[QoL Suggestion] Voxel Replace/Paint Tool

[Wolfram]

I know the game has a built-in replace voxel tool, it works somewhat okay, but still has a few limitations:

• Sometimes the voxels get completely messed up when you replace them;
• You can only ever select voxels in a rectangular shape;
• It doesn't work very nicely with offset voxels;
• The amount of honeycomb isn't very accurate, sometimes it will fail saying you don't have enough of it, since it's calculating the entire rectangle volume instead of actual voxels;

 

With those above in mind, what I wanted to suggest is something similar to the paint tool in games like SE.

It would work similar to the Repair tool, you would equip it and select the voxel you want to use (in place of scrap) and point to the voxel you want to replace. It would then use a raycast to detect the right voxel and also optionally select connected voxels of the same type, and show a preview before replacing.

 

So for example, let's say you have a ship with decorative panels, made out of offset white plastic, and you wanted to paint them with gold.

You would simply select that tool, select the gold honeycomb, point to the panel and it would detect all the voxels composing that panel and show you a preview on what it would look like.

After clicking, it would apply the voxel replacement.

 

This would be a MASSIVE quality of life improvement, not only for builders but anyone who buys a ship token and wants to customize it in some way.

[Tordan]

I agree that the current paint voxel tool is essentially useless. 

It is better/easier to do the same task with a simple cut and paste.

 

Highlight and copy a region of the same size as the thing you want to color, then scroll up or down to choose the material you want, then just paste it back on top of the original.  (not shift paste, just paste.)  Because this game has existing dominance, it will simply recolor those voxels with the new material, and won't change the shape.

[Wolfram]

@Tordan correct. Nowadays, that's how I do the voxel recoloring when I need it, but it's still quite time consuming, specially when the voxels are offset and close to other voxels, the selection tool only being able to work with rectangles makes it quite hard to do right.