Server ship size limits

[Atuarre]

Being able to specify individual limits on dimensions and block counts for ships (and separately for non-ships), would be nice for server operators wishing to allow people to import blueprints, but not allow them to import ships that are three sectors long which wreck their server performance.

These limits would have a default of -1 (no limit) as usual, but if specified, would need to be checked at the time of importing, buying, or building, in either astronaut or build modes.

 

[Dr_Dac]

Say hello to the Borg cubes

 

[Cool3303]

 

[GROOV3ST3R]

The moment you put a limit on anything, artistic and original design goes out the window. If people can\'t make ships the way they want to, they will just make cubes to maximise their performance. On the plus side, a cube has incredible armoring if the core is at the centre.

 

[z1967]

I can see where this could be useful and where you are coming from, but there could be some obvious flaws with this. The first is the overuse of borg cubes or other cubeships as they would be the most efficient. On the other hand, servers woudn\'t have to worry about ships crashing a server or slowing it down. I think it might be slightly better if it is limited by mass instead. A 2000 mass ship could be anywhere between a corvette/frigate and a 20 sector long stick. this does not limit creativity as much and minimizes the \"borg cube effect\". Jsut my 2 cents.

 

[omelet]

It is better to make people not want to spawn giant ships because of the tradeoffs they have with performance (or not be able to through not having enough money) than to have a hard block limit. But, as a server option I suppose you could play that way if you want and it would solve your problem I would imagine.

 

[Atuarre]

People will make borg cubes just because it gives you a large ship with a faster turn rate. This isn\'t a valid reason to deny server operators the choice of trying to protect their servers with limits... besides, if you look at the ships the inartistic hardcore players produce, they\'re already just as ugly as a borg cube. Maybe uglier.





If I had these limits, I can deal with the ugly ships people may make in protest. I can get a good night\'s sleep and log in and deal with them. But while I\'m alseep, people won\'t be building or spawning 3-sector-long, 10-million-block ships to lag or crash the server, ruining the game for everyone because of their burning, selfish need to have the largest possible phallus, at the expense of a playable game.

This is a choice I want server operators to have. Not just for me... all server operators trying to provide good servers. Players can still choose what servers to play on, and what servers not to play on. Personally, I would much prefer a game with sane limits, than one without. I don\'t think leaving the stability of a server, PvP or otherwise, entirely at the mercy of the common sense of the lowest common denominator is a good plan.

So please, let server operators have the choice of using limits like these.

 

[GROOV3ST3R]

and it doesn\'t crash the server I play on.



But it costs 2.1 billion to buy so anything bigger would have to be spawned in by an admin. So unless an admin wants to screw over his own server on purpose, the ships size is relatively limited. Nobody is dumb enough to make a stick. It wouldn\'t load in it\'s entirety, shields and power would be crap and it wouldn\'t like turning. At all. Not to mention the core would be exposed or very badly armored.

 

[-PR-Sandbag]

I\'d definitely like to be able to set a block limit. Setting dimensions might be a bit restrictive.

 

[kiwionthemoon]

I like building big ships and showing them of at server spawn. Its just annoying having a limit on big ships it also makes endgame pointless

 

[Atuarre]

I thought about it a while longer until I was sure, but... if there were programmable limits on dimensions and block counts both, then there might not be so many Borg cubes.

If a server had limits of, say, 200L, 100W, and 100H, the resulting 200x100x100 ship would be around 2 million blocks (edge effects aside) solid. If that server also imposed a block count limit of 250k blocks, then most ships built on it wouldn\'t be Borg cubes, unless that\'s exactly what the designer wanted. You just couldn\'t fill the entire volume with a rectilinear solid.

This is just an example, of course. The more I think about it, the more I think there ought to be an ADMIN_OVERRIDE_BLOCK_LIMITS config line as well. This would allow RP server administrators to make, for example, a Battlestar Galactica themed server with 2M block battlestars and basestars as thematic faction centerpieces, but their players would be restricted to building ships the size of maybe Colonial one, or fightercraft, or whatever they designate.

Personally, I prefer to look at this as a tool to help admin that want to allow large fleets of reasonably-sized ships in engagements that don\'t lag their servers, giving them more time to focus on more important things than trying to police lag-causing ships.

The hardcore, combat-only, win-at-any-cost Titan-builders can and will insist that no server admin anywhere has the right to stop them from building whatever they want, wherever they want, on any server the want, no matter the cost to game playability. I get that. I really do.

I just don\'t agree.

Server processors, disks, and memory, are all finite. Please, schema, give us the option to have limits?

 

[generalBLT13]

Ha my ship is bigger it is 1100 meters long, 800meters wide and 300 meters high and it can carry ships sized 240 Meters long, 70 Meters wide and 50 meters high[

 

[Commodore]

Hey, been a while since I saw you in game, on topic, a few servers already have this kind of thing implemented. (Block limit on imports) There are workarounds, but you can\'t just download an 800m blueprint, coarse a few minerals and buy it. So it forces everyone to build their own big ships, and once you\'ve built it, you are less likely to want to fight, lag the server and wreck your ship.

(Workarounds like building yourself the shell of a nice ship, with a components around the outside, and ready to fill with 10x10x10 blocks as soon as you buy it)

 

[Wade]

i think just mass limit work and then if there still ppl cuasing ag just ban them or blow up thier work block count and dimention limit seems a bit drastic but i get where ya comming from

 

[Ninjanoto]

art is in the eye of the beholder not in the person saying hey build what you want just not like that this and that big but i do get what he is getting at

 

[Snapems]

People went nuts in this thread- Read what the OP said. He\'s talking about ships so big that it effects the server. Which means reasonable restrictions, that wont restrict creativity.

Having a limit of a ship size- limited to say, 5000m in all directions, doesn\'t limit creative users, it limits abusive users. - If there truely is no limit, this could easily be considered an exploit/bug, -and not something that needs to be discussed.

Therefore whatever that limit is, it makes sense to give that to the server-owner.

Additionally; I don\'t think limits as crazy as 200m would be that bad. - In fact, playing on a server like that would be interesting to me.- Building/fighting small effecient ships.

TL;DR; I think giving this inevitable restriction to the server owner is just plain good.

 

[fstratzero]

I think these ideas are alright for a short term solution.

My personal take on what you guys have said is to break up the classificaiton system into mass for each class.
http://starmade.wikia.com/wiki/Ship_Classification

Then allow/dissallow those classes up to Titan, and a final option for larger than Titan class.

(side note, it would be cool for the game to add the class of ship to the tittle as a prefix or suffix)


Personally I think Schema, needs to work on scalability. So that your servers can handle two 10 sector ships flying into each other at 500kph with out slowdown, errors, or a crash.


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