How Big Is Too Big

[MrPākehā]

(If this has been posted/talked about before, feel free to delete this post)

Ok, so heres something for you to consider,
When playing survival, you are always limiting the size of your ships and stations in order to keep resourse cost down during building. (I know i do anyway)
When building in Creative, you can go for broke and not care about the resource cost.
BUT, when does a creation become too big.

After a while of scouring the workshop for a mothership that tickles my fancy, i decided to build my own. Dont get me wrong, theres are tons of blueprints and worlds out there that have fantastic builds, but nothing that i was willing to spend massive amounts of resources on.

So while building my own mothership in creative, the thought occured to me that my build might be getting too big and after some searching, i decided to come and ask the community their thoughts on how big is too big.

The ship i am working on is loosely based on this image from Jaime Jasso
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/319474167287526501/

If i was to build this ship to scale, i would be looking at Approx 500+ blocks long, 100+ blocks high and 50+ blocks wide. Hull alone would be thousands of blocks then adding in everything else to make it a habitable ship would would add heaps more.
So using this ship as an example, would this be considered epic or just too big.

[casualsailor]

The main limitation will be your own hardware's ability to render the object whlie in motion. This is not an easy thing to predict.

My knowledge of the game leads me to believe that it is more GPU and Graphics Memory intensive than CPU or core memory intensive.

If you know how to monitor your GPU and its memory, you will need to do so and experiment.

[CelticMoss]

Should be ok right now my Shimakaze destroyer build has half it's hull and i'm not really lagging at all.

Was thinking on making yamato but there is no 400mm cannon mods

[MrPākehā]

Originally posted by casualsailor:

The main limitation will be your own hardware's ability to render the object whlie in motion. This is not an easy thing to predict.

My knowledge of the game leads me to believe that it is more GPU and Graphics Memory intensive than CPU or core memory intensive.

If you know how to monitor your GPU and its memory, you will need to do so and experiment.

I have a multi-display setup with Rainmeter running on my desktop. This allows me to monitor the CPU,Ram and SWAP on one screen and play games on another. My computer has no problems atm.

Originally posted by Crazy:

Should be ok right now my Shimakaze destroyer build has half it's hull and i'm not really lagging at all.

Was thinking on making yamato but there is no 400mm cannon mods

Oh yes 400mm cannons would be good. If you look at the pic again, that ship has 2 cannons that a mod like that would fit nicely.

[Dracco0085]

Make it as big as your imagination and computer can handle.

In my main game I have a mother ship, I started it as a very, -very- simple mobile mining platform I made in creative before switching over to survival. It's now a 13.5 million Kg behemoth with more space and functionallity than I really even need or use, and it's still getting bigger.

So yeah, start simple and just build. You'll be amazed with what you end up with.

[error1440]

Originally posted by Dracco0085:

Make it as big as your imagination and computer can handle.

^^^^^^^^^^ so much this. Don't limit yourself, if you can.

Once theres some optimization in the game, I'll probably go back to working on my megaship. Not even close to done aside from the hull and thrusters, about 80,000,000kg already, 450m long (yup, 3 grav gen fields maxed out) and it will have...iirc about 300 or so turrets on just the forward section alone.

[Feisty Eliza]

You should draw the line when you have something impressive and no shorter. I wont suggest building it to scale, because you'll run out of stuff to fill the interior with before finishing, but build as big as you need.
My largest ship to date is over 200 blocks long and barely moves, but its got more capability as a survival base than most stations on the workshop.

[Professor Nipples]

I read that the block count stops for a powered grid in the 300k range. Could be wrong but I thought someone said 375000 blocks or something like that.

http://forums.keenswh.com/threads/game-keeps-crashing.7361957/

[MrPākehā]

I thank you all for your help and wisdom but for now I have decided to put that ship on hold for now and im working on a station for the UESC comp thats running atm

Originally posted by Sierra:

I wont suggest building it to scale, because you'll run out of stuff to fill the interior with before finishing, but build as big as you need.

This is true, thats why i scrapped it for now and im taking it back to the drawing board.
Im thinking that the best way to build it would be to start inside with the interior and piping then build the outside to fit the guts.

Originally posted by Professor Nipples:

I read that the block count stops for a powered grid in the 300k range. Could be wrong but I thought someone said 375000 blocks or something like that.

http://forums.keenswh.com/threads/game-keeps-crashing.7361957/

Some of my ideas i have had could probally reach that range but i doubt that i will ever build anything that big, be able to fill the inside etc without a heap of mods from which my net provider would shoot me for DLing not to metion what my wife would do to me if i did that.