PCU Costs

[MekaDovah]

So in case anyone's interested I did a little experimenting to see what cost what in terms of PCU count. This might help people bring their PCU counts down if they're worried about it. Now I didn't test too thoroughly so I cannot say how accurate these numbers are under all conditions. I just spawned them in and then copy and pasted them one at a time to see what they were. Also I only checked large grid.

Doors = 115 each. This includes the sliding doors, the regular doors, and each individual airtight hangar door block it seems. This of course implies if you were going to use the latter for hangars, it's going to be expensive in the PCU department.

Turrets = 115 each. Only checked gatlings. I would assume missile turrets are similar. If you're heavily armed, it's going to cost you.

Thrusters = 15 each. Cheaper than I expected. Only checked large hydro and large atmo, but I was already seeing a pattern that PCUs seem sorted by catagory more than individual blocks.

Modules and Armor = 1 each. Dirt cheap. I would assume a lot of purely static blocks are this.

Refineries and Reactors = 90 or so each I think? Not too bad.

Lights = Unknown, but a fair amount. I mount lights on my outer hulls for better visibility in dark conditions, but tried removing them and gained back like 2000 PCUs for only a few dozen lights so I think it's one of the more expensive ones and that bothers me because I would like to be able to light up my interiors at least so I can see what I'm doing.

That's all I checked. As far as I can tell lights, weapons, and doors of all things are performance hogs. Personally, I'm not very happy with this because a 100,000 PCU server wide limit is just too strict. I know this is just for optimal performance and I am free to disregard it at my own risk, but it would have been more reassuring if I knew the game was designed to handle better.

If anyone has more info, either corrections, circumstantial data, or just more, feel free to add it. It's a good idea for people to know this stuff so they don't have to guess.

[Pembroke]

Originally posted by MekaDovah:

If anyone has more info,

The PCU costs of all blocks can be found in the file cubeblocks.sbc.

[Eskidead]

Originally posted by MekaDovah:

So in case anyone's interested I did a little experimenting to see what cost what in terms of PCU count

Everything is right there in the G menu - when you mouse over the things to build, the PCU count. Is. Right. There. At. The. Bottom. Right.

So your "experiment" has no value.

[callme-jk]

my last test this week was with a default map:

100.000 pcu world limit

-5k used by red crashed ship

paste a ship with around 2k pcu.... not working pcu limit reached... wtf...
with other words: play something else.. .P

seems to be alot of standard-things are buged currently, last patchnotes confirm this. -.-
but hey, performance is nice currently... no wonder, if you can use only a empty map... LOL

[NYVS]

Many of the default maps are filled with ships and stations already. Easystart planet scenarios have at least 3 pirate bases per planet, and the easystart bases are no slouches...

Edit: Are you reffering to a completely empty world, with absolutely bothing in it?

[Pembroke]

Originally posted by Eskidead:

when you mouse over the things to build, the PCU count. Is. ... There ... So your "experiment" has no value.

That's not immediately obvious. Your post gives people the info where they can see it. That's good. Also, the hover info doesn't give you a list of costs so it's a bit cumbersome to use in planning. Which made me wonder whether there was a way to get such a list easily which in turn made me discover that they're in cubeblocks.sbc in XML form making an easy compilation possible. So, plenty of valuable information added here, I think.

Now, would someone tell me, where I can see the PCU limits set in a particular server? Is that available somewhere in the game or is it just something the server admin must specifically add to their server descriptions?

Edit: Ah, it's also in the G menu. Number at the lower-right corner.

[battlekruiser]

Originally posted by Eskidead:

Originally posted by MekaDovah:

So in case anyone's interested I did a little experimenting to see what cost what in terms of PCU count

Everything is right there in the G menu - when you mouse over the things to build, the PCU count. Is. Right. There. At. The. Bottom. Right.

So your "experiment" has no value.

woah dude cool down
i can't run the game now and wiki does not have these values
even if it's useless to you, there probably are weird/dumb edge cases where it is useful to someone