Spherical Turrets - How Laggy are They?

[StormWing0]

Heh, my favorite reaction so far is still "Wait, that thing is a TURRET?!?"

So much this. XD The next thing you hear is them exploding. XD

 

[Panpiper]

I've got to wonder if it would not be possible for the game to have a pre-check function for collision checks. This would be a process you invoke at a shipyard that causes all docked entities to run through all possible rotations to find any and all collision points. Those are recorded and stored as long as no linked entity is modified subsequently. If anything does change, the previous pre-check is voided and it has to be rechecked for collision.

A ship that has had that pre-checked could then possibly avoid doing collision checks at all, and would simply automatically stop any rotations at the point previously established by the pre-check. Ball Turrets and the like, constructed such that they never collide with anything, would never cause any collision checks at all, as they have been pre-checked to note that they never cause collisions.

Maybe I'm just clueless when it comes to programming, but I would think something like this could significantly reduce server lag from collision checking.

 

[StormWing0]

It's possible to do but you would still need to check if a change has occurred but that isn't as bad an issue.

 

[Malacodor]

Maybe I'm just clueless when it comes to programming, but I would think something like this could significantly reduce server lag from collision checking.

It's less of a programming problem and more of a geometry problem. There's an infinite amount of possible turret positions. Turrets can collide not only with the ship, but also with other turrets and docked entities of all kind. The game had to be able to check all possible combinations including rare edge cases to prevent exploiting.

 

[Benevolent27]

I'd like to use one or more turrets like this one, but I fear they'd cause performance and lag problems due to collision calculations. Then again that's a problem with turrets in general, at least in greater numbers. So my question is: are spherical turrets in a hemispherical recess much worse than regular turrets or not? It would be great if some people with multiplayer experience could give me tips before I invest a lot of time in building potentially useless turrets.

Most of my turrets are spherical. I like them, a lot. But I do notice that a lot of lag can happen with them. I don't know if it's because they are spherical or just because I have a LOT of them. The world may never know.