Shipyards and ships under construction.

[Amos.37]

Obviously designing and building ships will be an integral part of SB.
My question is, what form do ships under construction take? Do players design a blueprint and then use to building tool to print an entire ship, ready to go?
Do players have to build the ship from scratch in the world, visible to other players, and then save a blueprint only when it's done?
Is the ship instanced so only the designing player or players in the same lot can see it?
Do blueprints only allow the saving of hulls, or wiring and YOLOL as well?

Really, all this boils down to, will there be sections of a station dedicated to ship building, shipyards and shipwrights, where any random player could go and see the hulls of ships currently under construction? Because personally I think that would be awesome.

 

[cranky corvid]

There is an instanced, multiplayer-capable ship editor available at stations that you can use to design blueprints, and it supports the full set of construction features including wiring and Yolol, but will likely have some limits as regards to testing. You can print whole ships from blueprints as a station service by paying a hefty premium on top of the bill of materials. However, there's also a device that projects holograms of blueprints into the game world and allows you to fill them out with the building tool, and constructing them in-world is much cheaper. You can also assemble ships in-world from component parts, not relying on a projected blueprint, although that is more challenging.

Factory automation is a thing that's already theoretically possible and that the devs want to facilitate, so dedicated shipbuilding infrastructure will exist. I don't expect to see many public-access facilities, though, too easy for dumbasses or saboteurs to wedge themselves in somewhere and gum up the works. I suppose you can hope the less secretive factories install viewing windows... Although station lots (the parts of non-player stations that players can rent to construct their own infrastructure in) are also partially instanced, and it's not settled exactly what people without permissions looking in will be able to see.

 

[Amos.37]

I guess even with the blueprint holo projectors, large ships will still take some time to build.
Be interesting to see how they are filled in, if it's layer by layer, as in fill in frames, then plating, then internals, and so on;
or if it's more chunk by chunk, with every layer getting filled in together. While it would take longer, I kind of hope it's more a layer by layer approach. A little more realistic that way.
The instancing of lots will decide whether other players can see it or not, I guess.

 

[Amos.37]

Another thought, if automated building tools on the factory arms can fill in blueprint projections, it wouldn't be too hard to create effective 3D printers for ships. At least, it would be easier than automating a factory to put a ship together piece by piece.

 

[Burnside]

There's also the idea of having modules, section, or sub-assemblies fabricated in a factory-style setting and shipping those to a yard for final assembly into the full ship. The advantage in tiered assembly like this is discrete parts of the ship are designed for removal in large chunks, so rather than refitting or repairing whole systems bit by bit, a ship in need of repairs might instead just detach a thruster block or armor slab and install a new module from the shipyard stockpiles. These attachment points can be hidden inside of small hatchways or engineering closets along corridors or major rooms and allow large vessels to be covertly shipped as packages of modules or stored efficiently in a warehouse (not that station inventories aren't more preferable).

 

[thiccbeard]

I wonder which will be cheaper, building the ship with the build tool or piecing it together?

 

[Amos.37]

There's also the idea of having modules, section, or sub-assemblies fabricated in a factory-style setting and shipping those to a yard for final assembly into the full ship. The advantage in tiered assembly like this is discrete parts of the ship are designed for removal in large chunks, so rather than refitting or repairing whole systems bit by bit, a ship in need of repairs might instead just detach a thruster block or armor slab and install a new module from the shipyard stockpiles. These attachment points can be hidden inside of small hatchways or engineering closets along corridors or major rooms and allow large vessels to be covertly shipped as packages of modules or stored efficiently in a warehouse (not that station inventories aren't more preferable).

I like this idea, but I'm not sure how it would work with key systems like engines with what we've been told about how the system calculates a ship, weight and thrust, and so on.
I hope they get a system like this to work, but I think at least early on the system might struggle if you change out the engines on a ship in game rather than in the ship designer.
I think doing this with armour sections and even weapons will be possible, but engines might need some extra work to sync up thrust and centre of mass calculations.
I would love to see designated refit stations for ships. Especially the idea of a large ship coming in to a station with battle damage, and having spent armour and systems removed and replaced is really cool to me.

 

[CalenLoki]

Recalculation of MFC and thrusters is very quick. It's done every time your ship is dynamically modified by bullets.
It's fast enough that FCU on a turret may work, even if with little delay.
So that won't be a problem.