Away with thruster walls.

CalenLoki

Master endo
Joined
Aug 9, 2019
Messages
741
#21
Price is the worst way to balance things in creative games.

Give it solid drawbacks, to make sure using them is deliberate choice, and not brainless must have. Preferably exponential
I.e. 5x thrust and 25x resource consumption
 

XenoCow

Master endo
Joined
Dec 10, 2019
Messages
562
#22
Price is the worst way to balance things in creative games.

Give it solid drawbacks, to make sure using them is deliberate choice, and not brainless must have. Preferably exponential
I.e. 5x thrust and 25x resource consumption
Yeah, I'm' fine with that. The balancing tools were just examples.
 
Joined
Apr 26, 2021
Messages
18
#24
The Us government asked me why I was spamming engines all over the back of the ship?
1619933094221.png


I could only reply with "It is the only way to get the ship to max speed" duh
1619933367247.png
 
Joined
Jul 27, 2021
Messages
12
#25
An overall flaw to the hyper-modular design of the game. One of my concerns when looking into the game too. It seems like more interactions with size, shape and mass need to be considered, as well as different thruster types and simply overall making it so that you don't need thruster walls to achieve the same speed. Mind you, I don't have game access to first hand feel it, but it seems dumb to have max speed in space require extra thrusters. Why? There is no friction in space anyhow. I agree with something along the lines of slow and fast acceleration types with better and worse fuel efficiency. Lots of potential, but like anything big changes would break the hell out of existing ship designs. I'm sure this will annoy people once we hit the wider public in early access. My expectations for jank are set to expect it.
 

CalenLoki

Master endo
Joined
Aug 9, 2019
Messages
741
#26
An overall flaw to the hyper-modular design of the game. One of my concerns when looking into the game too. It seems like more interactions with size, shape and mass need to be considered, as well as different thruster types and simply overall making it so that you don't need thruster walls to achieve the same speed. Mind you, I don't have game access to first hand feel it, but it seems dumb to have max speed in space require extra thrusters. Why? There is no friction in space anyhow. I agree with something along the lines of slow and fast acceleration types with better and worse fuel efficiency. Lots of potential, but like anything big changes would break the hell out of existing ship designs. I'm sure this will annoy people once we hit the wider public in early access. My expectations for jank are set to expect it.
There are tons of reasons for space jelly drag, and they've been brought over and over again. So let's not bring it here again, and focus on modular thrusters instead.
 
Joined
Aug 16, 2021
Messages
6
#27
Great thread!

Here is my suggestion in how it could be implemented.

1. We know we'll get access to collect gases, and also seperate gases from solids. So I suggest that engines utilize this effect, where fuel is getting better as we get better access to minerals and more energy dense gases with different characteristics.

2. Hardpoints already have 4 connectors, so use them! Connecting 1 fuel line to the hardpoint gives you X speed, and one fuel line comes with the standard fuel that exists within current fuel tanks. Connect 2, and its a normal multiplayer minus added heat. For example X*1.9 since 10% is lost in heat. 3 fuel lines would mean X*1.9*1.9. So if X = 10 m/s in a ship, connecting 1 line = 10 m/s. 2 lines = 19m/s. 3 lines = 36.1m/s and finally 4 lines = 68.6m/s. Assuming heat doesn't also escalate with it, with only 10% penalty per step.

This way a ship starting with 1 engine and 1 fuel line and fuel pump (fuel pumps have limits for fuel flow), it'll go slow, but as we advance and gets access to better fuel pumps, or more of them, we can add more fuel lines. The same volume of engine space, gets more and more effective and "speedy". Reducing the need to spam engines as a ship expands so much.

3. As we get access to factories and atmospheric pumps, we star to get access to different gases. Using a pure gas as fuel shoud work in its own, but blending different gases from different fuel-tanks should give different results, and we min/max the mixtures through the hardpoint/or fuel pump.

Using ICE as an example. It can be split into its contents, and some of those gases would be Oxygen (O) and Hydrogen (H2). Set up two fuel lines and connect them to the hardpoint thorugh fuel pumps, and start to adjust how to mix them together. A 4% H2 +96% O mix is needed to get the engine working. But it wouldn't be as explosive as mixing 18% H2 and 82% O for example, where the mix becomes hugely explosive. Risk vs Reward. Making dangerous mixes of fuel makes the engines overheat faster, but it provides max thrust in shorter amount of time for faster acceleration. Unless you let it go and it overheats and explodes. Test out lean and rich mixtures for efficiency and heat management benefits, or add in small amouts of other gases taken from Ajetite for example.

Point being, fuel is how we get the effect that is whished for within the OP of this thread. Discovering the perfect mix after trail and error where some ships have exploded is just fun, and valuable within a company. YOLOL scripts to differ the mix to make it run on its edge of heat tolerance becomes possible too. Efficiency and range and/or explosive for burst and acceleration and maneuverability.

There is no need for "tier 1,2 or 3" engines when one engine can do all of the same steps (outside of shapes), and be more naturally linked to progression through better and more scarce access to different gases with different effects and optimal blending rates vs X other gases. Solid state storage could also be a next step above pressurized and cryogenic storage of energy. Perfect match for factories to produce better and better fuel over time.

4. If max speed is 150m/s then allow all (almost) ships to reach that speed. The only difference between them should be time to get to 150m/s and fuel costs to maintain 150m/s + penalities to play with faster and faster acceleration to reach it. Penalities are heat generation and consumption on equipment overheated, plus higher consumption for that period after.

Two ships with same amount of engines can be different based on how fuel is mixed and played with. One only have 2 types of fuel tanks of O and H2, and the other have 3 with O, H2 and X gas. X gas is used in bursts with the O+H2 mix to reach 150m/s faster than the other, but that burst of acceleration produces a lot of heat which increase consumption for a while after at 150m/s speed. For example.
 
Last edited:
Joined
Jul 23, 2021
Messages
9
#28
Slower ships, more consumption, speed cap in a simultaion this size? without a way to jump long distances? Madness!
 
Last edited:
Joined
Aug 19, 2021
Messages
8
#29
I agree that people's desire to have maxxed speed is the root problem. You don't need to zip around at max speed. Its wasteful. When talking to my friends on this topic, we think a medium speed option (a drive between thrusters and the warp gates) is a desirable option. Then the long hauls don't have to be so long, and it adds my much loved complexity to ship design, but you'll still need to have thrusters. But, perhaps the drive to have maxxed out thruster velocity will fall in that scenario.

Thoughts?
I disagree. Speed equates to time and time is a precious commodity in this game. Ships are inherently slow as compared to other games and distances can be exceedingly long depending on your endeavor. Additionally, it takes very little in the way of an armed ship to have sufficient firepower and speed to destroy your gameplay loop so for players seeking to avoid such a situation being able to match the max speed of an aggressor is more of a necessity than a convenience.
 
Joined
Aug 19, 2021
Messages
8
#30
This post was born from a discussion in the main discord's #alpha-feedback channel. The discussion happened on April 1st, around 3:30PM GMT if anyone would like to find it and read it for themselves.

The general statement is as follows: Smaller, more powerful and potentially modular thrusters would allow for more creative ship design in addition to making the creation of viable ships more accessible to the average ship builder.

The discussion came to the conclusion that making thrusters take up less rear area (by at the very least making longer and smaller thrusters) would assist all ship builders in creating viable ships that look much better than ones created right now. This contrasts the current game state, in which weak, fairly large thrusters require you to fill the entire rear-facing surface of the ship with thrusters, therefore creating a "thruster wall" effect, and limiting ship shapes to ones with a lot of rear surface area - namely, cubes.

The hardest, and yet potentially best way to mitigate this issue is to implement a system of modular thrusters, potentially even fully replacing the current thrusters. This system would allow the design to fine-tune all characteristics of their thrusters, including but not limited to warm-up time, power, consumption rates, in a much more interactive and hands-on way. This system should be initially implemented specifically for surpassing the thruster wall issue, instead of simply replacing it - these new modular thrusters shouldn't be so weak as to require filling the entire back of the ship with nozzle modules, therefore simply repeating the problem. A ship of Hedron size should be able to fly with ~6 modular thrusters, each one's nozzle taking up somewhere around 2 box thrusters' nozzle space but being quite a bit longer. This is simply an approximation, though, and the exact details are for the design team to figure out.

Everyone hates cubes. They're boring, ugly, and frankly, their amount of sides reminds me too much of the quantity of braincells I possess.
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Here are some counter arguments that have been raised against this during the discussion. I will add more as replies to this thread come in.

"They'd only reinforce borg cubes being the meta"

No, no they would not. From a design perspective, cubes are dumb - every direction you're shot from, you're giving the enemy what one would call "a pancake shot". Ships closer to what our current jet fighters look like will start popping up a lot more once the rear doesn't need to be covered entirely in thrusters to reach max speed (since a jet fighter shape only has 2 pancakes - the top and bottom). The only reason cubes exist is their sides have high surface area (hence being pancakes), giving a ton of space for thruster walls. Eliminate the need for thruster walls and the cubes will leave with them.
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Thanks for reading, comment your opinions, arguments and any changes I should make to the original post.
I agree with your point. I too would like to see a change in the current thruster design that would greatly reduce the number of thrusters needed in ship designs. Let' face it, people want to go as fast as they can and that will not change so why not reduce the number of entities needed to achieve that goal. I see only benefits from doing so in both ship design, game mechanics and client/server workload.
 
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