Buoyancy and physics

[Lizzard]

Just out of curiosity, how many people around here enjoy building traditional hulls that rely on the game's normal buoyancy to keep their ships afloat such as materials and air gaps vs foils and azipods or some other artificial method of "floating"?

[Xeno42]

i think the majority of my ships float normally but having some hover props on heavy/dense craft can increase there longevity

[Eudaimonia]

Newer players tend to rely on air and helium pumps to float, eventually people learn that this is a bad idea and use alloy to float instead. There aren't many who use engine power to keep their boats floating, cause at that point you might as well just make a hovercraft.

[Carolus Magnus]

I always try initially. But often when all the functional bits are in the ship is stable but sitting way lower than is desirable. So I just slap some active stabilisation on it. I always build my ships packed to the brim and the large ones have big slabs of armour, which doesn't help. Neither does my tendency to build very tall.

But before PID's were a thing that was a whole other aspect of difficulty to building a boat which was enjoyable in a way.

[Xeno42]

Originally posted by Eudaimonia:

Newer players tend to rely on air and helium pumps to float, eventually people learn that this is a bad idea and use alloy to float instead. There aren't many who use engine power to keep their boats floating, cause at that point you might as well just make a hovercraft.

sir pumps are still nice to get some extra buoyancy and you can get some more speed out of them but yeah you shouldn't rely on them to float

[fleatoad]

All of my newer ships float using alloy without the need for air pumps or engine power.

[Lizzard]

I do use air pumps mainly to make it look good and sit where I want it to when it's cruising around. But I learned not to rely on only them for a battle.

Still, with proper compartmentalization, I found they work really well! By the time the ship sinks, it's basically lost the battle anyhow.

[AwesomeDragon]

I use pumps only to keep it afloat after a certain point in battle by using a health trigger, but most of the time my weapons will be destroyed before the hull.

[Xeno42]

yeah a lot of times its just a husk of armor left that the enemy is uselessly firing at

[DeciNinja]

Most of my ships have lots of airpumped space and no artificial stability or lift at all. However, I incorporate a lot of alloy or wood into my designs so I can build all the structure I want while also having stability and freeboard. This also means that they still float even when completely swiss-cheesed.