Power Auxiliary: Extinguishing the engine fires.

[Winterhome]

Gonna be a fairly short post, like most of mine.

Power Auxiliaries have both an ON and an OFF state, right? The OFF state has no real usage other than stockpiling power for a very fast near-instant recharge - after which you really want to leave it on for the rest of the fight.

Turning power auxiliaries OFF has no real point to it.

My suggestion: Rework damage so that rather than just spawning explosions based on the initial group size, there's an amount of explosive damage that the reactor needs to deal base on its initial group size. The explosion damage is calculated by dividing this initial explosive damage quantity by the number of explosions.

This would be functionally identical to what we have right now, with one twist.

Turning your reactors OFF mid-explosion could mitigate the total amount of damage by a certain number per second. For instance, if your reactors get hit and they queue up a total of roughly 500,000 Damage, and you turn off the reactors, it may (for an example - just throwing this one out here randomly) reduce the damage requested by maybe 25k per second or some such, thus reducing the size of the explosions in the chain reaction until they reach nothingness.

Now, as an added bonus - Astrotech Beams could be configured so that, when fired from a separate, player-piloted, undocked ship, they cut the damage total with each tick the same way that turning the reactors OFF would - except with the potential to be even better.

Allowing mechanisms by which players can mitigate ships' chain reactions would reward players with fast reaction times for killing their reactors, and it would reward players who wish to make "Medic" type ships. To balance it out, perhaps the explosion damage could be buffed a bit. I would also recommend adding in a "spool-up time" based on the size of the group to balance out the power of turning reactors off and on constantly. Make it a real choice to kill the fire or not.


tl;dr
Turn reactors off to slowly put out reactor fires. Astrotech beams from support ships save lives.

 

[Madman198237]

Well, I'd say more along the lines of "shut it down, and don't use it again until the ship's rebooted", but this has potential regardless.

 

[Lukwan]

I'd like to see shutting-down the Aux-reactor reduce the chance for a full on chain-reaction destroying the whole shebang. ( Still have it very likely to explode.) Alternatively a successful shut down could simply slow down the chain-reaction.

The Astrotech beam should act like fire-retardant foam: stopping the spread of damage and the ending the chain-reaction. To keep this from being automated the Astrotech should only work from a separate, un-docked entity or by hand.

 

[TheGT]

Well, I'd say more along the lines of "shut it down, and don't use it again until the ship's rebooted", but this has potential regardless.

I read your quote in the voice of arnold schwarzenegger. You have made my day.

In other things, it would be cool to have the handheld healing/astrotech beam be usable as a fire extinguisher on right click that is extra effective when aimed at the aux blocks at stopping the explosion rate.

 

[MacThule]

I was under the impression that the point of the cascade failure of an aux pow unit was to duplicate the risks inherent in docked power where damage to the docking section could cost the ship ALL the power from the unit. If this is able to be mitigated, aux pow starts to become pretty OP.

I very much like adding value to astrotech... but I think until we get a better feel for how ships with aux pow actually perform over a period of time this may be going too far, too quickly

 

[Lukwan]

I was under the impression that the point of the cascade failure of an aux pow unit was to duplicate the risks inherent in docked power where damage to the docking section could cost the ship ALL the power from the unit. If this is able to be mitigated, aux pow starts to become pretty OP.

I very much like adding value to astrotech... but I think until we get a better feel for how ships with aux pow actually perform over a period of time this may be going too far, too quickly

The main reason for Aux power is to replace docked reactors and avoid the pitfalls of collisions etc. While the mechanic of making them volatile is needed to prevent them from being OP I think there is a great opportunity to play with the 'Engineering emergency' response. You make a good point about waiting for things to shake out before adding astrotech countermeasures so there is no rush to implement fire-retardant.

To keep it from being OP you would need to design the reactor room to allow access for the emergency repairs. It would require at least one spare crew-person to act as engineer. The chain-reaction will spread in all directions and pose a great risk to the fire-fighter (s). Even after the cascade-failure has been arrested your reactor is going be pretty gibbled until you can make dry-dock. With sufficient balance -elements this could add an interesting new game-mechanic and as always: more drama = more fun.

 

[Madman198237]

Well, as of right now, a reactor's size determines number and power of explosions. An average reactor will not be completely consumed, but will be largely destroyed (No chain-reactions---the destruction each explosion causes has no effect on the number of explosions yet to take place) yet still providing power. I think that, when hit, you should get a warning about reactor instability (You should have time to react, even though this could conceivably be an antimatter-matter collision power source, which would most likely have already consumed the entire ship in a massive explosion, especially if the shot hit the fuel (Antimatter) storage....), say 10 seconds, during which you can start a shutdown. Shutdown time is based on the size and damage the reactor has received. A heavily damaged reactor will take more time to disable than one that's just been touched by a cannon round. A larger reactor takes longer to deactivate. During deactivation, explosions will occur. Once the reactor is shut down, it's down until you reboot, but no longer exploding. That's your tradeoff---continued power and a crater, or a small(er) crater and no power until the ship reboots.

 

[EricBlank]

that sounds pretty reasonable, madman. We actually do get a HUD message about the reactor at the moment but the explosions do start immediately.

In the reactor shutdown process, or when applying an astrotech beam, the radius and number of explosions called for is reduced (cumulatively, over the period of the shutdown process (catch it early!) or the application of astrotech based on size of the array), perhaps? To stick with the idea of fire control.

 

[Winterhome]

I really don't see the point of forcing people to reboot. Crews exist, and any time something gets damaged mid-combat in any real world ships or tanks or anything of the sort, damage control is immediately performed with the intent of getting things working again as well as possible given the irreparable damage. Y'know, since their lives literally depend on the ship working.

Just give the reactors a spool-up time when you reenable them. Something like 1 second for every 200 Power Auxiliary blocks or whatever before they reach their maximum output again. When you're in combat and being fired at, a few seconds is a really, really long time, after all.

 

[Madman198237]

Yes, crew should eventually play a part (Replacing the rebooting mechanic completely on anything larger than a single-person fighter-bomber, anyone?), but for now, this is a reasonable tradeoff (Cue truthful accusations of bias....NOW).

That said, in real life, no naval vessel ever took a direct hit to the propulsion system and repaired it completely during the battle...mostly because being left dead in the water sucks, at least as far as survivability goes. Being left dead in space is worse, because you happen to need this little thing called oxygen in space, and the pumps and mechanisms that provide it are powered by the very same power system that just got shut down before it did more damage to itself....anyway.

There's no such thing as repairs during a battle---you can't work fast enough to put together badly damaged systems. The most that you could expect is the rapid repair of air leaks/gaping craters. You simply can't rebuild large, complex systems in the field. You need heavy machinery. However, you can fix things to the extent of "Fires are out, auxiliary systems are running (Or even the primaries if they didn't sustain extreme damage), and we're being towed back to a shipyard to spend the next year in drydock. But at least we won't be sinking today."

However, like I said, fixing/reactivating relatively undamaged self-reliant pieces of equipment can happen in the field, but it can take hours.

 

[Winterhome]

You might also consider that forcing rebooting before reactors can be reenabled would be a guaranteed way of ensuring that nobody ever uses such a damage control mechanic for any reason whatsoever.

 

[Madman198237]

What?

The reboot thing is basically a stopgap measure. If you can't afford to suffer the explosions, then you take the power hit. If you can't suffer the power hit, take the explosions.

Because right now, nobody will build any sort of ship that can't take the explosions from these reactors---you just can't.

 

[MacThule]

What?

The reboot thing is basically a stopgap measure. If you can't afford to suffer the explosions, then you take the power hit. If you can't suffer the power hit, take the explosions.

Because right now, nobody will build any sort of ship that can't take the explosions from these reactors---you just can't.

I think I might be reading you wrong, but wouldn't this basically cut the balancing effect on auxiliary power in half?

"Nobody" and "can't" are exaggerations of course; I've already seen ships in MP with AP. Some are just... vulnerable. Others use AP in outboard nacelles (like the warp nacelles on the Enterprise) so potential explosions are safely relegated to only affecting the AP nacelle itself and no other systems. If they can't afford to contain it inside the ship under 2 layers of advanced armor that is. The current system is totally viable, IMO.

This system is pretty new, and I've seen players in the forums here asking for a volatile replacement for docked power for over a year. I think we should give it a good couple months for people to see what they can come up with before asking for new code to make push-button mitigation of the balance possible.

 

[Madman198237]

That's the thing----it works almost like an explosion, disabling power, but in exchange for the disabling of MORE power, you get MORE SHP remaining after the detonation. It allows for things like glass cannon alpha-strike vessels to do what they do best, yet not immediately get completely immolated. Especially since shutdown is just reasonable. You can't really safely reboot in combat, so it's a combat debuff for a repair buff, basically.

 

[Winterhome]

That's the thing----it works almost like an explosion, disabling power, but in exchange for the disabling of MORE power, you get MORE SHP remaining after the detonation. It allows for things like glass cannon alpha-strike vessels to do what they do best, yet not immediately get completely immolated. Especially since shutdown is just reasonable. You can't really safely reboot in combat, so it's a combat debuff for a repair buff, basically.

It doesn't work that way. By self-crippling your ship, you're guaranteeing that the entire ship is lost. Combat doesn't end faster than the explosions continue, mate (we're looking at a minute and a half tops vs. 10 minutes to 20 minutes of 1v1 combat) - and most ships that're large enough to use auxiliary power seriously are also large enough that they need it in order to power one of their systems alone, if not less. Shield generation is 10e/s/shield unit, so 200k shield recharge will take up your main generator. Thrust uses exponential increases in power consumption, so almost all ships with auxiliary power would be limited to 1/3 thrust. Weapons... Don't even get me started on those.

You turn your reactors off with no way of reenabling them, you're guaranteeing that everything - everything is lost. It's just flat-out not viable under any circumstances. If your ship is crippled by something small enough that it can't do any damage at all in the time it takes to reboot, then I question how you managed to take a solid hit to a reactor in the first place - because mid-combat rebooting is outright impossible.

 

[Madman198237]

-----Poorly chosen wording. I'm thinking of some way to shut the offending group down, not the whole system. Because nobody ever shut down #2 engine because #4 was throwing smoke and/or visibly on fire.
I'm working on the idea of the secondary usage of batteries---as batteries. Freaky, right? But you can use them to effectively store another "charge" for a large alpha weapon, and the increased regen you gain after the power dump could allow you, for example, three shots of the otherwise one-shot-only (Before retreating for a lengthy recharge) weapon before you gotta run.
Alternatively, an alpha-damage-oriented vessel that uses these things to decrease recharge time. This would allow it to continue fighting, especially if it's an extremely soft target otherwise. However, this would allow you to limp out of combat, instead of turning into a very large wreck because your poorly designed power system self-destructed and took most of your ship out.

But the basis of the whole idea is: No person ever designed a successful powerplant where the power system self-destructed when one tiny portion was damaged. Always, always, always, there's a way to shut it down. Or there's not, in which case the reactor is already a large crater and you have bigger problems to worry about (See steam explosions, fission/fusion/matter-antimatter collision reactor science, and flooding/unintentional depressurization of spacecraft).

 

[Winterhome]

Ah, yeah, that would make more sense. It would be an enormous pain to go through and manually shut down a single reactor grouping, though, what with how the GUI looks. It would need to be a separate button - some sort of "Shut down damaged reactors" thing or whatever.

Still, I'm not such a big fan of the idea of mandatory reboots, seeing as how you can knock out a pretty significant thing in a real engine - like, say, a radiator or a few cylinders if it's an internal combustion engine - and the engine would still function, albeit significantly less well, and most larger parts could be jury-rigged if absolutely necessary. For an example of a ship being repaired mid-combat - The USS Johnston's three aft turrets were knocked out during the Battle of Leyte Gulf, and the repair crews successfully restored power to two of them mid-combat while under fire from what was effectively the entire Japanese Center Force. It wasn't a direct propulsion hit, but then, we're not talking about a ship with thirty separate generators magically supplying everything in the ship without needing powerlines.

If you're in favor of shutting down the specific engines until reboot, then our main difference of opinion is the speed at which a dedicated repair crew could get out the fire extinguishers, duct tape, and surplus extension cords mid-combat.

 

[wanzer]

I think that, when hit, you should get a warning about reactor instability (You should have time to react.

you can force of a warning by placing logic gates in a grid pattern inside the reactors that are linked
or incase the reactor in a layer of logic gates

may one fall out then you can bet your grandmother the reactor got hit

make the logic gates then trigger a rail sliding a display in front of the camera telling you that the ship is going boom boom

 

[Madman198237]

You can. But you shouldn't HAVE to. No fancy extra science should be involved to tell you that the train's pulling into Oh Crap Central and that that escape pod really would have been a good investment.

 

[Winterhome]

you can force of a warning by placing logic gates in a grid pattern inside the reactors that are linked
or incase the reactor in a layer of logic gates

may one fall out then you can bet your grandmother the reactor got hit

make the logic gates then trigger a rail sliding a display in front of the camera telling you that the ship is going boom boom

Back when docked reactors were a thing, I always had a display set up in my core room (and occasionally in front of my main cameras) made up of flashing lights, linked up wirelessly, to tell me when