Ships: Engines

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Geoff the Medio
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Re: Ships: Engines

#46 Post by Geoff the Medio »

Unless there's an argument more compelling than "I want complicated ship design", I'm going to close this thread soon, and go with having ship engine-like characteristics be mainly determined by the hull itself, and not a separate design choice.

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utilae
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Re: Ships: Engines

#47 Post by utilae »

Give a summary of the consensus and perhaps the advantages/disadvantages of both types of engine systems.

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loonycyborg
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Re: Ships: Engines

#48 Post by loonycyborg »

Multiple engines == micromanagment && balancing nightmare;
Engine built into hull == KISS;
In Soviet Russia, forum posts YOU!!

tzlaine
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Re: Ships: Engines

#49 Post by tzlaine »

Geoff the Medio wrote:Unless there's an argument more compelling than "I want complicated ship design", I'm going to close this thread soon, and go with having ship engine-like characteristics be mainly determined by the hull itself, and not a separate design choice.
I'm all for this.

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eleazar
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Re: Ships: Engines

#50 Post by eleazar »

Geoff the Medio wrote:If we're not going to make it possible to chose between different engine types as a standard part, then I'd rather make engine techs integral to the hull type itself, instead of a separate design choice. In this case, you'd have to research a particular engine type to unlock each hull type, and hulls would include all the base engine-type characteristics in them.

This would presumably make it easier to make 3D models that represent a particular engine type, and would make it much easier to balance engine characteristics against other hull properties. There could still be add-ons or other engine-related parts to alter engine-related ship characteristics. This also seems to fit fairly well with the plan to have various hulls have distinctive characteristics that affect their usefulness for particular roles, but which aren't specifically tailored to a particular role. Having all ship parts be separately selectable leaves not many options to distinguish different hull sizes or shapes from eachother.
Yeah, i like that idea. It's a bit more elegant than they way i was trying to achieve it.

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pd
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Re: Ships: Engines

#51 Post by pd »

I like this too.

Sandlapper
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Re: Ships: Engines

#52 Post by Sandlapper »

Ditto, I'm in agreement as well. Geoff's summation, immediately above, doesn't seem to close any doors toward how I envision things should ultimately transpire in future development. Make it so.

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utilae
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Re: Ships: Engines

#53 Post by utilae »

Hmmm, ok I do see the advantages of this and would like to go with it too.

But,
A solar sail would have a different hull then a warp hull or a rocket hull.
In the case that an engine, eg Warp Engine, has multiple possible hulls you will end up with this:
Warp Engine - Hull A
Warp Engine - Hull B
Warp Engine - Hull C
Solar Engine - Hull A
Solar Engine - Hull B
Solar Engine - Hull C
It would be more efficient to have the parts able to combine from seperate parts:
Warp Engine
Solar Engine
Hull A
Hull B
Hull C

It's data normalisation.

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Geoff the Medio
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Re: Ships: Engines

#54 Post by Geoff the Medio »

utilae wrote:A solar sail would have a different hull then a warp hull or a rocket hull.
In the case that an engine, eg Warp Engine, has multiple possible hulls you will end up with this:
Warp Engine - Hull A
Warp Engine - Hull B
Warp Engine - Hull C
Solar Engine - Hull A
Solar Engine - Hull B
Solar Engine - Hull C
No, you'd have:
Hull A (requires Warp Engine tech)
Hull B (requires Warp Engine tech)
Hull C (requires Warp Engine tech)
Hull D (requires Solar Engine tech)
Hull E (requires Solar Engine tech)
Hull F (requires Solar Engine tech and Warp Engine tech)
etc.

Each engine tech would be prerequisites for (guessing) between one and four hulls with various properties. Some hulls might require more than one engine tech (and most would require non-engine techs as well). No two hulls are different just by their engine; you can't just strap a warp engine onto what would otherwise be a solar engine hull.

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utilae
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Re: Ships: Engines

#55 Post by utilae »

Ok, no probs then. :)

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