solid connectors

[EvilTesla]

I suggest that the physics of the engine can be improved by replacing the spring-like connectors between parts with solid connectors.

I suspect the reason that this isn't done is because it is harder to track when the connection breaks. Springs break when they are extended too far, when does a solid bar break?

To fix this problem, I suggest  that each connection has a health, and this health degrades when there is a significant different of forces on the two objects. That can be calculated easily like so:

You have a part 'X', with children 'A,'  and 'B', and a parent 'P'. 

the total forces exerted on 'X' can be summed from F_A, F_B, F_P, and F_ext. That is, force from A, B, P and external forces (environment collisions etc..)

To calculate the damage on connection X-A, the game would first calculate the magnitude of the force on connection X-A:   dF = sum( F_B + F_P + F_ext) - F_A.  If the magnitude of dF exceed a certain amount (so the connection only degrades with significant forces), then the damage sustained would be proportional to dF.

 

In this way, the entire drone could be treated like one part, but we could still have parts break off. 

 

 

 

 

[Lurkily]

I'm not sure what you mean by several things. 

Do springs break with distance?  I don't believe they do; perhaps as a result of the physics damage breaking the part, but not because of the distance.  Correct me if I'm wrong, I haven't used them under very taxing conditions for a while, but I seem to 

I'm not sure why it would be harder to tell if a part of your drone died, if it were linked by a spring rather than a strut.

It sounds like you're looking for shipwide rigidity; it's not difficult and has been tried, but the devs didn't take to the way it led to there being no real wrong way to build a drone, vis-a-vis stability.

[EvilTesla]

I guess I am making some assumptions about the game engine. 

If I were to design a game like this, I would try to mimic real life. In real life, stuff breaks because the springs holding the stuff together get stretched too far. In the case of real life, the springs are van-der-walls forces.

In the game, I'd think that the connections (note, I'm talking about the connectors, not the parts) don't have a health bar, but instead break when they are stretched too far. Yes, this is an assumption, but it is intuitive and fits with how the game behaves.

The problem with connecting objects by springs is that the result is unstable. If the spring constant is too low, things wiggle. If it is too high, the physics calculations need to be more precise. This is obvious I think. I don't see how this instability is desirable, as it doesn't mimic real life well. It is extremely rare in real life that one would encounter the type of instability that we see in the game. Admittedly, games ought not follow real life precisely, but  this instability problem doesn't really improve enjoying the game for me, it is counter-intuitive. Why can't I connect a bunch of thrusters together (as long as the thrusters can handle the strain)?  Why do I HAVE to connect light parts to heavy parts?  This isn't something I'd have to consider if I was building things in real life (again, as long as that light part was strong enough to handle the strain).   It seems to me that there is plenty of challenge in designing drones without the difficulty of stability. 

The difficulty (I'd personally find, maybe this is easy for others) of replacing springs with struts is answering "when does the strut break?", since the strut can't bend or extend anymore. So, I offered a solution that would allow modeling the breaking of struts, without the instabilities. 

 

Yes, I am suggesting having shipwide rigidity, as I think this better mimics how such a craft would act in real life, and I do not personally enjoying dealing with stability problems. Reading this forum I get the impression that there are others that feel similarly. I'd like to keep the struts breakable however, as I do find it interesting to still have to deal with fragility of a drone. With a drone build this way, you'd want to avoid piling a bunch of children all on the same parent. 

 

 

 

[Ookami-sama]

Have you ever looked at the wings of a flying plane? They do wiggle and bend quite a lot, and I suppose they have to given the strain they experience. A spaceship that is designed e.g. not to dislocate entirely when rammed into large metallic objects, or even the ground, is in my mind bound to bend a little. Also, it is very much possible to make extremely stable drones, even if it requires some experimenting. It is not entirely necessary to slap light parts onto heavy parts, either.

This game's struts, as the term has been coined, do not act like springs: they are not extensible in the least. Their point of connection to components can rotate, but their length is fixed, at least for forces up to 44 x 30 = 1320 (newtons I suppose), as shown on the following drone:

The large block on the left rotates a little, but the connection's length does not increase. I could add more thrusters, but I believe this many is enough to prove my point.

Said struts do not break, either: the parts they are attached to can do that, however. Technically, I think the struts do not even exist: they are the graphical manifestations of the coordinates of each part and relationships between them, but have no existence in the game. Well, if a developer comes around they might shed light on this, and as usual prove me wrong!

You might want to revise your opinion and suggestions with this additional bit of info in mind.

[Lurkily]

In practice, the struts exert force on the part, and the physics eventually breaks the part, at which point parent connections disappear.  Realism is nice, but you have to trade off dev time with added value; I'm not sure making strut breakage more technically realistic is fun enough to justify investing in, personally.

I don't think springs and struts are fundamentally different, in part because spring connections basically fulfill every role and behavior of a strut, just with adjustable physics and variable length, one thing struts can't do at all.

Rigid drones are possible, but they're a logistical challenge, and logistical challenges are the whole point of engineering games.  It's not unachievable, though, even now; there are some pretty stable 1,000-plus part drones displayed on the forums.

The devs ARE looking at solutions to make stability not quite so challenging - a rigid starter chassis, inertial dampeners, and limited availability of rigid struts are all things that have been put on the table.  But making it impossible to build an unstable drone isn't one of those things.