Ship cores, breathing, and new ship structures

[nearbeer]

I'm suggesting what I think is a necessary idea to rid servers of ugly ships and increase the value of your ship hulls for good: breathing. Before this would be possible, the player would have to remain fixed to a ship's 3D space rather than disappearing whenever he entered a ship core so the player's position could always be calculated. It would fix some annoying spawn bugs anyways, and who knows, chairs could be added to make command rooms look nice since austronauts standing next to cores might be a little ugly. I know oxygen suggestions exist but I felt this was a better method.

Now on to the real suggestion. Every astronaut would have an oxygen bar that tops at five minutes (or 300 seconds). The bar changes based on the formula (air quality - 50%)/300 per second, so air levels above fifty percent increase your oxygen while fifty is stagnant and all below cause you to lose oxygen. When a player is all out of oxygen, he dies (no duh).

Where does this oxygen come from? The answer is planets, ventilation blocks (One per STATION only), and ship cores. Everywhere that oxygen can not escape a ship or station (Every station would be generated with a new ventilation block) the quality is 100%. Likewise, all air in a planet is 100%. However, should oxygen begin to pathfind any way out in to the vacuum of space (Your hulls are breached, some idiot opened both doors of the airlock, etc.), your air quality of the ship will fall to a minimum of 10%, so at minimum you'll need to fix your hulls in 6 minutes-ish.

I also note that I do not support battery powered oxygen. It completely negates the purpose of protecting your ship hulls, because it would be no consequence if a ship took damage. Consumable oxygen (described below), however, provides the little support you need while not being OP.

I heard about the plan to add planet survival, and though secondary of a suggestion, I thought players could start on random planets since they'd provide oxygen and work their way to a ship through mining, since starting in space would force players to make ships in 5 minutes or die. Just an idea.

It's also a good idea that players could spawn in space stations. The only problem I see is that there'd be crowding, but perhaps a function for the spawn station could be made that ships that stay too long are removed.

For the convenience of players, I suggest that two new blocks be added for bocking oxygen escape: a forcefield, it blocks air not movement, and a blast door, it can be opened and closed but always blocks oxygen. When I say this plex doors do NOT block oxygen because if a ship has rooms with doors then the ones not near the core lose oxygen and such.

Now, where does this idea prosper? I think that if this were to be added, players would be forced to make finer looking ships and be more careful when taking fire. Sure, it can be a bit of a burden, but if players started additionally with 4 force field blocks, a gravity module, and 25-50 more hulls, then it wouldn't be that big of a deal, especially that you have 5 minutes worth anyways. Most players right now don't even neeed to use their hulls so they just make a solid ship of lasers and cannons, but that can be put a stop to. Note that I do not want this to exist for the sake of realism rather to enforce better ship construction priciples.

It was said that players would just construct the smallest space possible then make all weapons/tools on the outside but I think it would still benefit since the players that would do that could easily be killed from the outside. Remember at the start that I said players would not disappear when they controlled a core, so now they can die very fast if they do not protect themselves.

OH and no more flying around in sole ship cores. I hate that and it should die in a fire.

A nice block to add (creds to king chameleon) would be an oxygen storage block. It regenerates when you enter planet atmospheres and acts as a fail safe to improve the air quality of your ship when your hull is breached by a bit for some time.

 

[Artaxias]

I like your first idea where we don\'t disappear into the core and sit in command chairs instead. I like it also because I hate exiting the core and popping out of my ship. I won\'t comment on the oxygen suggestion, because I\'ve already made one of my own.

 

[King Chameleon]

I like the air quality system.

So what you are suggesting is that when a player leaves the atmosphere of the ship they have the amount of oxygen left in their bar, which changes depending on the quality of air they were last breathing?

To add to your suggestion, what if there were two types of blocks added:

A cheap storage block for air which gives the whole ship interior an airsupply which regenerates when entering atmospheres. If the hull were to be breached this would increase the time until air runs out.

A recycling block, which is more expensive (This would allow ships to stay in space indefinately). The air quality would be dependant on the number and dimension of these blocks aswell as the interior volume of the ship. However, I imagine this would be very challenging to code (im no coder though). Unless air was represented in the form of a non-touchable block, which spreads outward from the recyclers. The air block group would degrade quality if not in contact with a recycler/storage block or a tree perhaps!

 

[nearbeer]

@artaxias

I took a look at your thread, ours are pretty similar so I\'ll take it you support this. I think mine is more detailed at how the system works though.

@king

I think your storage block is an excellent idea, but I don\'t understand your recycling block. If it defeats the purpose of closing off the ship I think it\'s a bad idea though.

 

[Artaxias]

I support your idea, it sounds good to me. I comment on other threads that have similar ideas to mine because my threads seem to disappear into the abyss.

 

[KKobayashi]

bump
supported

 

[SeaPancake]

Maybe there should just be a life support block that requires power to run, and when you run out of power, you lose air quality.

 

[nearbeer]

I think there\'s no need to add a new block for the oxygen. The ship core should be accessable anyways, so it serves as a good oxygen block.

 

[Temich_7799]

Oxygen? ? ! ! It wouldn\'t be bad

 

[nearbeer]

I\'m glad everyone is supporting my thread :D hopefully this gets added

 

[Miow22]

dwelling on the idea of a life support block, you could make it so it is a module, and that it uses up some power. Better oxygen quality based on the amount of blocks, more blocks taking more power, and the power idea could also lead to a clean stable supply of infinite oxygen.

You would also of course have an indication somewhere on the screen representing oxygen levels, a bar maybe: it\'s a great idea you\'ve brought up.

 

[nearbeer]

I see why these life support blocks are necessary now, if someone has rooms sealed off by plex doors it gets no oxygen. The only problem would be that every room would be forced to have that air supply, so I thought instead an airlock block should have to be added and oxygen could instead pass through plex doors as if no blocks existed even if closed.

 

[Brony]

air means an atmospheric pressure.

In this case it would be a suction system for example the shell is broken and you\'re beside you get sucked from the hole.

The chair system is special because it takes more item to start a basic ship.

I spoke with a force field that is used as a pass-through door, do you think that air could stay away from him?

 

[Guard13007]

The only problem I see with your idea:

\"I thought players could start on a planet since they\'d provide oxygen and work their way to a ship through mining. Just an idea.\"

I like this idea, but manufactoring/crafting needs to be simplified and generalized a bit for this to actually work. Also how do you deal with servers? Everyone spawning on the same planet, the planet would be scraped down to nothing at one point, and no one new would survive past that.

 

[nearbeer]

Like I said it was a secondary suggestion, but may be necessary since starting in space would be tougher since players would have 5 minutes to build a ship. Maybe instead of spawning all on the same planet, players could spawn on random planets across the universe.

 

[Guarana_SUI]

I support Your Oxygen Idea, you should check out my thread where im talking about the strict diffrence betweeen inside and outside of the spaceship:
http://star-made.org/content/gravity-system-overhaul-also-oxygen
As for Airquality and stuff i would rather prefer a simpler solution: If your Ship has any holes the Airsystem just dont work.



The Idea of decent ships:

I really see where you comming from, but the need of a 3d space inside a ship wont make any diffrence. People will just bulid the space thats nececary and then start with the guns outside from there.
This problem is caused by other factors such as the power of weapons and the moving system. I will probably start a thread about this soon. I think the best way to describe the problem is this funny video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0C1wGCiRVIE

 

[MikeV37]

I think since the players are given blocks from the start, they don\'t need to harvest much of the planet in order to make a ship and lift off. In larger servers where this becomes a problem, it ccan be self regulated by the creation of a \"Home base\" or \"Green party\" faction, which frowns on people taking apart the home planet.



In fact, why not make it NPC? The home planet starts with some buildings, ships and turrets controlled by an NPC faction, that enforces not destroying the planet in much the same way as the shops get angry when you shoot at them.



Or yeah, a space station at spawn, with large hangar doors for players to build their ships in.



Also, if air can pass through plex doors, won\'t it just escape into space? I think it\'d be better if they didn\'t pass through doors. Perhaps include a new block called \"Blast door\" which doesn\'t let gases through.



The problem with different rooms needing an oxygen tank can be fixed by making a ventilation system on your ship, a 1x1 corridor through the different rooms. Perhaps this could be a block as well, which specifically lets gases through?



It\'d also be nice if the doors automatically closed if exposed to vacuum for a while. Otherwise a part of the ship can\'t be sectioned off from the rest in case of battle.

 

[Guard13007]

@nearbeer I like the idea of random planetary spawns, but the idea @MikeV37 said I like best, a big hanger on the station at spawn, a nice place to breathe easy while you build, and be protected from random attacks by other people.

I dislike the blast doors idea for it blocking oxygen while a regular door allows it, but I think a blast door is needed since I hate having a weak point in my armor in the form of doors to get in.

 

[Winterhome]

Combine this with remotely controlled doors (perhaps use interiorcamera blocks that can be placed in any given direction but have limited visual range and use a different key - they\'d do nicely, since they could have an in-ship activation beam).

Add a required Life Support mechanic - rather than a single block, you could have a Generator style efficiency setup - except rather than box dimensions, life support becomes more efficient as you have more blocks that are only connected on two sides. No big boxes, just a lot of ventilation shafts. The larger your ship\'s interior overall, the more life support you need.

If half of your ship is cut off by spess lazorz, you lose half of your requirements for Life Support - and hopefully you didn\'t just lose your entire LS system.

 

[CorneliousCrowe]

Maybe we are coming at the problem the wrong way. I am personally in favor of an air block or some sort of life support system. It would make building massive capital ships more chalenging and create a new combat dynamic.

But maybe there is air in space? Spaceships seem to be effected by some sort of friction forces while in space. I realize this is a game mechanic ment to make things simpiler, but it also works in the context of the universe, which reletively speaking is incredibly small. The furthest out planet is only about 10000 km from its star! Maybe oxygen (or whatever our intrepid space explorers happen to breathe... perhaps stardust?) exists all around the star system.

Adding oxygen to the game would make things really difficult and un-fun for early gamers, especially if they start with nothing and have to rely on trading or building to make a ship. (on a side not, I think there should be raw materials that can be crafted into useable blocks on each planet, so that players can start on a planet with an empty inventory and no directions, and create the most basic of ships to fly to the nearest store with to trade) Even with the required start up blocks, without a detailed and experience-breaking tutorial on how to properly build a ship to start out with, its hard to the point of being un-fun to get your ship going anywhere fast. Its hard enough as it is figuring out what goes where and does what, I had to watch schemas videos on it to get the game going.

So here is my suggestion, take it or leave it:

The sectors around the spawn-star are filled with air! This allows the player to travel from one planet to the next with reletive ease to gather materials for ships and turrets and bases. I like that each planet now has different types of resources, while still having certain \"base level\" materials and ores. Maybe the player can harvest some of these materials and create basic ship parts, such as power generators and thrusters, and then they must travel to other worlds to get some of the rarer elements (like the glowing ice blocks on the frozen planets) There are shops in the area (although it would be nice if they spawned less. There are about 50 in my explored area now... and i\'ve only been in one star system...) where you can trade for rare items or the completed versions of craftable blocks.

outside the star system is \"void matter\", Invisible and toxic \"stuff\" that still creates drag on your ship, (to keep the physics the same) but is damaging to the player. Because of this it would now be neccisarry to keep oxygen generators on board our ships. These would create a \"bubble\" or a cube of air around itself where the player would be able to breath normally. By placing more of them, or expanders, it would increase the size of the bubble. They could be made from some of the more rare elements, so that the player can\'t worry about them until later in the game. plus, they take up energy and valuable space, so it would limit ship building sizes to what the player has available. This allows for things like an \"open\" style hanger without the need for space-consuming airlocks. I like to build shipboard hangers so that my docked ships are protected in a firefight, but i want to be able to undock drone ships and leave them behind to destroy pirates too, and closed hangers wouldn\'t let me do that without getting out of the core. (oh, I am a fan of getting into the core or a block. I don\'t know why, but I just like the idea that it takes up less space and allows different viewpoints. Your way would work too though, and I like it.


This method creates a fun and chalenging starting area for new players to sandbox thier way around, while making the really rare and exciting things deeper and later in the game.
I hope this is well enough explained!