Remote Salvage beam rotation?

[ShinNoir]

Let me first start off and say that I am lazy. If there is any way to do something easier (and more creative) I'm going to do it.

Salvaging, yes we could just build a giant cube and unload and suck up an entire asteroid, but where is the creativity in that?

So with all of the new rails I had the idea that I could build a rather small salvage beam array in a cylinder. Attach that cylinder to a ship and have the cylinder sweep back and forth from a up 45 deg and a down 45 degree with the salvage beams on. Thus sweeping the entire asteroid and making mining as easy as the push of a button.

BUT...

Ive run into a few problems with the idea. Remotely even with full cannon support the salvage beams do not stay on. You can easily work around this and activate it every time you start a sweep.

Second problem and this one I don't know how to fix. When salvage beams are activated by logic the angle at which they are shot out of remains the same no matter the rotation of the ship. So if starting at the down 45 deg angle, they shoot out at the down 45 deg angle and then the cylinder rotates to the up 45 deg angle the beams are still pointed in the same direction as when they were first activated. They will change in height as the emitter moves up with the rotation of the cylinder. Any suggestions on how to keep the beams pointing in the same orientation as the cylinder as it rotates?

~ShinNoir

 

[Tydeth]

Logic-activated beams simply won't change direction, as they're not receiving a constant fire command to update their "fire forward" direction with like when player-controlled. Those brief pauses with logic-controlled beam/cannon systems are pretty much the only time a direction change would occur.

As you noticed, the beams did move with the emitters; they just didn't change orientation. A solution is to use rails that adjust the array such that the beams stay pointing in the original direction. This can be rotors that face in the same way as the beams to make angular motion of the emitters possible (see Atlas Armament faction thread; xlBlackhawklx posted a pair of imgur gifs demonstrating such a mining ship; I am building a similar setup, but mine isn't completed yet), or a set of rail basics to make the array move back and forth laterally, or some combination of the above.

Alternatively, you can use the up and down arrow keys to switch between your main ship and the array when mining, so that you can start up the logic for the swivel, then switch to command the array and hold the mouse button to fire the beams manually; they would thus change direction as the thing turns up and down.

 

[ShinNoir]

Well darn, that sucks. I hope that change that soon.

Thanks for the info

~ShinNoir

 

[Zel0t]

Been wondering this myself. Could you not hookup salvage/cannon plus logic to refire in tighter intervals to make it update more often? Ill try this out when i have time.

 

[Mork2]

You can use 2 sets of salvage beams using alternating logic to keep what appears to be a continuous beam up. 2.5 seconds alternating. You can try to slow down the speed the of the rotation. I have made a spin system where you have a bar rotating around a centre point and it does mine the entire asteroid.

 

[ShinNoir]

Here is what I came up with instead.

http://starmadedock.net/threads/blue-sun-occupational-division.8159/

~ShinNoir

 

[Tydeth]

Nice ship. I see you went with a combination of the original swivel you desired and the axial rotation method I posted about.

 

[AtraUnam]

Just an FYI axel rotation does in fact suffer from the same issue as rotating beams in any other fashion. Its just much less noticeable because the effect is spread along the entire length of the beams range. Over large fast arrays they will start to corkscrew: