Damage Control Center && On-board Ship/station Grid System.

[Atreyis Lortani]

My idea, which is something that I'm surprised wasn't included with the initial launch of closed alpha (hell, in-house alpha for that matter): the Damage Control Center. It wouldn't be a room in itself (aside from the large reactor for a large ship/station, what is really?), it'd just be a block or so (and auto-connect to the main terminal's network, allowing you to view it while flying or whatnot). As the name suggests, the DCC wouldn't display the current/max health of all blocks, only those that are damaged (be they armor blocks, decorative, functional, weapons, etc). Of course, it couldn't tell you where these things are unless some sort of on-board ship/station grid system is implemented as well....which brings me to my next idea...

The on-board ship/station grid system. Quite simple really, the framework is already implemented in the game in the form of symmetrical construction. The translucent planes would appear on all three axis (with -x/+x, -y/+y, and -z/+z at the end of each to aid people unfamiliar with quadrants from mathematics and those of us who have the insane idea to build a ship with no obvious front :P), with the game calculating the center of the ship as it does for symmetrical construction - though, because of the fact that ships are generally not nice, neat cubes, the game would take the longest dimension on each of the three planes and generate the grid system assuming that each of those blocks is being used even if only 70% are. This function would be built into the DCC as part of the report generation (Light Armor Slope: 31% integrity. Grid: 32, -1, 60).

The limitation for the DCC (and built in grid system) would be that the DCC can only show information for the blocks connected to the same ship/station; so your heavily damaged fighter you just parked in the hangar of your 3,000 block long carrier won't show up on your carrier's DCC and vice versa.

[Zefnoly]

There are already scripts letting you show damaged blocks on the workshop... They work with programmable block and does not need any other mods.

[Zefnoly]

One of them let you program LCD screens to show damage of certain blocks you choose

[Mr Wallvnut]

What we need is a more visual representation of ship damages. I'm thinking a version of the project which shows a hologram of the ship it's attached too, except scaled down to fit in one block. Blocks would be colour coded based on their condition, 100% health blocks would be largely transparent. Idealy this system would track which blocks were destroyed and show them as black. If you wanted to reset the blocks there'd be a reset function to re-establish the current state as the blocks that actually belong in the ship (for the cases where you modify a ship).

[Atreyis Lortani]

Originally posted by Zefnoly:

There are already scripts letting you show damaged blocks on the workshop... They work with programmable block and does not need any other mods. One of them let you program LCD screens to show damage of certain blocks you choose

That's exactly my point. These scripts are 100% useless when someone is in their small ship and not docked at their station (assuming the scripts show values for docked vessels as well). You need an LCD display to see the data and while you could put one on either side of a small ship's cockpit so you'd only have to look to the sides, that's highly impractical. Not to mention it'll add extra weight and power requirements (to power the LCDs, programmable block, and the extra thrust that would be needed to move the additional mass in each direction). This should be already included in the game (in a single block similar to the control station but specific to damage control), especially considering what kind of game it is and how often it involves fighting or even sustaining damage. This is a game of engineers...in space. The basic concept behind both things is science (and therefore logic). Logically, a damage control center is mandatory for any space-faring enterprise or structure that sits in space. After all, you never know if you'll run into pirates and have to fight your way to freedom, or encounter a meteor shower (at least that's part of the game) and have to do some quick repairs to get back to a station. I can't think of a single game, TV show, movie, etc, that has space travel and does NOT include a damage control center; note that a holographic projection of your ship/etc on your HUD, such as in Elite: Dangerous, counts as a damage control center.

Originally posted by Mr Wallvnut:

What we need is a more visual representation of ship damages. I'm thinking a version of the project which shows a hologram of the ship it's attached too, except scaled down to fit in one block. Blocks would be colour coded based on their condition, 100% health blocks would be largely transparent. Idealy this system would track which blocks were destroyed and show them as black. If you wanted to reset the blocks there'd be a reset function to re-establish the current state as the blocks that actually belong in the ship (for the cases where you modify a ship).

Good idea, apart from one thing....that won't work on a small ship since small blocks are...well...small. Plus, on a small ship you have a cockpit and....well that's it as far as player-accessible areas are concerned - so there's nowhere to actually put this holographic projection. I had thought of this as well, but threw the idea away once I realized there's nowhere to put it on my small mining ship (or a small fighter).

[Atreyis Lortani]

Now that I'm home and not at work I looked at the script mod you mentioned, Zefnoly. It's a great mod and I'll use it, but it does have two severe limitations which my suggestion wouldn't. First, you need a programmable block and a timer block - not sure if there are small block versions of each but will check when I boot SE shortly. Second, if you get into a fight or bump into something too hard, chances are more than your drill/weapon will be damaged (such as armor blocks). Which means if you want to see if absolutely anything is damaged you need to set every block on your ship/station to show on HUD - which is not only impractical, but it clutters your screen and will cause massive frame drop on slower machines. The idea behind the damage control center condenses the blocks needed down to one (though it's actual spacial requirements might be the same, it's still one unit), adds the feature to the core gameplay mechanics, and makes it so all you have to do is activate the DCC and you'll get a readout (or visual display for a few minutes on the blocks themselves) of each block that is damaged and not the ones that are at full integrity.

[STORM]

I used to have a mod (called DamageIndicator) that would provide 3 types of indicators:

- Damaged blocks: blocks that have been shot at, for example.
- Incomplete blocks: you laid down a block but never finished building it completely
- Deformed blocks: Common issue when mining

Additionally, it keeps track of all blocks and provides a total ship integrity %. And, it uses the LCD panel to show all this information (or the HUD). Further, it colorizes blocks for each Indicator type (something that is not too intuitive). Lastly, it takes into account "merging" and "docking"---something that doesn't always feel intuitive either. Basically, when you merge/dock (with another ship, station, etc) it recalculates the entire system to take into account what merged/docked.

You can see a version of it here (third one shown):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8qpLr11iBc

I recently removed it from Steam due to no further planned development. And the tool became too complex since there was ALOT that was being requested. And there are a few bugs that I never got a chance to fully fix. If you'd like to enhance it further I'm glad to send you the source.

BTW, one thing the mod does not do is keep track of blocks globally. There is performance issues with that. Reporting is only *active* when the ship is occupied. I found no way around that.

[Atreyis Lortani]

Looks interesting. Sent a friend request so we don't clutter the forum.

[Professor Nipples]

Storm...bring that script back!!! Awesome stuff!

[Atreyis Lortani]

Originally posted by Professor Nipples:

Storm...bring that script back!!! Awesome stuff!

If I can find the SE toolbox and ModSDK then I can take a look at the source; but since it's not appearing in my tools list, I can't look yet.

[STORM]

Thanks. You can download it here:

https://www.zipshare.com/download/eyJhcmNoaXZlSWQiOiJlMDc0NTVjNi04OWNkLTRmNTctYjY0Ni1kYzQzYjU2MmY0MTciLCJlbWFpbCI6Im11c2ljZGV2QGdtYWlsLmNvbSJ9

Once you download unzip the file into your Mods folder located in:

C:\Users\{your user}\AppData\Roaming\SpaceEngineers\Mods

Then just copy the mod into over to that folder and you'll be able to see it in your Mods list in the world Mods settings.

There's some setup once enabled. You need to add the text "dmgind" into the Ship name you control via the cockpit. If you want painting of blocks add "p:on" and if you want to use the LCD panels, add "uselcd:on". If using LCD, add "dmgind" as the LCD name.

Let me know if any questions, concerns. There's also DEBUG ability, using "debug:on" in the ship name. It spits out block location info. Not useful but I added that in there in when trying to re-paint blocks back to their original color.

I don't know how useful the mod is anymore, and there's probably better mods out there for this kind of thing...if anything, hopefully you can learn from it and/or modify it to fit your needs.

[Atreyis Lortani]

Already downloaded it when you sent it to me in STEAM chat, I was just trying to find the SDK. Finally found it on steamdb.com. Installing now.

EDIT: Gotta thank you, Storm, for adding such extensive comment blocks in the code. Going to make figuring out what does what so much easier :-)

[STORM]

No problem at all. Thanks for the interest, it has sparked an interest in me as well.

[STORM]

By the way was looking today and workshow has this one:

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=397089400

Much much much simpler.

[STORM]

Hey guys, I've decided to repost the mod to the steam workshop. Thanks for bringing me back to this little project, and SE. By posting to Steam it will make it easier for others to use. I'm doing some cleanup and optimization so the tool can run a little better; and I will look further to enhance it as well, for example, adding multi-player code. It will not be up today, I'm thinking of using this weekend to do as much as I can and then upload the new version.