Last_Jedi_Standing wrote:I'm not loving these ideas.
Oh dear.
Yes, indeed.
First, the cores do too much. They're just part of a ship. There's no logical reason for them to be tied into research and extraction. Likewise, I don't think they should be the power cores.
Ship Cores aren't 'tied to research and extraction', the Analyzer functionality is just like the inventory crafting table - once you have dedicated blocks like workbenches, or in this case the Extractor, it will only see use rarely when such blocks are not available - just like its counterpart in vanilla Minecraft. The fact that they also serve as a power core makes sense to me because both block's functionalities can easily be combined into one, omnipotent item you'll use throughout the game - the Core. And that's what's going to be literally powering and making your ship move, so it's gonna have to be well protected.
But it doesn't make any sense for it to be one omnipotent item. What is a Core, really? Is it the ship's computer? It makes sense for Steve to have a built-in crafting table--he can make stuff with his hands. It doesn't make sense for the ship's computer to be able to pull rare minerals out of rocks, because that has nothing to do with its job, which is running a ship. I have less problem with them acting as a power core, because that's directly tied into what they're supposed to do, although I think it would be a cooler mechanic to have a separate generator.
Separate generators are in play that constitute crucial components, CTRL+F on my research paper with the words 'auxiliary'. I see the Core block as being the catalyst of everything Futurecraft is to be, therefore it'd be this strange technological contraption that can do these things. But I will think of an alternative.
Second, I don't like researchers and extractors just being magic blocks that do the work. That's a poor way of doing it. I think it would be better to have the rare materials spawn as ores far, far below ground (say a kilometer or so) and only be mineable by advanced equipment. Research should require a lab of NPC scientists, that don't actually do anything but look many, many times cooler than a magic block.
Naw, that'd be fairly difficult to code and throw in mining equipment that'd be useless outside of getting your initial ores. Futurecraft shouldn't even resemble one of those lackluster mods with one bajillion ores, ain't fun. NPCs could expedite the process by automating it a lot more, but this system allows solitary players to be able to do research on their lonesome as well.
Futurecraft likewise shouldn't resemble one of those lackluster mods that add nothing but a bunch of magical blocks that do stuff for you. That's the only thing that I disliked about Indrustrialcraft back when I played it (Which was, like, two years ago, so I have no idea what it's like now). Everything you did came down to taking your stuff and dropping it into a Macerator (one block), and then putting it into a Compressor (one block), and then into one of those advanced furnace things (one block), all of which are powered by a Waterwheel (one block), or a Solar Panel (one block), or a Wind Generator (one block), etc, etc. Nearly everything the mod had involved putting stuff into a series of mostly identical single, magic blocks, that did whatever it was for you. That's Better Than Wolves's huge strength, IMO--it favors huge, multiblock contraptions that are an engineering challenge to build. Ultimately a 19x17x12 Better Than Wolves kiln accomplishes the same thing as a 1x1x1 Industrialcraft autofurnace, but it makes more sense, looks much better, and is much more fun to build and design with. That's what Futurecraft ought to be. A laboratory with NPC scientists accomplishes the same thing as a single magic research block, but also makes sense in the context of the game, and is cool to build and look at. I'm not suggesting that you add any ores that you're not already planning to add, I'm suggesting that rather than getting your initial small quantities by a weird magic-y method, you do it by mining. I can't imagine that this would be any more difficult to code (if anything less; mining already exists and extractors don't), and the mining equipment is going to be added for the asteroids anyway, and I don't see what about my system prevents solitary players from doing research.
Okay, yes, yes I see your point. Look, I'm not a fan of the way Redpower and IC do it, but that seems like the most feasible way of going about it. Think about it from a practibility standpoint - before you go into space, where are you going to get NPCs to man the research station that will enable you to do so in the first place? Perhaps we can reach a compromise. Having more ores beneath diamond layer and somehow more powerful than it just breaks MC's traditional gameplay...though the concept of breaking bedrock with a BTW-esque contraption sounds pretty cool.
Maybe have a 'Drill' entity that has the capacity to destroy bedrock if deployed properly, though it functions fine in the way of automating basic mining. Increasing tiers of the contraption break the blocks faster, including admintium. From there the player can snatch at the valuables embedded below the 'impenetrable' bedrock layer (that can actually also be pierced by plasma weaponry and the cruise missiles of the Heavy weapon type, just to make sieges actually winnable) which consists of extremely spongy terrains, with networks of caves composing 90% of the region's mass. The generator for these chunks would go out of its way to put streams and pools of magma everywhere; one bad move can leave the player burning alive. But, Titanium and Strontium ore would spawn naturally down here, and the lava can be put through a refinery device to get crocite. The Refinery item would act identically to the Extractor called for in the original idea, but as you say, it would be much more enjoyable to construct and tweak to one's liking.
From there, you can make a research station: Console blocks, test tubes, microscopes, and a container full of items ready for experimentation would comprise one's options for creating a tidy lab, though these must be in proximity to an Auxiliary power generator or a power node in order to be charged. When the two key components are charged (container and console block with research preset), an NPC will spawn to watch over everything and generate blueprints for use in the VANILLA WORKBENCH. Test tubes and microscopes, while not entirely necessary, will expedite the progress of a project if they are detected within the vicinity.
Ooh. That's good. I support that kind of research completely.
Third, hangars. No no no no no. That is not how hangars should work, not in any way. I don't think hangars should be a special module or whatever—just make fighters in such a way that it's not practical to have them in a space less than a few hundred blocks long (requiring a long period to slow down when entering a ship would do that). And I don't like them not being player-controllable. Yes, I hear you about the heavy fighters, but in fact there are people who would want to be snubfighter jockeys, and probably more of them that would be willing to be Crewmember #11 on a dreadnaught.
Make fighter entities craftable so people can fly them down the hangar as well, that should suffice for subtlety making them practically required to be actual landing pads. Hangar modules should remain for NPC fighters, though, that would provide a spiffy way of enforcing authenticity with swarms of fighters going all over the place shooting stuff up. That actually seems like the only practical way to go about doing it, really.
Having starfighters appearing out of a mob spawner is an awfully odd way of claiming authenticity. There shouldn't be anything special about a hangar that requires it to be a module. It's just a big room with doors at one end. It doesn't have complicated stuff associated with it in the same way engines or sensors do. Fighters should be produced at a factory (probably a shipyard, although obviously not the same way as a ship) and loaded onto their ships. It doesn't make any sense to have them just spawn in the hangar. That's magic, and we're trying to avoid magic. It doesn't make any sense.
The thing is, nobody is going to mass-manufacture dozens of fighters for the purpose of a disposable damage-buff that a squadron of NPC pilots essentially are. Perhaps the TerraFirmaCraft method could be introduced - a structure of certain blocks in the shape of an open prism with a console in back hooked up to the Core or Aux. Generator would spawn the fighter mobs with the explanation that when given a steady flow of power, the blocks in question can fabricate ships which your NPC pilots man. To increase the realism of this, when a hangar module is constructed, NPC pilots will spawn around it and randomly mill around the surrounding area. (Only God fr0st knows where they come from, though) Could also say they're drones, but that could be an upgraded variant of the module that consumes less power from your ship.
So, maybe a compromise. I say fighters should be built in a factory, but that factory could itself be on a ship. In fact, that's what the hangar module could really be getting you--not the hangar itself, but rather a structure a bit larger than a fighter that contains a transmuter (or whatever we want to call it). When fed resources (iron, steel, electronics, whatever), the device will produce a fighter. You can then do whatever you want with the fighter: Fly it yourself, give it to an NPC pilot, move it to another ship, whatever. So a ship without a carrier module could still house some small number of fighters, because all you need for that is a big open space, but it would be unable to manufacture more when they get destroyed. That would also lead to cool things like redistributing surviving fighters after a battle to make sure none of your ships are left defenseless.
In a perfect world, you'd have to get NPC pilots from some sort of flight training facility. I'm not sure how practical that is, though. Although the 'flight training facility' could really just be a room near the hangar that pilots spawn in and not actually anything special at all. Actually, that would work for a lot of things. Soldiers spawn in barracks. That's magic, but it's an accepted game mechanic and is standard in a lot of places, so it's probably workable.
Fourth, ships seem alternatively too small and too large. I think three players is too many for a frigate; there won't be enough players to have fleets of them that way. But twelve is too few for a dreadnaught; we have thousand-block long ships here. I don't think there's really a good way to to dreadnoughts in terms of crew size unless you vastly increase the number of NPCs. Twelve players could control a dreadnaught if they had three hundred NPCs to help them, but not with only twenty.
I had more to say but now I can't remember it.
Three hundred NPCS? Are you daft? Do you have ANY idea how much lag even fifty mobs in vanilla MC can create for the underpowered PC demographic Futurecraft is trying to cater to? Anyway, three players is a perfect number for a frigate, and they can even be slaved up to to player controlled ships as AI vessels if need be. NPCs would just be mainly for looks, their entities would spawn upon activating a vessel, but wouldn't have that much of a role in the day-to-day running of the ship. Most of a craft's functions would be controlled via control panels that NPCs could interact with, but not actually affect in any serious manner.
How do you expect to run a kilometer-long ship with 32 people? An ImpStar has a crew of 37,085. That's longer than a kilometer, of course, but I'm sure you see what I'm getting at. A crew of three hundred is incredibly low for the size of ship we're dealing with here. Expecting it to be done by that few people is insane.
And 12 players is the population of the average Minecraft server. Mind you, this isn't a 'set' number, it's not like the ship won't launch unless twelve people on board, but twelve would be the recommended amount of crewmembers to regulate all subsystems effectively. Unless there are fifteen more logistical modules, you're not going to need upwards of 12 peeps manning the biggest ship in the game, though certainly no one would stop you from having more.
I have no objection to the number of players. I think you'll have a hard time getting twelve people to do it as it is. The problem is that the number of NPCs is ridiculously low.
A one thousand block long ship moving with a mod like Zeppelin is not pretty when it's possible. A one thousand block long ship with three hundred NPCs aboard is a nightmare, all those entities have to be loaded at once on account of the way Zep (and I assume Copernicus) handles actually making the vessel into something usable. The maximum of NPCs on any ship should not break thirty; even if fr0st's new engine makes all of this playable for even Intel Atom users, it would be wise to keep things low until it can be seen to what extent it defies the unpossible, at which point an update can up the count allowed.
As I said, a dreadnought's power core is such that you could feasibly operate all logistics modules simultaneously, but with all of them able to be controlled from the bridge the minimum needed would hover around twelve. While you claim to have a NASA supercomputer, some of us aren't so fortunate :P Such an aesthetic like NPCs should be the lowest priority when it comes to maximizing performance.
I hear the bit about performance. My computer isn't as good as all that, but it's sufficient for Minecraft (although not for Planetside 2). I'm saying that from a game continuity perspective, dreadnaughts should have a crew of hundreds at the very least, and thousands would be better. But if that's not possible, it's not possible. However, comparing Copernicus to Zeppelin is a bit off. We're not doing the same thing at all. Ships in Zeppelin are 1 entity/block. Ships in Futurecraft will be one entity/ship. That means a FC ship with three hundred NPCs should work as well as a 15x4x5 ship in Zeppelin, which is not very big at all.
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