Very large blocks

Alexander Brunius shared this feedback 5 years ago
Considered (Not Planned)

When building large ships of over 10k blocks a few shortfalls of the game become apparent. You need dozens or hundreds of some blocks which is really bad both for performance, for ship looks + functionality as well cluttering the list to scroll through. Performance of Thrusters also falls short for 10k+ block ships made out of one or several layers of Heavy Armor, where you basically need to cover the entire ship in thrusters to fly on Mars or Earth, or not take several minutes to accelerate.

I propose adding a new type of Very large blocks, basically larger versions of some block types already existing on a large block grid. This does NOT need a new grid size, since they would fit on large grids. I know that most of these are available in mods, but they are often either badly balanced, balanced assuming you have some other mods or just have a very different art style making them fit bad with a pure vanilla game experience.


Here are some examples of what I feel is needed, the size and output are just suggestions and naturally up to KSH to decide on what they feel fits best:

  • Very Large O2/H2 Generator. Any very large ship powered by Hydrogen thrusters needs hundreds of these to supply H2. I propose a 2x2x4 sized Generator with about 12 times the capacity of ice and conversion rates + 10 times the power draw of the standard large O2/H2 Generators.
  • Very Large Gyroscope. Any 10k+ block ship made out of heavy armor often needs dozens if not hundreds of Gyroscopes to be able turn at all. I propose a 3x3x3 Gyroscope with 30 times the torque and 20 times the power need.
  • Very Large Airtight Hangar Doors. Current Airtight Hangars are limited to ships 3-4 large blocks in height ( Double doors ), and you often need dozens of them on larger Carrier type ships. I propose a 1x3x2 block that extends to 1x3x6 when fully extended ( which would allow ships of sizes up to 7-8 large blocks through ).
  • Very Large Drill. When building drillships you often end up with a wall of drills. I propose a 3x3x5 size drill with 9 times the speed of a normal large drill for 7 times the power needs.
  • Very Large Thrusters. I propose Thrusters extended 1 block in all directions compared to normal large ones, and with roughly 6 times the thrust output for 5 times the power needs.
  • Very Large Cannon/Missile Launcher. Weapon systems also falls short and even the smallest ships can have range comparable to capital ships. I propose a large fixed Cannon and Missile Launcher with a range of 2400m ( 3 times normal max ), much longer reloads and more damage done. This would probably require new ammo types too.

You could add more stuff to the list ( like reactors, grinders, welders, solar panels, cargo or production blocks ) but this is what I feel I need the most when building epic capital ships on survival Multiplayer, and we got server admin modifiers for production/cargo to help with these aspects if you feel they are too slow.

Replies (13)

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In a way i agree, however the bigger blocks get, the less interesting ship designs you will see since you will always have to work around this big same block space where more smaller blocks can be placed in any figure you want.

But i especially agree on thrusters and hangar doors or they should make the blast doors more reliable and airtight, then you can make your own costum made gate every time but seperate grids from pistons and rotors will always stay dangerous to work with even if we count the bugs out.

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I agree there needs to be a more powerful gyro the current one is really insufficient past a certain point.

The hangar doors though just need to be made modular, so that we can build on/extend the ends of them to a custom size we need.

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Hi guys, we are sorry but we dont plan this feature for SE1.

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Gyroscopes are a problem for well-thought-out ships. They only have 1 mounting point and weigh a lot, if they are severed from the ship they will cause the ship to explode. This is why the best built ships in this game do not put too many gyroscopes on one block or ANY gyroscopes on hull/light armor. Adding super-gyros will kinda eliminate this aspect of engineering good ships in SE, for better or worse...after all its pretty clear most ppl don't care for actual challenge in this game by how few 1x1x1 servers there are.

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1x1x1 servers are a challenge? More like a grind. If you want a true challenge you play PVP on a small map.

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1x makes things like turret ammo and "tankless hydrogen" a concern, you need a "magazine" cargo container close to the turret to reliably have more than 720-ish rds in your turret or when your pipes get cut you'll run out of ammo, just use a welder on the turret and put repair comps and ammo in it probably better but whatever. in 1x you can't carry around 250k Ice as fuel in a fighter and still have it maneuverable, you need tanks for it to not be slow.

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You realy should first release SE1 before concidering future versions. And if money is the issue i for one would rather pay for DLC for such features to use in SE1 than a whole new game with same features. Even if the same amount imo.

Better to have just one game to maintain and evolve than multiple versions of same or similar content, right.

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Very large o2/h2 generator

storing ice as energy should not be an efficient solution for maintaining flight on planets in the first place.

Very large airtight hangar doors

Perhaps... But that would be a very large volume to pressurize anyways. It's more efficient to just put an airlock and a warning sign on the interior entrance to your hangar, and use blast doors with pistons and/or rotors for the exterior. That said, I'm always in favor of more creative options.

Very large cannon/missile launcher

As is, I'm not in favor of projectiles magically disappearing at 800m in the first place. This suggestion would give large grids an arbitrary range advantage in addition to their inherent advantage of being bigger. Also, the inherent limitations of weapons' range is their ability to hit their target, which is a function of the gunners' skill (either human or computer) and the velocity of the projectile. The current limitations of the game engine govern the maximum projectile speed. I would never want to see battles decided solely on arbitrary ranges dictated by the game over player agency (skill.)

Very large thrusters

I agree that even bigger thrusters could be helpful, but your suggestion for how to implement them is laughable. 6 times the thrust for only +1 length? The game is called Space Engineers not Space Witchcraft.

Everything else

Agreed.

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Very large o2/h2 generator

Yeah I totally agree. I will be the first to ask for more realistic physical properties. I think this is why many people prefer KSP over SE, lack of realism and physics. We don't have cars of today going around with a small fuel refinery on them and a tank of crude oil... It should always give you more range to use refined and stored fuel instead of refining ice on the way. The big issue here as pointed out earlier is that when you play on a high cargo multiplier you can fit alot more ice than "intended" without being able to fit more H2 in a tank, so another approach would be to multiply the H2 capacity of tanks as well.

This change doesn't totally remove the need for a large or very large refinery block though... because if large ships can store more fuel, they need to be refueled somewhere, and those generator blocks will be needed on your base or mobile refueling platforms instead.


Very large airtight hangar doors

Piston and rotors work decently for beauty projects or stuff not mean to be used, but if you aim to actually put them to use ( open/close a lot on maneuvering Carriers, inside combat for example ) then you must use airtight hangar blocks instead. I am proposing a solution to enable pvp or practical heavy duty use hangars on very large ships.


Very large cannon/missile launcher

These weapon systems would ofcourse need to be balanced, but I think it's easy to achieve. By having the projectiles large and visible enough, and making them fixed weapons instead of turrets any smaller ship can easily dodge them and the weapons usefulness will be restricted to combat against enemy large bases or enemy very large ships. It's silly at the moment to try and have combat between two 10k+ block ships in multiplayer and both ships having over 100 turrets or launchers, none of them capable of doing any serious damage at all vs a few layers heavy armor without expending hundreds of ammo of blasting away for minutes, with ramming or ramming weapons/blocky missiles being your only option.


I agree with your concern that any unbalanced turreted huge auto-aiming devastating weapons or weapon with longer range than current turrets, but that is not what I am suggesting.


Very large thrusterIf you compare small and large ion thruster ( large grid ) they add 2+2+1 blocks in each direction and they gain 12.5 times more thrust so I don't think it's totally unreasonable. ( numbers from https://spaceengineerswiki.com/Thruster ). My numbers were just meant as a crude first draft, but the reason I picked them is because the Space Engineers building system does not really work well when it comes to building components larger than 4-5 blocks in each direction, and going larger would probably have required redoing the block placement system which complicates things alot. To be a meaningful upgrade it also needs at least 5 times more output (IMO ). Another option that might work better would be to re-use the current "large" model but increasing it's weight, materials, power and energy/fuel draw while adding a "Medium" thruster closer to the current large thruster component specs.

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perhaps some sort of guided missile system or a rail gun of sorts, something that just does better at range than the current weapons in the game, also fixed rocket launchers need longer range

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I sure hope that SE2 has water, weather, and concrete, in addition to these very large blocks.. :-)

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I use mods to achieve something similar to all of these features. It would be nice to see them in vanilla

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Partially agree.

Titan engines are popular for a reason. More tank-sizes, battery-sizes and container-sizes would be nice to have.

An 'speed module'-friendly, somewhat larger O2/H2 generator probably will be performance friendly enough to not need a dedicated large generator and will provide more flexibility then simply a large one. Same goes for gyro (there is even a keen-mod for gyros with upgrade).

But things like larger weapon versions are likely to send what there is of balance to hell (definitely won't mind having keen-cannon in the game however :) )

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I agree with the O2/H2 generator, but not with many of the other things. First off, I propose all of these "Huge" blocks be designated as "Capital Class", and I think they should be very expensive and power hungry, but ultimately should perform better. For example, a huge reactor that is very expensive, and isn't as efficient when it comes to Uranium use, but, also generates extremely large amounts of power, could be very useful, but should be balanced according with all of the other Capital Class items so that you cant just expect to have one Capital Class reactor powering all of your Capital Class systems, without at least supplementing it with large grid reactors. I feel the O2/H2 Generator being capital class would be like, amazing. Mainly because it would negate the ridiculously loud and synchronous noises from having about 50 regular O2/H2 generators, and that alone is reason enough for me to use something like that. But yeah, being able to have Capital Class subsystems, and like, maybe weapons, although I dont particularly like having weapons like that implemented by default, as it removes the necessity to be creative and make rotor operated turrets that have rocket launchers, or gravity cannons, etc. Still though, great idea, and I think Keen, especially if they give this a quick look, could have a ball with this. Even having Capital Class rotors that are bigger and look beefier, and also have a much stronger rotational force for things like engine nacelles would help very large ship builders like me. I personally dont really think thruster's need to be touched, or gyros, because huge ships shouldn't be able to move crazy fast for balancing reasons, but I also understand that it shouldn't take 5 minutes to accelerate to a reasonable speed. I'd leave that up to Keen to balance, but still, just for the sake of performance at least, it would help a lot I feel. Also, having gigantic Capital Class landing gear would be nice. Thanks anyone who took the time to read all of this, and sorry lol, I know its quite a lot. And props to you for the Idea Alexander.

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I agree wholeheartedly with this, especially with having large gyroscopes. Huge ships shouldn't be super maneuverable, this I get, but it's very annoying having to cram gyroscopes into every single possible space in a large carrier and still having extremely sluggish controls. A 3x3x3 gyroscope would be fantastic in that it means I don't have to keep layering dozens of armor plates and gyroscopes, not to mention they would be far less likely to become dislodged if the ship is damaged.


The ship I'm working on right now is a carrier at 12k blocks, only having heavy armor in thin layers over more exposed vital components. I'm able to get a good amount of thrust out of it by making full use of available surface area, but it has 326 gyroscopes crammed into every possible nook and cranny that I could find and still steers like garbage, and that's with a completely empty inventory/hangars. I don't have very strong feelings about most of the other suggestions (though I wouldn't mind seeing them implemented) but gyroscopes at least could really use a more efficient, larger option.


Edit: My ship actually handles real well. The problem was that I has shared inertia tensers on some rotors.

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Small Large now XL

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Proposed 4 years ago, declared concidered, not a single block introduced since. Cmon Keen, step up your game.

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It's marked as 'Not Planned'. Basically 'Won't do'.

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Ahh yes, but concidered.

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These really are needed. When ships get bigger their costs get exponentially higher eventually even the 1 pcu blocks build up and this would help a lot.


Even some simple shape blocks such as 3x3x1 panels would be nice so that 1 pcu could be used in place of 9 pcu for example.

It would also eliminate the ridiculous practice of using refineries as armor.

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