Network and beams

[Mur]

Because of the limitations of how current ducts work and how the grooves with beams it is often difficult to design a fully networked ship, its hard to get into side pieces that are a square and you need to build up a network layer on layer to bridge the gap which causes other design issues.

I suggest instead of needing to place network into existing beams I think that beams by default should be designed that they carry a network signal inside where the duct should go. This means that you could considerably lower the amount of parts and bolts needed to be inside a ship and open the design to more complexity while also lowering the time to design ships. The existing ducts can still have a place to use outside of beams such as on plates or to connect multiple generators.

In my opinion the complexity of a ship should be from its design and not from parts being finicky in how they are put together.

 

[Womble]

And dumbing down the creation of resource and data networks to the point of irrelevance. Combining cables and pipes with ducts isn't "difficult"; deciding where to allocate your network build budget and the bolts needed to stop it springing apart under stress is more of a challenge.

Networking should not just "be there by default", any more than engines or controls should be.

 

[anton_stezhkin]

You are rigtht! Though there is one gret thing in this idea. Having beams with pre-installed ducts would save much time when designiong ships.
But it's possible to implement such a thing by creating modules for each beam + duct combiantion. Sadly, the 45deg, 30deg and onther non-90deg ducts are missing. I hope that they'll intorduce ducts for each beam type in time.