Hello,
I've recently been playing around with making stabalizers for a SAM platform i'm working on and have realised that the current in-game analog for a hydralic ram, the pneumatic piston, is rather dated compared to the rest of the available components. While ok for some lighter loads, although not small ones due to it's minimum 5 block length, when put under heavy loads the piston doesn't have the strength to lift things. Also, when under load the internal piston rod begins clipping through the fixed body of the piston and the piston it's self begins to sag/compress.
Reasons for replacing/reworking the pneumatic piston,
- Naming. The name pneumatic piston implies the involment of hydralics when it is actually an actuator.
- Mechanical Depth. Stormworks has evolved into a game with a lot of multiblock structures which allows for large amounts of creativity and challenge. The pneumatic piston does not fit in well with the rest of the parts.
- Versitility. The pneumatic piston can be difficult to incorperate into builds due to the single size present in the game, the weight problem that I alluded to earlier and the inability to start with them extended. Another problem I observed was that pistons do not behave correctly when pusing against a body on a pivot. While trying to make a tiltable platform simillar to this, the piston would not be able to correctly rotate the platform while it had weight on it but worked when the weight was not there.
- Balence. During testing I found that robotic pivots far outclass the pneumatic piston when it comes to lift capacity. Paticuarly when the pneumatic pistons are being used at an angle rather than facing directly up. Of note the platform tilting problem I talked about above works fine with when using robotic pivots rather than the rams (piviots at the rotation point).
So that I'm not asking for things without having some kind of solution I'll put how I think I would doing, ignoring the fact that I can't access the engine.
Hydralic rams would range from 1x1x3 upwards and could include a 3x3x? versions. Each ram would have two fluid inlets, A and B. These would act like tanks and the extension of the piston would be based on their fullness. This would allow the ram to be used with normal stormworks fluid loops and extension is just controlled by pumping fluid from one tank to another. Adding another fluid called "Hydralic Fluid" might also diversify the mechanic from simply pumping water around, maybe using hydralic fluid gives better lifting capacity? As for physics this is harder for me to give any reasonable solution but by assuming the incompressibility of fluids the hydralic ram model could be kept visual and the actual force could just be applied through an invisible "rod". Not sure if this would solve the sagging problem though, it depends on how stormwork's physics engine handles forces.
Just to give some uses so i'm not asking for one paticular build. Hydralic rams would allow for a larger range of sizes in builds. Excavators, cranes, stabalizers for vehicles, custom door locking mecanisms, more intricate/realistic loading ramps, etc.
Thanks for reading this far. I hope that everything I said was rational and the theoretical implimentation of the mechanic wasn't too insulting to any devs reading this. I would include some photos to back my points up but when I tried it errored out due to message size and I've had to rewrite this.