Are we gonna be able to have harpoons?

[TimeTraveler]

Yes i know it's kinda weird. But as i saw the trailers and such the boarding mechanic looked so cool. So will there any way of using Harpoons/Tractor beams to bring in ships or make the come to a halt to more easily board?

 

[Meetbolio]

You can make a ship come to a halt if you grab it with enough cargo lock beams. Although you do need enough energy production per second in order to maintain the heavier ships in lock.

 

[thiccbeard]

perhaps you can use a cargo lock beam to bring yourself to the target. Not the other way around, because in space it is all relative. Instead of using your ship to arrest another, perhaps use your ship to bring you to it. (same same but different)

 

[XenoCow]

There was a video in one of the progress notes where one ship was being held in front of the other with a tractor beam as a turret. However, I could imagine having cargo lock beams attached to a small ship at the end of the tractor beam to grab onto other ships like a tentacle, kind of thing.

 

[SuperbBuffalo]

I thought they showed in bolt cutters that grabbing a ship with cargo beam locks would break it

 

[XenoCow]

I thought they showed in bolt cutters that grabbing a ship with cargo beam locks would break it

They did show it breaking most of the time, but finally they did get it to work. The main reason it was hard was because of the geometry of their ship. A simpler way (untested) to position the cargo lock beams might be to have them organized not all in the same plane like in the video, but in a pyramid shape. Each cargo lock beam would still be 90deg from the other two, but the grabber end wouldn't need to be 'C' shaped. Imagine XYZ coordinate axes but with cargo lock beams pointing inward from each direction.

 

[TimeTraveler]

Oh, alright. Thanks for the reply's!

 

[Cannon Machine Ballista]

They did show it breaking most of the time, but finally they did get it to work. The main reason it was hard was because of the geometry of their ship. A simpler way (untested) to position the cargo lock beams might be to have them organized not all in the same plane like in the video, but in a pyramid shape. Each cargo lock beam would still be 90deg from the other two, but the grabber end wouldn't need to be 'C' shaped. Imagine XYZ coordinate axes but with cargo lock beams pointing inward from each direction.

As shown in the video "rotating stage"?

 

[Recatek]

I would LOVE harpoons or some way of tackling/hindering ships for boarding.

You can make a ship come to a halt if you grab it with enough cargo lock beams. Although you do need enough energy production per second in order to maintain the heavier ships in lock.

This is only true for small ships. I've personally tested it and found that you can't grab a ship larger than yours with cargo lock beams -- they won't make a connection. Tractor beams also don't work very effectively for large ships. They're too slow and too weak, and they don't pull you towards the target at all, only it towards you.

 

[Meetbolio]

and they don't pull you towards the target at all, only it towards you.

Hey in space everything is relative

But seriously, gib harpoons. Would love to get some harpoons on my ship.

 

[Azelous]

I think devs may not want to do harpoons due to rendering the cables. They would have to make a decision: cables phase through ship hull, or cables wrap around ship which is a physics implementation unlike anything else in the game. If they're going for either, I think they should go for the latter. The problem is they are already trying to optimize the game, and the feature would work against that end for a small feature.

 

[Atsuい]

If it was possible, Starbase would already have all that.

Not that I agree but this is what suggestion topics usually boil down to. We need a statement from Frozenbyte about the things that will definitely *never* exist in SB and then patiently work up from there. It will be a long journey up ahead.

 

[Nyefari]

As shown in the video "rotating stage"?

We've heard from Dev's that for the purposes of that video the mass limitations of the cargo beams was turned off, so though it worked there it probably won't work as well in game. not sure yet but still worth testing.

 

[Meetbolio]

There's no weight limitation on cargo lock beams. The only thing limiting them from lifting literally anything in the world is the generator output rate of the ship that it's on.

 

[Nyefari]

I'm under the impression that the mass they are moving is felt by the beams they are attached to, meaning that they can absolutely rip things apart. In this case I meant that the turntable was capable of spinning the weight without breaking.

 

[TimeTraveler]

I mean, rendering the cables could be solved so the harpoons cost alot of money and is a one time use. So i don't think rendering it will be the problem as there is no large ship combat yet.

 

[Recatek]

There's no weight limitation on cargo lock beams. The only thing limiting them from lifting literally anything in the world is the generator output rate of the ship that it's on.

After doing more tests I can back this up. I was wrong originally. The Pincer I used failed to grab an Urchin initially, but when I loaded it up with extra generators and batteries, it was capable of doing so. I think the power requirements for picking up even a moderately sized ship would be prohibitive for anything other than another equally large or larger ship though.

 

[Meetbolio]

Now let me just finish my pincer that has 90% of its body made out of generators....