Laser weapon blocked from firing

[Cpt-Fortius]

Short Description of the issue:

Long time no see! Great to have the mechs back! Good job!

Problem: Bricks built in front of "Laser" weapon block weapon from firing.

Steps to reproduce the issue:

Place "Laser" weapon, blace bricks in front of it, try to shoot.

Environment

• Starship EVO version: 24w27a + anything older

Additional information:

Why is it a problem: Limits options for decoration / accurate replicas. I like to completely hide all weapon blocks.

Desired outcome: Own weapons' fire should pass through any blocks on the same child entity. It seems like a good compromise between being able to build nicer things without enabling exploits like shooting through your own walls with your turrets on the opposite side.

[Azathoh-the-blind-idiot-god]

making projectiles pass harmlessly through the entity that fired them would allow people to just bury their weapons in meters of armor, making it effectively impossible to target them specifically. I also like building with aesthetics over function but I do think that this game should be designed to be fun, even if that means that 100% accurate replicas will be impossible.

[Cpt-Fortius]

Well, my fun is building accurate replicas that work.

You're partially right, someone COULD just build a cube of doom, but this is hardly a game to be taken seriously in any form of competitive aspect. If anything, if you had to resort to building such a thing, you've already lost, whether you get the most kills or not.

Would that even be an insurmountable advantage? You can fight from pretty long ranges and fly reeeeal fast. I'd say most hits on specific parts are more by luck than effort. And you don't even need to hit the weapons to kill the enemy, so how is it any different than fighting an armor cube that has weapons on every surface, or weapons hidden deep within with little holes to shoot out from? Some of his weapons could break sooner?

At any rate, this is to help small builds - on anything moderately large scale, the stuff that might be worrying from a competitive standpoint, it's easy to build decorative weapon barrels with holes that allow unobstructed function. Little builds, stuff with one 1/8th thin weapons suffer though.

Etc: This barely 3 meters tall Terminator suit I'm working on right now:

4 tiny weapons hidden behind the pipes, maybe half the shots come out. If you're wondering, it gets even worse if I delete the pipes and put one large weapon there + the scale is off.

[ProPeach]

Yeah I don't think allowing weapons to shoot through bricks any more than they already do is a viable solution either. Perhaps if the weapon models were improved so that they visually fit better with the rest of the blocks in sevo, this issue could be reduced? It would mean players don't feel that they have to hide them in order to get the look they want.

Like for example, removing the gap between a laser brick and a barrel placed on it so the whole weapon is one constant diameter. Maybe with a similar system to the Tank Join type brick which appears automatically when you connect pipes to systems etc

[Cpt-Fortius]

Anything's fine really, so long as it looks right. You've nailed it on the head, the weapon blocks look too much like something - like a prefab. Which is fine in something cruder like Space Engineers, but it's troubling in a game with such a fine-scale brick system.

Although I must repeat, I strongly doubt there's any real downside to shooting through same-entity bricks. I can just as easily build a much uglier weapon that has enough holes to shoot through yet is almost impossible to hit in return. -Thus rendering any balance concerns irrelevant.

[Majikmonster]

Although I must repeat, I strongly doubt there's any real downside to shooting through same-entity bricks. I can just as easily build a much uglier weapon that has enough holes to shoot through yet is almost impossible to hit in return. -Thus rendering any balance concerns irrelevant.

This. Hitting the weapons systems of a moving ship even at mid range is like hip-firing at a penny mid-flip. The brick scaling and stretch tech already allows you to build an armor cube with holes large enough to fire through. Firing back and actually hitting said weapon instead of its armor is like a sniper shooting down the barrel of another sniper's rifle. Impressive, but a highly improbable and impractical fringe case to be designing a mechanic around.

Learn from the past, and don't make the same mistake as Schine did with Starmade by tweaking systems to fit a PvP/min-maxing philosophy. You'd be alienating the majority to appease a vocal minority to the same end. Remember the YEARS Schema spent trying to make them happy, only to realize it was driving other players away, a fact he directly addressed a couple years before official development stalled: https://starmadedock.net/threads/starmade-pvp-pve-balance-perspective-direction.31064/

[tsunamayo]

Hi all thanks for the discussion. While I completely understand the need I dont think it is the best thing to do for the game. There will always be a limit to be drawn between building freedom and gameplay. You know I have worked tirelessly to give you the most freedom possible but at the end it is a game not blender. I think it it would look just illogical. I can see newcomer seeing it as a bug and making a bug report.

=> one question: if there is just a single brick (or several brick but all in contact with the end of the weapon), does it breaks it? It should not according to how raycast work, giving you a bit of latitude to play with.

btw your suit is amazing.

[ProPeach]

=> one question: if there is just a single brick (or several brick but all in contact with the end of the weapon), does it breaks it? It should not according to how raycast work, giving you a bit of latitude to play with.

That still works, I think the rule is that a laser of 0.5m length can fire through 0.5m of bricks etc, at least that's what I've found. It is nice to have that little bit of leeway to play with yeah

[Majikmonster]

=> one question: if there is just a single brick (or several brick but all in contact with the end of the weapon), does it breaks it? It should not according to how raycast work, giving you a bit of latitude to play with.

That still works, I think the rule is that a laser of 0.5m length can fire through 0.5m of bricks etc, at least that's what I've found. It is nice to have that little bit of leeway to play with yeah

I thought this is what Cpt Fortius and me were concerned was happening, the quiet removal of this feature. Glad to know it's the raycast, an innate mechanic of the engine, that allows for wiggle room, and that ultimately we both got (already had) what we wanted without needing a change XD. I was unaware the weapon length was shorter than the barrels on the mech. My prior points stand uncontested.

@Cpt-Fortius FYI, layering bricks, even in the beam/laser raycast 'dead zone' can cause issues, at least last I tested.