Ship Hulls

[Lenier]

So, am I correct in saying that right now ship hulls die on to much impact if the "collision damage" setting is turned on? What if ship hulls and how we use them was rethought?

I want a type of ship hull that withstands heat and energy impact but does not take direct collision well at all. Then I want a type of ship-hull which will actually crumple back on impact with a missiles or ships, slowing the host ship and preventing massive damage to the frontal systems. I think this two-fold system would make for some really interesting ship designs (large crumple zones combined with layers of refractive hull instead of lots of layers) and would also promote the use of more than one type of hull and more than one type of weapon, ultimately making ship design and ship battles more interesting.

Right now, there is no advantage to having normal hull on your ship other than cost. Lets make those titan battles so much more interesting. Ramming speed?


EDIT: This is a post lower down which summarizes the idea better:

Instead of the current hull system, we use a new system using the current id's, and maybe add another level which would use up some id's I know, but it was bound to happen eventually if schema ever plans to make a third level of hull.

First level of hull: energy dispersion hull

• disperses energy from weapons taking normal damage
• collision damages the blocks alot
• missiles are deadly

Second level of hull: crumple reinforced hull

• does not disperse weapons well, taking massive damage
• On collision with object or rocket, instead of taking heavy damage the block calculates an orthogonal space to jump to, such as the space directly behind it.
• If it is empty then it takes minimal damage
• if there is a block there, the block takes heavy damage
• This effect also slows down both ships reducing overall collision damage

Third level of hull: Reinforced shell hull-possibly only in three colors (black,white,gray)

• takes minimal damage from weapons
• takes minimal heat damage
• on collision, block takes minimal damage but gets pushed back/gives damage to blocks behind it massively slowing opponent and possibly giving both ships minimal interior damage depending on the slowdown speed/g-forces.

anybody think this is doable?
Please "Agree" if you agree!

 

[NeonSturm]

I like the concept - essentially different armour vs different weapons, but:

Think about the required number of block IDs (except you want the shape to decide about how it works) Then think about Role-Play ships and look&feel of ships.

 

[jayman38]

I wonder if you could have a modifier block type (only one block ID) that links to multiple hulls, to give them new behavior. Kind of like a configurable weapon computer for hull instead of weapons. You could even use one of the existing decoration computers, and get this kind of block, with the different orientations for free (no additional BlockIDs required). And it wouldn't break older blueprints, because the computer would have to be linked before it could effect hulls. Otherwise, it's just another decoration block.

 

[WaffulMann]

Why is more IDs bad, I mean minecraft has tons and tons of block types and oh look 60 fps.

 

[NeonSturm]

Why is more IDs bad, I mean minecraft has tons and tons of block types and oh look 60 fps.

Minecraft has 4092 possible IDs, we have 1024 - that saves us 2 bit per block (24 instead of 26 per block).

Maybe we could have it too by having some blocks only accessible over a range of variable IDs (maybe 16-64) which just add 4-6 bit to bits provided by blocks around them and use the result for themselves.
Dunno how hard it is to implement.

 

[ltmauve]

Or an effect to reduce collison damage.

 

[Lenier]

what if you only had a few colors. Save the current hulls for the exterior and have grey black or white reinforced crumple hull block types. only a few new ids then!

 

[CoolDog3]

I like the idea of hull that withstands heat. I think I could make some cool heat shield ships with it.

 

[starhaiden]

does the sun go through blocks if it doesn't I'm going to build a dome station in the star and build a warp gate inside it. secret base nobody can get close or risk damaging their ship

 

[max stripe]

does the sun go through blocks if it doesn't I'm going to build a dome station in the star and build a warp gate inside it. secret base nobody can get close or risk damaging their ship

the sun will dmg ship blocks but will not dmg stations
btw for ships in the sun more mass = longer time in sun before ur ship begins to burn

 

[NeonSturm]

does the sun go through blocks if it doesn't I'm going to build a dome station in the star and build a warp gate inside it. secret base nobody can get close or risk damaging their ship

Would like a 9^3-1 block group of plex doors around the sun centre. If you want to use the gate, you have to send some remote-signal to close the plex doors (currently you can use only the docking beam and a multi-sector dotted line of activator blocks)

The only thing that is bad for this strategy : the gate throws a cone-shaped shadow which everybody can be in without taking damage

For more realistic suns, "sun-damage projectiles" have to spawn in a sphere around the sun-centre. Gates would then only block a part of the damage - dependent on how close you build it to the sun and how big it is.

 

[FunnyBunny14]

For some reason cores love taking damage from the sun. When you're not in them and close enough to the sun, but not in the radiation influence sphere, the core will take damage without you doing anything. Really annoying when building a ship.

 

[max stripe]

For some reason cores love taking damage from the sun. When you're not in them and close enough to the sun, but not in the radiation influence sphere, the core will take damage without you doing anything. Really annoying when building a ship.

2 sectors from the sun and u start with a little dmg move in closer and the dmg goes from 80 to 600

 

[FunnyBunny14]

No, I mean further than sectors. And only my core takes damage. Trust me, it is a bug.

 

[max stripe]

idk then
i havent gone near a sun since before the weopons update so things could have changed

 

[Lenier]

Honestly, I think that it should be almost completely impossible to go next to the sun. I like the idea that certain hulls could be heat-resistant though. they could also be used as atmospheric reentry shields!

so energy diffusing hull
collision-crumple hull
heat shield hull

 

[Lecic]

So, am I correct in saying that right now ship hulls die on to much impact if the "collision damage" setting is turned on? What if ship hulls and how we use them was rethought?

I want a type of ship hull that withstands heat and energy impact but does not take direct collision well at all. Then I want a type of ship-hull which will actually crumple back on impact with a missiles or ships, slowing the host ship and preventing massive damage to the frontal systems. I think this two-fold system would make for some really interesting ship designs (large crumple zones combined with layers of refractive hull instead of lots of layers) and would also promote the use of more than one type of hull and more than one type of weapon, ultimately making ship design and ship battles more interesting.

Right now, there is no advantage to having normal hull on your ship other than cost. Lets make those titan battles so much more interesting. Ramming speed?

How do you think crumpled hull would work? Because I don't think it would. There's no way to have a deformation system in this game, like in Space Engineers, which is were I'm guessing you got this idea. If deformation was possible, it'd require a different block ID for all of the deformations for all of the hull blocks, which would create a simply massive amount of IDs.

Before a certain someone interjects with their (wonderful) idea to improve this issue, even with yours there'd be a ton of new block IDs.

The game can currently handle 1024 IDs. According to the Starmade Block ID list, there are currently 541 blocks, which means we've used a bit over half of the possible IDs.

 

[jayman38]

I envision collision-crumple hull to look exactly like other hull, and to be damaged (and disappear if taken enough damage) like normal hull, and simply reduce the velocity of both entities by a huge amount, to simulate crumpling. Even a minimum crumpling action should probably reduce the block's HP by over 50%, to further simulate the crumpling damage effect. In short, the crumpling hull should take MASSIVE damage from collision, so that they normally get destroyed during collision, and greatly reduce velocity of both structures during collision.

If one or both structures still have momentum after the initial crumple blocks are destroyed, they continue approaching each other, with the potential to damage underlying blocks. At the reduced velocity, the damage from collision should now be a lot less. A second layer of crumple hull might be helpful.

Edit: On second thought, these types of hull should take more damage from absolutely everything, not just collisions, so just drop the armor rating to 0% and drop the block's HP to low-double-digits.

 

[Lenier]

I will flesh out the concept a bit here, and no, I actually have never seen more than a few images of space-engineers. This is not the only way to do it, and I think that jayman38 has a good concept, but here is my original thought:

Instead of the current hull system, we use a new system using the current id's, and maybe add another level which would use up some id's I know, but it was bound to happen eventually if schema ever plans to make a third level of hull.

First level of hull: energy dispersion hull

• disperses energy from weapons taking normal damage
• collision damages the blocks alot
• missiles are deadly

Second level of hull: crumple reinforced hull

• does not disperse weapons well, taking massive damage
• On collision with object or rocket, instead of taking heavy damage the block calculates an orthogonal space to jump to, such as the space directly behind it.
• If it is empty then it takes minimal damage
• if there is a block there, the block takes heavy damage
• This effect also slows down both ships reducing overall collision damage

Third level of hull: Reinforced shell hull-possibly only in three colors (black,white,gray)

• takes minimal damage from weapons
• takes minimal heat damage
• on collision, block takes minimal damage but gets pushed back/gives damage to blocks behind it massively slowing opponent and possibly giving both ships minimal interior damage depending on the slowdown speed/g-forces.

anybody think this is doable?

 

[Lenier]

People, agree with the first post if you like this idea!