In Sci-Fi universes which bother to explain their FTL technology, ships usually require serious hardware in order to move around. Star Trek ships have warp nacelles, which use coils to create a warp field around the ship.
Other ship systems such as cloaking, weapons, and shields are far more complicated to setup and operate than the warp drive itself, which is the most critical component of a ship.
What I propose is a redesign to the way ship dimensions are handled:
- Add a new 'Warp Field Emitter' block, which could be either physically linked to the Ship Core via cables, or linked via frequency.
- These could either be powered independently, or draw energy directly from the ship code.
- Placement of these blocks around the Ship Core would determine the shape of the rectangular warp field, which is currently set using the Ship Controller Lua API.
- Stacking these blocks (like the particle booster can be stacked) along an axis could effect how far out the warp field is extended, with longer stacks extending the warp field much further on that axis. This would allow for creating Trek-style nacelles, or placing the blocks individually in many places on/near the outer hull.
- Additional methods would be added to the ship controller for interacting with these blocks (Get a list of all emitters, turn individual emitters on and off, etc).
- Shrinking of the warp field (for example, if an emitter was destroyed during combat) would prompt a warning from the ship controller when attempting to jump, requiring a second call to confirm the jump. This reduces the risk of a player accidentally leaving part of their ship behind because it was damaged during combat.
A system like this would give the external design of the ship more meaning, while not severely restricting possible hull designs. This might make combat more interesting, since the warp drive would have multiple points of failure, rather than being completely protected in the center of the ship. Implementation of this is probably also more performance-friendly than the flood-fill solution proposed in #29.
In Sci-Fi universes which bother to explain their FTL technology, ships usually require serious hardware in order to move around. Star Trek ships have warp nacelles, which use coils to create a warp field around the ship.
Other ship systems such as cloaking, weapons, and shields are far more complicated to setup and operate than the warp drive itself, which is the most critical component of a ship.
What I propose is a redesign to the way ship dimensions are handled:
A system like this would give the external design of the ship more meaning, while not severely restricting possible hull designs. This might make combat more interesting, since the warp drive would have multiple points of failure, rather than being completely protected in the center of the ship. Implementation of this is probably also more performance-friendly than the flood-fill solution proposed in #29.