Starcraft Hyperion and Terran Structures

[dphilostrate]

I once found the creation of Starcraft II's Hyperion to be initial skill test for newcomers. However, I have been building this for years...which means I spend 65% of my time removing out-of-date stuff and replacing it with the new stuff. Of course, that is not to say I wasn't happy when I could finally replace my gravity lifts with real elevators. Although, I have not been able to get the Yamato Cannon to work right since changes to weapon power consumption in early 2015. It took me a long time to replace many things over the years...after tetras and heptas came out, I felt like there was no way to update everything. Same for when logic or rails came out. Over time I managed to rip out the old stuff and replaced it with the new.

At present it is:

Mass 110k
Length 277m
Height 94m
Width 253m

Power 18m
Shield 3.3m
Armor 45m
Structure 13m

There is a lot of spaces to fill in the so those numbers are not set in stone.

I've done a lot of fun stuff for the interiors and although it has feel of an RP ship...I really wanted to mix actual play optimization in their too---so packed behind many walls are tons of shield capacitors more often than not.
There are about 30 to 35 ship-to-ship turrets and 25 or so point defense rapid fire guns. In the hangers there are two dropships and 50 wraith starfighters. There are also some "planetary infrastructure" hangers with supply depots, SCVs, a command center, barracks, and starport.

Permit me to share some exterior images:

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Structures

In addition to the Hyperion, I wanted to created some of the notable Terran structures from the Starcraft universe. Because some Terran structures can also fly, I thought it was reasonable to turn then into actual ships. There are two "planetary infrastructure hangers" in the Hyperion for these buildings. Basically, the idea is that you can use the Hyperion to deploy a prefabricated base on a planet. You would just need to place some rails on the planet first. Also there are a few supplementary structures at the base like the landing pad and biodomes. Those were all built on the planet and are not flyable, merely decoration. Oh...and yes, I did add some ice crystals to appear like the blue crystalline in-game minerals.

The structures which are seperate entities are all avaliable inside the Hyperion's two massive planetary infrastructure hangers. The large structures like the commander center, barracks, and starport flow along rails to a position over the hanger doors.

In the picture above from the planetary infrastructure hanger, you see the back of the Terran barracks and a number of supply depots. I know the supply depots do not have the "Lift off" feature in Starcraft, but I figured why not since they can be orbitally deployed, I figured, why not.

The top part of the command center is a docked entity. I thought someone could try to make the satellite dish or turret attachment if they wanted. The interior is mostly RP space, but it does have some cargo space and a weak sensor. I would like to include some actually utility to the buildings rather than being limited to storage space.

These are the SCVs, just weak repair/salvage entities mostly for show.

 

[dphilostrate]

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Interiors

I used the interiors of the Hyperion as we see in Starcraft II to influence the general internal designs of the ship. I found the sci-fi artstyle of the Terrans aligns with the "used future" style which is seen in Star Wars or Galactica. I also noticed the naval style of internal architecture and attempted emulate that style.

If you are familiar with the bridge of the Hyperion and its cantina from Starcraft's cinematics, you will recognize my attempts to create the same. I did not get the bridge the way I wanted...but let's call it an "homage" to the original.

This is an image of the map at the center of the bridge. Those are all Starcraft planets and I tried to place them in locations which made some sense to me since there is no lore map of the Koprulu Sector.

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Tactical Design:

I designed the Hyperion to be more of a "fortress in space" than a carrier or transport, however, it can serve in those capacities. I imagined this ship as pulling into the middle of a battle with its turrets pinning themselves on some of the moderately-sized ships, while fighters focus on smaller ships. The pilot of the Hyperion is then able to focus its primary weapons and Yamato Cannon on enemy carriers and flagships.

Naturally, mobility for a ship like this is relatively negligible. Instead, the ship must be designed to resist a lot of fire. This means more than shields. Important ships systems will often be found behind walls of heavy armor or blast door docked entities with their own shields. Then there are a lot of modules to help defend against Ion, EMP, and Explosion effect. I left Punch through and Piercing effect only minimally hindered because I like to build weaknesses into my ships intentionally.

To cut out a portion of the damage, there are a little under 30 small point defense guns spaced around the ship which are designated to focus fire on incoming missiles. Some of the PD turrets are hidden inside the ship and a player need only activate the defense array on the bridge to have all the doors open and turrets to slide out.

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Fighters:

I am very displeased with my fighters. I feel I could do better because they are not very good at what they do. They look like the Wraith fighters from Starcraft II, which limits the amount of space I can use for them. But they there are several hangers in the ship they can be deployed from. Two hangers in the "head" portion of the ship. Two in the "wings" and one on the ship's "belly."

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Dropships:
The standard Terran shuttle. It have adequate interior space to transport one or two squads. Minimal weaponry, built for short ranged sector travel.

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Drop Pods:

One of the features I am and thinking about getting rid of are the "drop pods." You will notice several cylindrical structures on the sides of the ship's "neck." I loaded a drop pod within each. One drop pod has an autopilot with the push module which should activate upon deployment (keyword is "should"). There are also some atmosphere descent flaps which activate stop modules once they are opened. The drop pods come equipment with gear and supplies, the thinking is they would be for the rapid deployment of ground troops.

After installing them, I was like "Wait...why did I include these?!?" There are no ground troops in the game so I feel like having drop pods in a waste of space. Nor would I use them to travel up and down from a planet's surface when I have a drop ship. I considered using the "silos" with the pods are lowered from for some massive missiles, but the reduced effectiveness of warheads makes that pointless. Maybe I can load the tubes with some sort of defensive satellites to deploy around planets? Any ideas?

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Docking Tubes:

During the cinematic in Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty when Jim Raynor first encounter's Valerian Mengsk's battlecruiser, he says, "Prep docking tubes." I tried to make some, but I really do not like how they came out. They have to be a part of a telescopic deployment system to deal with space limitations. I feel like they hold little true utility and should likely be scrapped. Opinions?

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Constructive criticism is encouraged.

I am not ready to made the blueprints available to everyone. There are few things to adjust first. But the version I make available will not have every nook and cranny packed with blocks. I will grant the player ample space to customize the ship as their needs vary.

 

[Comradecolonel]

I approve 100%. +1 for Terran bases and battlecruisers.

 

[Dr. Whammy]

Additional supply depots required...

Looks great. I've always loved StarCraft. Keep up the good work.

 

[dphilostrate]

I should mention the lag from the ship is very disappointing and demoralizing when trying to build. Near the edge of the ship I can be at 50 FPS but once I get closer to the core it drops to 8 or 9 FPS. I have been able design a lot with it be 8 and 9...but it wears me out. I tried disconnecting ships and drop pods and structures, but the FPS remained 8 or 9. Any ideas for what I could do on that issue?

 

[Dr. Whammy]

Did you connect a rail speed controller on all fixed-docked entities to set their speed to zero? This may cut down on the collision checks StarMade normally runs. Having too many entities that close together can cause lag as well, but there's not much that can be done about that.

 

[dphilostrate]

I will try that out. Do I also do this with the rails which are only single blocks for stuff like turrets?

 

[Dr. Whammy]

All "rail basic" blocks being used as stationary docks should be linked to a rail speed controller set to zero speed. That will cut down on unnecessary collision checks. Don't connect your turrets to the controller; just try to minimize collisions via your build methods. Try to give them as much rotational clearance as you can so they don't collide with anything but their own base. Highly complex builds such as yours are beyond the scope of what StarMade can efficiently handle. This goes double for multi-player. People will see your builds and say "Daaaayum!!!" Then the server will lag everyone to pieces until they rage quit. Ask me how I know...

 

[dphilostrate]

All "rail basic" blocks being used as stationary docks should be linked to a rail speed controller set to zero speed. That will cut down on unnecessary collision checks. Don't connect your turrets to the controller; just try to minimize collisions via your build methods. Try to give them as much rotational clearance as you can so they don't collide with anything but their own base. Highly complex builds such as yours are beyond the scope of what StarMade can efficiently handle. This goes double for multi-player. People will see your builds and say "Daaaayum!!!" Then the server will lag everyone to pieces until they rage quit. Ask me how I know...

I can guess how you know! lol

Yeah...my design methods must be modified. At this time my philosophy is "Envision big", "Build it", "Let the laggy realities of computational mechanics hit me over the head", "Subtract frivolous stuff."

I need to be "Envision big", "Halt. Think. Perform reductions early on. Then Build."

Of course there 121 attached entities to the Hyperion and then a third of each have one to four of their own attached entities. Is that too many?

 

[Dr. Whammy]

I can guess how you know! lol

Yeah...my design methods must be modified. At this time my philosophy is "Envision big", "Build it", "Let the laggy realities of computational mechanics hit me over the head", "Subtract frivolous stuff."

I need to be "Envision big", "Halt. Think. Perform reductions early on. Then Build."

Of course there 121 attached entities to the Hyperion and then a third of each have one to four of their own attached entities. Is that too many?

Is that too many? Here's a little hint...

This 7500+/- mass light assault ship has a modular 100 round select-fire torpedo launcher mounted to it along with a light missile turret and 19 point defense turrets; for a total of 143 entities. The first and only time I spawned one of these in multi-player resulted in everyone's ping jumping to the high quadruple digits. They were PISSED. My ping sky-rocketed to over 22,000. I had no choice but to jettison my launcher and destroy it with cannon fire. The lag was so bad that it caused missiles and the majority of cannon rounds to pass right through it. 3 minutes later, the game had registered enough hits for the launcher to begin to break up. Torpedoes started detonating; with a few of them flying off at odd angles until the whole thing went ka-blooie; thus ending the lag.

StarMade just isn't ready for builders like us yet. Schine need to optimize a lot further before we can release our true potential. Other-wise, we'll be permanently exiled to single player...

 

[StarWars1981]

Is that too many? Here's a little hint...
View attachment 25980
This 7500+/- mass light assault ship has a modular 100 round select-fire torpedo launcher mounted to it along with a light missile turret and 19 point defense turrets; for a total of 143 entities. The first and only time I spawned one of these in multi-player resulted in everyone's ping jumping to the high quadruple digits. They were PISSED. My ping sky-rocketed to over 22,000. I had no choice but to jettison my launcher and destroy it with cannon fire. The lag was so bad that it caused missiles and the majority of cannon rounds to pass right through it. 3 minutes later, the game had registered enough hits for the launcher to begin to break up. Torpedoes started detonating; with a few of them flying off at odd angles until the whole thing went ka-blooie; thus ending the lag.

StarMade just isn't ready for builders like us yet. Schine need to optimize a lot further before we can release our true potential. Other-wise, we'll be permanently exiled to single player...

You should've built it in a shipyard ... despawn vessel!!! QUICK!

 

[Dr. Whammy]

You should've built it in a shipyard ... despawn vessel!!! QUICK!

Actually, I did.

There was no lag while the ship was docked but once undocked, the chaos began. I figured the lag was due to being literally 150 meters away from my planet so I flew about 2 sectors away to see if I could test fire it. No dice; the thing continued to lag us all to pieces and I had to eject and destroy the launcher... So much for my anti-capital plan. I've since refit the ship with additional missiles and a slight power grid boost.


Then again, it might have been due to the lag other players were generating. Their fighting brought everyone online to a halt. More tests are required.

 

[StarWars1981]

Just to speak for the server people here ... I think the coming response will be "Please do it in SINGLE-PLAYER!!!!"

 

[Reilly Reese]

Just go on a server where there is no fighting at the time.

 

[dphilostrate]

There is a level of awareness for the technical limits of a server one must have when they build a capital ship or a ship with a ton of torpedoes in would seem.

I suppose it will be awhile before capital ships can really go at each other with no holds barred.

 

[Theats]

I really like the concept of deploying prefab bases on a planey. I played the first Starrett years ago and would like to see something like this implemented as an in ga me faction, though more changes would need to be made to keep it legal.

 

[dphilostrate]

It would be awesome to have a building jettisoned from a ship and landing on an uninhabited world with only the push of a button. But I imagine development would first desire to create auto shuttle landing before auto building landing.

 

[dphilostrate]

Ok so I changed all the rail speeds and removed those turrets and docked ships with questionable clearance. But the FPS remains 8 to 10 whenever I am about 100m from the ship's core.

 

[nightrune]

This is not that large of a ship, and I don't think that many entities.

I wonder what is going on.

 

[AndyP]

Are we talking about FPS or PING problems here?

FPS problems are usually caused by a wrong setting for "max segments drawn".
People tend to set it in an empty sector with like 500-600 segments to display in total.
And see no difference between 1500, 8000 and 20000 so they keep it as 20000 as it does not seem to have an affect.

Now the problem, when those players approach a planet, or a huge ship and suddenly load an object with 30000 segments to draw, and possibly have a video card that can handle 8000 segments, they get FPS drops and blame starmade for not being optimized for large structures.

Now seeing a large ship in range of a planet, and thus additional physics calculation from rotating the sector, it could be exactly this problem.

Dont get me wrong, but if its "FPS dropping" its your settings, or some rare cases that cover ships/station with 300+ docked entities and a lot of overlapping. If its a "Ping raising" for all on the server, its something to look into from our side.
It IS normal for a large planet to cause some FPS drops when loading, because of chunk generation and light calculation, but once its fully loaded the FPS should be stable.

Feel free to drop me a blueprint, or join our testserver (play.star-made.org:4242) as it should be compatible with the current release, and we spawn it there and examine the ship for possible problems.

- Andy