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

[Kurock]

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"

 

I did mean to imply that there is space for both elements in DU.  So I would also like to make this request. 

[Anaximander]

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

...what

 

What scanning system exactly? Have you seen the GDC stream? You literally have to triangulate a location when you scan for minerals.

 

First, you need to understand that the whole "spheres of influence" is nothing more than a permanent AoE effect. You know, like say "make X amount of volume on construct do damage when Y conditions are met". Simple Boolean logic. There's no scan. You simply deploy a field that does two things, one being "if another Ele,ment of priority lsit in proximity choose it over another element" and then second is "if Heat Level exceeds X% then cause dmage to player".

 

That's it. You "casted" an AoE effect when you built the construct. It doesnt' scan anything.  It's just a dmage zone. If EVE can pull of Spheres of Influecne in a 14 year old game, I bet NQ can do that. We got the technology.

 

Also, you clearly missed the memo on how geocodes update on a server. Those "heat bubbles" apply and move in relevance to the ship's core. Unit. Thheya re "tethered" to it. Ther'es no weight on the server. But oh well, I guess you are one of the "I want to build Boxships packed to the brim" smart-apples who play SE and build flying turds.

 

Second , Heat is not the same as Temperature. Unless NQ adds an atmosphere inside ships, I can't see any reason to have "spreading heat", by having "air voxels" being affected by the "Heat bubble" gradually, via an inverse square root rate of increasing the heat on the Air Voxels and a recursive additive value. What this means? I don't know, you know better than I, Einstein said "those who understand fully, can explain with ease". Since I only have a CSD Major degree, I'll be expecting the explanation from you oh wise one.

 

Heat has many advantages, even if its "Heat Bubble" can be survivable... but tricky.

 

Like, people scanning for heat signatures inside a building or scanning for heat on a starbase to nuke its modules. Or, you know, the whole thing called "Tactics", of having a ship being full of heat sinks that make it NEARLY invisible on LADARs, like the Normandy from Mass Effect, having the ability to "cloak" for a limited duration on thermal scans by having its entire hull's heat dumped into sinks.

 

But no, I guess we don't need challenging game mechanics, otherwise Jeff and Lil' Timmy won't be able to build Packed-to-Brim Boxships.

 

Thermal goggles for night operations? Nah, we don't need those either. I guess we will have to stick huge ass flashlights on starfighters for night operations. I guess Flashlights are also out of the picture. You can't possible cast frigging light, it will tank the servers.  I mean, do you know how heavy the inverse square root is? Do you? I mean, I know, Quake in 1995 fixed the whole issue with "areas of effect" and everyone uses it ever since, but still, your eternal wisdom clearly sees past all.

 

Hiding a base that's underground with Heat-sinks and Cooling Systems to hide your presense on the planet from thermal scans? Nah. Hiding on a Lava Planet to make it impossible for your base to stand out? Nah. I guess Heat Offers Nothing.

 

So, according to you :

 

a) Heat Signatures serve no purpose to warrant Heat Sinks in the game for ships to be "stealthy" or have ships that are "cheap but burn easily" and "they don't burn easily but cost". You know, the whole point of the game's economy, Lua scripts and the such.

 

2) Heat has no value in combat, tactics or in general, adding no depth into the game.

 

Since I proven you wrong, I'll just stand here and wait for you next wall of text - which indicates you probably build ships the way you structure responses, nonsensically and without proper thought put into them.

 

 

Cheers.

[wizardoftrash]

 

Explosions from overheating!

 

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

 

The intent with the heat-explosion would not be to damage other constructs, only the overheated one. If the heat explosion can't damage other entities then it should be just fine as drawback mechanic.

[Astro_Alphard]

I'm going to go against the introduction of "heatsinks" as a game mechanic because if you look at all spacecraft designed today they don't have much interior space. In spacecraft design, well, space is at a premium. 

 

The same thing will hold in the future, Any form of sublight travel using momentum drives (like current rocket/ion thruster technology) will automatically include a heat vent in the fuel system (use waste heat to preheat the fuel), Also the vast majority of spacecraft have thermal insulation so only things on the surface of the craft get hot and the easiest way to disperse that heat is simply by rolling the spacecraft by 180 degrees. 

 

It just doesn't make sense to employ a heat mechanic without giving players the option of active cooling systems and insulation. Both of which take up valuable internal space and have to be put in as fixed functional blocks. This limits the types of ships that could be built, practically eliminating the reason why people are attracted to DU in the first place. 

 

It also makes starting gameplay needlessly complex. I'm an engineering student so I'm fine with the stat and numbers game but i have friends who don't understand the first thing about thermodynamics. Implementing heat as a game mechanic will raise the bar for entry, especially for a teenage audience or an audience that doesn't have a background in sciences. I know people who don't know what a joule is and are excited to see this game, imagine how confusing it would be for them to see Joules for energy (fuel) and Joules for heat. 

[wizardoftrash]

Your objection regarding the realism of internal space in space travel is legitimate. This is the way that actual spacecraft look today, so I can understand how this is how you would envision it in a game. We aren't talking kerbal space program here though, this is a science fiction game. As such, the reference materials will include fictional depictions of space travel which typically include more interior space.

 

Modern spacecraft aren't designed to be lived in, science fiction spacecraft are, and are modeled more after oceanic craft where humans spent long periods of time on them (for work and for fun). The "look" of a spacecraft where there are various control rooms, living quarters, etc is something a key part of the audience will be looking for in larger ships (which is the only kind of ship that will have to dedicate much space if at all to heat dissipation).

 

For designers that don't want to create internal spaces like this, I've already described a method where players can "run" heatsink systems on the ship's exterior instead, so the option of designing a more modern looking craft will still be there. Each of those options will have its own set of advantages and disadvantages outside of the astetic factors (internal heat means pushing key systems to the exterior where they could be damaged, or forces you to make the ship's "hitbox" bigger. External head means exposing your heat system to damage, possibly leading to a backup or an outage).

 

 

It also makes starting gameplay needlessly complex. I'm an engineering student so I'm fine with the stat and numbers game but i have friends who don't understand the first thing about thermodynamics. Implementing heat as a game mechanic will raise the bar for entry, especially for a teenage audience or an audience that doesn't have a background in sciences. I know people who don't know what a joule is and are excited to see this game, imagine how confusing it would be for them to see Joules for energy (fuel) and Joules for heat. 

 

The system I proposed won't involve any real math. Heat requirements wouldn't be given in a conventional quantity, it'll be in cubic meters of heat dissipation area required, and those cubic meters are "projected" by the heatsink elements. A more hardcore player is going be planning their ships ahead of time in terms of where their actual system-blocks will be placed, heatsinks would provide some more depth to that process. A more casual player could easily add the heatsinks as an afterthought, either extending parts of their ship to get their other functional elements away from their heat "areas", or projecting their heat outside of their ship in fins or entente.

 

As for how realistic it is to need to manage heat on a spaceship, our current spacecraft have no active shielding, no weapons systems, and no need for combat-level evasive maneuvering. Whether or not that need will ever actually arise in our lifetime is moot, it would be a fine game mechanic and this is a game first and foremost.

[Kurock]

DU is about optional depth. Being against heatsinks is like being against liquid cooling systems on a modern desktop PC. It is an optional extra that allows for better performance tweaking of existing components.

 

For normal use the cooling built into the elements will suffice, but if you want to go deeper, like making a stealth ship or a high performance hovercraft, then those that want to, can.

 

(On a different note: Still not convinced about explosions when a shutdown-until-repaired will suffice.)