Retractable landing gear

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1441952717 these guys managed it. Might be worth contacting them.

I can see where Keen is coming from, but honestly it shouldn't be "too complex". I doubt that the engine and dev team are incapable of creating a stable, functional landing gear that retracts. I do think that it shouldn't be top priority though, considering all of the other things to work on. It would be an awesome feature and I have wished many times that there was a vanilla landing gear that could retract or at least was not so big. Maybe just a skid or pad landing block that isn't so tall? I know for a fact that would be extremely simple to make, especially for the devs. I can say that a block like that would make building sleek or compact ships much easier when it comes to landing.

i mean... its space engineers just engineer retractable gears guy... like cmon xD

Not possible without phantom force bug.

It's perfectly possible and has been done many times use blast door blocks

I was not aware blast door blocks were available for small ships.

U can do two type of landing gear, with height 2 and 1 block. Now it useless then i try to do more compact ship.

does this mean you guys need more money???? TAKE MY MONEY!

How complex? How do you program something you dont know how to change?

Exactly. There’s already several mods featuring retractable landing gear.

If modders can make it, there’s no reason it should be “too complicated” for Keen.

The mods work good for a mod, but for example, this one: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1114854185&searchtext=retractable+landing+gear

It looks great, but the hitbox is still there when it's retracted.

This one: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1441952717

Based on a rotor, and as you may know, rotors aren't super stable, so putting a bigger load on it (aka a whole ship) might not be a very good idea, it can cause issues. While that's acceptable for a mod, it's not the same way when it's in the game. If it's vanilla it has to be stable.

Don't get me wrong here, I would love it if a retractable landing gear would be implemented, I love building good looking ships and the vanilla landing gears don't look very good on sleak designs, they're hard (not impossible) to implement. You can use wheels and rotors etc if you're willing to risk the rotors flipping out (not very likely, but still a risk).

“If it’s vanilla it has to be stable”

LMAO

A good quarter of the vanilla stuff either doesn’t work correctly, or is unstable.

The only slightly unstable thing in SE is rotors and pistons, and in fact, most times it's just about the player not understanding the limitations they have and the space they need. I can't really think of a block right now that does not work as intended... Of course, there are slight bugs, like the ore detector bug that was fixed in the last patch.

I still stand by my point that if it's vanilla it has to be stable. If people use stuff for something it wasn't meant for, then the issue is in the players hands and they can't really complain. If instead, they make that a feature (with the same issues) people can complain about it not working, and of course, they're right to.

All that aside, I don't doubt that they could make it work, but the question is just to what cost? How much development time would it take? All the testing and bug squashing required for such a thing is rather extensive, and that time could instead be used to improve other aspects of the game. It's all about priorities when developing a game, and right now, Keen is trying to make SE a finished package that works as it should for an upcoming release.

i learnt how to do that myself from youtube vids...

it sure isn't difficult or ""TOO COMPLEX"" and if what their saying is the engine cant support animated models WTF? ?

if the engine cant support animated models then what about the mods that do have animated models, i know there are a few

I think there is much more fun in creating your own retractable landing gear, after all that is SE (and engeneering in general) is about: creating what you do not have out of what is available, isn't it?

Clang Rejects your offer and also multi grid isnt supported for projectors so not practical for any build in survival the actual game part of this game soooo . .. . . . .. .

This being declined disappoints me very much, it was one of the things I have been waiting for to be implemented for a few years now.

I can see them declining to add AI now saying "It's too complex, we are going to only focus on multiplayer"..............

Unless this has some kind of real functional use then what is the point, it would just be another silly cosmetic thing tieing up the devs time. In any case if you really want retractable landing gear its entirely already possible to make your own using pistons and or rotors.

I use the retractable landing gear mod standard on ALL my ships.

No you don't, it's too complex, it doesn't exist.

"An animated hitbox and model is to complex dear god you learn this at university in year one"

So doors are too complex too then? They have an animmated hitbox and moving model.. Retractable landing gear mod works fine.. Even if the hitbox is static.

It was a joke, you are obviously using the mod so it exists....

Keen saying it's too difficult to implement makes no sense as a reason for not implementing it when a mod exists that does already what they say is too difficult.

Chilllll

I don't think they literally mean that it is too complex for them to implement. It's that it makes the game lose focus, since you can easily engineer one yourself. Remember that there is a large chance the people responding and reading this stuff don't speak English as well as us.

While it is already possible to make flush landing gear with a complicated piston/rotor setup, the problem is compactness, which a dedicated block would solve. What a dedicated retracting block would not do is remove the possibility to create one's own custom gear. In fact this has far more potential to become even more flexible if the massive, gaudy fixed gear are replaced with a simple flat mag-strip option in addition to a folding/retractable gear object with animation. This could potentially turn nearly any block into a landing gear block.

Yes. But with human nature the way it is, once such a block is added no one will bother with engineering their own solution and so then engineering part of the game looses something.

On the other hand, if keen added landing gear variants in different shapes and sizes then it keeps the engineering aspect intact.

The More Pistons mod adds a more compact piston. Maybe keen could integrate that somehow too.

I used to think that way too, Lee Conlin. I gave that up a long time ago. It's not a valid argument, because the Common Player will rather not bother at all than build their own mechanism anyway. Same goes for things like airlocks, people will rather not bother at all or just slap two sliding doors together than build a proper airlock mechanism. So, at this point I've given up and would rather have dedicated blocks so people actually use these mechanisms.

I'm also with Raelsmar on that building a custom landing gear just takes up way, way, way too much space.

so correct me if i'm wrong but;

this long and extensive thread about the state of landing gear in space engineers has come to the momentous, new, and original conclusion that......

the unit block size in space engineers is far too large and thus the entire game is fundamentally flawed? requiring, in addition to extensive modding, first the addition of a dedicated door block to make sliding and sealing play nice and now the further addition of a dedicated landing gear part. None of which can be seen as anything more than a doomed attempt to duct tape over an enormous hole in the games basic design, the only remaining hope of which is to unify the two disparate grid systems that currently exist within the game??

That's just an opinion, not a conclusion, and it's based on your own personal view of what the game should be - which is just one of very many. The block size decision was not made on a whim. If the block size was smaller, people would be complaining why they couldn't build large ships instead. Every game design choice has consequences outside of the obvious.. Meaning, the net number of complaints wouldn't change, just the actual people who complain would.

There's also the very simple reason that when this game was started, block count had a much larger impact than it does today, meaning that what I described above had a much stronger impact than today, strengthening that argument. There comes a time in the lifetime of software development where you just have to make a decision and stick to it. This, I would argue, is the safer choice, affecting more people positively than it does negatively.

There's no reason why a smaller unit block size would necessitate higher block counts, the game already contains a super block system; i don't suggest removing the large block size that allows easy construction of large vessels, merely that it shouldn't be the unit block size, for example the unit block size could instead be of a 0.5 m edge length such that 125 of them would form a solid cube the size of the existing unit blocks, the 2.5 m edge length blocks would remain preserving the existing design language.

and yes this is my opinion, yes in software engineering you do at some point have to make non-regressive decisions, however all i'm actually suggesting is that all the features and blocks currently limited to the large grid be extended to the small grid.

There's no reason it should, no, no, but even just a cursory glance at this community clealy tells that it will.

Your suggestion of unit block size has been suggested and rejected before. It doesn't work, because it will take the current armor block optimization system that removes invisible faces, and break it or make it much slower, since it's no longer a simple neighbor check.

People will be building huge ships with the small grid, because now Keen is "officially supporting it", and complain when the performance drops. People use mods to do so now, but at least they can't blame Keen since they're overriding Keen's recommendation so it's on their own heads.

I'm sure we all would like what you're suggesting. I know I would. Unfortunately, for us all, it's not realistic.

:( well that's sad but at least we can dream, any thoughts which will come first; airship dlc for medieval engineers, or the proposed but apparently equally unlikely reduction in unit bock size?

I don't play ME so I have no idea 😛 but airship sounds more plausible since you suggested it as DLC 😁

:D sounds good, i don't play ME either, nor do i intend to unless they add airships