How to handle floppiness

Currently, I use a 'spine', and attach every part of my ship to the closest bit of spine to a center. (The brain is not always my center of mass.)  I always try to place anything that exerts force so that it either pushes on this spine, or pushes on a flush stack of blocks connected to this spine.  This can still result in some wiggly ships, but it seems to help keep more rigid than attaching everything sequentially in a chain.

For example, I'll connect 1 to 0, (0 being the block at the center,) 2 to 0, 3 to zero, and as blocks get out of range, I'll connect 4 to 1, and 5 to 2, and always connect new blocks to the block closest to center.  It would be nice, though, if flush parts would be treated as 'fused', if we won't be permitted to connect parts to multiple parts. (I see the danger -- every part might be connected to every other part, making any other configuration a 'wrong answer,' and having a dominant strategy isn't good for a game.)

I had an earlier build where you could freely connect all parts with each other.

It made the drones more stable, however it introduced a pretty decent hidden cost.

Each connection adds a new joint for the physics engine to calculate. So this increases the amount of joints exponentially and therefore has a huge performance impact for a small stability gain.

I'm currently more in the favor of adding some parts that allow you to close an open circle or increase the stability at specific points.

Maybe a magnet part could help connect some independed parts.

I had an earlier build where you could freely connect all parts with each other.

It made the drones more stable, however it introduced a pretty decent hidden cost.

Each connection adds a new joint for the physics engine to calculate. So this increases the amount of joints exponentially and therefore has a huge performance impact for a small stability gain.

I remember the computational cost of the Red Rising games, with their fully destructible structures that computed structural support and stress.  I kind of assumed this was an issue here too, but I didn't know. 

Closing a circle . . . well, it would help.  You could enclose the outer hull.  But that outer hull would still be a floppy sack.

What about just fusing structural blocks that are adjacent into a single block?  That way you could make a spine of structural blocks, and could connect to points other than the center - but the structural blocks themselves would act as a single rigid body.  (Until they start getting destroyed, that is.)  You could forge a skeleton that would be able to anchor the whole ship. 

I had an earlier build where you could freely connect all parts with each other.

It made the drones more stable, however it introduced a pretty decent hidden cost.

Each connection adds a new joint for the physics engine to calculate. So this increases the amount of joints exponentially and therefore has a huge performance impact for a small stability gain.

 

I remember the computational cost of the Red Rising games, with their fully destructible structures that computed structural support and stress.  I kind of assumed this was an issue here too, but I didn't know. 

 

Closing a circle . . . well, it would help.  You could enclose the outer hull.  But that outer hull would still be a floppy sack.

 

What about just fusing structural blocks that are adjacent into a single block?  That way you could make a spine of structural blocks, and could connect to points other than the center - but the structural blocks themselves would act as a single rigid body.  (Until they start getting destroyed, that is.)  You could forge a skeleton that would be able to anchor the whole ship.

Yes a fixed spine could help. I think the best way to proceed is to just experiment and try it out during Alpha

Interlocking parts allow solid, rigid connections that otherwise wouldn't exist in Nimbatus 0.2.2 while allowing for a flexible yet strong armored frame, allowing the discount of shield use and providing an overall more reliable craft.

Now, obviously the interlocking connection shown in the picture isn't the only one on this craft. In fact, there are TONS of such connections strewn across, stitching the craft to itself and allowing this craft to even out-tank shielded drones.

What you're trying to say, is to connect every other part, so the rigidity of one chain reinforces the rigidity of the other chain?  This may also work with diagonal or zig-zagging chains 'zippered' together.

Thanks for this.  I'll play around with that.

As for out-tanking shields . . . in the current build, parts seem to regen damage - I've never seen a bit of damage that was 'the straw that broke the camel's back'.  If I come out of a fight without damage, I'm golden.  I assume this will change, though, and if so, shields being able to avoid damage entirely might be able to out-tank any armor.

Thing about shields is they're superlight. Not some ultralight thing like LED, but they still don't weigh too much. The issue with this is that shields having tiny amounts of mass means when a heavy-hitting missile or missile shotgun start slamming into your shields they start to pop from slamming against armor and stronger, larger components like solar panels and fuel tanks.

[move]But that's just an analysis. A game analysis.[/move]

Yes, I'm aware that shields aren't yet terribly effective against some things, though bracing them in heavier blocks can help.  That's why my focus was on what they might be in the future; the promise to look at solutions to the rigidity problem, alone, would be enough to redefine their effectiveness.

I did try zippering a ship's spine together today - a 2x7 spine of solar panels, zippered together.  Big ships still look like a bag of loose legos, but they're not splitting or separating at least.  A design that's less long and more of a brick would probably be even more rigid, as my ship was pretty skinny.

I've done similar things by connecting every block to either the core, or the closest block to the core possible, and I still think that's ideal, (and already leads to what you call  'stitching',)  but using this to also 'tether' sections of the ship will help.

Something like struts from Kerbal space program could work. Sacrificing mass for rigidity. It would be nice not to have to use them like duct tape to keep drones together though.

Struts would really be little more than the struts we already have, though, only more of them.  Apparently, things were able to be freely connected in previous builds and caused some issues.  I'm sure any issue could be mitigated, but I favor a different solution that sidesteps the problem.

My favored idea right now is to have a second layer that is used to construct a 'chassis' or 'skeleton'.  These pieces would not have physics interactions with other blocks, and would 'fuse' together.  The entire chassis would be fully rigid as long as the parts were adjacent, giving you a rigid body to anchor all your parts to.

A drawback to this system would be that if chassis parts were ever exposed, damage dealt to that part would also damage every ship part attached to it.  This would include adjacent chassis pieces, meaning that damage to your chassis could propagate through large portions of your ship, diminishing as it propagates to more remote sections.  If a part of the chassis were ever broken loose, they would also be heavy enough to deal physics damage to other parts of the ship as it maneuvers.

My thought is that chassis parts should be more mass-efficient the larger they are.  So large pieces may be heavier, but they're lighter than a lot of small pieces of the same size.  Thus you incentivize working with the design constraints of large or oddly shaped chassis parts. 

Though each section should only be selectable as a whole, they should be treated as groups of 1x1 blocks.  Thus you can connect parts to nearby sections of a chassis piece instead of the center, and damage to a chassis piece propogates in the same way, regardless of whether you use big or small pieces.  Each individual block of a chassis piece should also be destructable.  This opens up the potential to 'break a ship's back'.  Chassis pieces, being heavy, might cause physics damage as you maneuver if they became separated into parts.

It provides a rigidity solution without simply interconnecting things more.  All connections are still parent-child, as they are now, without having to worry too much about introducing circular, self-reinforcing, or computationally expensive physics loops.  It provides logistical challenges in building efficiently, and it provides a weakness which, if exposed to damage, could threaten large parts of a ship.

I wish i could make a big done with moving parts that dosent explode immediately 

Keep connections short.  Interlace components so they don't split into 'strings'.  Try not to have parts suspended a long distance from their connection points.

In the current build, try using magnets set to attract to minimize flex.