Physics question on part counts

[Conarr]

To what extent do the space tape struts add to the part count woes of a vehicle? In other words, does a strut running between two tanks take as much processing as the tanks themselves from a CPU or graphics processor utilization standpoint?

Upshot, should we try to keep strut count to a minimum as well as part count, and should strut count be a greater or lesser concern than part count?

[BubbaWilkins]

To what extent do the space tape struts add to the part count woes of a vehicle? In other words, does a strut running between two tanks take as much processing as the tanks themselves from a CPU or graphics processor utilization standpoint?

Upshot, should we try to keep strut count to a minimum as well as part count, and should strut count be a greater or lesser concern than part count?

Each part represents multiple physics calculations (nodes, structure, etc). Struts are the same as any other part.

[Uocjat]

i'm not entirely sure but from the looks of it struts are very low on polygon count (somewhere around 30-40 for a strut connected at both ends and that's if the middle part isn't just some sort of sprite) so as far as graphics go they do count towards memory usage but it's very little per strut (if I remember correctly medium fuel tanks are something like 200-250 polys each)

as for physics calculations i'm not so sure as that depends entirely on how the game handles them

but at least as far as mass and collision goes there's nothing there

how exactly they hold stuff together though is another matter - if they did something like removing a part's "wobble/break"-factor they might actually make for less memory usage

but I think it's more something to the effect of adding their own strength factor to that of the existing part so that would mean that it's slightly more in the sense of memory usage though still not a whole lot so unless you're running a very low end PC/laptop struts shouldn't anything to massive worry about unless you have eleventy million of them of cause

[Poddster]

Each part represents multiple physics calculations (nodes, structure, etc). Struts are the same as any other part.

Isn't there a property on parts to make them ignore physics? I guess you can't really apply that to struts, otherwise they wouldn't work...

[Conarr]

Isn't there a property on parts to make them ignore physics? I guess you can't really apply that to struts, otherwise they wouldn't work...

I'd love to know this so I can better plan the rest of my interplanetary ship, but I'm not smart enough in C++ / C# or whatever the programming language is here to find out. I'd also LOVE to know the shear strength on the Sr. Docking ports. I have this ship and I want an idea what it can take before the a ship docked on one the the ports pops off.