Thruster VFX on hover pods

[ProPeach]

The return of the thruster plume effects is great to see! Makes your ship feel far more believable and real. It reminded me of something though and I had to go through some old videos to find it, there used to be a similar effect for hover pods!

(timestamped video) https://youtu.be/9fY5FbaAlNs?t=82

The thrust plume there is again really cool, but I think the best bit about that clip is the slight gimbal/tilting movement of the pods as they apply thrust. The whole car seems way more alive with that slight motion, it'd be awesome to see that return too when you have time

[PopkaAkula]

As a person that likes building hovercraft a lot this would be a very welcome change, and would also justify the very large hitboxes of the hoverpods.

[tsunamayo]

So I fixed the VFX. For the rest as it require a deeper redesign (code + mesh), so I am considering bigger changes:

• Trashing the current rounded design, which I never liked. I would replace this by gimballed thruster, maybe one rounded and one squared, but more neutral and blocky.
• I am also considering simplifying the system by using standard thruster for making hovercraft, in which case I would still give the previous design - so they could be used on spaceship either.
• Do some more cheating in the hovercraft balance, so people dont need to place them smartly (apparently it was too hard for plenty of folks - even if it is just like a car but anyway)

[ProPeach]

Thanks for the VFX fix!

Oh hmm I see, so there's an opportunity for a redesign. Personally I like the spherical look, especially for hovercars as it fits nicely as a kind of futuristic wheel. I can see why you'd want to change it up with new shapes though, that seems exciting.

For me the biggest problem in working with the existing pods is there huge hitbox. It can be difficult to fit them in to designs, for example the AE86 I built in the sinking hovercraft report has hover pods which are clipped just so they fit in the wheel well. The hit box has so much empty space that I had to, the other option would have been making a fake wheel ans lining the bottom with lots of smaller hovers.

With regards to the balancing, yeah making it a bit more forgiving could help. In the car example, sure you can just put one on each corner, but sometimes the car frame itself is not balanced before you put the hovers on which means the craft is tilted. Say you have all your reactors/thrusters at one end, or a big cockpit on one side.

[BigBadKangaroo]

So I fixed the VFX. For the rest as it require a deeper redesign (code + mesh), so I am considering bigger changes:

* Trashing the current rounded design, which I never liked. I would replace this by gimballed thruster, maybe one rounded and one squared, but more neutral and blocky.

* I am also considering simplifying the system by using standard thruster for making hovercraft, in which case I would still give the previous design - so they could be used on spaceship either.

* Do some more cheating in the hovercraft balance, so people dont need to place them smartly (apparently it was too hard for plenty of folks - even if it is just like a car but anyway)

Hi there,

1. I quite like the rounded design and would like to keep it if it can get the "functionality" back. If it's too much effort to get them working - scrap them and make new and better ones :D Would love to see what you come up with as for a new design.
2. I don't really like the idea of using regular thruster as "hoverpods". Having a seperate block is more straight forward imo and gives additional build options.
3. When some players have issues with getting their hovercraft to work right, we could need an option in the hovercraft computer for an "easy-mode" where hoverpods don't need to be placed in the "right" position - as long as a hoverpod large enough is placed on the craft it works fine and balances itself out. *Edit: I think and "easy-mode" option could give a lot of players more options to build cool looking hovercrafts that wouldn't work right now

[Kaiser-Indrasil]

My big gripe with the hover pods is their square hitbox. If the hover tech using standard thrusters meant no hitbox problems, I'd take that over a separate model for the hover pods.

My second, lesser problem with the hover tech is that, it's not hard to sorta balance the craft. BUT if you wanted it to level itself perfectly along the ground, that's next to impossible, as it always ends up leaning forwards or backwards.