Recoving my wrecked ship

[Scoob]

Hey all,

 

I did a quick search on this subject (Google) but it was returning quite old information, so I'll ask again for hopefully some responses for the current version.

 

Basically, not quite an hour in, I'd created a nice mother ship over-spec'd for future expansion.  I was quite pleased with it.  However, during a mining operation I must have nudged the asteroid and my ship was destroyed.  I say "destroyed" but it was just the front block - the starter block, if that's the right word - that was destroyed.  I think I fell foul of going into a menu, exiting then having my ship rotate quickly to align to the mouse, it then whacked the asteroid and was dead.

 

So, I'm in the Drone thing - basically what I started with - looking at my 99% intact ship, which is quite literally just missing one block.  Can I salvage this from the Drone?

 

Cheers,

 

Scoob.

[Shrooblord]

Hey. The Mining Drone is equipped with Mining Lasers only, so trying to salvage anything with it will only damage that wreck's hull without returning (much) material. You'll need to try and build a quick temporary craft and mount some Salvaging Lasers on it if you want to salvage the wreck.

 

Or perhaps you meant "salvage this" as in "save this situation"? Sorry, no. If it is as you say and the root block of the ship was destroyed, that's all the game looks for to see if the ship gets destroyed. Well, I say that. It's one of the death conditions for a ship. Another is the "total hull integrity" also known as a ship's healthbar. If that gets depleted, or your root block itself gets destroyed, the ship blows up, no save.

The best you can do at this point is salvage the wreck and modify the design to better protect the root block for the future.

[Scoob]

Thanks for the reply - I suspected as much!  I think it would be nice to be able to recover a ship that's intact bar one block, not sure if it's a plan for the future or not.

 

That said, I'll likely just start again as I've not played for ages and am basically re-learning things.  I do have a long-term save from ages ago, but didn't know what oddities I might experience continuing such an old save.

 

For now, ship building 101 would suggest I enclose that starter block to protect it.  Lesson learnt....again lol.

 

Scoob.

[Nachtu]

If it is as you say and the root block of the ship was destroyed, that's all the game looks for to see if the ship gets destroyed. Well, I say that.

 

Is that the case? I swear I've built ships and deleted the root blocks many times afterwards in the build mode.

[Scoob]

Urgh, just noticed the typo in the thread title lol.

 

I'm going to start a new game in a bit and be a little less ambitious with my initial design & protect the starter block.

 

I expect I can delete the starter block in build mode, but if it's destroyed that's it for that ship.

 

Scoob.

[Shrooblord]

If it is as you say and the root block of the ship was destroyed, that's all the game looks for to see if the ship gets destroyed. Well, I say that.

Is that the case? I swear I've built ships and deleted the root blocks many times afterwards in the build mode.

I believe one of the Loading Screen Tips informs you about this.

 

But yes, in Build Mode, you should be able to destroy the root block with Safe Mode turned off, and the nearest block attached to it will become the new root block. I say should because I've had three separate instances of my ship plain blowing up when I deleted the root block, the game deleting all blocks "chained to it" in the process. Sadness.

 

So far, I've discovered that it's probably(?!) safe if you delete the root block, but there's another block attached behind it, yet if the root block only has blocks attached on its front face, you die, no save. But I'm a little fuzzy on that since I haven't experimented too much with it, the matter altogether is rather confusing, and you can imagine me not wanting to find out whether or not a certain deletion blows up my ship and sends me back home crying for repairs.

 

In general I'd say it's best to never touch your root block ever again after you begin construction, but I get how that's kinda a moot point given that you wouldn't anyway in a perfect world where everything you imagine ends up working out design-wise as you expected, but that's not how the cookie crumbles. I digress. I turn my root block into a Flight Recorder using the Transform Block tool, then encase it in Armour Blocks or something similar, and then start my actual design of the ship, with any ship I build. That's pretty much my MO. ;)

 

P.S.

For those interested, the more technical explanation to why deleting the root block could lead to the whole ship exploding in a great fireball is because data about ship designs is stored in what in the programming field is called BSP Trees. Think of these like hierarchies. If you've ever seen a family tree, those things: one thing is the "origin", and from that, multiple things are attached and branch off into numerous other things. The root block is, quite literally, the root of this BSP Tree, so cutting it down fells the entire tree.

 

It makes sense programmatically, but I haven't quite figured out yet what the "attachment rules" are, i.e. when a block is considered a "child" of the root block and when it is considered a "neighbour" or "cousin" I guess (if you want to keep with family naming schemes): blocks placed in front tend to be children, but not always. Blocks placed behind tend to be cousins, but not always. I haven't the foggiest about the rules concerning left-right and above-below placements. Again, this could use some proper experimentation / code sniffing to find out the exact rules, to better inform the community as a whole and prevent this sort of problem from happening again.

[Exarag]

Hello, I have just registered just to answer your question :D

 

Anyway, what I do most of the time with the root block is that I select it, transform it to any other type of block I like to (there is tool for that in a build mode) and then I scale the block up (another tool that allows changing material and scale of the whole ship). Once the root block has the material, function and scale I like, I build the rest of the ship around it.

[MetalX]

I always protect my root block in middle and late game ships.  First, I transform the root block into an armor block.  Next I scale the root/armor clock into a block twice its starting size, so now, 4X4X4.  Lastly I build the rest of the ship around it. 

 

First off, armor blocks have huge health totals.  Doubling its size in every direction increases that total exponentially.  And lastly, the rest of the ship being built around it makes it even harder to get to.

 

Still, it is not impossible to destroy, but now it is much, MUCH more difficult to destroy.