salvage/debris

[joykler]

i think this belongs here

as i just mentioned salvating things form ships and frost saying it could be possible to create debris i made this

so frost you think thats doable

and this if a ships is broken
some things will go to item form
but no computer will be able to hande that much items flouting around especially not when they have to stay like that for ages

you should be able to immediatly fly away in a salvation ship from the closest spacestation/city/mothership
this would be a small two person craft with low to no armor and no weapons
but it should have alot of cargo space
and would this be a entity or a build ship

i mentioned earlier throwing debris behind my ship to block my persuers
at that point people said it wouldnt be possible ....?

are things like asteroids [belts flying comet forming] also thing people have thought about and is it possible?

[fr0stbyte124]

I won't know until I benchmark whether we can handle a lot of debris. My guess is that since we are in space, our render budget should be well into the green, but that's no guarantee. We are also dealing with a very long draw distance.

[Dr. Mackeroth]

I won't know until I benchmark whether we can handle a lot of debris. My guess is that since we are in space, our render budget should be well into the green, but that's no guarantee. We are also dealing with a very long draw distance.

Plus they would all need collision physics.

[fr0stbyte124]

That part shouldn't be too much trouble. In space, things are spread out and it's rare that you'll need full-scale collision detection.

[Dr. Mackeroth]

That part shouldn't be too much trouble. In space, things are spread out and it's rare that you'll need full-scale collision detection.

But it in the rare instance something DOES collide, you don't want the object just phasing through each other or have an unstoppable force colliding with an immovable object.

Actually, how are you handling ship-to-ship collisions?

[Iv121]

BTW considering that those ships are going to be piloted by humans (What’s this debris lololololo) there are going to be much more collisions than you would expect ...

[Keon]

That part shouldn't be too much trouble. In space, things are spread out and it's rare that you'll need full-scale collision detection.

Don't do momentum with your ship debris. Have them stop eventually to make salvage easy.

[Prototype]

Now what sort of time frame do we want debris to stick around for? Cause nobody likes swimming in debris (well maybe a few people, but most probably won't) although it is rather unlikely that you'll get enough ships exploding within a small volume, but then again battles of this scale are possible.

[joykler]

if some debris could settle as blocks

like items that freeze in space
become a block of ice that when you break it gets the item that was flying around to start

then you would just have broken ships with alot of mixed up blocks

[Prototype]

Not a bad idea, I actually like that, although you might see some block suddenly changing rotation and position, but that is better than a full despawn.

I assume you are talking about having the surviving blocks in the ships going back to being stationary blocks

[fr0stbyte124]

That part shouldn't be too much trouble. In space, things are spread out and it's rare that you'll need full-scale collision detection.

But it in the rare instance something DOES collide, you don't want the object just phasing through each other or have an unstoppable force colliding with an immovable object.

Actually, how are you handling ship-to-ship collisions?

Alright, it's been a loooong time since I've discussed it, and I won't get into detail here.
Essentially collision detection consists of checking progressively more accurate bounding dimensions, each one completely inside the one before it. If there is no collision in a coarse box surrounding the entire piece of debris, there is no reason to look any deeper into the structure. In space, things will be spread out enough they can be treated as bounding boxes or spheres almost all the time, regardless of the actual complexity of their surface.

@Keon
I can add an inertial dampening factor based on some shared frame of reference for the area. Things will still move around in space, but they'll appear to all be very slow or stationary when you match their orbit vector.

@joykler
Re-mounting blocks to the grid probably won't happen because everything is moving in space, including the planets. Anything stationary couldn't follow the orbit.

[Keon]

@Keon
I can add an inertial dampening factor based on some shared frame of reference for the area. Things will still move around in space, but they'll appear to all be very slow or stationary when you match their orbit vector.

Are we having realistic orbits?

[fr0stbyte124]

We will have "close enough" orbits. It would be cool to have the real thing, and park things at Lagrange points, but that would be approaching KSP complexity, which I think will make things unnecessarily difficult. We are by no means dealing with precision instruments here.

[Keon]

KSP doesn't have lagrange points.

[fr0stbyte124]

Sure it does. If the moon orbits the planet and the ship is affected by both gravity wells at the same time, there's like 5 different places you can keep it stationary. They're probably not labeled, but they're there.

Anyway, it was the whole plotting your course and trajectory thing I was referring to. In not-realistic space games you have enough horsepower that you can just go wherever you like. Considering we can hop between planets, that seems to be the case here, too.