Large ships impossible for functionality

[eden_eldith]

After sitting down and building a ship for 4 hours today when the thrusters were turned on the ship lagged to hell, Its only after 600 hours of playing this game that i've realised that you'll never be able to build a viable capital ship that can handle- docking, defence, parasite fighters, mining, refining, shields, hydrogen, point defence, rail guns and high speed manoeuvres plus missiles or orbital bombardment all in one, as after a while the amount of pcu will break even the beefiest of computers, this game needs some heavy optimisations or bug fixes to save it from withering out as I think im done for now too, i cant find any solutions for big capital ships that are actually functional and not just pretty ornaments that are empty inside.

[Mad Scientist]

With the right hardware and a higher pcu limit / no pcu limit, you can actually do all of this without lag. Voxel games tend to be CPU heavy, and a fair amount of GPU is required as well.

I suppose the real question is what the system specs are, and how loaded the CPU/GPU is where you have that issue.

[herrschaftg35]

The game engine cannot handle it. 65K physical shapes is a hard limit which is reached rather quickly when building large. Gyroscopes are absolutely useless on large ships unless they have been modded.

Originally posted by Mr. Gentlebot:

With the right hardware and a higher pcu limit / no pcu limit, you can actually do all of this without lag.

If you go big enough utilizing non-modded blocks, there will always be lag.

[eden_eldith]

I work building computers for gaming and i've tried server cpus that have great single thread performance and space engineers will still stutter after a ship is built big enough, With nanobot build and repair system, defence shields plus UNSC weapons and modular encounters as the mods you cant make one big capital ship with all these parts and keep a playable sim speed or engage in any combat, i have over 600+ hours in the game believe me i've tried
MY RIG
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060
Driver version 511.23
Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-7700K CPU @ 4.20GHz
27.94 GB RAM
resolution: 2560 x 1440, 59Hz

[Karmaterrorᵁᴷ]

Well inn a way you are asking for it all in one package which isnt really gonna happen. thats less an issue of PCU though and more an issue of having everything makes you heavy, so you choose light and fast or heavy and slow.

On PCU count though, everything you listed is possible in a single build for reasonable PCU. To me one of the most important skills in SE is being able to scale a build to the right size for performance, vs having the impact you want it to visually. Aragath from the SE dev team is really good at this, a lot of the intro vid ships look huge, but really they are just very well designed to give that feeling of scale, with a very low amount of actual blocks.

Its one of the reasons i always start with thee hull shape, and a refinery next to it to show me how big the largest production block is. Il generally make more interior space than i need to be sure. Doing it this way if i see physical shapes going too high, or its just overall too big, i can scale it down before adding all the internals. Maybe remove some blocks width, or some length from it.

You also have to trim fat wherever you can, so maybe you have a PMW that uses 4 welders to weld the rounds.... can that be done with 3 or 2 welders You have 20 thrusaters in each direction... is 18 really gonna impact it that much, and could the hull shed some weight to compensate.

Anyways hope some of that rambling helps :)

[Spaceman Spiff]

Welcome to the real world, Mr. Anderson....

[Dan2D3D]

Hi, the good Perfo for a Mothership is no more than 100 blocks long and 100K PCU.

We can go over but the world Perfo will start going down faster when building a Mothership over 100 blocks long.

+ Important
-> We must keep an eye on the Physical Shapes limit in the Info Tab of the grid Terminal for not going over that PS limit because we lose the ship going over, it becomes a "ghost" and nothing can be done to fix.

Physical Shapes = Game limit per Grids, so what the game can support on one grid and I can tell the FPS and Simspeed will drop a lot playing with Mothership close to the PS limit.

[Dan2D3D]

I have a few absurdly huge Motherships and I recommend to use only ION thrusters with Reactors for a Mothership, so it will stay in space / never go on planets.

= You will be able to go bit over 100 blocks long, but keep in mind the good Perfo range is 100 blocks long.

This one I made is not bad at 160 X 75 but the Simspeed starts to go down only when walking inside cause the interior is completed with Ships, Hangars, Bed rooms, Living rooms, Medic rooms, Airlocks, Stores, etch ... :
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2738290787


Edit
We can complete the interior and still have a good Perfo on 100 blocks long Motherships.

[Jack Schitt]

Originally posted by Mr. Gentlebot:

With the right hardware and a higher pcu limit / no pcu limit

Agreed. Turn the pcu limit off in options. You'll get a lot further with your build ideas.
I don't get stopped by PCU limits. I've been attempting to build the same idea you're trying to build. A mother ship that does everything.

My computer is approximately 8 years old. I have yet to be stopped by PCU limits. I turn them off. I think what happens when pcu limit is disabled is lag only starts to happen when our build has actually reached a size our computer is struggling to handle. The option for PCU limit seems to decrease what our computer can actually do by a lot. Turn that option off.

[Kamakazee Monkey]

My PC specs are pretty similar to yours and I have very little problems with regards to lag when flying large ships, but I don't build my huge large grid ships to handle the same as a small grid one. When I think of a large capital ship" I think of something big and slow that maneuvers like a brick. Asking for a capital ship that can do everything including "high speed maneuvers" tells me that the problem could possibly be with some unrealistic expectations on your part.

However if not being able to build a capital ship that moves like a fighter is a deal breaker for you then I get not wanting to play anymore, I'm just not sure it's really a problem the developers can help with.

[herrschaftg35]

I have a challenge for those who have never seen a lower FPS or sim speed in the game. Keen may have broke this blueprint by now but have at it...

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2271251547

[Dan2D3D]

The problem when building absurdly huge Mothership is that it becomes too heavy and will need too much of Thrusters, Gyros and Power blocks to be able to move a bit, also needs A Lot of Jump Drives for the smallest Jump

= Those needed blocks will add to the Total Mass of the ship where it will not be able to jump at some point cause the mass is going up the more Thrusters, Gyros, Reactors, Jump Drives we add.

[Star_Kindler]

I just wish that large hydrogen thrusters had thrust relative to the size they took up. If large hydrogen thrusters were viable it would heavily decrease the lag of a lot of bigger ships, that currently need small thrusters to move at any decent speed. It makes no sense that 9 small thrusters easily out-thrust one large which is 27 times the size of a small. It should have equal thrust to 27 small, or at least very close.

Especially with the new hydrogen bug from this update that makes previously stable ships unbelievably laggy, large hydrogen thrusters being viable would massively help. I wish there was at least a mod for this, but I couldn't find any.

I had a 20k block ship that before the update brought sim speed down to 0.90 when it moved, which was completely fine, but now it brings it down to 0.08.

[eden_eldith]

Originally posted by Dan2D3D:

The problem when building absurdly huge Mothership is that it becomes too heavy and will need too much of Thrusters, Gyros and Power blocks to be able to move a bit, also needs A Lot of Jump Drives for the smallest Jump

= Those needed blocks will add to the Total Mass of the ship where it will not be able to jump at some point cause the mass is going up the more Thrusters, Gyros, Reactors, Jump Drives we add.

this is literally it ! i don't think i could have nailed the positive feedback loop there more accurately. I absolutely adore this game but I think until either a) my pc is better or b) the game is optimised, i'll hold off. and I think with the way cpu's and gpu's are going option A might be more feasible. But im defo keen to keep up with updates and creators :D

[Ben Argo]

I think another issue you can consider here is that in real life, there are rarely any "good at everything" ships for the same reason you mention above: there isn't enough space. Even if there were, it would be too complex to be effective at any one of its roles.

Fighters are fast and maneuverable bombers a bit slower but harder hitting vs large targets, corvettes can clear out Fighters, frigates can take on corvettes, destroyers/battleships cab offer some heavy firepower as glass cannons or tanks, and carriers offer force protection using a large supply of Fighters and maybe some defensive weaponry to keep enemy Fighters at bay.

One of the biggest engineering considerations isn't simply "is this possible?" It's more like "how much can I get away with while still coming in close to budget?" A classic example from Star Wars: the Empire revolved entirely around its military-industrial complex while the Rebellion made use of whatever it could get. According to the Tarkin Doctrine, the Imperial Navy should focus on huge ships to intimidate planets into good behaviour. Most large ships focused on heavy firepower, some shields, and a handful of TIE fighter/bomber squadrons. But this was absurdly expensive for the Empire and lead to massive class inequality, unrest, and more support for the Rebellion.

Meanwhile, the Rebellion went for hit-and-run tactics, using independent fighter squads to fill in several roles, like scouts/interceptors, dog-fighters, bombers (A-wing, X-wing, and Y-wing). Their larger class ships were mostly repurposed diplomatic ships (Corellian Corvettes), stolen from salvage yards (Y-wings and Nebulon-Bs), stolen from the Imperial Navy (the Quasar-class cruiser/carrier from Rebels, for example), or given to them by sympathisers (like the plans for the X-wing). They wanted simple ships that were fast, easier to repair, and allowed them to quickly get out of system when the Imperial Navy inevitably shows up.

What does all this mean for you as a Space Engineer with access to unlimited resources in this game? 'Just because you can, doesn't mean you should." The Empire's massive projects, like the dreadnought class Eclipse Star Destroyer and Death Star(s) were a massive waste of time/resources as numerous smaller ISDs and TIE Defenders could have been build in their stead, securing the Empire's space for decades longer (if not centuries). When you're designing ships, create a concept in mind and then use that concept to set clear limits on your build.

You want a Mothership, so it has to be big. But if you try to have this mothership be good at EVERYTHING, it'll fail (as most overly-ambitious plans do). Instead, set the goal of having this mothership focus on being a carrier built around a super weapon (maybe a railgun or pair of railguns that fire in sequence?). It would need to have a large hangar to deploy fighters (no bombers, as the railguns should do that job) and a smaller hanger for maintenance/mining craft (maybe 2 each?). It should have three reactors, one for each rail gun and another for the engines/daily needs. It will likely need a processing centre and assembly area in the back to produce more ammo. Some close range anti-fighter turrets on the exterior. A crew area with food, beds, toilets. All these things add up to a checklist of sorts. Then you can think about specialty stuff, like maybe giving it more gyros or strafing thrusters to allow for better manuevering with the railguns. It wouldn't be able to do a toe-to-toe with a heavy-cruiser or destroyer, but you can plan

[Ronin Planetary Industries]

You spent four hours building a ship? An entire four hours. Wowzers... (end sarcasm).

If you want to create a heavily armored ship, you'll need more power, gyros, and thrusters. If you add more power, gyros, and thrusters... you'll need to add more power, gyros, and thrusters to manage that additional mass... and you'll find yourself tumbling down the rabbit hole.

If you try to build such ships in survival, you'll spend weeks mining and refining enough platinum to build your ion thrusters. While it's fun to push the limits of design. Don't expect those behemoths to be playable.