Thermodynamics, fleet types, and a few block types.

[Alpha393]

Thermodynamics: most functional parts produce heat, the biggest sources being warp drives, engines, weapons, shield generators, etc. too much heat in one area, and your ship will start taking damage. When placing any piece, something similar to the hangar bay clearance and the thruster ports appears on every side and the length of these areas scale with part volume, with a hard minimum length of 3 voxels. These fields allow a component to dissipate heat if a side is fully exposed, additional exposure increases the dissipation rate accordingly. Heat dissipation scales with surface area. Heat will attempt to reach equilibrium across the craft, and will constantly dissipate into space through all exposed surfaces.

 

Plasma applies a large amount of heat to anything it hits.

 

Thermal vent: dissipates heat at twice the normal rate, but consumes extra energy to do so and is very fragile. will not be protected by energy shields.

 

Heat sink: draws in heat, and has a higher thermal damage threshold, but cannot be protected by energy shields and will vent its heat back into the craft if destroyed. Heat will leak back out if it's buried in the hull.

[Warrax]

Interesting,

 

But certainly something i would not want to manage during my ship design

[CageHunter]

I also think it's a nice idea, though i wouldn't agree with the details. It would add a further level of complexity in ship design which i'm no friend of.

The game will become even more awesome if you enable everyone to become a ship builder. I fear such a feature would have the opposite effect.

[Vrmithrax]

I would have to agree in general on adding the complexity of thermodynamics, you start crossing a threshold into simulation vs game when you start throwing too many management-heavy parameters into the mix.

 

That said, I would NOT be opposed to very basic and general thermodynamics, keeping them very vague and non-intrusive.  I'd use something like the basic heat mechanisms that games like Mechwarrior have used in the past.  For example, add a heatsink block that will dispel X amount of heat (volume based), make it fairly heavy, and then tie it to just certain ship functions.  The engines and thrusters are very "ion-like" so you can assume they are ejecting heat as plasma during their operation (to make it simple), and their heat impact might be minimal.  Except when you have the afterburners kicked in.  Then make things like weaponry, mining and salvaging, etc. generate heat.  Generate too much heat, fill the heat sink bar, and weapons and afterburners are unavailable until cooldown is achieved.  Something along those lines, with it staying basic and having a risk/loss weight when deciding if you want to add sinks, could add a little finesse to ship building.

 

Anyhow, that's my thought...  I think it could add some depth, just have to be careful that you don't dive too deep and scare off people that can't swim well.  ;)

[darkconsole]

while a neat idea i think its too much for this game. it would basically just turn everything into mech warrior where you have one huge gun and 90 heat sinks. and i think its suppose to allow for a bit more creativity than that would.

[Vrmithrax]

If you balanced them out by making heat sinks very massive, so there is a noticeable cost in maneuverability/speed/etc. it would help discourage the "ship is one big gun and a bajillion heatsinks" trend.

[Alpha393]

I actually agree with it being a bit too complex, but at the same time the proposed solution feels a bit too simple. Perhaps if several pieces of < say 10 km^3 volume each in contact with eachother get grouped into one 'piece' for heat flow, with all their stats added up?

 

Plus, so long as your ship isn't a cube or a Tetris block of doom your surface area would ideally be enough to handle excess heat anyways.

[KooperChaos]

so long as your ship isn't a cube or a Tetris block of doom your surface area would ideally be enough to handle excess heat anyways.

Maybe also a heat radiator block could be added that works with surface (similar to solarpanels) and has a higher dissipation rate(?) than a normal block but not as fast as a vent while cooling passive so you have the possibility to cool even a Tetris block... I think this would be requiered especially for the starter ships since there is power still more of an issue than in super-Carrier-Cruiser-what-ever-giant-space-thing that has hundreds of TW in excess

[Alpha393]

Yes, that sounds like a good idea.

 

Radiator: +50% heat dissipation to normal components.

Works off of surface area

Must be exposed to function

-25% to heat damage taken

 

How's that look?

[KooperChaos]

Radiator: +50% heat dissipation to normal components.

Works off of surface area

Must be exposed to function

-25% to heat damage taken

 

Sounds good to me the crème de la crème would be retractable heat radiators like in KSP so you could protect em when flying through dense asteroid belts... but that might be too much

[Alpha393]

Well that's sort of what the powered radiators are intended to be, just in a static variant. Wouldn't mind an extendable variant, but not particularly necessary .

 

Now then, as for fleet types:

 

Xsotan dread fleet:

Consists of: 1-3 mobile fortresses/dreadnoughts (potentially exceptionally weak for their size depending on distance from core), 0-10 cruisers and/or frigates, and 0-40 corvettes, all rather weak compared to the area's normal xsotan.

 

Tactics: build up their numbers in an empty sector around the flagship(s), temporarily making it an hidden mass sector (or a unique sector type of possible), before attacking a nearby faction capital. Occasionally you can observe these fleets getting ambushed by faction defender fleets.

 

Faction defender fleets:

Consists of: 0-1 dreadnoughts, 2-5 cruisers, 5-10 corvettes and/or frigates. Very strong for their area most of the time.

 

Tactics: will patrol sectors in a group, periodically moving between sectors of high interest (factories, shipyards, home, etc.) will intercept xsotan dread fleets immediately when they enter faction territory.

 

Faction vanguard fleets:

Consists of: 4-10 battleships, 4-10 cruisers, 0-10 misc corvettes and/or frigates, and 2-6 various support craft such as arks, carriers, at least one salvager, at least one mobile shipyard (a new craft type that exists to carry a shite ton of repair beams and build and crew new vessels made from salvaged minerals)

 

Tactics: expand faction territory by expanding into other factions and empty space, claiming territory for their faction and clearing them of pirates, xsotan, and locals, before leaving an occupation force and moving on until they're wiped out or run low on supplies.