i dont understand drone-building

[Zyro]

this game has potential but i honestly don't understand the drone-build part. and the whole game is based on this!
everything is connected to the main base piece with rods. i cannot build a drone with more than 15 pieces. even when i place a piece right next to it, it still says its not stable.

some things just make no sense if you don't know about it. i hate to look stupid but come on...
how do i make a solid drone?

[Markus [Stray Fawn Studio Dev]]

It's really difficult to make something complex from the get-go, one has to get a feel how things work over time. Starting small and then grow into bigger drones might make things easier. This might be frustrating for people who played other builders and want to make incredible things from the start, I'm sorry ^^'

Start only with thrusters and fuel tanks, make a small drone which you can maneuver savely around the test drive. Does it begin to wiggle? Put parts closer to the core. Add weapons and Experiment with the placement. How does it react if the parts are close to the center of mass? How does it react if they are far away? What's the difference between lasers (no recoil) and e.g. a shotgun (lots of recoil)?

You slowly get a feel how the Physics in Nimbatus work. Then start making the drone more complex by adding resource tanks and resource collectors. Later you can add a shield, heaters and coolers.

If you know how to build stable drones, Play around with sensors and logic parts. Take a look at the training area in sumo and Play against beginner drones. Slowly you should be able to beat them :)

Also take a look at the steam workshop. There are a lot of great drone designs (also small beginner ones) which help you get a feel of how the system / Physics work in nimbatus :)

I hope this helps a bit. Please show a screenshot and we can help you improve your design :)

Also the "instability warning" in Nimatus is not a true/false statement. We added it because drones tend do become instable after a certain threshold, but depending on how you construct things it might still work well.

[Fitz]

I think the game would benefit greatly from a reinforcement rod part that just adds a standard rod between two existing pieces. It's an essential part of real engineering and it's an intuitive way to solve stability problems.

Right now designs end up with a handful of "stringy" modules because there's no way to tie a part tree back to the trunk. It might trivialize the "stability" mechanic but it would enable some currently infeasible designs such as large arms that extend far from the core, or really anything that requires rigidity to work properly.

[Markus [Stray Fawn Studio Dev]]

Struts is something which was long discussed during the early access period :) The gist of it is that it's bad for the physics simulation performance wise as well as it leads to less interesting drone constructions (having these slightly quicky but organic drones is a unique selling point of Nimbatus).
We have added the hollow block which allows for a strut-like behavior without any performance drawbacks. They are a bit unwieldy, but that was half of the idea :)

We know that it's not completely intuitive from the start, but I think of it this way. If you want to carry a very very heavy metal ball, you don't carry it with one extended arm, but carry it close to your body (center of mass). That's how physics work and we have the same element in Nimbatus :)

[Zyro]

i missed the part that i can connect new pieces to an already placed piece. that was a big game changer for me, haha. i was already getting frustrated seeing so many big creations in the workshop and im left with the small stuff that just explode when its over 15 pieces. thanks for the tips ssero, playing around in sumo helped a lot!

only problem i got left is no extra thrusters since the start, and im about to pass the 3rd wormhole. a lack of thrusters really puts a hold on growing. is this just bad luck on my end or intended?

[Markus [Stray Fawn Studio Dev]]

It might be bad luck, I'm sorry. Were no planet available which had thrusters as rewards or Shops which did sell one?

We have to balance it more, if there were no planets available. Happy I could help with the construction :)