Hello everyone!
With just over a week to go before launch, we’re going to take a look at building machines for space, examining some blocks in greater detail and exploring some important concepts you’ll want to consider when building your spacecraft!
Balancing Load & Fuel
So, first things first, getting off the ground with your rocket ship!
One of the most important balancing acts you’ll need to embrace when creating spacecraft in The Broken Beyond is ensuring you have enough thrust to get the mass of your machine into space.
There are three elements to this equation you’ll need to balance; Weight, Thrust & Fuel.
The greater your machine’s weight, the more thrust you’ll need to get it off the ground.
The greater your machine’s thrust, the more fuel it’ll use.
The more fuel stored on your ship, the greater its mass (weight). And so on…
With the new blocks added by the expansion, there are a lot of different configurations of boosters and fuel storage for you to experiment with to find what’s right for your machines.
Burning a low amount of fuel to generate a low amount of thrust over a long period is very inefficient. You’ll need to find a good middle ground where you’re generating a good amount of thrust, but not burning through your fuel reserves too quickly.
Those of you who are particularly discerning have already figured out that stacking small fuel barrels together provides more storage than a large fuel barrel while taking up the same space. However, a Large barrel storing 100 Fuel has a lower overall mass than 10 Small barrels storing 10 Fuel each.
However, a key difference between using a single Large Fuel Barrel and using several Small Fuel Barrels, is large ones have better wet to dry mass ratio. This means that a greater proportion of the blocks total mass comes from the fuel it contains and when a Large Fuel Barrel is emptied its mass will be lower than Small Barrels capable of holding an equivalent quantity of fuel.
Another important consideration is that the Large Fuel Barrel has significantly more attach points for linking it to other blocks. This makes it ideal to form the main structure of your machine, whereas Small Fuel Barrels stacked together provide far less points of attachment.
If you’re trying to be space efficient and maximise the quantity of fuel your machine can carry, small barrels are the way to go, but if you’re trying to be efficient with your mass to fuel ratio, large barrels are superior. There are tradeoffs with everything.
Another thing you might want to consider is separating your machine into two separate fuel networks if you’re using boosters and weapons that require fuel, like the Flamethrower or Blaster. If your fuel reserves run low, you might find your boosters draining the ammunition from your weapons to power themselves!
Multistage systems are also a great way to make your spacecraft more mass-efficient, allowing you to jettison empty fuel storage or other systems that are no longer needed to complete your mission.
Steering in Zero Gravity
We briefly touched upon steering in space in our 3rd development post but it’s an area we’d like to expand upon a bit here as well.
For steering in space, there are 3 new main blocks you could use; the Control Thruster, The Inertial Steering block and the Booster block.
The Booster is designed to output large amounts of thrust and that coupled with the fact it consumes fuel, means it’s not ideal for reorienting your machine, unless speed is more important to you than control.
The Inertial Steering block is by far the most effective method for rotating your machine and it scales well with your machines size, making it impactful even with the largest of machine designs.
The Control thrust might offer a degree of finer control than the Inertial block, but the main reason we added it to the game was to allow players to create realistic replicas of real spacecraft. Control Thrusters can technically also be used as a method of low-impact propulsion for maneuvering your craft around in zero gravity.
Both the Control Thruster and Inertial Steering block also have an option for countering rotation, making it easier for you to stop your machine spinning. While this is very useful, it’s worth noting that the Control Thruster has the potential to knock you out of a stable orbit as it makes continual adjustments.
Atmospheres & Aerodynamics
As discussed in previous posts, The Broken Beyond features atmospheres which enable aerodynamic blocks to function.
Aerodynamic forces however are not consistent across all atmospheres as their density can vary, with lower density atmospheres providing less aerodynamic forces on your machine. There also isn’t a hard edge to atmospheres where aerodynamics suddenly cease to function, the forces will fade as you transition into space with an approximation of the barometric formula.
As a practical example, creating a plane for use in a low density atmosphere (like a gas cloud in space) will require its design to maximise lift and propulsion in order to function properly.
We also briefly mentioned in a previous development post that entering an atmosphere too quickly or at a bad angle can significantly heat your machine, causing it to burn up. This hazard can be countered by heat-shielding your machine using armour and some other metal blocks to protect vulnerable parts from burning. Placing these parts on the forward facing parts of your machine means they’ll take on the brunt of the heat during re-entry.
Misc Points
Another area of Besiege that works differently in space is fire. Although it is still possible to create flame outside of an atmosphere, in many instances it’s a lot less reliable and the risk of fire spreading between blocks is significantly reduced.
A classic method of propulsion in Besiege is heating a water cannon with a torch to produce steam, but in space torches are unreliable and don’t provide a constant flame. If you wish to use this propulsion method outside an atmosphere, you’ll need to use a Flamethrower which in turn requires fuel.
Something else to consider when designing your machines for space is that you’ll rarely need to fire in the same direction that your ship is pointing. So placing all your weapons facing forward isn’t always wise and you may wish to create turrets to ensure you can target enemies independently from your ships flight direction.
That’s everything for this post, next week will be the final development post before the expansion’s launch on the 22nd of June and we’ll be taking a look at some of the new levels which make up the space campaign!
We hope you’re as hyped as we are for the release and encourage you to wishlist The Broken Beyond if you haven’t already.
Cheers everyone,
Von
Previous Development Posts
Post 1 - Simulating Planets & Gravity
Post 2 - Simulating Atmospheres and Trajectory Prediction
Post 3 - Space Blocks
Post 4 - Fuel System & Blocks