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Detaching ship parts


Epidemic

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Imagine a situation where your crew and you in a cargo ship full after mining, then some pirates come to steal it, they totally overpower you with their 2 big ass ships. so you wanna escape but you're too big and clumsy to out-maneuver them, so you detach 3 cargo bays from your ship, and every one of them is a seperate ship with a bridge that tries to escape. and now even if one or two of the parts captured, the rest escaped and you haven't lost all of your precious cargo.

 

Or imagine that function in a combat, when two huge ships start fighting each other, then one of them transforms into 4 ships that maneuvering faster and attacking from different sides while the big ship needs to power shields all around the ship and shoot 4 fast moving targets!

 

What you think about it? you think this level of building is possible in DU?

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For this, I envision a system in which a special functional voxel is used to join two structures together when powered. If the power fails, e.g. in the event of a ship attack, or is switched off manually, the structures detach. This could be used to make the scenario you're proposing.

For real though, if you're being attacked by pirates and you detach your cargo bays, you're serving them loot on a platter. You need a defense system capable of dealing with threats like that.

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The main problem NQ has been having with "Merging" is that when the ships are together, which ship has the full control?  and how the rdms will function, along with LUA scripting for the different thruster variations that would come with a "merge"

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The main problem NQ has been having with "Merging" is that when the ships are together, which ship has the full control?  and how the rdms will function, along with LUA scripting for the different thruster variations that would come with a "merge"

I hope they add some kind of priorities in LUA, so even if few ship connected only the main ship will be in control.

 

For this, I envision a system in which a special functional voxel is used to join two structures together when powered. If the power fails, e.g. in the event of a ship attack, or is switched off manually, the structures detach. This could be used to make the scenario you're proposing.

For real though, if you're being attacked by pirates and you detach your cargo bays, you're serving them loot on a platter. You need a defense system capable of dealing with threats like that.

but what if your defnse system just isn't enough? what then? lose all your cargo and ship? or save part of the cargo and part of the ship?

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The main problem NQ has been having with "Merging" is that when the ships are together, which ship has the full control?  and how the rdms will function, along with LUA scripting for the different thruster variations that would come with a "merge"

There are a few ways you can go about this.

 

For ship docking for example, you could have a priority system that automatically shuts down flight controls for every connected ship or fragment that isn't the mothership of the fleet (for a larger ship and smaller docked ships). In Starmade that is by default how docking works, and in Space Engineers a docked ship can use thrusters to violently un-dock (does not recommend).

 

In the case OP is describing here, the detachable components don't actually appear to be fully functional ships. OP is talking about un-powered connected containers that can be disconnected to reduce the ship's mass (to improve thrust). As long as the containers don't have thrust or any component system, there is no battle for control: only the ship has any claim to control there, so there should be no conflict between the docked parts and the main ship.

 

It'll all come down to a few mechanics as to whether or not it'll be possible. Depending on how they set up landing a ship onto another ship, you might be able to create container "ships" that land onto your barge (if landing gears are magnetic and can lock). The troulbe is without any controls on the container "ships", you can't actually tell them to un-dock from the barge.

 

On the flip side if you can use landing gears on the barge to connect to a container ship or ships, you might be able to tow them. This could be a problem too, as ships that have landed might lose their flight functions, so "landing" onto a cargo unit to tow it might shut down the barge and prevent takeoff.

 

Best case scenario would be the ability to destroy/delete/disconnect ship components mid-flight, even if the only way to restore the disconnected parts would be to "repair/restore" the ship (basically to replace the detached components). A break-away block (like the rotors and connectors in Space Engineers, or docking components in Starmade) that you can control from the barge that would allow you to purge everything connected to it would be the way to go. You could even probably set up a script to automatically disconnect the cargo bay if your shields drop for example.

 

If there is no such block at launch, a clunky but possible solution would be to set up an explosive charge in-between the cargo unit and the barge that would destroy the hull connecting the two, but not damage key systems, thus relieving you of all of the mass of the cargo when detonated. We don't know yet if damaged hull actually disappears, nor do we know if you can "cut" portions of a ship off as a result of damage. The devs mentioned damage to constructs warping/damaging voxels, however we don't know if that can actually cause systems to break off of a ship (of if the whole ship would "explode" before that type of damage would occur). So that might not be possible at all.

 

We can expect AT SOME POINT in the future for there to be some kind of connector block that would make this possible, but if the above two solutions aren't present at launch, you might just have to go down with your ship.

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Not sure if there'll be such a block at launch, I hope so since I think it's quite important in ship designing. I think though that carrier ships are planned for launch, so there'll actually be a way to have a construct inside another construct, with them moving at the same time. There should be some kind of magnet that makes construct stick together, like the landing gear in space engineers.

 

The merge block when triggered edit one construct and create a new one.

The landing gear doesn't edit/create anything, it's just make 2 construct stick, so there's not load on the server.

 

So after all, I think it is likely to have for release a way to detach parts of a construct, the problem is that since those parts are not connected through a merge block, your ships would be composed by many constructs, and you're not necessarily able to access those from the main section (so you can't access the container from your cockpit or other elements), but depending on the elements you position on those detachable constructs and shipp design, maybe it's not a big problem. Keep in mind though that each construct requires a core unit, and a core unit should be quite expensive. 

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