Turret Slot Block

[Ohm is Futile]

So we have a turret rotation lock block, ship blueprints, and so on, but I feel we lack something that would make swapping turrets so much easier.

 

I suggest thee the Turret Slot block! Available as a pre-fab block for each size factor (associated to tech level, iirc), these could be placed on your ship and not do anything to it physically, beyond showing something similar to a holographic block and preventing placing other blocks that would otherwise make the placement of a turret invalid. All of this would be available in the standard ship building screen.

 

Placing such a block, beyond "reserving" the spot for a turret, would create an empty slot in the ship's UI where you assign numbers to turrets. This slot should show the maximum turret size in its tooltip as well as the supporting block's material. The menu should now show your turrets' inventory and allow for simple drag and dropping of turrets into these slots, placing the turret there (or removing it!) without having to go through build mode.

 

Furthermore, it may be of interest to integrate a short string field when placing these blocks where players may write a few words to describe the position of the slot. This information would also appear in the tooltip when mousing over a slot in the UI. Alternatively, it may be interesting to allow players to color those blocks and have the slot display its color in the UI as the background for that slot.

 

This would allow for schematics to save turret emplacements and allow for easy and convenient swapping of turrets. The number of blocks that can be placed should not be tied to your ship's maximum capacity, only the actual act of placing turrets in them should be restricted by your ship's limit. This avoids issues with swapping modules or building that ship from a blueprint and losing most of the turret emplacements.

 

All of this saves a lot of time and messing around trying to select turrets and shifting them around as well as making life a lot easier when you want to upgrade turrets or whatever.

 

Thoughts, comments, approval?

[GrimJahk]

I posted something similar a few days back.

 

 

[Ohm is Futile]

Ah, I went back a few pages looking at titles. I'm honestly kinda discouraged by the sheer number of suggestions that seem to be posted here, but I thought I would post about it since I didn't see anything that hinted of being similar to my idea. I'll give your post a look!

 

EDIT: Looked at it, looked at your signature, thought of like minds and all that. I feel as though my suggestion is a bit more fleshed out, though. Also not sure about why there's a guy talking about differences in turret placement? From what I can tell, you didn't suggest specifically that this would be a block "on which" turrets would appear. In fact, in a way, you might as well have suggested the same thing I did. The only difference is that I specify that it is basically a ghost image of a turret and not really a block the way the rotation lock block works.

[GrimJahk]

Yup, sometimes I am far more clear in my mind than I am in text ;)

 

My original thought was around improving on organization, then switched to having Hardpoints that a player can swap out turrets without entering Build Mode. Then evolved... LOL

 

I try not to flesh out too many details at first because it's an awful lot of work, that is wasted if no one is interested

[Ohm is Futile]

Yup, sometimes I am far more clear in my mind than I am in text ;)

 

My original thought was around improving on organization, then switched to having Hardpoints that a player can swap out turrets without entering Build Mode. Then evolved... LOL

 

I try not to flesh out too many details at first because it's an awful lot of work, that is wasted if no one is interested

Agreed, fleshing out an idea is a double-edged sword, it can both help an idea gain popularity or cause it to get disregarded even if the core idea is good. Which is why I go the extra mile and try to explain both the core idea and give an example and openly state what kinda variables I see playing into whatever idea I may have.

 

That then results in long posts which may get disregarded based on length... which then further discourages suggestions when you consider the sheer amount of them. I do hope there's staff dedicated to this section, since I think this is such a great game with huge potential and I'd love to pitch in despite being relatively poorly educated in game development.

[GrimJahk]

Yup... Fleshing out shows you care, or at least thought it out and not doing Knee jerk reactions to events.

 

Wall-o-text scares away conversation.

 

Still a small community, small company, amazing but young product... all the perfect elements for people with ideas and passion to pitch in and help...

[freelikegnu]

I would love to position turret mount positions in build mode and then choose where they are placed and chose hotkeys in a ui similar to the upgrade slots where I can quickly view my turrets and drop them into the preferred location.

[Ohm is Futile]

I would love to position turret mount positions in build mode and then choose where they are placed and chose hotkeys in a ui similar to the upgrade slots where I can quickly view my turrets and drop them into the preferred location.

Glad to hear you agree. Honestly feels this needs to be in the game. This feature should remain useful regardless of what changes may happen to turrets in the future.