Hull/Canopy/EngineGlowL/EngineGlowR are runtime-baked into one ArrayMesh
in _ready via SurfaceTool.append_from, dropping 4 MeshInstance3D children
to 1 (Nose/TailFin stay separate, they're retinted per-team). Skipped in
headless mode like the goal/arena_boundary visual builds, since physics
only cares about CollisionShape3D.
All 6 source surfaces (hull, canopy, engine_l x2, engine_r x2) carry
distinct materials, so this doesn't literally cut draw calls 6 to 3 as
TODO.md assumed — Godot still issues one draw call per surface regardless
of node count. The real win is scene-tree/transform overhead, not batching.
_apply_team_color() allocated a fresh StandardMaterial3D on every call, and
ran at least twice per ship (once from _ready at the default team, once from
the team setter when the game mode assigns the real team). Cache one
StandardMaterial3D per team in a static dict on Ship and reuse it across
every ship on that team.
Ship._emit_telemetry_data() ran get_euler()+trig every physics tick
for every ship regardless of whether a HUD was watching, wasting work
on AI ships and every headless training instance. Disable
_physics_process outright when headless, and skip emission the rest
of the time unless a signal actually has a listener.
Josh Creek