Light weight blocks/different building materials

[TBAGGER]

No one builds a plane body out of the same material they build a tank out of. This is lunacy.

I have re-wrote the original game files to make all blocks have a lightweight alternative to test my theory. It works, it works so much better than the original game that I can't imagine building anything with the original blocks anymore.

Boats no longer need stabilizers.

Engines actually turn out horsepower relative to their size.

Clutches work all the sudden.

Think about the size of a large engine. It's like a 20L, 3000hp V12. It wont power a 50' tug boat on it's own. How many 3000hp Yarding Tugs have you seen?

This game is ridiculous, a freaking lawnmower weighs 2 tons and requires a V12 to get the rotor moving. Still bogs out when the grass is wet.

I'm not saying change the block weights, I'm saying add carbon fiber, add wood and aluminum. Change the bouyancy, change the strengths. Wood is light and buoyant but easily destructible....Am I making any sense here?

[Ra-Ra-Rasputin]

Engines on the larger end are actually relatively small to how much they put out.
The large engine is the physical size of an equivalent 1200HP engine, this one, here:
https://www.depco.com/marine-engines/cummins-kta38-m2-marine-engine-item-16173/
The difference is that one is equipped with a pair of chunky starters, but the power production and size is about equal. The large engine puts out about 1000 HP @ 10 RPS.

As for tug boats, i don't know what tug boats you've been around, but ones that i look at online look to be around 3000-4000 HP range. Most of them are twin engines. According to my unfinished graph, the large diesel puts out around 2200 HP @ 19.7 RPS, so running a pair at that rate would, in fact, get you tugger performance.

Though, it's always poor form to compare games to reality. For one, reality isn't bound by hardware limitations and the current tech development of real time physics implementations.

As far as boats needing stabilizers... i have absolutely no idea what you're talking about.

Every single real life seafaring vessel has both passive and/or active stabilization systems. Generally these are down to hull design that force pressure against certain portions of the hull in right ways to keep it all upright, we don't have water displacement, as it's essentially impossible to do real time, so...

Clutches... work? That's all i can say about that.


I'm open for more materials to play with, in fact i've made the suggestion before, but you're more than a little bit off with your claims. Destructability isn't really a factor at all. Block destruction is not in, the damage is currently either on, or off.

[TBAGGER]

I work in the marine industry, I own, work on, drive boats all the time. The Power to boat size is off. Not because the engines are underpowered but because the whole damn boat is made of 12" thick steel. I do agree with you, there are lots of high horsepower boats but it shouldn't be necessary to complete the build. For example my last build was a 40' planing Mono-hull fishing boat, it draws OVER 8 FEET. Because of this I need twin 3000hp diesels! That boat would be powered with a pair of 5.9's or some BB Chevy's in reality. Pretty big difference there. 400-800hp or 6 thousand?

The Large engine in the game is Massive. Maybe It feels bigger with the scale of video games but seriously it's BIG. An engine that big would never stall out from clutch engagement even with a 3 foot prop. My main point is that with my experience on boats it feels like the engines are gutless tourqeless hogs. But VOILA you reduce superstructure and deck weight and all the sudden the boat handles like the real thing. I got it, I made some changes and now everything feels exactly perfect. A 40' sport fisher doesn't NEED a seakeeper to keep it from capsizing on a calm day. Why? because the flybrigge isn't steel, It's kevlar and carbon fiber and it weighs 1/4 of the hull material. That is what provides boats their stability, not stabilizers or seakeepers.

Don't take everything I posted as a rant, it sounds rant-like but it's not. The game isn't finished yet and there's a ton of room for improvement(like block types). What I'm saying is that this (Simulation) game should contain the necessary building elements to fabricate realistic hull designs without needing excessive logic to make up for that lack.

If you don't believe me give it a try. It's really easy to add different block types, only takes 10 minutes of your time. Build a Police RIB with twin V12's and watch it fly. Because inflatable pontoons aren't generally made of steel. I'm trying to get people to try it for themselves and see the level of realism this seemingly limited game gets from a little tweaking.

[Siegfried67]

Originally posted by TBAGGER:

No one builds a plane body out of the same material they build a tank out of. This is lunacy.

Right, your tank should be built with the weight blocks, not the normal blocks.

Originally posted by TBAGGER:

I have re-wrote the original game files to make all blocks have a lightweight alternative to test my theory. It works, it works so much better than the original game that I can't imagine building anything with the original blocks anymore.

Boats no longer need stabilizers.

Engines actually turn out horsepower relative to their size.

Well, there's no engeneering challenge anymore. Of course everything will work better if you change the game files in your favor.

Originally posted by TBAGGER:

Clutches work all the sudden.

They work perfectly fine, what's your issue with clutches?

Originally posted by TBAGGER:

I'm not saying change the block weights, I'm saying add carbon fiber, add wood and aluminum. Change the bouyancy, change the strengths. Wood is light and buoyant but easily destructible....Am I making any sense here?

There is not material strenght is game as far as i know, everything seems to break at the same "stress level".

Only thing i'd add for buoyancy would be a helium fluid, lighter than air if air has a density in game (not just "empty' with a density of 0).

Hard to tell if blocks are too heavy compared to irl without knowing what the unit for weight is (definitely not kilograms). I guess the values are given to compensate the fact that noone would build a hull with 25cm thick metal. If you give reallistic density to blocks, you'll have a hard time making anything float or fly. If you make it lighter but less resilient to shocks, it'll cause a lot of problems, sometimes the games physics makes stuff vibrate and break already, increasing that kind of issue would be a nightmare.

I guess you'll just have to learn to play in a world with a different set of rules.

Edit after seeing your last post : i won't talk about RL boats, i know nothing about that kind of stuff. Maybe in the future they will tweak some values, but i hope it won't make everything too easy.

[dergerch]

I see where he's coming from and I'd support the suggestion to add at least one other, more lightweight (and why not - more fragile in return) building material. Basically the plywood equivalent to the 25 cm steel hull...

[Jorg Hammond]

Sure, it's a sensible request.

RANT:

I wish the search function was more idiot friendly on mcro.org (when I say idiot I'm talking about me, please don't take no offense). I was thinking it would be neat to have a fuel slider in the creative menu in order to be able to test tanker ships at various levels of load, and had to spend a quarter of an hour making sure this hadn't already been suggested, realizing it did, and upvoting the suggestion.

END OF RANT

Fire away the Suggest a Feature button and file it in, good sir TBAGGER!

[Beginner]

There is no stress simulation in the game. And never will be. This means there is no point to add lightweight blocks as they will not have any drawback and it will only let all players use them instead of regular ones. Which will lead to even worse balance between mass and power. Most of current boats and ships that I see in the top are felt absolutely fine for me. Nice look, speed, and draft.

[Sunshine]

Anything "weight" is basically broken in this game and doesn't make sense. How come I build a 50m "large" vessel, outfit it with all it needs and it is bobbing up and down in calm water and depending on where I position myself on the ship it even cants to that side. Like what!? How can the weight of a person influence a 50m ship made of "steel"?

So yes, we need different weights/materials, otherwise this will never leave the stage of "hurr-durr luk at muh boaty mc boatface!" stage. In other words: You will never be able to build "serious" vessels with this silly weight and physics system.

Another big joke is that water is basically air, not really water. How come we still can't build open hulls? How come when I build a funnel that is open all the way down into the ship, it spawns flooding already - how is water getting in there?

Displacement basically doesn't exist... in a game primarily about building ships.

This could be so much more, that is what frustrates me...

[Ra-Ra-Rasputin]

Originally posted by Sunshine:

So yes, we need different weights/materials, otherwise this will never leave the stage of "hurr-durr luk at muh boaty mc boatface!" stage. In other words: You will never be able to build "serious" vessels with this silly weight and physics system.

I completely disagree, and so do the vast majority of people who have uploaded boats they've spent a long time making on the workshop. You can make "serious" vessels, it's just not easy or quick, and that particularly is what draws me in.

Are there issues? Sure. Flat bottom hulls for instance generate far too much drag, when they should glide along water beneath them, essentially reducing drag.

Originally posted by Sunshine:

Another big joke is that water is basically air, not really water. How come we still can't build open hulls? How come when I build a funnel that is open all the way down into the ship, it spawns flooding already - how is water getting in there?

Displacement basically doesn't exist... in a game primarily about building ships.

I've also said it before, and i'll say it again: Don't compare games to real life. Water displacement cannot exist with current physics models. It's literally impossible to make the game run at even 2 ticks / second with a top of the line 1500$ consumer CPU if water was displaced around one square block.


Beginner does bring a good point, even though we 2 don't always agree. Given how the game works, and what limitations can exist for lightweight blocks, there is currently very little reason to ever not use light blocks. Even if they were significantly more expensive in career, at 3x the cost, there would still be little reason to use anything heavier, except for balance purposes.

[Beginner]

Originally posted by Sunshine:

Anything "weight" is basically broken in this game and doesn't make sense. How come I build a 50m "large" vessel, outfit it with all it needs and it is bobbing up and down in calm water and depending on where I position myself on the ship it even cants to that side. Like what!? How can the weight of a person influence a 50m ship made of "steel"?

Who said it's steel? 50m ship here can have a mass of 2-3 tonnes so there is no surprise that the character's mass and force can affect it.

Originally posted by Sunshine:

So yes, we need different weights/materials, otherwise this will never leave the stage of "hurr-durr luk at muh boaty mc boatface!" stage. In other words: You will never be able to build "serious" vessels with this silly weight and physics system.

I'm not sure what you mean by serious as we playing a game here. It's not a professional simulator software.

Originally posted by Sunshine:

Another big joke is that water is basically air, not really water. How come we still can't build open hulls? How come when I build a funnel that is open all the way down into the ship, it spawns flooding already - how is water getting in there?

Don't understand here too. Water can't be water in any software anyhow.

Originally posted by Sunshine:

Displacement basically doesn't exist... in a game primarily about building ships.

Displacement from the ocean? I would like to see a game where the ocean level getting higher once an object gets in.

Originally posted by Sunshine:

This could be so much more, that is what frustrates me...

I'd recommend just enjoy the game rather than trying to compare it to some specific NASA simulator software for NASA PC :wink:

[Sunshine]

Originally posted by Ra-Ra-Rasputin:

I completely disagree

Yeah, render me surprised.

Originally posted by Beginner:

Displacement from the ocean? I would like to see a game where the ocean level getting higher once an object gets in.

Oh please...

[TBAGGER]

Yeah this went too far into the political aspects of whether we "want" lightweight blocks or not. No one here has actually built a ship using them so why are we even debating it. We can't change the physics of the game, why would we they work fine(as long as you use lightweight blocks). What we can change is the way boats handle.

Everyone (including me) says the hulls are steel because a small fishing boat draws 8 feet when in reality it should draw only 2-4 depending on hull style. What we mean by "steel" is that they're simply too heavy and non-bouyant.

HOWEVER........

If you keep an open mind, try a build with steel hull and a 1/4 weight superstructure/deck. Then go on the debate and tell us what you've found. Like some practical pro's and con's you've DISCOVERED from using the blocks in-game. Then we can really get somewhere with this conversation.

The reality is nothing will ever come of this same yes/no theoretical debate I've seen 3 times already. I can tell you where it ends:

We're not changing block weights because it will antiquate all my previous builds and that hurts my feelings. If you cant build within the restraints of the game build your own damn game.

So let's be good little engineers, use our brains instead of our "feelings" and test some theories. Adding light blocks into your game doesn't break any previous builds, it just adds new blocks to your inventory. If you don't like it simply delete the files.

[TBAGGER]

This group of people that play games like this are a different breed, we aren't mindless, we don't play for a "distraction". Let's push the envelope yet again and bring a HUGE level of realism to a game that is already soooooooo goooooood. Right?

Light weight blocks, in my personal experience, have fixed all the issues I had with this game.

Fixes include:

-Boats not bouyant enough(drawing too much water)
-Boats not planing even though they are planing hulls
-Excessive rocking in causing harmonic capsizing
-Engines not producing enough power
-Excessive fuel consumption (overall poor engine performance)
-Inability to build scale models because of lack of proper balancing

Naval architects don't add weight(blocks) to balance their designs, they trim weight where it needs it, shape the hull to lift the boat out of the water. Currently we cannot do these things without having excessively heavy builds.

Please elaborate on what you've found using lightweight blocks on your builds.

[Ra-Ra-Rasputin]

Originally posted by TBAGGER:

Naval architects don't add weight(blocks) to balance their designs

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keel

Naval architects disagree. The entire construction of a ship is generally dated based on the attachment of its keel.

I may test this later on, but as i said, it's not often that i find myself fully agreeing with Beginner. In this case i do.

Originally posted by TBAGGER:

We're not changing block weights because it will antiquate all my previous builds and that hurts my feelings.

Retroactively changing the properties of even minor items is generally a bad choice as it will break existing builds, retroactively changing the properties of something that literally every vehicle has by necessity is disasterous. It has nothing to do with feefees. A well designed boat for instance can take weeks to build. It can take days to fix that one single upload.

Originally posted by Sunshine:

Yeah, render me surprised.

And yet, you had nothing to say.

[TBAGGER]

Wow I think I need to bring a lawyer in to explain this better. I build boats dude, I know Displacement hulls often use lead cored keels for they're stability, sail boats for a counter balance like a forklift has to stop it from tipping when lifting a load. We can pick each other apart for spelling mistakes all we want but I stand by my word.

I apologise, I should have said "When building sleek, sexy, fast, planing hulls naval architects don't ADD weight to balance their designs.

However I'm honoured that you only are complaining about one spelling mistake instead of 15 points that you want to bring out to take away from my real point. Which is that you still have no experience to base your argument off of since no one uses the blocks yet. My point is stop arguing and try a build. I think I'm presenting this in a clear and structured manner?

[Sunshine]

Originally posted by Ra-Ra-Rasputin:

And yet, you had nothing to say.

And why would I?
While you are free to share your opinion on my post, I am not condemned to answer it, or do so in a specific manner that might please you, am I?
Exactly.