Can You Defend Yourself Against an EMP Without Shields?

Welcome to another episode of Trailmakers! Today I am putting the EMP blasters to the test to see how exactly they affect creations and if they can be defended against in any way other than an energy shield.
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In the toughest motoring expedition in the universe, you and your friends will build your own vehicles to cross a dangerous wasteland. Explore, crash horribly, use your wits to build a better rig, and get as far as you can with whatever spare parts you find on your way.
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[@WhitzWolf92]

This is my working hypothesis: Upon impact with a creation, the pulse travels through a (random?) block adjacent to the point of impact, repeating a certain number of times, affecting any functional components it passes through. So the target cube is resistant at first because there are so many non-functional blocks that the propagation ran out before reaching a blaster, but the car mostly made of functional parts so something is affected every time. This also could explain why the car's rear shield didn't work, even though it was far away, the EMP had an easy route to propagate toward the engines while the cube had multiple potential routes and dead ends. I'd try making a large grid out of 50kg weights with smoke dispensers on top and 2x4 blocks in between, lay it flat and shoot from above, varying the number 2x4s to see which dispensers are affected.

[@186scott]

I was thinking something similar and on the cube chances are most of the time it was the seat affected and as the seat has nothing connected to it you couldn't see what it was doing

[@Prince_Asuda]

That's actually really interesting as that would mean that the most effective way to counter EMPs would be to build a kind of snaking shield using as many small parts as possible. Make the point of impact have the longest path(part wise, not distance wise) to any functional parts. The old Robocraft used to have a similar exploit with their damage propagation where advanced users would use a technique called "Triforcing" in order to minimize the chance that their seat or weapons would get damaged. Of course, fittingly enough, wedges were key to this technique.

[@TlalocTemporal]

There's also timed immunity at work. Once an EMP has hit something, another can't hit it again. Perhaps this is a side effect of back-propagation prevention?

[@shay5025]

My thoughts exactly

[@shay5025]

​@@Prince_AsudaI was also thinking of this robocraft system!

[@falconmanjanik1574]

ah yes “sheilds”

[@BubbyGamingOfficial]

I noticed that as soon as I click on the video

[@captainsnekk]

Sheild

[@Thyrone558]

Yes

[@BenMercado-wn3zt]

ah yesl i shawls usely my sheilds

[@Kumogd]

Sheilds

[@ILEFTCAPS0N]

Maybe we'll get a new "breaking the sound barrier with EMP's" video.

[@ThatGamerPilot]

Do they have recoil? Maybe you have engines without controls, and you shoot the engines... 🤔

[@WhitzWolf92]

I think the game would crash trying to render the projectiles and particles long before you had enough launchers to break the sound barrier.

[@GummieI]

It is actually kind interesting, because yes on one hand, the main way to counter EMP's are energy shields. But on the flipside the main counter to Energy shields are the EMP's as well. They really counter each other

[@m.h.6470]

if I remember correctly, in the devlog the devs stated, that the emp was specifically to disable shields. The "random firing" was an afterthought that they implemented. Technically if an emp were to hit your vehicle in real live, there wouldn't be misfirings, it would just stop working all together, as all electronics would be destroyed.

[@GummieI]

@@m.h.6470Well they also said in a devlog there would be not orbiting, and there would be no need to attach quantum rudder to hinges etc, both of which absolutely been done to great effect already so...

[@Nevir202]

@@m.h.6470 Depends. EMP hardening is a thing to prevent exactly that. But you could still get weird random signaling, as there's no such thing as a perfect defense. As if you want to get signals in and out of the computer, it eventually has to interface with something that IS NOT shielded. Imagine your controller is in a perfectly EMP shielded box, so it will NEVER be damaged or even effected by the EMP. You still want to send it a signal so that it DOES something, so if you are talking something like a fighter, the controls are going to be a bunch of beefy electronics themselves so they won't be damaged, but that doesn't mean they aren't going to have induced voltage in their wires, sending random signals. It just means they'll survive it. Unless you have some way to be 100% sure of which signals should be accepted or rejected, your control computer will then either reject legit inputs, or accept false inputs. You can't have something like a microcontroller sending encrypted signals, because THAT won't survive the EMP, so you are going to have to use analogue tech or very basic digital.

[@m.h.6470]

@@GummieI being possible and being intended are two very different things...

[@m.h.6470]

@@Nevir202 but emp protection is pretty much only used in military installations. Granted, in the case of the game, you could be considered military-ish.

[@nutmeggaming11261]

Day 5 (? I lost count since I havent in a while) of asking Scrap Man for Trailmakers "Build Swap": Everyone makes a creation, but each round everyone has one persons creation, and it switches. As in round one is Yuzi's creation, round two is ScrapMan's creation. A lot of strategy can go into this I think, as well as this could be with any creation. You'd have to make a creation that works for you but noone else, and somehow not slip you up. And you also need to be able to learn other people's creations on the fly.

[@An_M4A3]

Good suggestions keep up

[@OnyxBMW]

Are you sure the EMPs are being taken as 1 hit, or could it be that devices have a cooldown before they can be EMP'd again? I'd posit that the test of way too many EMPs and staggered EMPs reveals the latter as more likely than the former. Not that they're being bunched, but the devs don't want you to lock down critical components indefinitely.

[@ShadowMajick]

Agreed. Was looking to see if someone else commented this as I had the same thought.

[@davidjohncook]

You didn't check to see if plain blocks count towards a triggerable limit. Hence why the large cube worked so well at blocking emp. The emp might do some sort of random selection first before it tries to trigger. To keep simple as I dont know exact numbers, let's say you have 10 turrets on top of 10 blocks. And emp selects only 1 thing at random when it hits. You should have 50% chance that a gun fires. But if you have 1gun on top of cube of 99 blocks you only have 1% chance of it selecting the turret.

[@AlrenClan]

Battle where all vehicles have exposed logic and every control has to go through the exposed logic so as the fight goes on everything devolved into chaos ( also emp will be fun )

[@An_M4A3]

Perfect suggestion

[@crowshearer.mp4378]

maybe you guys could do like Drones vs Ground vehicles but the ground vehicles are restricted to only emps, maybe it could be like a transport mission where its a 2 in 1 vehicle vs 2 drones but idk

[@Kierantheemo02]

Here before scrap fixes “sheild” in the title

[@An_M4A3]

I just noticed lol

[@OB1-D2]

What if the the objects have a cooldown on how long before they can get emp-ed which is why the last test would only trigger on the third attempt of shooting it.

[@iGompers]

I was thinking the same thing. The smoke trails made me think this since the first shot triggered a few and the second shot triggered all the ones the first did not trigger. Maybe there is some form of I-Frames so to speak, with getting effected by the EMPs.

[@PheonixT]

MORE I-FRAME THEORIES YES!

[@MarMonkey2606]

my thoughts exactly, because the emp is already an extremely powerful weapon it would be unfair for the effect to be spammable.

[@Auxetic-]

Maybe the emp went just under the shield made with blocks… therefore hitting the ground & the splash area kept hitting the car? I think maybe that’s why it allegedly took 32 blocks to successfully prevent the emp from hitting the functional parts of the car. At 32 blocks, the angle was too severe for the area of effect to reach? Idk

[@OB1-D2]

If you have the triggerable objects set to toggle does that mean that the emp toggles them or does it just do the same thing as if it wasn’t on toggle. Also can you test how logic will behave so that we can see if having logic blocks to trigger something actually increases the chance of that thing being effected.

[@danielpalecek4090]

one of my builds has multiple hoverpads on toggle, when I get emp'd all the hoverpads get randomly toggled and I have to repair to get them all into the same toggle state.

[@jasonblackshear6823]

If you have a chain of logic blocks resulting in the trigger of a smoke emitter, if any of the logics are effected, it should present the same end result, right?

[@bonesciencegaming3863]

I recently made the malevolence from the clone wars series and it absolutely launches other creations and makes them go wild, I love it, it has 32 emps

[@Berilaco]

Bro... you spent 100complexity on emps?

[@firefox1731]

​@@Berilaco complexity mod, probably

[@Berilaco]

@@firefox1731 still wild

[@Mimimo02]

I think a possibility of why the car was still influenced so long is because it had a rear mounted wheel

[@marimbahb08]

I had the same thought

[@Pystro]

But that would then have been affected even at 36 units length. Maybe it was just a question of random chance not triggering the wheel at SOME point (and it just happened to be at 36) or maybe we haven't fully figured out the distance dependence yet.

[@TheChosenVaultDweller]

It would be cool to see ejectable flares added to a creation for the emp to lock onto.

[@Xmar4]

absolutely LOVE the editor's notes. It's so fun. The little comments and clarifications

[@lordshaitan]

I just always assumed that on EMP Hit every device on your vehicle has a percentile chance of being triggered (ie 10%). This is why a build with only one device appears to only be affected roughly 1 in 10 times, while a build with more than 10 devices statistically would have one or more effects every hit. In addition it would appear that a build that has been impacted by an EMP does not apply another EMP chance within a particular time frame -- but perhaps it extends the time? It may even be scaled based on number of devices, and number of devices affected. For example, if you have more than 10 devices, one device being affected is 50%+ chance, with the next being 30% chance, and the remaining at the normal 10%. Only way to be sure is to have a construction of 20 laser cannons, and shoot it at least 100 times (preferably 1000), and record the results. And then build a device with 2x EMP's, staggered, and run 20 trials with the time between shots increasing. You will then be able to determine when the next EMP is applied, and if hit before this time, if the second EMP within a timeframe actually does anything at all.

[@theinfernollama8564]

Lunch time = Scrapman uploads. Keep up the good work man

[@seanfitzgerald9815]

You all already found the right ship design to protect from weapons. A circle! Could do a circle with shields wrapped around the donut part and leave center open

[@Fire_Flame138]

Idea; A RC type of battle with EMPs triggering the different logic on the creation.

[@weawou]

Wait, do you mean a vehicle that is powered solely by EMP? 😂 That's next level stuff right here

[@mattymerr701]

Editors note: you can unlink the audio and video on a slice and crop out the silence so you can have the audio at the same speed but the video sped up. Also, not that it is necessary in this case, If the recording is via OBS, you can make the canvas slightly larger so the webcam is off the game video and can be slowed down while the game is sped up

[@etiennehogenhuis9810]

i think the EMP works a bit as it should, after all, it is an Electro Magnetic Pulse. so wat I think is happening is that the distance of the shielding isn't as important to stop the EMP, all the non-functioning blocks are like wires, so if you build a shield attatched to a long beam on your creation like at 18:00, its just flows all the power of that EMP shot trough the small but long beams straight to your car and thus affecting it, but if you create a giant brick like in the beginning, its essentially a big spunge and just soaks up all the energy of the EMP and thus not realy affecting your creation.

[@bonesciencegaming3863]

Can you do a battle bots battle, where you emp an unmanned (without a driver but has a seat if that’s how the emp works) creation and that makes them drive and trigger weapons ect, I think it would be an interesting battle

[@fredrickbambino]

Day 69 of asking scrapman to battle with flying tanks

[@nutmeggaming11261]

Please do this scrap!

[@Kierantheemo02]

😏😏😏

[@An_M4A3]

n i c e

[@Legoboy1604]

Nice

[@DrplasmaLi]

Lol

[@steeljawX]

From what I've experienced and experimented with, the EMP's function as such. Once the EMP explodes, things with function within the blast radius go through an RNG roll (for a lack of a better term.) If they fail that roll, they are effected by the EMP and then the effect starts RNG rolling again. Failure to pass that roll means that the function of the block is swapped. The source of my hypothesis is from trying to find out if hover blocks can be EMP'd. I EMP'd a 3x2 hover creation and there were times when 2 pads were zapped and there were times when all 6 were zapped. During the time that they were effected, they would randomly switch off and on, but it's definitely each part does their own roll and each can fail and swap at different times.The best way to defend against an EMP is to basically have some far distance shielding where you can detonate the charge and not have it splash into any key components. I think there also might be, I haven't confirmed this at all, a hierarchy of what is affected first. I'm basing this on your video here. It seems like it'd be shields first (because obviously,) then propulsion, and then it's a bit of a tie between auxiliaries, weapons, and gadgets. But to suggest another challenge for you to do in a group setting, hover pads definitely can be EMP'd, so some kind of EMP hover water battle? A wall climb battle would also work. Generally any kind of vehicle where you are relying on some kind of device to function will work. That being said, I really wonder how submarine EMP battles would go. The variable flotation devices going all jank would be funny. Same with balloons. Oh, about EMP's imparting a force; yeah, it's a thing. You can, for some reason, in the Spacebound map EMP pirates to death. Like after 1 initial zip-zap, it'll start dealing them damage. I've been experimenting making just EMP bombard monsters to go up against pirates and it's quite the light show. But EMP's will deal so much damage to an area that's been EMP'd to an extent. I don't know the extent that is, but you can chain them into an EMP machine gun for just the craziest cheese ever. Grouping them all up like that into 1 mega blast, I think, just makes it so that the blast is bigger, but the blast is also considered a single instant. So instead of doing that RNG roll for each EMP, which means you could guarantee EMP cheese spam if it did do that, each component gets a single roll for the sum blast that occurs in that area at that instant. If you stagger the shots, then there's multiple instances, making multiple RNG rolls, meaning a greater chance of affecting components.

[@BeefIngot]

When things go fast, it takes thicker objects to register hits, so doubling or even tripling up walls makes it more likely for a fast projectile to be caught in something.

[@supersmiley5587]

What if the emp travels through the creation where each block weakens the strengh? Think of it like an earthquake. The epicenter is the strongest point where the farther you are the weaker it gets. I would try to do a line of smoke emiters and shoot at random points. If the theory is correct, the point of impact will get affected more or even all the time

[@eerrefvu]

For multi-player Monday you guys should make karts with weapons in an arena and shoot them with an emp to make them fight.

[@mrtemr8667]

Got an idea for multiplayer monday. A dogfight with emps but there is a dynamite which explodes the plane when triggered.

[@SoupRoutine]

This gives me a good idea for a multiplayer battle. I'm thinking, a boats battle, where the floatation of your boat can only be done with the BCDs (that way the EMP should theoretically be able to mess with it) and EMPs as the only weapon allowed. Maybe let everyone do a rapid fire setup with multiple EMPs staggered together.

[@DETHdressedInRED]

Ahhhh, the control cube.... **Remembering "the CLAAAAAW" from my childhood**

[@MajorWolff23]

You should make a video where you battle, but the only wepons you can have are EMPs

[@TheChungassSupreme]

I think your best bet for EMP defense is a form of ablative plating (in real life, Ablative plating throws out shards of material from the point of impact as a means to disperse kinetic energy). Basically, have armor plates connected to detachable blocks, that way when the detachable blocks are activated via EMP, the plating throws itself off, and the detachable blocks only activate once per EMP effect per repair. I don't know how reliable it would be, but I think having more "Useless parts" to activate from an EMP would lower the chances of more important parts being scrambled. I don't know how how effective it would be, nor do I know if it would be effective against other weapons like missiles, but I do think it would make an interesting idea to test, at least.

[@35manning]

"EMP's have force???" Next video, "How many EMP's do I need to break the sound barrier?"

[@Negative0PlusInfinity]

Video prediction: because of the slow speed of the emp launchers, he’s gonna have it so sensors detect anything close and when the blast is close, the blocks near the sensor detach. This would only work if scrapman was flying driving or swimming away from the projectile, though.

[@loganappel2691]

The EMP effect probably has a delay between how often it can affect an object, it seems to be guaranteed after the 3rd shot from all the emps so shot it with all the emps then wait till it would have recharged 3 to 4ish times and then shoot it again

[@kwnstantinos8809]

Keep up the good work scrapman!!

[@thatSGgamer.offical]

same

[@Hlebuw3k]

What about a space station docking challenge? Send a space station going one way at a certain speed, and launch a rocket from a planet with a module to dock to it. You will have to match the speed, the angle, the position, and the rotation all at once. I think it might be fun in a multiplayer competition too

[@Blivvy_]

It seems to me that the emp trigger for every block is some sort of time based.if you hit a block with emp, the block calculates if it's being triggered or not, then it has a cooldown until it can calculate the trigger again. For instance, if you hit a block with emp, and it calculates a no-trigger, then if you hit the same block again 1 second after it doesn't activate either since it's still in that no-trigger state, but if you hit the same block 5 seconds later, it will resett the calculation and calculate the trigger again.

[@thesunnynationg]

Shield and EMP need a lot more investigation. A LOT

[@presidentmichael3349]

A few things I would add to the testing. 1 If you have the seat centered with shield walls 36 blocks away, will the creation be affected in the same way as if there were no seat? A follow up of this one would be if the distance the seat can be from the area hit by the EMP is fewer than 36 blocks? How few is the minimum? 2 Are the single shield block layer you used as strong at protecting from EMP as multiple layers? Instead of trying to conserve weight with the arm holding a shield would the thickness matter and perhaps make the effect better? The cube seemed more resistant to me despite being smaller. If density is more effective it would also be beneficial to other types of weapons. 3 The range you can stretch and shape energy shields, is it related to the 36 blocks of the normal block? Also what is the closest different objects that would be affected by the EMP (Including the seat) can be to the edge of the energy shield and still be protected from a EMP? Finally 4 Can anything be done to protect you from the effects of EMP? Perhaps something like that rotating multi energy shield design? A wall thick or far enough away that EMPs are useless? A creation with redundancies placed at opposite ends so if part gets affected then the rest can compensate? Can any of this be done to build a viable vehicle within the complexity limit? 5. Finding out that EMPs cause damage and impact force was unexpected. Now I expect to see the future attempts at breaking the sound barrier with EMP thrust or other silly ideas.

[@Vyzion2020]

Good testing sesh dude. Most likely there are also hidden cooldowns before the emp state can be active again. On those smoke emitters i didnt notice many being turned on twice in a row.

[@FrankDrebin]

Likely game is only checking if there was an emp hit on that frame, but not how many hits, and this is similar to shield behavior which would eat all shots before breaking on a single frame - it tested if shield was compromised once per frame. For normal bullets each shot is probably calculated separately.

[@MrPudelNudel]

I thinks it might be more simple than it seems, the emp "hooks" to a block that it can affect when it is in range and over the average lasting time of the EMP effect there is a 20% or so chance of any logic/mechanic block to get affected, that would explain why the constand EMP didnt trigger the single gun constantly but only after a certain time period. I guess to deflect an EMP without the Shield the good old garbage disposal trick is the best, to create a field of debris between you and the EMP and gain distance, maybe through a water ball dispenser or something, even though that would mostly just work without gravity.

[@Nerca_]

My first theory is that if an emp projectile hits a block with no moving properties then it has a chance of deflecting and scattering throughout the build and onto blocks with moving properties. EDIT: it seems to last a certain period of time and if it doesnt hit something functional within that time, the emp with have no effect.

[@Koljon]

I think every triggerable Object has a variable wich desides if it’s emped or not. It ca only be on or of so the amount of EMPs won’t matter. And I also think it took less shots on the smoke thingy because you had a solid line of Bloocks and not just a wall

[@aldrm002]

One thing that you didnt test for, that i think might be a "Thing" is if blocks have a cooldown between when they can be re-affected by an EMP The fact that the singular item vs 2 emp seemed to always fire off on the third strike, would suggest to me that maybe a singular object cant be affected by the emp more then once every X amount of seconds

[@aldrm002]

Additionally, when you stagger fire the group of 10 billion emps, the time between effects seemed roughly the same

[@turrboenvy4612]

Further questions: 1. Does it affect logic blocks 2. If something is connected to a logic block can it still be triggered 3. Does it affect toggles 4. if something toggled by a logic block gets triggered, can it get out of sync with the logic? 5. Does the number of inactive blocks matter? I wondered if that was the reason for the low success rate on the dense cube.

[@ryansandt9886]

You guys should have a battle with vehicles that use an emp to create the inputs for driving/attacking in a small arena

[@mach5406]

Multiplayer Idea. Robo wars in the stadium, but players have to sit on the outside of the stadium and emp their robots. Each player has three or four robots.

[@TheunknownUser-lz1rt]

I think when a block gets shot and gets scrambled it has a cool down before it can be scrambled again by the emp

[@lordsrednuas]

On the target reticule being a safe distance, it looks like it would be... if the EMP was in the very front of the creation. Because the EMP was set back behind the front wheels, the front wheels were still in the aoe.

[@jordant2529]

I don’t know why but all of those EMPs stacked across reminded me of the rows and rows of weaponry that a Battlestar from BSG has. Idea: Space Battleship battle for multiplayer Monday where the only weapons you have are mounted broadside like a Battlestar, NO AIM ASSIST, unlimited weapons and max block count. SHIELDS are allowed obviously.

[@sirsiriuss4010]

I do believe, after triggering an object with EMP, there is a "cooldown" on said object before it can be EMP'd again

[@SarungStreams]

My thought for "shielding" yourself against emps is to make a sea urchin esque craft... or in the case of a race car where you are predominately being shot from behind just have nothing in the back

[@weawou]

Questions: What happens when you EMP a build that detaches it's seat after it's spawned in? And secondly, can you control a vehicle with a detached seat? Maybe there's some silly way to detach the seat, but still have it in the vehicle while you drive it?

[@monsieurgb497]

Theres a way, but it requires the build to have 2 seats, the controls have to be set on logic blocks, and then you disconnect the seat you are on. Oh, the logic blocks have to be on the seat you are, not on the detached vehicle.

[@weawou]

My pc can't handle scrap mechanic, but I wonder purely for scientific purposes 🤓 I expect the mechanics that are connected to the logic/seat will still fire when hit with an EMP after they are disconnected, but maybe they don't! I imagine there could be some kind of grabber on the vehicle under a dangling seat that catches it when it's disconnected so that it's still attached to the build, but also not.

[@briishcabbage568]

The only way I wish EMPs were changed is that any moving blocks it hits are reset to their original state after it runs out, since as they are, if you have (for example) a steering hinge/piston on toggle, it will completely prevent you from putting said hinge/piston in an even state with it's counterpart(s), if it has them, and causing way more semi-permanent damage than it should. Let's say your creation has a hinge to open a hatch, mirrored on both sides. If only one of these hinges are hit, the hatch will open, but it might not trigger what is meant to open WITH, and doesn't trigger the one on the other side. Unless you have a redundancy control, you cannot make your creation even again. Depending on how useful the thing it hit IS, the damage could range from "Aw, my creation looks worse" to "My center of mass is now thrown off/My break is only active on one side and I can no longer fly straight at all" to "I cannot fully turn my thrust off and cannot stop." I just hope it reset after, man.

[@larualrdyno5277]

Y’all should do a race/derby with emp as weapons and parts of the cars are on detachable blocks.

[@DeltaBlazeGaming]

I dont think the emp shots are counted as the same shot, but its probably that functional blocks have a grace period between when they get zapped and when they can be zapped again. A slight protection keeps you from being completely stun locked. :>

[@Jakubboss99]

Here is a cool idea, make small cars which automatically EMP themselves, and have a destruction Derby with those cars as an obstacle

[@notthatbad42]

Idea: team race where you have a vehicle with a set amount of emp’s and another one that has no controls for the engines, and the only way to make it go forward is to shoot it with emp , you could do like a 2v2 where there’s one of each type of vehicle for each team and the first one to get both vehicles across the line ( probably preferably not very far) wins

[@notthatbad42]

Basically emp powered vehicle race

[@TheMostUt]

I would build a single long machine, with a few of every activatable device placed randomly along the length, that would tell you if there is a maximum propagation distance in the creation. I would then make a large flat with a number of different devices across the plane, with a movable gantry above the creation to blast different areas. You could then quantify/qualify the probability of various malfunctions and likelihood of each type of malfunction. I think the number of functional vs nonfunctional blocks is still a factor, which could explain why the physical shield didn't seem to work. Adding a larger number of nonfunctional blocks in the shield arm is probably the solution. The calculation seems to be timed based, which is why the EMP machinegun didn't work more reliably. To experimentally test probability of malfunction, build a couple dozen seats with functional attachments, then a wall of EMPs each firing at a single seat. Each fire cycle, record how many seats were affected. I would go with multiples of 10 for simple math, so 10 functional but separate creations. single EMP firing machine. Fire 10, 20, 50, 100 times, and record how many malfunction each cycle. For extra points you could also record WHICH seats malfunction, or which devices malfucntion more often, but I'm not sure that would matter.

[@undeadoperations]

I wonder if there is an internal cooldown on each individual part that only lets it get affected by an emp blast every so often. It could also be that a single emp can only affect a certain amount of parts at once, would be interesting to see if adding more emp's would trigger more smoke emitters per volley.

[@zacstratton4860]

i think it locks onto the closest power core to the impact point and itll effect that area so if you used a prong or something sticking out the back of your creation itll stay on that and not effect anything else, sort of like the radar counter measure on the f35.

[@deanwinters582]

I'd say that the thickness of the area being EMP'd has an effect, as it seems that the EMP has no issue passing through most surfaces. Also if agree with some of the other comments that there's probably a period where parts are immune from being affected post-EMP

[@stevenblair3692]

Howdy! I would hypothesize that the effects of ALL EMPS are affected by some sort of RNG that runs in the background. So either all the EMPS fired at a given moment will have an effect, or none will. Having multiple EMPs firing simultaneously at different objects could prove or disprove this.

[@TheCleverJoker]

Seems to just randomly select any block within its radius and checks if it can be affected or not. More dud blocks means better protection.

[@TheGodHerobrine]

Scrapman be like "there is no way they impact that" EMP be like "Impacts with ease"😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂

[@spider59er35]

I think it just comes down to what the electricity outside the initial impact comes in contact with

[@rogelynroldan9889]

Not shields, but SHEILDS NOW THATS WHAT I LIKE

[@liamchristians7555]

Video idea, jets with emp vs cargo plane which has a separate gunner. On the wing tips there is dynamite and the jets have to shoot it to cause the cargo plane to crash. The cargo plane has to fly around the danger zone map

[@luismlc89]

What i wanna see is EMP against "transformers" from Workshop :D

[@badasuhuaidan5630]

Random idea can the randomness be used to make beautiful chaos, like randomly firing rockets, and or a octopus with legs that randomly move etc

[@kopaxson5202]

You and Yuzui should do an ep with the quantum drives.

[@eibawi_official]

Here less than 5 minutes, the tikr you post is perfect

[@paulmartin7900]

I think the emps have a cooldown effect on anything they hit so that it can only be emped, for example, every 10 seconds

[@toosafelol]

Calculation of emp probability could be grouped for performance sake. Try adding delays to the emps so the impacts are calculated at different frames.

[@Fredhasentered]

With EMPs having an impact force, seems like the challenge needs to be who can keep the monowheel upright the longest?

[@jeremyayers5353]

It seems like the amount of non functional blocks to functional blocks ratio is what effects the EMP activation chance. I would test one block and one functional block.

[@shadeepsies]

So I believe that the range like “18 blocks” is based on solid blocks when you tested with a car you only used 1 solid block greatly increasing the range at which is need for the EMP to not hit with its blast.

[@BubbyGamingOfficial]

claim your "here before scrapman changes Sheilds to Shields"

[@SVT_Samson]

idea: what if all the emp's hitting at once just registers as one chance. if you were to stagger them would it make a difference on how often the effect takes place?

[@TinaGloria2012]

Its 5am for me and I'm trying to use scrap to help me sleep. Dam you extra coffee 😂.

[@theaumguy1621]

Maybe only the seat got affected when you hit the cube but "nothing" happend? There is nothing connected to the seat, so maybe that is why?

[@EpsilonRosePersonal]

I've wanted you to test how damage propagation works for a while and I think it might be tied in to some of the weirdness you're seeing here and similar bits of weirdness you've seen with explosions, in the past. Basically, if damage (or an EMP) hits a block, how does it propagate to adjacent blocks? Does the number of connections matter? The number of potential connections? Does the type of block matter? How about the size (e.g. does damage/EMP propagate through four 1×2×2s the same way it would two 2×2×2s)? With you EMP buffer tests, you had a lot of densely pack, highly connected, blocks for your first set of tests, where you you got a lower buffer requirement. Conversely, your second set of tests used a pair of skinny, poorly connected, rails and it had a much higher buffer requirement. This makes me think the number of connections or total number of blocks might be more important than the distance. On the damage side of things, this might also have implications for how different shield configurations work (e.g. shields attached by a single pole, shields attached by multiple poles that lead back to a single block, shields attached to multiple poles that connect to multiple blocks, or directly attached shields).

[@noraehslikespotatoes9355]

Video idea, you and someone should make cars that have rockem sockem type robots on top that just fight with arm mechanics and make them fight in a car/robot derby

[@theinfernollama8564]

I was thinking because it was one solid block less distance was needed. But when you just have an extended shield attached to some supports you need a longer distance. I could be wrong tho.

[@emilchristensen6390]

In real life an EMP works by inducing power in the "wires" of a circuit (wireless power) this usually does one of two things: 1: kills circuits because the EMP induces a voltage higher than what the circuit/components are rated for. 2: If the voltage induced in the circuit is not higher than what the circuit is rated for, there will suddently be a voltage in different parts of the circuit, making the circuit do whatever the circuit does, but without it beeing asked to do it. I think the devs is simulating the second scenario in the game.

[@rickyrotarys1501]

Emp Proof idea...What if u made a creation where inputs(keys) only activate logic gates that control the creation/vehicle and only have the seat connected to the logic gates flip the green switch icon off for parts that can recive inputs (not including logic gates)from seat.

[@JR00STER]

Anchor block a decoy creation to the back of a functional creation and see if the decoy absorbs the shot. It would be a seperate creation technically and may not transfer through the Anchor block

[@gregblastfpv3623]

PHYSICS I believe the "failures" are a side effect of how the physics engine works. Physics objects go to sleep when not moving so calculations can be skipped to improve performance. They wake up when a physics event happens, such as shooting them with a physical projectile. However the systems are probably meant to activate only if the object is physically active (awake). So that - when it is not - not only the physics, but another bunch of calculations can be skipped too. When you shoot it, you wake it up. When you shoot it again, systems activate, unless you gave it enough time to go to sleep again. There will be a threshold of forces applied that determines when an object should go to sleep. And since vehicles have round wheels, there might always be at least a tiny movement even on flat ground, hence it remaining awake forever, ready to have its systems triggered by an EMP for example. The thing that is a little blurry is the reaction of the creation to shooting itself. It does make sense that the EMP triggering itself, meaning it has fired twice, will activate the nearby systems (it has been hit on its own head so things close to it only will activate). But at the time of firing the object was asleep so why did it hit itself? I believe using a system from a creation re-enables its physics no patter what. You shoot, it wakes up. That distance you chose being the minimum distance for self-hit to register makes the hit pretty much instant so systems near the hit won't activate just like other cases. The only question would be: why does the EMP still trigger itself sometimes? That can probably be left to chance or other reasons described in other comments (chance is never really just chance ;)). EDIT: actually it makes even more sense to say that it is applied per "system" (cannon, smoke emitter, ...) rather than per "creation". But them being organized in a hierarchy, if the parent is asleep, the children are asleep no matter what. And the more children you have, the less chance you have for the parent to be put asleep altogether. Also since the EMP acts as an impulse force on contact, you might be seeing better results if you fire two in a quick succession (with a small delay)?

[@whodisbrody]

You should do an emp battle with tnt on your creation, if you get hit you have a random chance to blow up

[@mikieeco1]

Bayblades, but everyone is outside the arena with a turret with an emp

[@deon5729]

maybe there is a bit of a cooldown between when each block can be affected by emp even if it has not been trigger just being in its blast radious triggers the cooldown which would make sense since making somebody being in constant emp on all blocks that can be affected sounds a bit bad doesn t it ? and maybe rather then having specific blast radious it has a number of blocks it travels thought upon hitting a creation rather then it just being an ordiany explosion like it looks. ig you could test if there is a single rod of blocks that is long will it need to be longer then if you made like a big rectangle

[@dragonangl2161]

First thing I take away from the video - in PvP matches, you can hide the EMPs inside your ship, behind shield plates, to guard against blasters.

[@thesunnynationg]

try a very long line of those smoke generators to see if the last one also gets affected if you hit the first one. obviously the line should be longer than the EMP's Blast radius.

[@Coolzilla1]

Now that we know they have force how many emp’s to break the sound barrier

[@daniel_77.]

build a machine that pushes one building into another, creating a domino effect, in instruments of destruction

[@jorge8596]

I was gonna suggest making 2 huge clusters of EMP shoot each other, theoretically creating an unstoppable chain reaction, but that last test doesn't give me too much hope. Maybe there still is a critical amount of EMP that will trigger the unstoppable reaction just by sheer number of targets?