DeadlyDays

maybe someone pointed this out, but the constraint isn't collision detection but syncing the changes in real time to all the clients and calculating where the damage applies and deformation. In space engineers, it is as cost prohibitive as it comes. You have to not only detect the collision, but how it deforms the voxels that collide then all the subsequent collisions as the voxels continue to collide since you don't want a collision where a small voxel completely stops the ship and bounces them off, you want it to deform and become destroyed until the inertia is halted. This is an immense amount of data to try and keep real time. So basically a single collision is like 1 calculation. a space engineers collision is like a thousand separate calculations due to deformation as you calculate the effects of voxels on other voxels independently for each voxel. Depending on how they are coding the game, from what I understand floating point calculations are not predictive between different hardware so they can't just sync the player input on each client and have each client reach the same result, different hardware will reach different results so they have to continuously update clients for anything that requires those type of operations to stay in sync with the server. I'd want a balance if possible, I can handle not having deformation from collisions but I still want collision damage of some sort. I don't know if their "constructs" support deformation or partial destruction outside of build mode and I suspect they don't as a performance saving measure. My idea would be to figure out a way to calculate partial construct states, basically have a system that after finishing a build calculates a model for partial collision damage on lets say from 18 or so different directions, or 6 different directions with 3 levels of damage. so basically the model automatically degrades based on precalculated models that can be generated based on the voxels you made the construct out of. expanding on that, have precalculated deformation states to mix between the damage states. So basically where there is "bend" between each damage state so it gives the appearance of some basic level of deformation and is easily calculated in real time by the clients and synced. All you need is both the constructs locations relative to each other and come up with as efficient a solution as possible to determine which of the 6 angles is closest.

seems to be the focus is to try to promote community so the game doesn't die off from lack of interaction. This is a real threat in a procedurally generated landscape that can expand forever. They have TONS of room from the huge planets in the system, there is no actual need to facilitate intersystem travel at all except to make it kewl. Intrasystem seems like it'd be enough. Is there going to be real unique landscape items or is all the unique stuff going to be player created? If it is driven by player creation than even more reason not to facilitate intersystem travel. To make the community thrive, they need a natural growth and slow expansion so that the population and infrastructure density reaches high levels. Without that infrastructure creation and population density you won't have the production potential for new players to get off the ground fast turning the game into a slow slog. There is a real joy to games that slow it down and create a barrier of entry in time and effort. If you can travel dozens of systems at a drop of a hat it cheapens what already exists. You gloss over the environment as you look for something unique. If they purposefully force you to build that infrastructure and population density then it becomes much more meaningful to gain that extra mile, that first asteroid, that first moon. etc etc slowly expand so that there is stuff there to interact with. Players should be able to join the game and buy a ship and fight right there at the arcship. If everyone is 20 systems away than there is no community, no one building the ships for that newbie. Ideally there should be locations where people send weeks of their time and have a want and a NEED to fight the person next to them, if the universe is too easily accessed there is no NEED to fight over land. It'd be nice to have an actual reason to decide, is it more costly to fight my neighbor for land or travel to a new spot. Got to engage the players, keep them engaged. don't want people just wondering where everyone else is at. The stargates also give you another point of contention, driving conflict and consumption as someone destroys the stargate and you need to build another. Or launch a few to launch an assault. Need conflict drivers as they say.