Heatsinks - a concept for preventing large ships from being dense mass

[wizardoftrash]

Similar scifi sandbox games suffer from a ship-building flaw where players have an inventive to include no interior spaces in their ships.

(edited for spelling)

Space Engineers, Starmade, Emperion all have a problem where even with big spaceships, players are rewarded by densely packing the ship with systems and armor and creating no interior spaces for players and decorations. Starmade is working on an overhaul for their power systems to solve this issue and I have a different idea for how to encourage players to build large ships that feel large, but have interior space.

 

Heatsinks. Now I'm not saying that the power units for ships should create dangerous heat-areas that hurt players, however a system in which Reactors require space to dissipate heat creates opportunities for balance and build decisions.

 

I will define some terms here so that it makes sense.

 

Reactor: I'm referring to power units here. Different sizes of reactors would have different Heat-Outputs and different Heat-Dissipation threshholds. If you can get your heat dissipation above the threshhold for the reactor, it will operate at its highest efficiency. If the heat dissipation is below the threshhold, it would output way less power per fuel consumption. A steep decrease in heat dissipation (from the heatsink being severed or destroyed) could overload the power block, creating an outage or explosion. Bigger Reactors would have a higher Heat-Output and a much higher Heat-dissipation threshhold. Smaller reactors would have small heat-output and a much smaller heat-dissipation threshhold, and the smallest would require no heat dissipation whatsoever.

 

 

Heatsink: I'm referring to the physical element or voxels that need to be placed adjacent to the Reactor to dissipate heat. This could be elements that can be inter-connected and chained together, or a conductive polymer that are palced and formed just like voxels (as an element would probably be the simplest to implement). When you connect a Heatsink to a Reactor, it projects a heat-dissipation field around it (1 meter on all sides when connected to a small reactor). This heat dissipation field's volume is what you need to reach the heat dissipation threshhold of your reactor, big threshhold means more of your ship's volume must be built to dissipate heat. This field wouldn't hurt the player, but any other elements placed within this field (thrusters, weapons, shield generators) would receive a massive performance drop. This allows you to turn space built for heat dissipation into interior spaces, since you don't want to place functional elements there. Larger reactors need much more heat dissipation, which will encourage players designing large ships even for combat to create interior spaces that could be decorated to look like living quarters, an engineering bay, or any other interior space. In addition, Large reactors would have a much higher Heat-Output.

 

Heat-Output: is a property of reactors that determines how large of a heat dissipation field a heat sink will project. If you attack a 5 meter long heatsink rod to a small reactor, it would project a 1 meter wide heat dissipation field around it. Connecting the same heat sink rod to a much larger reactor would project a 5 or even 10 meter wide heat dissipation field around it, which will allow you to create a large heat dissipation area without packing the interior of your ship with "more" heatsinks.

 

"cant you just have your heatsinks protruding out of your ship so that the ship denser and more efficient?"

 

Good question, and the answer to that should be absolutely yes. This is why I feel the system would create some neat balance decisions. A builder could absolutely design their heatsinks so that they all protrude from the ship, projecting their heat-dissipation area into empty space so that it doesn't interfere with their functional ship elements. That choice would also create a vulnerability, as they could easily be damaged or destroyed during combat leading to a reactor outage or explosion (that's where that steep drop in heat dissipation would come from). A clever ship builder could even have their heatsinks recessed in their ship (where they might interfere with systems at full power), but use a track or roter to push the heatsinks outside of their ship when they need the most power, or if they need to turn on a 2nd bigger reactor (which would increase their heat-output, and make the heat dissipation area around the heatsinks much much bigger).

 

Thoughts?

[Lights]

i feel this would be very taxing on the servers tbh

[wizardoftrash]

i feel this would be very taxing on the servers tbh

Either that or taxing on the game client or user's machine. Scripting will be user-side, and if a system like this were only applied to moving constructs, heat management could also be player-side (since a construct would only generate heat if its functional elements were in-use).

[Shynras]

I voted 1-2-2. Reasons:

 

-It's a "cool" feature, why not

-it would be taxing on the servers too much, and that's enough of a reason. Another reason is that i don't want to see all ship's interiors the same, because that is what would happen. People should design interiors using their creativity, ship's role efficiency and combat strategies, instead of placing a block because it's the most efficient way to sink the heat, doesn't matter if your ship's interiors sucks or it's the same of any other ship. 

-An explosion is too much, this game is a MMO, ships will be quite expensive, especially large ones, you don't want them to blow up just because you went afk 1 minute leaving the heat sink system off. A reactor outage is enough to make it a feature you need to keep in mind, without making it the most important feature you need to care about. Otherwise it would be annoying to be worried about your ship blowing up all the time. 

[ATMLVE]

I have a few thoughts on this. First off, heat sinks really don't do much in a static environment; they need to be cooled off themselves with a moving fluid, whether it be air or liquid. So simply making "space" around them doesn't make much more sense in the first place, because you are then simply coating the reactor in air rather than another material; sure, it'll take longer to "overheat", but from a scientific standpoint it's really the same thing. 

 

Secondly, if people don't want spaces on their ships, then I don't they should be forced to include them anyway. In battle, constructs will be damaged, and their elements will need to be repaired. If an enemy figures out where your main reactor is, and it happens to be buried in your ship, then you're going to have a hard time reaching it to repair it if you don't have alternative access to the the reactor besides the hole they blew in your hull. Same thing goes for other elements; if you stuff them up inside of a ship, then it's going to make it problematic to reach them later.

 

Thirdly, I am interested in the prospect of overheating elements, but I think making it dependent on the space around them would get unnecessarily complicated.

[wizardoftrash]

 

Secondly, if people don't want spaces on their ships, then I don't they should be forced to include them anyway. In battle, constructs will be damaged, and their elements will need to be repaired. If an enemy figures out where your main reactor is, and it happens to be buried in your ship, then you're going to have a hard time reaching it to repair it if you don't have alternative access to the the reactor besides the hole they blew in your hull. Same thing goes for other elements; if you stuff them up inside of a ship, then it's going to make it problematic to reach them later.

This doesn't actually have to be about heat. This could be about electrical interference, radiation, or some imaginary technology. The idea is to make the player allocate some space inside of their ship that isn't functional elements, where they put that space would encourage people to build ship interiors.

 

-> Players that don't want spaces on their ships would place their heatsink elements outside of their ship. It makes their ship more dense, but exposes them to more risk. That option would be there. Making players do something that they don't want to do is part of game design, you give them choices (heat dispersion outside or inside). I recall the Dev team talking about Repair Modules, which leads me to believe that repairing and restoring a damaged ship is entirely automated. You would need power, raw polimers for the damged/destroyed voxels, parts to replace the destroyed elements and time.

 

-> We don't actually know what element damage, voxel damage, or repairs will look like at all. If you need to repair those things by hand then yes, creating access ports for maintenance will be baked in. This was a suggestion for if there were no other incentive to create those spaces so that they aren't anemic flying skeletons with everything non-essential removed.

[Shynras]

Anyway, heat should be something that you need to keep in mind only on a certain type of ship (maybe a certain weapon generates a lot of heat, so if you use it you need to take precautions). If you don't want it, you can just create a ship that doesn't have elements that generate heat. Ofc there should be some kind of pro for the elements generating heat, to balance it out and make it viable. 

[Anaximander]

If NQ follows the absurdly realistic model of EVE's "micromanaging" of modules, I bet they'll add Heat-sinks that overheat nearby modules if in proximity.

Case in point, my bomber in EVE, can take 5 High Slot modules, those will be my three Torpedo Launchers, my probe launcher (for picking up them sneaky miners) and my Cloak of Skill (cause I am a ninja with torpedos, 'kay? ).

So, what I have to do (if I know what I'm doing) is that I put one Torpedo Launcher THEN NEXT to it my Probe Launcher then NEXT toi that my second Torpedo Launcher THEN next to that my Cloaking Device and then at the very last slot, my third Torpedo Launcher. 

What happens is, that when I'll overheat my Torpedo launchers - and trust me, I will, cause life is too short for safety precautions - I will overheat my moduels at a steady rate, without overheating them in a group. Notice, my Probe Launcher does suffer overheat from the two torpedo launchers, but since it's turned off during combat, it won't suffer alot of damage, if any at all.

Same thing can apply in DU. Heck, some scripts may emerge or overheating  modules in even and odd numbers so they won't overheat alltogether at once. Or even better, having ACTUAL materials that act like Heat-Sinks for modules, like, having a device connected to voxels that have a property on them that dictaes that heat is "passed" to them. Bonus points to NQ, if they made modules passively emit radiation, so they require shielding and people don't do the Space Engineers cheese of having thrusters inside a ship. And that way, engineers can actually be of invaluable use during combat, as a good engineer would be able to do what any good healer or support role can do in MMO PvP - keep the party going. (Puns).

The idea is solid, but you can't say "Reactors need heat dissipation" and then say "but Thrusters that fire Antimatter fuelled plasma? No heatsinks required, no biggie, it's just radiation that can cause tumors in 3 minutes, I am not a wuss, I can take that face in the face."

You can't have a mechanism like that and then just say "but it only applies here, here and here. But not there, because reasons."

[wizardoftrash]

You can't have a mechanism like that and then just say "but it only applies here, here and here. But not there, because reasons."

You actually totally can, because its a game.

 

The goal was to make the heatsink elements or heatsink voxels effectively an extension of the reactor.

 

In theory do weapons and thrusters generate heat too?

well sure, however the assumption is the the Thruster Element has its own heat dissipation right out of the box, same with weapons. They were all designed not to overheat on their own, that is unless you overheat them with another heat source (or push them too hard).

 

The reactor on the other hand would need more install, gotta have X ammount of heat dissipation that does not overlap with your thrusters and weapons, or else the heat from your reactor will heat them up to the point of inneficiency/damage. Heatsink parts will let you decide where to put that heat dissipation in or on your ship, and avoiding overheating your other elements would be a fun part of ship design for any ship bigger than a shuttle (which would probably have a tiny reactor, and consequently not need any additional heat dissipation).

[Anaximander]

You actually totally can, because its a game.

 

The goal was to make the heatsink elements or heatsink voxels effectively an extension of the reactor.

 

In theory do weapons and thrusters generate heat too?

well sure, however the assumption is the the Thruster Element has its own heat dissipation right out of the box, same with weapons. They were all designed not to overheat on their own, that is unless you overheat them with another heat source (or push them too hard).

 

The reactor on the other hand would need more install, gotta have X ammount of heat dissipation that does not overlap with your thrusters and weapons, or else the heat from your reactor will heat them up to the point of inneficiency/damage. Heatsink parts will let you decide where to put that heat dissipation in or on your ship, and avoiding overheating your other elements would be a fun part of ship design for any ship bigger than a shuttle (which would probably have a tiny reactor, and consequently not need any additional heat dissipation).

Let's just say that the Modules have a stat, called Heat Emission Range. That means, that, if one module has 5 meters heat emission, anythign within that range, including players, wil ltake damage. BUT, there are mateirals that can absorb that "block" that heat emission and have a damage mitigation on them that makes them excellent for "shielding"the part of thrusters that may come clsoe to people.

 

I mean, it makes building a lot of interesting, it makes the prioblem of "put a thrsuter next to CoM and screw reality" kidn of peole you see in SC or Empyrion. Heck armors may even have a "radiation tank" on them, that reduces radiation of certain hertz in itnensifty, with started armor being excellent for cosmicradation (normal one, like in orbit) but a nuclear reactor or a thruster? You need an Engineer Armor son. And eve better, Pilots have to wear Pilot specific armors to tank the radiatio emission of their power cores on their starfighters, which could be a ne xpelsive armor ,if the starfighter is extremely "gimmicky" and demands a very powerful or advanced Pilot armor for the piulot to not die from the radiation of their own starfighter, which can be essentially the same as bolting out of a fight if you get exploded in EVE, to save your expensive implants (EVE's version of player armor sets).

[Lethys]

I think this will be too much for the servers.

 

But nonetheless, heat would be nice to have and If they go this road then I would definitely try to not fly a box ship of doom. I can't really understand the bias against it, but whatever

[mrjacobean]

If they add this (or any system like this) after release, its going to make many designs unusable. This may or may not be a good thing, but that will have to be taken into consideration when changing the building system from what we already know

[Kuritho]

Imagine having a pressurized room with multiple heatsinks leading to it, super-heating the air. Then a pair of doors will open, ejecting the air and the heat.

And it continues.

 

But there won't be any air at launch.

[Anaximander]

If they add this (or any system like this) after release, its going to make many designs unusable. This may or may not be a good thing, but that will have to be taken into consideration when changing the building system from what we already know

Yeah, but having Space Engineers trollships is kind of a cancer.

 

"Attack my propulsion, good luck, it's in the center of the ship".

 

 

Even Empyrion is adding explosive damage whne fuel tansk are destroyed to prevent the "box everything together" designs.

 

That's called "challenge", it's integral for seperating the good builders from the bad.

[Shynras]

Heat that detect surrounding elements it's too much for the servers, it's not going to happen. At best heat can be represented by a number for each element that can generate it, and influence in some ways other elements (the ones weak to heat) without taking positions and distances into consideration

[Ben Fargo]

The most harm a damaged heat sink could do should depend on how the script that runs the reactor is coded.  It should be able to either lower the output (partially or completely) if it starts to overheat or let it run normally and possibly explode.  That would let the player choose what risk to take.

[Anaximander]

Heat that detect surrounding elements it's too much for the servers, it's not going to happen. At best heat can be represented by a number for each element that can generate it, and influence in some ways other elements (the ones weak to heat) without taking positions and distances into consideration

A sphere of influence that applies a degeneration on a module / Element's HP when it's overheated, and having said module direct and prioritise the dengeration on one module that's connected to it - a Heat Sink - is too much for the servers?

 

Well, crap, I guess NQ's plan for 100000 players on the same spot is doomed on arrival, cause if they can't pull off a simple logic in their game like the one above, they can't for certainly pull off the game as a whole.

 

Notice, the above system can work with the injection of "cooling systems" that generate a sphere of influence that cools (preventing the degeneration debuff)  of overheated modules and drains the cooling system's power supply during the overheat. Same thing, sphere of influence. I t doesn't detect things, it just applies "tags" on things when placed down - exactly like how RDMS can apply tags on people entering a sphere of influence around a Control Unit, or a Territory Unit. Same Cooling Unit can be used later on by players to colonise a lava planet (or soemthing along those lines). You know, the survival part of the game, with a person running a dedicated role on it by maintaining it.

 

And guess what, NQ already uses spheres of influence, like for mining and JC has said that PvP on constructs will involve a center point of attack, with the damage spreading around it. So, yeah, it's not gonna tax the servers, just people's creativity, by forcign them to not cheese the game with Space Engineers boxships.

[CaptainQuoth]

I would like for there to be alot more thought needed to building a ship than is in Space engineers.

[Shynras]

A sphere of influence that applies a degeneration on a module / Element's HP when it's overheated, and having said module direct and prioritise the dengeration on one module that's connected to it - a Heat Sink - is too much for the servers?

 

Well, crap, I guess NQ's plan for 100000 players on the same spot is doomed on arrival, cause if they can't pull off a simple logic in their game like the one above, they can't for certainly pull off the game as a whole.

 

Notice, the above system can work with the injection of "cooling systems" that generate a sphere of influence that cools (preventing the degeneration debuff)  of overheated modules and drains the cooling system's power supply during the overheat. Same thing, sphere of influence. I t doesn't detect things, it just applies "tags" on things when placed down - exactly like how RDMS can apply tags on people entering a sphere of influence around a Control Unit, or a Territory Unit. Same Cooling Unit can be used later on by players to colonise a lava planet (or soemthing along those lines). You know, the survival part of the game, with a person running a dedicated role on it by maintaining it.

 

And guess what, NQ already uses spheres of influence, like for mining and JC has said that PvP on constructs will involve a center point of attack, with the damage spreading around it. So, yeah, it's not gonna tax the servers, just people's creativity, by forcign them to not cheese the game with Space Engineers boxships.

 

Yea they use the same system for scanning, but first of all you'd probably have multiple elements (even multiples of the same) able to generate heat or cool, so a ship would have already an high amount of spheres. Then, a scan is something that happens istantly and you do once in a while, while a heat/cool sphere would need to be kept costantly active or costantly spamming, since your heat is a number that changes over time, while the resources that you scan don't move. 

Then, your ship get hit, and some elements with a heat/cool sphere gets destroyed, or if you have a repair unit that replace those elements with new ones. Creatind/deleting "spheres" is additional work for the servers that you don't do in the scanning system. Then those spheres are costant and move over time, the scan sphere doesn't move, actually a scan may just be a visual effect, we don't even know if there's really a sphere involved in the detection of resources. 

Now guess what happens in a huge fight, with a huge amount of ships, players and those spheres. Madness. It's going to be hard to do what they have in mind already, NQ can't do the impossible and that's why we don't have collisions, realistic fps and other cool features they said are too much for the servers and the actual technology. So, as much i would like that, it's not an efficient feature worth to add. Detection (when it requires tri dimensional operations, like intersections) in general is a really heavy operation for a computer, because since a machine doesn't know where to "look", usually have to elaborate an enormous amount of informations, or has to do multidimensional operations

[wizardoftrash]

This is why I suggested only 1 type of element that actually kicks out heat: the heatsink elements themselves.

 

Heatsinks wound only need to be "ckecked" when the ship turns on, and when the game already checks to see if an element is disabled due to damage.

-when the ship turns on: the ship generates the spheres (but they would look more like rectangular prisms to be honest or cylenders) and checks for elements within those areas. If they are, it applies the debuff and gives you a heat warning. Example: HEAT WARNING - THRUSTERS OVERHEATED. If the dispersal area is not enough for your reactoe, it gives you a heat warning for your reactor.

-when the ship receives damage and checks the damaged elements to see which ones are disabled, since the Heatsinks will likely be elements, it would check to see if any of the heatsinks are disabled. If so, it repeats the above process (though the only system that would gain a heat warning that didn't already have one wod be your reactor.

 

If your Reactor generates a Heat Warning, it would check its current heat level against what its "new maximum heat level" is with its reduced number of heatsinks. If the current heat level exceeds the new maximum, that's when bad stuff happens: Outage, or in an extreme case, Explosion.

[Ripper]

I love threads about forcing players to do things a certain way.

 

I think there SHOULD be heat sinks, but not to force a certain behaviour. Heat sinks should be the opposite of fuel pods. Instead of providing a substance such as fuel, they take heat away from the element.

 

Next, you'll be telling me I cant fly a giant penis. (Or I'll need to add a scrotum for my heat sinks)

[Shynras]

I love threads about forcing players to do things a certain way.

 

I think there SHOULD be heat sinks, but not to force building of interiors. Heat sinks should be the opposite of fuel pods. Instead of providing a substance such as fuel, they take heat away from the element.

 

Next, you'll be telling me I cant fly a giant penis. (Or I'll need to add a scrotum for my heat sinks)

I would like to force americans to eat pasta with tomato sauce, instead of ketchup...

[Ripper]

Given time, players find the optimal build / loadout. So you will eventually see very similar ships.

 

The best way to combat this is provide variety in your elements. Restricting creativity only encourages the building of similar ships.

 

Take "level 1 engines" for example..

 

There should be multiple engines that essentially perform the same way, but have different unique characteristics. Each of those characteristics would necessitate certain design decisions. (Proximity to other elements could be one of those traits)

 

Ship maneuverability is an arguement for interior space. A solid cube will have much more mass than a hollow cube. This means it wont fly as well.

 

Esthetics is another arguement. Functionality isn't EYERYTHING. So players will build cool looking ships that ALSO have good performance.

 

Everyone wants to be a bad ass, but they want to look good doing it.

[Kurock]

This is going to be a long one, so skip to the TLDR section for the summary.  

 

 

Heat mechanic for all the wrong reasons

 

At first I thought, DU is set far into the future.  Lore wise, the technology could be said to be so advanced that constructs can "simply" ignore the second law of thermodynamics.  The reasons currently put forward as to *why* a heat mechanic should be added are going to have no effect and not drive the desired behaviour.

• To encourage "spaces" inside a construct - I would think access to the various elements is enough to drive this, as previously stated.  And adding a heat mechanic does not encourage space inside a construct it does encourages adding heat sinks, which is not quite the same as space.
• Give engineering something to do - This certainly creates another dedicated job of "heat watchman" and gives an incentive to reroute power to give elements a chance to cool down.  But this alone is not enough of a reason to add an entire mechanic as well as having an engineer to do spot repairs or enhance elements would also fill this design goal.
• To discourage certain ship designs - As previously stated in this thread, aesthetic construct design should be dictated by the players.

But then this got me thinking, why would a heat mechanic actually be useful mechanic to have? It should not be an invasive mechanic so it needs to be transparent most of the time except when someone really wants to push the boundaries on what their construct can do.

• Limiting density of high heat producing elements - Not all elements are created equal and while active, they will produce different amounts of heat.  And also have different tolerances for heat before shutting down. Pack elements like weapons too tightly together or firing them all at once may cause no small heat issues.  This encourages alternate fire and not having a constructs every available space covered by weapons.  Power generators will necessarily create heat as well which means adding more power generators to power more weapons won't solve the heat issue.
• Thermal signature detection - The side effect of having heat is that it can be scanned for and read at amazingly long distances.  So much so that given a specific signature, a skilled player could be able to tell if a ship is powering up an warp drive or charging its weapons.
• It's getting hot in here - This could be a survival element requiring a thermal suit to circumvent. Though survival is not the main aim of DU. Radiation would fall under this category too.

But a heat mechanic will kill the server!

 

This is demonstrably false. Much of the mechanic can be abstracted in such a way that it will cause no more strain than the physics calculations for multiple thrust vectors on the same construct.  One way could be to use a directional graph with each node being a DU element with it's neighbours being nodes within the first nodes "heat range".  These links could be boosted by the presence of highly conductive voxels, like gold.

But what about scanning?  There are multiple ways this could be handled from only transmitting the highest heat signature to the top three to some aggregation.  Not all heat signatures will be transmitted to all other constructs in the area.

 

Explosions from overheating!

 

No.  Exploding constructs are generally very easy to abuse.  I am firmly against constructs-as-explosive-torpedoes. Lancers are another story.

 

Bonus: Heat sinks vs thermal radiators

 

Just a minor gripe on terminology.  What this thread is actually talking about are thermal radiators.  These are the elements that radiate excess heat away from the construct.  A heat sink is pretty much anything that can take up heat: from a chip to the Mississippi river.  Though what would be nice to see is a heat sink element in DU that can temporarily contain a certain amount of heat from a construct, drastically reducing the thermal signature of the construct, but only for a short amount of time, before the heat must be routed back to the thermal radiators. 

 

TLDR

 

Yes to heat mechanic.  No to the previously provided reasons as to why it should be added.

 

my 2c

P.S. I talk about thermal radiation in this post. This is not to be confused with nuclear/gamma radiation which is a completely different topic.

[Ripper]

Great post Kurock,

 

Agreed on the difference between radiators and heat sinks.

 

But it would be cool if there were both. Radiators to vent heat into space, which would be detectable by other players, and the heat sinks to store heat for a very short time while the player is in "stealth mode"