Lurkily Posted November 25, 2018 Posted November 25, 2018 52 minutes ago, Ookami-sama said: It seems to be a problem of stability rather than force, or number of blocks. Blocks pushed forward collide with the frame that keeps them from going sideways, as seen in the following examples. 2 You're right; if it were a compounding of forces, the blocks on the right would be the first to be crushed, and instead, it's the opposite. Are they connected in a stack or all to one part? Could the order of the stack be influencing the stability? (For instance, if each part is connected to its rightward neighbor, perhaps the successive connections give the leftward blocks more flex to be unstable with.) 1
Ookami-sama Posted November 25, 2018 Posted November 25, 2018 The order has minimal influence, but even that seems necessary to work with. Lastly I have been using three sets of blocks, with two spaces between each member of a same set. I will try to rotate them, see if that improves anything seeing as how every component seems to be a little skewed. Lasers less so than thrusters, though.
Alpino_WILL_STEAL_ oats! Posted November 27, 2018 Posted November 27, 2018 woah, can I get the world eliminator?
Garheardt the Black Posted November 30, 2018 Author Posted November 30, 2018 Aye! It's already uploaded 2
Garheardt the Black Posted January 5, 2019 Author Posted January 5, 2019 Ladies and gentlemen! I give you regenerative armor! This bad boy was designed to laugh in the face of anything short of a mamma snake, and boy does it. After taking enough damage, the outer hull will automatically repair itself. It can do this quickly enough to render it effectively impervious to weapon fire and it can withstand a hit from a hammerhead with no lasting damage to the ship. It can do this by taking advantage of light parts with high HP values, and converting the loss of signal from a button in the armor into a build order on a corresponding factory. While effective, it takes a ton of programming. The featured blasters are modified with sticky bullets, increased force, and multiple projectiles. This effect repels enemies and causes them to spin uncontrollably, negating things like a hammerhead's hard front end and preventing them from attacking. That's what I've been up to lately! 3
Lurkily Posted January 5, 2019 Posted January 5, 2019 I've done a few like this, but not on the same scale; one rammer used a factory-built ramming surface. Nice work there. How do they deal with fire? Is there any issue with the armor re-building and re-igniting? 1
Garheardt the Black Posted January 5, 2019 Author Posted January 5, 2019 So far, the armor has been fairly good at preventing fire from crossing into the internals, but that hasn't been heavily tested. My best guess on how fire works is that a heat value transferred to any given part will then begin to dilute that value among other parts nearby. If that's the case, the fact that the armor continuously respawns helps to soak heat before it can jump to the main body. The distance between layers also seems to help. I'll mess around a bit and see if I can get a decent example gif out of it. Thanks for the question; I have more testing!
Garheardt the Black Posted January 5, 2019 Author Posted January 5, 2019 I did some testing. The armor is spaced far enough from the inner hull that it won't catch it on fire, but once it's lit, the armor will continue to burn indefinitely. It's rather amusing to watch. 2
Lurkily Posted January 5, 2019 Posted January 5, 2019 I think heat does dilute into nearby parts, but fire is definitely self-sustaining and generates more heat of its' own. I did suspect it would do exactly what it's doing here. Unlike heaters, though, fire only spreads heat via direct contact, so I wasn't worried about your internals much. One solution to this might be to inhibit regen for a time; the only way I can think to do that is, for every logic block, have a switch that can mimic it's signal, to stop regen while it's on. Let the externals burn out, then turn it back on. The logic required for that could be burdensome, but it looks like you are keeping your logic elsewhere. One idea I've toyed with is a ship that can completely rebuild itself as long as the core and a factory aren't destroyed in a stage-by-stage rebuild, with each stage adding more thrusters, fuel, power, and weapons, so that it's never completely helpless unless it's nearly completely destroyed. I believe factories still don't exempt the children of factories say to start unbuilt from adding to their construction time, though, so it's not very useful right now.
Garheardt the Black Posted January 5, 2019 Author Posted January 5, 2019 Good points. A redundant switch could work to override signals. Or a AND or NOR gate with a switch. The drawback being having to program 70 more logic blocks. Alternatively, I could rig the armor logic blocks to dynamite, blow them up, then reprint them after the fire is out. 😆 Update: I found a quicker work-around. I'm using a large series of NOT gates already, so I added a uniform input command to each one. Now they're basically NEITHER gates. This way, I could input a single variable to toggle on and off with a switch rather than having to simulate every unique button signal. Being able to toggle is fairly useful in collisions as well, since whatever you hit has a tendency to destroy the first reprint if it's still in the way. With the automated repair off, it prevents wasted prints and their associated cooldowns.
Lurkily Posted January 6, 2019 Posted January 6, 2019 I had actually assumed you had a timer on the logic for each block, to make sure bits had a chance to fall away. In any case, your logic isn't on-board anyway, (If logic gets localized, this'll need some updating,) so more gates isn't really a barrier, just a pain in the butt. Those reprints ALSO do damage to the enemy that's in the way though, yeah? My big worry would be reprints getting lodged in terrain and tangled with any broken drone bits.
Lurkily Posted January 29, 2019 Posted January 29, 2019 Details, please. How do you keep them aligned along the path? It can't be just free hinges, even in Zero g.
Garheardt the Black Posted January 30, 2019 Author Posted January 30, 2019 The enabler lies with the propulsion. When the head pulls on the body, the body distorts because of the interaction of mass and force. So long as a directional force can use less energy to alter a part's orientation than it would use to alter the position, then that applied force will always alter a part's orientation first. If the body was mass-less, it would be impossible for a force to alter it's shape. So I concluded that the greater the difference between the mass of a fluid object and the force applied to it, the more the object will distend and I fooled around with a bunch of different thrust settings. It failed completely. But. I noticed that while pulling on a curved semi-fluid object reduces the curve, pushing it causes the curve to increase. Apply a pull to the top of the curve and a push at the bottom and you get a collapse at the top and a ballooning at the bottom. So. I thought if I could apply a simultaneous push and pull throughout the entire structure of the curve equally, the curve wouldn't collapse. I tested this by building a drone with segments that each contain identical amounts of thrust, causing the collective mass to resist a constant amount of pull and push. Hopefully, so long as the forces remain equal, when the craft turned the curve would be unable to collapse. Evidently, it worked. Further proof of evidence is the way the curve still collapsed near the tail; there was no longer enough push behind the curve to maintain it. I might be able to stabilize it some by adding more thrust at the very end, but in order for my conclusion to be correct, the curve near the last segment must collapse. I bear little hope the design will prove useful for anything practical, but it's really cool to watch. SCIENCE!!!! 3
Ookami-sama Posted January 31, 2019 Posted January 31, 2019 Speaking of drone swarms: I think I have modelled the behaviour of a band of children following their leader. Hey! No pushing! And in rows! Much better. And they even are eager to hear the leader's speech, seeing as how they are unable to stand still. I have fallen in love with this game all over again, I believe. 5
Lurkily Posted February 1, 2019 Posted February 1, 2019 Hum. I wonder about swarms on racetracks. Just . . . because.
Lurkily Posted February 1, 2019 Posted February 1, 2019 Wow. The vector thrust makes things almost TOO easy. This is a basic swarm drone. A vector thruster on a bottom-heavy drone, so the thruster leads it. Reverse it to avoid crowding in the front, strafe thrust on the side responsive to their sensors. This is babytown frolics. A nine-part swarm drone; kinda weirdly easy. I'm not used to easy. 3
Micha Posted February 1, 2019 Posted February 1, 2019 We should add the option to hide the sensor visualization so swarms look better 2
Ookami-sama Posted February 1, 2019 Posted February 1, 2019 I actually very much enjoy these coloured lights. The only thing that bothers me (a tiny bit) is that it is all default colours instead of pink: not exactly fancy, and that is a major drawback to my antsy fancy dandy drones plans. I mean... Does this not look like a world ready to be discovered? (I made one with lasers too) You know you want it. Do not listen to the voices telling you there is better to do with your time: they are lying. 3
Garheardt the Black Posted February 2, 2019 Author Posted February 2, 2019 On 1/31/2019 at 5:46 PM, Lurkily said: Hum. I wonder about swarms on racetracks. Just . . . because. I went up against a couple of these. I haven't seen many small drones able to navigate a course as well as the larger ones, and by nature of a swarm, you're restricted to smaller drones. They also had trouble avoiding each other on a narrow track. Also, I haven't been able to upload GIF files since yesterday. I found a list of my uploads in my profile, but didn't find any options for managing them or whether there is a limit. Is there something I should clear?
Lurkily Posted February 2, 2019 Posted February 2, 2019 The design I posted above, seeking the rabbit, did just fine; but they strung out in a line, since they didn't have a 'center'. If a rabbit-seeking drone was their target it might be more problematic. What I really wanna see in this thread is @Entity's 25-second racer. 1
Garheardt the Black Posted February 2, 2019 Author Posted February 2, 2019 I'd be curious to see that also.
"Star" Posted February 7, 2019 Posted February 7, 2019 I started working on something I had teased earlier. It was really mobile when I started, But you know as you start adding more it becomes more and more heavy. The Head of the drone nearly doesn't even fit into the editor camera! I am in the process of making the tail piece, After which I can finally make the full drone! 3 1
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