Read by Council Slab Mass

[leion247]

When building a ship I realized that slabs have just as much mass as their whole block parents. It's weird that 1/4 of a block has just as much mass as a whole block. I think having it to were slabs that are 3/4 of a block have only 3/4 of the original mass an so on, but to keep people from using slabs for all their armor because having advanced armor that has less mass but the same strength would be strange and OP, to do the same with the durability of the slabs. Either having slabs of a block that are only 1/2 of a block have 1/2 of the durability for all types of armor, or for stronger armors say 1/2 of the grey standard armor only has 1/3 of strenght, but weaker blocks like normal grey hull just being 1/2 a block having 1/2 the strenght. Just something I wanted to put out there.

 

[kiraen]

iirc, the current lore is that the different shapes are selectively compressed using similar technology to that used by the cargo modules.
Tetras, heptas, and wedges also have the same stats as full blocks.

Considering that a shaped block takes up the same grid space as a full block, it is unlikely that things will change.
This is not the first time this has come up.

 

[Lecic]

I think I would prefer to keep things as they are. It's a lot more complicated to balance the resource costs otherwise, and you don't have to look at a simple aesthetic choice (do I use thin hull or thick hull here?) as a major combat effectiveness choice instead.

 

[alterintel]

If given the choice between:

A) 1/4 Slab = 1/4 the resource cost, and 1/4 the armor protection.
B) 1/4 Slab = same resource cost and armor as full block

I would choose B

 

[jstenholt]

This will definitely not be a thing, for many reasons.

But the tl'dr of it all is, it would require changes to way too many systems.

 

[WitherFireGaming]

I'm not sure about this, but I heard the reasoning behind this was that giving them separate masses would increase the file size of each block. Can anyone verify?

 

[Megacrafter127]

I'm not sure about this, but I heard the reasoning behind this was that giving them separate masses would increase the file size of each block. Can anyone verify?

I can falsify. Mass and other block dependent stats are stored in the BlockConfig.xml, and since each wedge, corner, hepta, tetra and slab has their own entry in the BlockConfig.xml, changing the mass of some entries will not have an effect on the size of any other file, and the sizechange of the BlockConfig.xml will only be a couple bytes at most, and it may even shrink in size.
The only stat actually contained in the blockdata in the smd2 files is the current HP[not the max-HP], but a static number of bits is assigned to it, so even that won't change at all.