24 system point ship?!

[ec928]

So to build a 24 system point ship I need to:

1. Build a temporary tiny little ship. In addition to my main ship.
2. Transfer ALL my stuff from my main ship over to said temporary ship
3. Abandon my main ship by flying elsewhere in the newly built tiny ship
4. Build my 24 system point ship
5. Abandon that useless temporary tiny ship I was forced to build

Being forced to build a temporary ship only to scrap it later not only doesn't seem like much fun from a PC games perspective, it feels like a chore. Or even work. Is there a more efficient way to build a 24 system point ship?

[Khan Boyzitbig of Mercia]

There is the mining station start, you can scrap the empty canvas and go straight for a bigger ship if you wanted. You would still need to make a "temporary" ship as you lack the supplies though.

Or you could edit the save so your existing ship has a larger canvas. (obviously back up the save first just in case)

[aksel_bugbyte]

You can build it by starting with the abandoned mining station start and then switching out the default canvas.

If you want to switch a current 2x2 ship then a temporary smaller ship needs to be used as transition or alternatively edit the save file.

Go to the local game files -> savegames -> Your save name -> save -> Open Game file with notepad.

Search fo the ship name.
Adjust the X or Y to 84.

[hugues arroux d'ergot]

Originally posted by aksel_bugbyte:

Go to the local game files -> savegames -> Your save name -> save -> Open Game file with notepad.

Search fo the ship name.
Adjust the X or Y to 84.

... if it's so simple (ok ok I'm already aware of it ;-)) .. and rather than modifying a program file "by hand", wouldn't it be better to integrate this functionality into the game ? Hmm? I have accumulated several hundred hours on SH and this is one of the big negative points: the size limits of the ship and its position in its development grid. It would be good to be able to select via a space base-shipyard (a service such as "hull construction" ...) to switch to an additional width / length tile ... or more simply: a game functionality, switch to the grid higher ship: go from 1x2 to 1x3 or 2x2, then from 2x2 to 2x3 ... If all you have to do is change the value in the save file, it shouldn't be super hard to program !? The player could always choose to play with a large ship or several small ones. We stay in the spirit of SH !? No !?

[RavensDaemon]

Originally posted by ec928:

So to build a 24 system point ship I need to:

1. Build a temporary tiny little ship. In addition to my main ship.
2. Transfer ALL my stuff from my main ship over to said temporary ship
3. Abandon my main ship by flying elsewhere in the newly built tiny ship
4. Build my 24 system point ship
5. Abandon that useless temporary tiny ship I was forced to build

Being forced to build a temporary ship only to scrap it later not only doesn't seem like much fun from a PC games perspective, it feels like a chore. Or even work. Is there a more efficient way to build a 24 system point ship?

Makes the game more exciting!! Uncheck the box for all mats back from dismantle and make it the game even better!

[aksel_bugbyte]

Originally posted by hugues arroux d'ergot:

Originally posted by aksel_bugbyte:

Go to the local game files -> savegames -> Your save name -> save -> Open Game file with notepad.

Search fo the ship name.
Adjust the X or Y to 84.

... if it's so simple (ok ok I'm already aware of it ;-)) .. and rather than modifying a program file "by hand", wouldn't it be better to integrate this functionality into the game ? Hmm? I have accumulated several hundred hours on SH and this is one of the big negative points: the size limits of the ship and its position in its development grid. It would be good to be able to select via a space base-shipyard (a service such as "hull construction" ...) to switch to an additional width / length tile ... or more simply: a game functionality, switch to the grid higher ship: go from 1x2 to 1x3 or 2x2, then from 2x2 to 2x3 ... If all you have to do is change the value in the save file, it shouldn't be super hard to program !? The player could always choose to play with a large ship or several small ones. We stay in the spirit of SH !? No !?

At first thought it is easy to think that it would be that simple.

However, it rarely is. =) There are many problems to solve, but let me just give one example which is one of the main ones:

Ships, stations and asteroids are allocated to various "grid tiles" within a sector, there are only so many of them and any NPC ship can jump anywhere to a free grid tile.

One of the problems is that if the player spaceship is right next to another element (Like another ship or station) then expanding the grid itself would mean the player would be building on top of this another element. It would look completely broken, and be broken. Ships would be on top of each other.

So that's one of the problem that would need solving, among others.

I just wanted to give a solution through modding as it is possible to do, it may cause a bug like this or not, can't remember if the elements are rearranged when loading the modified savegame.

[Nebelbiber]

I would also like to have the ability to expand (or even reduce) the ships size instead of having to build new ones.

Originally posted by aksel_bugbyte:

One of the problems is that if the player spaceship is right next to another element (Like another ship or station) then expanding the grid itself would mean the player would be building on top of this another element. It would look completely broken, and be broken. Ships would be on top of each other.

But couldn't this be easily solved by only letting the player expand the ship in a direction where the grid tiles are empty? If there are no fitting empty tiles next to the ship the player would have to hop to another sector and chose a fitting place on the grid.

I understand though that it might not always be that easy to implement and that it might create problems players don't think about.

[aksel_bugbyte]

Originally posted by Nebelbiber:

I would also like to have the ability to expand (or even reduce) the ships size instead of having to build new ones.

Originally posted by aksel_bugbyte:

One of the problems is that if the player spaceship is right next to another element (Like another ship or station) then expanding the grid itself would mean the player would be building on top of this another element. It would look completely broken, and be broken. Ships would be on top of each other.

But couldn't this be easily solved by only letting the player expand the ship in a direction where the grid tiles are empty? If there are no fitting empty tiles next to the ship the player would have to hop to another sector and chose a fitting place on the grid.

I understand though that it might not always be that easy to implement and that it might create problems players don't think about.

Possibly. One thing that jumps to mind there is that the player might be in such a menu, with the ship grid tile green (For an OK signal to build there). But it suddenly turns red because a NPC ship is about to jump into the sector and it just happens to be at the same time that the player is in the menu and the game is allocating the grid tiles for incoming stuff. =)

Maybe not the end of the world, but could be a bit confusing. So perhaps, but these edge case scenarios need to be played out in ones mind as much as possible so that the implementation has a good chance to work well in all circumstances.

Special sectors is another idea, where it would be guaranteed that nothing can intervene the process. We'll keep this feature in mind and let's see how this evolves in the future!

[munners42]

If you're modifying the ship size in the game file, don't forget to edit the roof size for the ship in the same file!

[Spicy pineapple]

For reducing a current ship canvas size in game without modifying files the areas of the ship outside of the new canvas size could just be marked for dismantling and prioritised above any other priority tasks? And only when that section is segregated from ship then the new canvas can include the removed portions too? So it could overlap the parts removed earlier before they all dismantled, avoiding resource waste and issues with ships overlapping each other?

And just automatically having walls placed at end of the new canvas size, with resources taken from the dismantled stuff or current player inventory? Not instantly built, but built before any dismantling is done if possible and just dismantling anything else in the way of where the new hull walls will need to be up until a new ship canvas is created on those areas or until all dismantling is done or giving alert some stuff will left behind? Warping in ships could just have those areas restricted for their spawn location until it all cleared?

[hugues arroux d'ergot]

@aksel, that's why I proposed an action in the base-building type game (space refit) that only allows our ship to be placed in the middle of a free area with +1 empty square around it. Because in fact you have already solved this problem of assigning a square of the sector grid to an incoming ship ..., through your module for creating a new ship: instead of placing 'n' cell forming a new vessel (1x2 for example) in a free space of the sector grid, we add it to the left / right, front / rear of our vessel. This would limit the extensions to 'n' boxes per frequentation of a space base-yard. I'm not saying it's easy to program. For having done a little dev for a big gas-factory application, I understand very well. But you've already programmed the thing! It would be a real bonus in this game: put your ship in the local refit for "n" days! We should have enough to survive this time of immobility ...

[ec928]

Ok thanks. I can't say I understood most of what was said, but I started again on the mining base to get my 24 system point ship. And now I can blow up enemy ships much more easily.

[Friends with Benedicts]

Wait, i didn't even knew we could change the canvas on the mining station start. This is new to me! How many guns/system does a 24 point ship have? I remember the biggest I've built had 2 energy, 1 rocket, 2 shield gen, 2 hull stab.

[Khan Boyzitbig of Mercia]

Originally posted by Friends with Benedicts:

Wait, i didn't even knew we could change the canvas on the mining station start. This is new to me! How many guns/system does a 24 point ship have? I remember the biggest I've built had 2 energy, 1 rocket, 2 shield gen, 2 hull stab.

12 separate devices, be they turrets, shields, hull stabilisers or jammers.

[ec928]

I found 8 energy turrets, 2 shield gen, 2 hull stab to work pretty well for blowing up enemy ships. I used to have a couple of rockets, but they fired so slowly and were useless against shields they felt like a downgrade. And having more guns seemed better than a jammer/scanner.

And yes, it is NOT intuitive that you can change the mining station canvas. In fact, 24 really should be the default. Because once you know you can have a 24 system point canvas, you'll likely always pick it because why wouldn't you start with the max system points?