Space Engineers

[Tleno]

You know, thruster effect won't disapear when you deactivate engine. Its stays like this and it confuses alot. And I'd say that hardest part to build are thrusters. They are actually the only problem... you know, you should make some kinda like hull pattern that gives you ship hull with already prepared thruster and other basic systems or at least rework the thruster system - its really overcomplicated.
On the good side, it looks like creating huge battle cruisers instead of small fighters is more fun - you can create huge spining "bosses" wich are completely immobile, but they spin shooting in all directions, just like in old video games... its really fun to make it...
And maybe, since its sci-fi map, you should create more sci-fiish grey descriptions? You know, explanation that plasma is not reall won't give the map any atmosphere...

 

[M0RT]

Thruster effect is not done, I already said, I have no idea how to work with particle emmiters, so once I get a better model, it will look better.
Working on patterns (I just completed code generator, I will add save/load feature for ships and some patters, which will use the same system)
Also, I am preparing an algorithm that will automaticly bind your engines to your keys, so that the ships are easy to control
Yeah, about plasma, I could alter that one, the thing is I don't want to write anything that would be wrong, there are children playing warcraft and I can't give them wrong idea of how the technology works, that would be irresponsible. But it's true I can at least rephrase that

 

[warman45]

plasma is a state of matter isn't it?

as we'll the stabalizers should also stop you're ship from "sliding"(you put engines on full then turn and now you're drifting, way to go, good luck controlling that!)

 

[M0RT]

Yes, it's a state of matter, basically ionnized gas.

Sliding: first, physically it is nonsence, there is no way to determine whether you are moving or not from inside the ship. But that's not "that" important, as the effect on game. If I made the left-right and top-bottom sides continuos, there would be "no reason to stop".
By the way, I noticed in the current version, that sometimes the ship will start rotating by itself (while I had all three engines on, the resulting rotation should be zero, it was, but once in a while it suddenly started rotating) anyone noticed that?

 

[Tleno]

Yup. Sometimes when you activate thrusters in both directions (Left and Right), he starts to spin chaotically. And what do you mean "children"? Children won't read those old booring descriptions, wroten by some science geek... no offence...
Also I was just thinking so you could colourize or someway mark your ship's tiles so you could understand where's what if you would make simetrical ship...

 

[M0RT]

Yeah colourizing could work, as long as only some tiles are colourized, but actually I inteded to colourize the entire ship in team colors (in team games), so maybe I will need to create some color mixer
Also I somehow fixed the engine flames, now they only show when the engines are on (although they don't show the power level, it is still much better)
In other news, ship load/save system is going pretty well, maybe i'll finish it today. Same for ship damage system, but that one is harder, I am not sure whether the script fails because of an error or because of JASS operation limit (thats the property of JASS I really hate).
You're right about the chidren, I already changed the description for plasma guns, but still I want to maintain the main purpose of these text, to inform everyone who isn't a "science geek" about some interesting technology that is used today, and you don't see them in sci-fi.
Uncontrollable spinning: I tested it multiple times today on different ships, the problem seems to have dissapeared, but I will test it further, there is propably a hidden bug somewhere.

 

[M0RT]

New version out, you can shoot each other now and the ships fall apart really nice. Also, I implemented ship save/load system, you get your code when you enter the test phase, and can enter it again in hull phase (the code is not protected in any way, so if you enter it wrong, some messed up ship will come out). Loading works for red player only so far (it is in test mode, so if chat anything, it will consider it a code and will try to load it )

 

[masterofra]

Brilliant Game idea. A few bugs(or deficiency on my part)
- if you build a valid ship, test, go back to building, and test again, the game's fps drops. The bigger the ship, the bigger the drop(i built a battlestation). its either leaks, or when you go back to build mode, your stuff isn't recycled or something else.

- There is no way to fire weapons.

- The fuel tanks are ~45 degrees off, when turning them, turn them 45 degres less/more

Also, when you have a turnable object selected, and you turn it, display text, or a temp floating text that displays the angle it was set to. also either allow text commands to be issued that set the angle, or add these abilitys
+ 1 degree
+ 5 degrees
+ 15 degrees
+ 45 degrees
(no ' - ' needed, because angles loop after 360, but you could add a toggle sign option)

 

[Landmine]

I just found something:
A weapon/engine tile is in contact with the edge of the build-able tiles (so have an engine tile at the very bottom tile), the game thinks it is pointed at the ship, no matter what you do (so you can't move on).

 

[M0RT]

FPS drop noted, going to look into that. Btw I tried the game for 12 players, FPS dropped to almost zero, so I spent last two days optimizing and tweaking the code, now it runs pretty good even for 12.
Weapons need to be assigned to hotkeys just like engines and they work. ( I already created auto-bind function, but it still has some bugs)
Fuel tanks are 45 degrees off, I know about that, its caused by the model, which is just 45 degrees wrong, just like all building models in wc3. Going to edit the model at some point, if I figure out how

The facing issue: indeed a bug, but you can move on, it works like this: I use a 1-dimension array to simulate a 9x9 grid. The script takes the id of the tile and substracts one to get id of tile one unit to south. If it is an edge tile, the id-1 becomes the top tile of the previous column (starting in bottom left corner, so previous would be the one to the left) So if you clear the top tile of the column to the left, it will let you move on. But ofc that is a bug

Thx for reporting bugs, will try to fix them

There already have been some complaining about the angles, I think i will add something like you suggested, thanks

 

[Tleno]

Also I want to discuss about the weapons. First of all what other kinda you want to add... you know, I'd recomend to add automatic turret with shoots automatically into other ships when activates but it spends lots of energy. shots with laser beams. And missle launchers. They need ammo (Needs missle container, just like Fuel Tank they store ammo.) and they are homing and have splash damage. Upgraded versions have special effect instead of damage (EMP, Fletchette) or sacriface homming acuracy for damage.

 

[M0RT]

I updated the first post quite a while ago with a list of devices, laser and missiles weapons are included as well as "turret versions", by which i meant automatic turrets of all three weapon types (they will cause less damage than the "fixed" weapons, ) Ammo containers are also included.
Anyway, the missiles with special effect are interesting, I could add some of them. It may be also interesting if all the missiles shared the same reserve (definetelly better than listing 10 different missile types in the fuel)

 

[The World Is Flat]

Hmm... i don't know, it would be more sratigically interesting to have the missile launcher fire different missiles from different ammo types. you should also have different ML sizes (only for non-turrets) like small medium and large. eg: You put a 'Medium' launcher in, you also put a 'napalm' rocket ammo in, this only fits in medium launchers. and you assign the ammo to the launcher. you can assign multiple different ammo types to a launcher but it takes time to change what you are fireing... you could also, instead of having 4 1x1 missile ammo squares, make the option to connect them into one big one? so that a bunch of launhers can feed off the same ammo pool? ideas...


EDIT:

Yeah, about plasma, I could alter that one, the thing is I don't want to write anything that would be wrong, there are children playing warcraft and I can't give them wrong idea of how the technology works, that would be irresponsible. But it's true I can at least rephrase that

You know that plasma-cutters exsist? they are very efficient, they used superheated gasses to melt perfect holes into metal, and to cut sheets of things that would wear out normal metal blades, if you did have them, they would have to be short range... also do all of you weapons have infinite range? the computer i'm using doesn't have wc3 on it so i can't play the version with the weapons but i hope it does, for realisticnesss sake...


EDIT:

You NEED a gravity cannon:

Type 1:
Cannon: Fires a blast that pushes things away in a line.
Type 2:
Wave: Knockes everything around the ship away. Even missiles, asteroids and ships.
Type 3:
Orb: Fires a ball that sucks things towards it, activates a second after fireing, saving you.
Type 4:
Missile fires a missile that explodes and pushes everything away from where it explodes.
Type 5:
Control Beacon: Pulls somthing in, and holds it in front of the device. uses more energy depending on the size on the object.

 

[M0RT]

Well that seems very interesting, but that would be extremely complicated to control. You would have to either assign tons of hetkeys to every launcher, or I would have to add some further control system to control missile type assignment. If I figure out a way to do it, i would like to add some missile system like that.
Also, i didn't understood what you mean with the 2x2 ammo squares? Devices take resources (fuel, energy, ammo) regardless of where they are placed, the resources are just numbers (again, i would like it to be as simple as possible, just flying the ship is complicated enough )

 

[The World Is Flat]

Ok i updated... my other post... and you mean you can get ammo even if its on the other side of the ship? ok then nvm. i updated my post... you could have a hero button (a dummy) that controls all of your missiles, up to like 2 missile launchers per button, and you would have to either make the controllers as devices or have them made automatically as more launchers were built...

 

[masterofra]

You said you fixed the lag problem, but it doesn't look like you uploaded the new version. Also, I attempted to fix up the engine model (it looks like you used
"buildings/Other/IceTrollHut1/IceTrollHit1.mdx"). I removed the sign, rotated it 37 degrees, removed the sign, and smoothed it out.

EDIT: I could have sworn that I removed the sign correctly, but I redid it
It turned out that what i did in the model editer was saved wrong, and when i reloaded it in the editer after saving it, the red box had reappeared. This time, i completely removed the sign, so it should work.

 

[warman45]

make shure that when ammo cases and power areas are hit they explode and do splash damage

 

[M0RT]

Plasma cutters: didn't know about them, I found a couple of devices using plasma, but this one seems to be closest to a weapon
Gravity gun: there is surely going to be one, I was thinking about the "control beacon", which would then be used to move and pick up objects in space. This would be the most important type, as it will be used in scenario objectives, other maybe later.
Range of weapons: it is not infinite right now (it should be ofc), but I needed to ensure that the game won't crash due to thousands of missiles flying everywhere, so there is a 10 second limit right now. Besides, the range shouldn't be totally infinite, plasma keeps cooling off, missiles need fuel, only lasers are "infinite" (depending on how well they are built)
Masterofra: many thanks, there is just one problem, instead of the removed sign there is a player-colored rectangle.
explosion: I will be glad if the hit area dissapears properly from the ship right now (the ships moves strangely every time a tile falls off), so explosions later, they will appear on all fuel storage devices.

EDIT: New version. I hopefully fixed the FPS drops (bugged unit recycler), ship are falling off now (you can try using -tst to spawn a enemy ship, but it won't move), ship loading now works for every player (with -load before the ship code), and the game should be playable in 12 players (for some reason the maximum number of players was decreased to 6, but I an going to set it back to 12). Also, there is a script for auto-detecting hotkeys, just click the blue arrow when you are in the key binding phase (has some bugs so far)

Changes planned in close future: the engine rotation control, ship hull status in multiboard, map/ship size/scenarion selection

 

[masterofra]

That fixed the lag nicely, I can build and modify my death star now more than once in game
Deathstar, and flying saucer

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kR-origwmooqz)jiNGASUUUSbfMReA

There is a bug that lets you add a hole in the center of your ship, and have engines stick into it. Please do not remove it, it expands immensely the possible ship designs.
I also fixed the team color block in the previous post, it should work now.

 

[warman45]

here i come from that's not called a bug it's called a feature

 

[Tleno]

You know, I tough about special abilities now. You know, you build a special ship module and you get a hero. when you click on your hero it activates ship ability and then you need to wait for recharge.
Okay, so here's the ability list:
Blinding light: Since its multiplayer type map where you oppose players, you should make a special blinding ability wich blinds players (Makes screen black or white or if you will do something wrong blue ) when you click on it. But it requires 20-50 energy, recharges 40 seconds.
Then goes turbo boost: Takes 50 fuel and makes all thrusters work 50% stronger for 5 seconds. Recharges 20 seconds.
Burn fuel: converts 50 fuel to 200 energy
Overcharge: Makes all plasma cannons shot 2 times more powerfull shots for 10 seconds and then disables them after that for 10 seconds.
Drunken shot: Same thing only makes missle launchers shot 2 missles at time.
The Shield Generator: Obvious.
Emergency stabilization: Stabilizes you ship but disables thrusters and weapons for 3 seconds and takes some time to recharge.
And something else maybe...

Oh, and you can have only one special module!

 

[M0RT]

Warman was right here, it is more a feature than a bug and though it is unreallistic a bit, it indeed increases possibilities of building ships, so I am leaving it as it is.
Thanks for the model again, I will try it later today (I am at school right now)
The special abilities seem cool (I like the bluescreen blindness ), I could add an upgrade for bridge, which allows using one particullar ability (because bridge already has 1-device-maximum check). Shield generator will be a standart device though. I'll put it on list.

I have another problem here, I created hull status display in multiboard, it just looks like the one in cruiser command. Anyone has any idea for an original way to display it? (I will post screenshot later today)

 

[Tleno]

Maybe display hull as [=]? you can also make so there would be something instead of = meaning something. Like thruster or cockpit...

 

[masterofra]

How about adding an E.M.P. missile. When it hits an enemy ship, it drains XX% of the ships power, disables all engines, weapons, shields and otherwise for XX seconds.

 

[M0RT]

Ok, here is the multiboard now (it is not bugged, it is just strange ship):

Multiboard

I am afraid that using symbols instead of icons would only look strange. I was actually looking for a completely different idea to display the ship, but this has to do anyway.
EMP: Seems interesting, disabling entire ship could be pretty ultimate, maybe just 3x3 tiles around the square that got hit. Anyway, I will implement it once I get to the missiles (now working on game mod system, finishing the "game" part of the map, ship respawns and this stuff )
Model: your newest model crashes the game. But nwm, I figured out how to edit the model myself, then it took about 5 minutes (I downloaded newest version of model editor )

 

[The World Is Flat]

ok, yeah, it looks just like CC but, thats ok... how about different colors for different devices or showing the hotkey in that devices color?

and if your ships don't slow down why will your missiles?

lasers should be instant, only ones with duration should be visible.

i don't think plasma should be a projectile weapon, maybe a contact weapon. how about lasers and railguns? (instead of plasma) railguns use magnetic accellerators to fire a a projectile dow a rail, so, you could have different payloads, and launchers for those. like different launch speeds etc. for the launcher, and EMP rails for the projectile?

and all gravity is is magnetics so it would be easy enough to explain away a gravity missile or control beacon etc.

Ever played Mechwarrior 3 or 4? they have interesting things like AMBs AMLs (anti-missile ballistics/lasers. and things like the CASE aan abbreviation for i don't know what, it carries weapons fro one part of the ship to another, if you ask me, ammo should be next the the gun, or need a case. and what about a targeting system? if you don't have it, turrets won't work and missiles can't home. and it could offer the ability to subtly cange the direction of a laser towards the enemy, just be a bit, to avoid close calls...

thats all for now...

 

[M0RT]

The multiboard already shows the damage of the hull tile (which is not visible from the screenshot, my fault) Problem is, there need to be icons, so if I for example would want to show device type AND damage, I would need to create icon for every combination of damage level and device type. I could use double-layered multiboard (the strange bug in earlier version, when there were two numbers on top of each other), but I don't really know how that works...

Missiles are not slowing down right now, ar at least they shouldn't be

Lasers are on the list, they'll have "infinite" speed and the shot will have some minor duration.

The plasma guns, as I described them in the game, are practically railguns (they use magnetism to shoot out hot plasma) but I like "classical" railguns better than plasma guns, so I think I will change it.

Gravity is not magnetics, magnetics affects only metal. Anyway in this case I think the game requirement is higher than the reallsticness (I made this word up, I hope you know what I mean) requirement.

Anti-missiles: I supposed turret-lasers would cover this area, they will be too weak to damage ship anyway...

Requiring the ammo to be next to launcher would be nice, but it would really complicate things for me right now, it doesn't even work properly right now, when the ammo is just a number.
Targeting system: I am afraid it would be a "useless" tile, just like bridge is now (without the abilities). I would rather add some missile jammer (or maybe combine these two into one device)

 

[The World Is Flat]

Ok, sounds good, i will think... is the bugging fixed? cus the frame rate sucks. and do you engines ramain on if you stop pressing the button? if so, could you have it so that if you stop they re-set to 0 thrust so you can just tap another thruster to stop or slow down? i don't have wc3 on this computer...

 

[M0RT]

Well the engine control depends on how you keybind them, but the "default" setting( the one you get from auto-bind) is that engines work at max power as long as you hold the arrow button down and turn off when you release it.
I just had the best idea ever, I will use special effects instead of units to show the ship!!!! Only thing I would need is a special model with 9x9 attach point grid If I could do that, the framerate will, I assume, increase rapidly.

EDIT: Bad news, can't get attachments to work, I have been working on that for several hours. I created a new model with 80 attachments, they just don't work ingame.

EDIT: found out why, obviously I am not allowed to name my attachment as I wish, I need to use standart names. I will need to make a 81 combinations of standart attachment point names thx blizzard

FURTHER EDIT: the new special effect version works nicely, 0% FPS decrease with 12 ships spawned. I am now going to fix all things that were connected to the old version of ships (like engine graphic, shot detection, maybe another things I don't remember right now...)

EDIT No.4: well, it's not 0%, but it is much faster than before. I will post the new version here soon, although not all "old" features are avaiable yet (ships can't be hit right now)

EDIT 5: version 2.0 out, as I promised, it is back to 12 players (you can use -tst to spawn additional ships to test FPS, for me it stays at 60FPS even with 12 ships of this size). Ship hitting will come soon.

 

[The World Is Flat]

Great! thats awesome!

 

[M0RT]

2.1 is here, it now includes ship missile hit system, so you can shoot each other. Thereby the multiboard hull status comes to use finally, it displays tile health nicely. This version also includes game mod selection system, current mods are co,fr,cr,dr (ship size) dd,td,ca,cy,ar (scenario) and os,af,pl (map). Only one from each group can be used. The mods have no effect so far , but you can watch how nicely they are displayed, defaulted to and so on... (enter mods with a +, i know it's not standart, but - is already used for -load)

 

[The World Is Flat]

ok great i cant wait to get my wc3 computer back!

 

[zolga]

so original pls dont give up

 

[warman45]

question when i fire the plasma..... should my ship start to die?

p.s. awsome not only can i play it again (got to laggy) but it's actually CONTROLABLE! YAY!

p.s cool things to consider turning stabalizers either on or off. (it can get hard to turn but they really are needed) and auto firing weapons.

 

[aaron]

wow this seems awesome and i like the whole tile layout you got going there. Pm me when this is done i will love to play it.

 

[M0RT]

warman: yes, it is indeed a bug, I am testing the fix now. Turning stabilizers on/off would just make the ship even harder to control, they are so weak right now that they can't really stop you from turning, if you want to. If by auto-firing weapons you mean some kind of turrets, it has been discussed here a lot and they will definetelly be included.

 

[masterofra]

I just came up with a brilliant idea. It would fix at least one problem. Have you noticed how you cant make a tiny fighter easily? you have to have at least 3 engines (maybe 2), 1 fuel tank, a bridge, a generator, a weapon, and a magnet. that's 8 slots minimum,(6 with 2 engines and no magnet)

So here is my magic idea. ship scale. You construct your ship, and then scale it. the current size will be normal scale. You can modify size from .5 - 1 (or even .25 - 1) with some method. when your ship is created, the attachment model will be .5 scale. All collision, projectile spawn, engine beams, etc will have to have scaled offset. Power of modules would scale as well. initially calculate the power scale to being the scale size, and the mass/ health being the square root of the size (proportional to area). A .5 size ship would have modules with 50% power. 50% damage(projectiles are 50% size), 50% thrust, 50% generation, 50% storage(missiles would stay the same qty, but half size). 50% consumption. Also, tile health and mass would be 25% of normal. This would make it so that the smaller your ship, the more maneuverable it would be. acceleration would be doubled at .5 scale. However, it would also have .25 health, and so would be much more fragile. I think this would be a really cool idea. You could make a tiny fighter with a 8 tiles, that has the size of 2 tiles.


Note, currently weapons blast your own ship to pieces., and sometimes, when you start, qa bunch of green ? appears where your ships is (ship appears too). It didn't start until i tried the hotkey assignment ability.

 

[warman45]

it would also be cool if when a part of you're ship is "severed" (say 3 pieces are brocken off) then the 3 pieces stay connected instead of each becoming an independant projectile.

 

[Landmine]

I just came up with a brilliant idea. It would fix at least one problem. Have you noticed how you cant make a tiny fighter easily? you have to have at least 3 engines (maybe 2), 1 fuel tank, a bridge, a generator, a weapon, and a magnet. that's 8 slots minimum,(6 with 2 engines and no magnet)

So here is my magic idea. ship scale. You construct your ship, and then scale it. the current size will be normal scale. You can modify size from .5 - 1 (or even .25 - 1) with some method. when your ship is created, the attachment model will be .5 scale. All collision, projectile spawn, engine beams, etc will have to have scaled offset. Power of modules would scale as well. initially calculate the power scale to being the scale size, and the mass/ health being the square root of the size (proportional to area). A .5 size ship would have modules with 50% power. 50% damage(projectiles are 50% size), 50% thrust, 50% generation, 50% storage(missiles would stay the same qty, but half size). 50% consumption. Also, tile health and mass would be 25% of normal. This would make it so that the smaller your ship, the more maneuverable it would be. acceleration would be doubled at .5 scale. However, it would also have .25 health, and so would be much more fragile. I think this would be a really cool idea. You could make a tiny fighter with a 8 tiles, that has the size of 2 tiles.

I must say that this is pretty awesome. Then again, it may cause errors in something, but I'm not sure with what. I know it's possible with even triggers, so it wouldn't be hard to put in (I've seen half of the triggers that would be required).

 

[M0RT]

Technically it's no problem, I would just replace scale constant with scale variable...It is indeed a very interesting idea, I am just not sure how it would affect the game. I have implemented something called "ship point cost", it limits your ship in size and device quality. Now depending on how scale would affect this cost, it would either be a must-have for everyone (in the case that point cost scaled), because it would basically just increase power of your engines (you'll be able to build double-sized ship with 0.5 scale, that would have same firepower and 0.25 mass), or it would be useless if it didn't scale (because you would massively descrease power of your ship, while gaining only a little benefit. I am not saying no, I have to think about it a bit (also I need to go now, i will finish my thoughts in ~7 hours)

Weapon blasts and green ? will be fixed in next version (weapon blast still needs some adjustments, otherwise it's almost complete)

Severed tiles: last time I tried that, the trigger was stopped in half because of JASS instruction limit. It was temporarily solved by releasing all tiles indipendently.

 

[dachi15]

i'll test it too nice idea +rep

 

[HappyCockroach]

Nice Idea, but I don't like that metal block model. You could have a better one. Any chance to have tile variation?

 

[masterofra]

Well, i see the problem, making a half scale ship that is still the same size would be twice as strong, I was trying to find a way to make it possible to make smaller ships, that will be more maneuverability. If, when you halved the scale, everything would have 1/4th of everything, so maneuverability would be unaffected. I was trying to find a solution for that. I cannot think of a solution at the moment.


Also, the Floating text that shows the current angle is nice, and it doesn't snap. to +-10 degrees ever. And the fact that the model doesn't seem to turn the first time is likely because you turn the model to the stored angle, and then change the angle. Also, for the hotkey auto assignment, make a counter for each hotkey assigned, and after 20, call a 0 sec TriggerSleepAction. Will prevent a thread crash.

Do you use GUI? if not, what do you use? its hard to tell.

 

[M0RT]

The metal block model is in fact the FootSwitch model with modified texture (which isn't mine, it's the "Space station tile"). Tile variation would be possible, but it would require multiple models of course.
Yeah I think disabled the snapping, it's no longer necessary with the angle info. With the rotation it's a little more complicated (I am not THAT stupid to turn it to previous angle): It is a unit without movement, so it doesn't show the unit rotion in the model. Only way of showing is calling ShowUnit. Problem is that while the unit won't show the rotation, it still rotates according to it's Turn rate. So if I call ShowUnit right after I set it to new angle, it won't show, because the unit didn't have time to actually rotate. So it is displayed at next call, where the unit is in fact facing the correct angle, but the model isn't. (This can be observed in the game, if you use "Set direction" twice very quickly, the model will face some angle between the new and the old one.
You actually observed a thread crash while auto-assigning? How many devices did you have?

It's written completely in JASS, this wouldn't be possible in GUI

 

[Tleno]

Yeah, I found that spinnin'-like-a-complete-retard bug still existing. I found that when you use one thruster to move back, other to move in front and other in one left or right, it starts spinning even more than its possible. Space Merry-go-round?

 

[masterofra]

The metal block model is in fact the FootSwitch model with modified texture (which isn't mine, it's the "Space station tile"). Tile variation would be possible, but it would require multiple models of course.
Yeah I think disabled the snapping, it's no longer necessary with the angle info. With the rotation it's a little more complicated (I am not THAT stupid to turn it to previous angle): It is a unit without movement, so it doesn't show the unit rotion in the model. Only way of showing is calling ShowUnit. Problem is that while the unit won't show the rotation, it still rotates according to it's Turn rate. So if I call ShowUnit right after I set it to new angle, it won't show, because the unit didn't have time to actually rotate. So it is displayed at next call, where the unit is in fact facing the correct angle, but the model isn't. (This can be observed in the game, if you use "Set direction" twice very quickly, the model will face some angle between the new and the old one.
You actually observed a thread crash while auto-assigning? How many devices did you have?

It's written completely in JASS, this wouldn't be possible in GUI

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This is my deathstar design which seems to cause malfunctioning, and possibly even a thread crash in the auto-assigning. It seems to have crashed before it assigns everything on the right side, and seems to have incorrectly allocated a few engines. I would of course say that the fact that the assignment works as well as it does is amazing.

 

[warman45]

BTW i have a new idea for an engine that would work for small engines. it's a 2 way engine. essentially it's a single engine that is half as strong as normal but can "fire" in 2 opposite directions (forward and backward) it is POSSIBLE you may want to have it create 2 distinct engines on 1 tile. but whatever. it means that you could build a small ship that is only 4 tiles (2 engines a bridge and a feul) you could call them manouvering thrusters.

 

[M0RT]

We have had this exact idea here already

Splitting tile: impossible, the current way of saving ship is complicated enough. Only thing I was thinking about for smaller ships are "double engines", which you would need to put on a 1-square thick hull, where they will be able to work both ways (so that you could steer with only 1 device)

The only problem is it would require some tweak in the game engine, for double free tile testing. Also the key binding system won't be compatible with it. But in general, it would be a good feature.

 

[The World Is Flat]

Found some nice turret models if youd like:

Gun Turret
Laser Turret
Missile Turret

They might be good for the turrets.

 

[warman45]

BTW the model for the tile should be at least twice as thick as it is (after all flying around in a ship that is paper thin is just wierd.