Why Cosmoteer ship design is Counter-Intuitive

Equalizer

... or why new players' ship are almost always terrible.

1. Power and Ammo production placement
In basically all sci-fi setting power / ammo generation is largely centralized however doing this in Cosmoteer guarantees you an ineffective ship.

Due to the low storage capacity of weapons, high power / ammo usage, and very low through-put and high latency of crew carrying stuff without power / ammo production being basically right beside the things that use them most parts will not be operation most of the time.

2. Shield and Thruster placement
The shield and thruster exclusion zone gives the impression that they should be placed at the edge of a ship. However this is very rarely a good idea. This is due to the shields and thrusters need almost direct power or they will be largely ineffective (see 1.) and placing them on the edge of a ship wastes surface area (see 4.).

Internal facing thrusters (most importantly reverse thrusters) are counter intuitive and almost necessary.

3. Crew placement
Similar to 1. it may be expected that crew quarters should be placed centrally. However, crew are slow to respond to supply requests, so again a ship will have many of its weapons and shields at the start of battle go non-operational due to the time crew take to wander from the crew quarters to where they are needed.

4. Ship shape (or the tyranny of surface area)
With the exception of railguns all other weapons require large amounts of surface area on a ship to increase its firepower. Many traditional sci-fi ship shapes have too low frontal surface area to be effective with almost all of the current weapons. This leads to the prevalence of wall shaped ships.

The flips side is that ships that aren't walls having a huge amount of internal space that there is no good use for. This leads to it tending to be filled with armor (ridiculously slow ship), crew (ridiculously expensive ship), random stuff (more wasted credits), or, the 'correct' counter-intuitive way, left empty (which typically looks terrible).

Northerner

Equalizer I think of cosmoteer more as a space ship themed factorio... Maybe that's why I've been pretty good since the beginning? A lot of concepts carry over from factorio to this game and It's much less daunting than factorio in terms of resource management , man i love factorio, but it is much more focused on combat than factorio. Play factorio, love factorio, LIVE FACTORIO!... Cough factorio is pretty good I'd recommend it! I've only spent 1000+ hours in that game!

More on topic if thrusters produced 360° thrust many players ship designs would be better, crew placement is less important than you think (remember who is saying this) so is ammo placement. Power is a different story. As far as shape goes you can make very good looking ships that fit the sci-fi aesthetic well but I will agree it isn't the easiest thing to do all you need to do is be creative!

Northerner

Equalizer Anyway I think the building is intuitive. But I say we need more parts that do things to fill out ships better. Which is something I am actively trying to do.

Dalas120

Equalizer 1. Power and Ammo production placement

The missiles update should help at least a little with these problems, since most of the missiles can be carried longer distances. They'll be highly explosive though and will benefit from sharing power/ammo with other parts, so internal design will hopefully still matter.

Conveyors are also getting significant buffs in 0.14.5, which should also help somewhat.

Upcoming larger reactors will also change this significantly. Depending on just how big reactors are, there might be situations where you only have 1 or 2 centralized reactors on a big 1mil ship. AFAIK the current plan is for them to produce larger batteries which will be more crew-efficient than the current reactor.

Equalizer 2. Shield and Thruster placement

You know, that's a good point. Why do shields have that exclusion zone, since 99% of the time they're used exactly like a 2x4 part. The exclusion zone is just kind of.... there. I'm not sure what a solution is, or if any is even needed.

Regarding thrusters, I kind of agree with you but I'm also not sure what the solution is. Just increasing the exclusion zones breaks existing designs, and viable internal thrusters isn't necessarily a bad thing.

Equalizer 3. Crew placement

Larger reactors might help this a little, since you'll want to put your quarters near the (hopefully centralized) reactor for faster response time. We'll probably have to wait for crew 2.0 for major changes though.

Equalizer 4. Ship shape (or the tyranny of surface area)

0.14.5 missiles can probably improve this, since some of them they are cheaper to store than to produce (missile storage might be a good way to fill internal space), and they all don't take much forward surface area (even the unguided ones)

Hopefully the tractor beam (which IIRC is going to be an internal part) and upcoming larger reactors can help some as well. Blink drive/multiplayer FTL and new control room types might help a little with surface area too, depending on how much space they need.

Equalizer I think the importance of logistics / what good logistics looks like currently isn't made very clear in the game
(I am looking at you inefficient built-in bounty mode ships).

Yeah, I fully agree. 80% of making a good ship is internal design, and the built-in ships will need a big revamp to help new players learn, probably when parts are finished and walt gets around to building a dedicated single-player mode.

Though I think it's important that if internal design does get more intuitive, we need to be careful that it doesn't get so intuitive that it becomes easy, or simple. Internal design is one of cosmoteer's main attractions, and if the learning curve gets too flat then players will feel like there's nothing to master. It feels amazing when you learn to stop making basic mistakes and your ships triple in strength, and IMO that's an important joy to keep.

Alpha

Northerner

Northerner 1000+ hours

And I'm shocked when I notice I spent 100+ hours on a game that I still play...

Northerner

Alpha I've also spent 300+ Hours on "From the Depths" "Terra Tech" and "Space Engineers"... I don't have friends but who needs them right? Ha ha! sobs

Alpha

Northerner Most of my games are singleplayer, but I wouldn't know how to survive without friends. Even interesting subjects at school get boring after too long. We all need somebody to have a laugh with and make otherwise generic days unique. 😃

Namek

Alpha
Northerner

Im with Northerner, who needs friends. when you have an internet connection!

Equalizer

Northerner I suppose people that have played logistics centered games (factorio is an obvious example) shouldn't have issues with Cosmoteer power and ammo.

However, I get the impression that many new players do not have this background and this is a major cause of ineffective ship designs.

I think the importance of logistics / what good logistics looks like currently isn't made very clear in the game
(I am looking at you inefficient built-in bounty mode ships).

Minion222

Namek looks at this forum and discord

Northerner

Equalizer I agree with your point, and expanding on what you said there, the built-in ships are not that effective and don't really give you a good direction on how to build effective ships.

However I also feel the built-in ships have extra space to accommodate parts that are planned in the future (at least that seemed to be the case with boost thrusters, engine rooms, and large blasters) so that opinion may change in the future.

I feel the guides on the forums about proper ship building help newer players and if they choose to play my mod it also gives players a better idea on what a effective ship design looks like.

Walt

Dalas120 AFAIK the current plan is for them to produce larger batteries which will be more crew-efficient than the current reactor.

Yup, that's the plan. I'm hoping we'll start seeing larger, more centralized with reactors in conjunction with satellite power storages that can be efficiently resupplied with the higher-capacity batteries.

Dalas120 You know, that's a good point. Why do shields have that exclusion zone, since 99% of the time they're used exactly like a 2x4 part. The exclusion zone is just kind of.... there. I'm not sure what a solution is, or if any is even needed.

Interior shields were originally intended to be a more niche case than they've turned out to be. I've sometimes thought about increasing the no-build zone to 3.

Dalas120 the tractor beam (which IIRC is going to be an internal part)

My current thinking is it's a 4x4 internal part with a 360 degree rotation.

Dalas120 new control room types

Still unsure of underlying mechanics to justify larger control rooms.

Kroom

Walt Maybe larger control rooms can be used to unlock special parts that increase weapon range, i also think that bigger parts should have more weight per block to make bigger ship heavier but also have more range.

beef1213

Walt what if large reactors(and only large reactors could have supply-lines that stick out and transport the power too the various rooms (but not directly in the rooms, to a 1x1 block i suppose) the crew would still have to load it both in the supply lines and back out of them so they wont become obsolete

mleise

Kroom i also think that bigger parts should have more weight per block to make bigger ship heavier

That is interesting, because one reason big ships don't feel heavy (aside from internal thrusters) is that they are flat discs in a 2D world still while their sci-fi counterparts are several stories high. Giving big parts more density would rectify this and the bonuses you mentioned would make it worthwhile.
Caveat: They'd still be able to rotate quickly, when those parts are all around the center of mass unless someone comes up with an agreeable solution to that. My best bet would be a maximum g-force from rotation on any part of the ship beyond which it would not accelerate further to prevent the ship from shattering. There is a reason CD-ROM drives maxed out at 52x speed. :p

Oneye

beef1213 https://forum.cosmoteer.net/d/7174-an-idea-for-power-conduits