Portals as Endgame Structures
I think that it would be fun if you had portals as an endgame mechanic making it possible to establish infrastructure for FTL pathways for cargo ships. The way that portals would work is that you have to build and power two identical portal frames on the same grid then you need to physically separate them and move the portals to the locations you want them to portal between. Doing it this way does prevent you from being able to have a single standardised portal that can dial to any portal of the same standard that you control like a Stargate, but it does present a really interesting and fun engineering challenge to set up a portal. Especially if you want both ends of the portal to be on two different planets!
As for the actual implementation, the hardest part is finishing your camera to LCD screen rendering effect in a way that is well enough optimised that its practical to have an LCD screen the size of however big you're willing to allow portals to be (which could be limited by making the energy cost of portals logarithmic where after a certain size the energy requirements start to rapidly approach infinity) https://support.keenswh.com/spaceengineers2/pc/topic/45239-camera-to-lcd-screen. Once you're able to render a camera to a surface you just need to make a phantom camera that matches the relative location of the player character to the other portal. Then cull everything on that camera that appears before the portal and just render the output of that to the portal surface on the clientside.
The second step is a bit easier since it doesn't rely on any new engine stuff, just an application of transforms, block placing, block deleting and grid control panel sharing in weird ways. What you want to do is designate one of the two portals as the primary portal and the other as the secondary portal. When a block is partially over the threshold coming from either direction then a copy of that block is spawned on the other side. The primary copy of the block operates completely normally but the non-primary copy is massless and non-functional. Attempting to interact with the interface of the secondary block will instead open up the interface of the primary copy. The secondary copy of the block makes the exact same movements as the primary copy (transformed first by the relative rotation of the portals) and transmits force relative to the centre of mass on the primary copy as it gets applied to the secondary copy.
Once a block is fully through the plane of the portal the appropriate copy gets deleted. If the secondary copy remains Then it gains mass and functionality at this point. The centre of mass is calculated for the secondary half of the ship including forces acting on it, and those get transmitted through to the primary half before the physics calculations actually get made rather than calculating both halves independently. This continues until no block that is part of the grid intersects a portal at which point the grid is just normal again. If a grid that was intersecting a portal gets split in half you would need to make sure to check for if both parts are intersecting the portal.
You can get rid of a few potentially problematic edge cases with the following decisions. Cameras and players that are far enough away from a portal can't see through it, they just see a mysterious purple fog. The same should apply to portals seen through another portal This should make it easier to limit the damage done to performance by having lots of cameras near portals or lots of portals near each other. You should also make it so that connections on the secondary side of a grid don't transfer energy or inventory. This would prevent you from having a ship where the power generation and hydrogen are stored safely on another grid and just pumped to it. The final edge case is that if a portal is on a grid that tried to pass through another portal, or a ship tries to pass through a second portal before fully exiting the first portal then the smaller portal and the second portal respectively should short out and turn off. This will prevent any weird nonsense with you having to break a ship up into 3 or more parts, or a portal into 2 or more parts.
I like this feedback
Oh I forgot to mention, if a portal gets cut off while a block is inside of the portal, then that block should be destroyed IMO, or maybe get a unique damage effect that allows a perfect bisection of the ship along the plane of the portal without actually deleting any blocks. That way there's the thought process about actually using a portal and if you trust the portal's owner. At the same time if a portal gets shorted out or turned off for whatever reason then it shouldn't be able to just reconnect to its paired portal again, instead you should need to set up the entire portal again from scratch, making it so there's some cost a portal being turned off or disabled.
Oh I forgot to mention, if a portal gets cut off while a block is inside of the portal, then that block should be destroyed IMO, or maybe get a unique damage effect that allows a perfect bisection of the ship along the plane of the portal without actually deleting any blocks. That way there's the thought process about actually using a portal and if you trust the portal's owner. At the same time if a portal gets shorted out or turned off for whatever reason then it shouldn't be able to just reconnect to its paired portal again, instead you should need to set up the entire portal again from scratch, making it so there's some cost a portal being turned off or disabled.
I don't know, that sounds more like something for a SE2 mod as for vanilla SE2. As nice as ports are (Stargate :D) the problem is they reduce the need of traveling far distance and would ruin so even more the feeling of a vast large space. Ports makes for me only sense to jump from on large sector to another to cut down too long distances.
I don't know, that sounds more like something for a SE2 mod as for vanilla SE2. As nice as ports are (Stargate :D) the problem is they reduce the need of traveling far distance and would ruin so even more the feeling of a vast large space. Ports makes for me only sense to jump from on large sector to another to cut down too long distances.
I think the key thing in this suggestion is power cost and size. I would add that the rarity and strong progression feeling from prototech in SE1 has improved the game and set a precedent that some powerful end-game content may not be as simple and easy to build and maintain as the more mundane blocks, strongly encouraging discretion and effort.
Rather than strapping a bunch of expensive blocks to your ship (i.e. jump drives) and a couple reactors, a portal station could require first acquiring rare, specialized components, building dramatically larger power infrastructure than is required for most ships (You may be in a phase of the game where one reactor is not a challenge to build, but what if a useable portal for ships required the equivalent of ~100 reactors? 200? An alien containerized black hole?) and the ever-present risk that an inadequately protected (and stationary) portal might find itself destroyed by random encounters/other players unless properly defended.
I think the key thing in this suggestion is power cost and size. I would add that the rarity and strong progression feeling from prototech in SE1 has improved the game and set a precedent that some powerful end-game content may not be as simple and easy to build and maintain as the more mundane blocks, strongly encouraging discretion and effort.
Rather than strapping a bunch of expensive blocks to your ship (i.e. jump drives) and a couple reactors, a portal station could require first acquiring rare, specialized components, building dramatically larger power infrastructure than is required for most ships (You may be in a phase of the game where one reactor is not a challenge to build, but what if a useable portal for ships required the equivalent of ~100 reactors? 200? An alien containerized black hole?) and the ever-present risk that an inadequately protected (and stationary) portal might find itself destroyed by random encounters/other players unless properly defended.
So what I'm hearing is basically the old Stargate mod being made vanilla except calling them Clang Gates.
So what I'm hearing is basically the old Stargate mod being made vanilla except calling them Clang Gates.
As much as I would like if Keen added alternate modes of fast-travel, this doesn't feel like it would fit the game's aesthetic (and having to start them close and then take them to a destination just seems tedious). If we're going to have giant ring-stations to send ships places, then it would probably be more setting appropriate to do something akin to The Sojourn's drift gates where the station is just a massive gravity-cannon and the ship is the projectile.
As much as I would like if Keen added alternate modes of fast-travel, this doesn't feel like it would fit the game's aesthetic (and having to start them close and then take them to a destination just seems tedious). If we're going to have giant ring-stations to send ships places, then it would probably be more setting appropriate to do something akin to The Sojourn's drift gates where the station is just a massive gravity-cannon and the ship is the projectile.
Don't think Space Engineers needs any more kind of magic stuff. We already have jump drives and grav drives.
Don't think Space Engineers needs any more kind of magic stuff. We already have jump drives and grav drives.
I love this idea. I think the best implementations of this type of feature are the short-range teleporters in No Man's Sky and the ability to fast-travel using beds in vanilla Ark. In the latter case, all inventory is left behind and only the player moves. This would be a great addition in late-game so long as it wasn't unlimited free teleporting forever.
I love this idea. I think the best implementations of this type of feature are the short-range teleporters in No Man's Sky and the ability to fast-travel using beds in vanilla Ark. In the latter case, all inventory is left behind and only the player moves. This would be a great addition in late-game so long as it wasn't unlimited free teleporting forever.
I could get behind a Portal or Ring type artifact based phenomena or naturally occurring Wormhole being used to network star systems instead of jump drives. Or instead a good reliable Super-Cruise mechanic.
I could get behind a Portal or Ring type artifact based phenomena or naturally occurring Wormhole being used to network star systems instead of jump drives. Or instead a good reliable Super-Cruise mechanic.
To me the key words in the whole post are “end game”. At some point the long trips through known space do get tedious and this would help with that very late game down side.
To me the key words in the whole post are “end game”. At some point the long trips through known space do get tedious and this would help with that very late game down side.
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