Power System Overhaul Proposal

[Kelpaz]

Unlike everything else in SM, which is true to real life...

Oh, and guess how real life nuclear reactors work? They produce heat.

Why yes a nuclear reactor heats up water turns it into steam that drives steam turbines.
That's heat being converted into a usable form of energy, but this idea revolves around a reactor that produces heat when energy is used.

 

[nightrune]

Why yes a nuclear reactor heats up water turns it into steam that drives steam turbines.
That's heat being converted into a usable form of energy, but this idea revolves around a reactor that produces heat when energy is used.

Heat tends to be an inefficiency in the system, but also most electrical loads tend to convert power into heat as well. I could imagine the amount of energy it takes to create our missiles and how much heat that would produce. The mechanic works extremely well for mech warrior. I would welcome it here.

 

[Jojomo]

Most people seem to not like this idea in one way or another so...LOL

Lists to back that up, or it didn't happen, thanks.

Or listen to Raisinbat and don't bring it up at all.
[doublepost=1487236261,1487236209][/doublepost]

Why yes a nuclear reactor heats up water turns it into steam that drives steam turbines.
That's heat being converted into a usable form of energy, but this idea revolves around a reactor that produces heat when energy is used.

The proposed system produces waste heat you have to deal with.
No stretch of reality there.

 

[Kelpaz]

Lists to back that up, or it didn't happen, thanks.

Or listen to Raisinbat and don't bring it up at all.
[doublepost=1487236261,1487236209][/doublepost]
The proposed system produces waste heat you have to deal with.
No stretch of reality there.

Not that realism matters in the face of game mechanics, but consider this:
Imagine you have a reactor that makes no energy but produces heat when you connect systems to it that stretches my reality quite far alright.

 

[Jojomo]

Not that realism matters in the face of game mechanics, but consider this:
Imagine you have a reactor that makes no energy but produces heat when you connect systems to it that stretches my reality quite far alright.

Sorry? Weren't you the one complaining about the "lack" of realism?

Try taking an electrical circuit with no load, and compare it with one connected to a load (system). Tell me which is hotter (more waste heat).

 

[Kelpaz]

Sorry? Weren't you the one complaining about the "lack" of realism?

I was using the realism argument as an example to counter argue someones idea of realism.
I don't even know how you could misunderstand my previous statements unless you forgot to read who I first replied to and what manner I did so.

 

[DragonSoul9000]

I like the idea but I do have some issues with it.

First: A change of this magnitude as you stated would break all current ships. this means that "all" ships including the ones you are reworking from the most recent Contests as well as any NPC generated ship will have to be reworked and possibly redesigned. this means that all the hard work both the DEVS and the players have done over the past year will have been for nothing. I know you Devs work hard at trying to make us a Great game. This game is already GREAT. I would hate to think that this rebalance endeavor will be making more work for you to do because in the long run this is going to cause more issues and bugs for you to have to fix as it will be a new mechanic added to the game. And we all know that when you start adding new stuff to any game things don't want to mesh at first. Now this will push back your timetable that you have setup. Think on this. if you say this is a fundamental issue and that it affect everything in the game then everything else comes to a stop while trying to rebalance this issue. So Devs will not be able to work on their respective projects to add new content and features to the game because this one issue.

Second: Small steps can save your life. in other words you need to find a way to slowly migrate to this new system and allow for complete integration of the new system with any old blueprints being broken. Ideas:

1: Implement a system for when certain blocks are put together they form a reactor and get a multiplier to the power output of each block so in this respect the player has the choice to use a reactor or generator or a power stick. this would not currently break any ships or BP. some redesign would of course still need to happen but not nearly as much as redesigning an entire ship. as well as it would make your job as Devs easier by not having to completely rework the contest ships. After that then start adding the heat boundaries and other such items.

2: Work Smarter not harder!!!! Small releases that ease into this new system would allow for general testing of each new mechanic. Make sure it works then ease into the next phase of the project. That is one thing I have loved about this game. I have always from the day I downloaded this game had both the Dev and Release version. If I found something on the Dev release that was going to cause me not to be able to use a BP or a certain block type then I would wait till it was right in the Dev version before downloading the proper Release version. I am assuming that is why the Dev version is there right?? Use this to your advantage. Implementing this system in small steps will save our ships, your time, and most importantly everyone. Sanity

Now with that being said, Yes I would really like to see this new power system implemented, but not at the cost of everyone's time and work being for nothing, including the Dev teams.
[doublepost=1487242035,1487241898][/doublepost]that was supposed to say without any old blueprints being broken.

 

[Brokengauge]

How many people think that the proposed generators would only produce heat?

How I understood it, was that no matter what your power load was, whatever kind of reactor you used would be able to meet the demand, and so keeping track of the actual power output is meaningless. If your reactor has an output of 0 with no load, and exactly the power you need when you put a load on it, then why keep track of that number.

If the reactor was undersized, it would overheat, with the severity of it dependent on just how undersized it is. This is your main design consideration: can my reactor handle this? Hey! Here's a quick and easy way to know- keeping track of the waste heat.

Is the actual layout that schine proposed any good? I don't think so. Bounding boxes are not a good idea. IRL you don't have huge areas around generators that say "no mechanical/electrical/plumbing systems within a 25 foot radius!...standing next to it ok tho..."

Basically, it seems like schine wants to change it to a demand driven type of power system, instead of the current supply driven system.

And if the economy has taught me anything, it's that "supply-side" ways of doing anything are horrible and limiting

 

[Gasboy]

Every ship I have done systems for in the past 6 months, probably the past year, has been above the softcap, and yes, I will tell you that it is a made up issue. Powering ships with aux is easy. Really easy. Are you just not building them properly? I can provide advice if you want any.

So power's fine then? Okay, good to know. Guess we can leave it the way it is?
[doublepost=1487255352,1487255274][/doublepost]

Oh, and guess how real life nuclear reactors work? They produce heat

Having stood on top of a working nuclear power generator, can confirm, nuclear reactors are hot.

 

[kingreol]

Any word from schema yet? Awaiting a dev blog on this, and in general the timeline of changes?

. Even if it's not set in stone, the survival aspect of gameplay + building aspect feels on hold just in case a major change happens that nullifies any non hull building. My worry is timeframe of this might be a long while and not all at once. So 4 months for the overhaul of major systems would put a soft hold on players in the game who don't want to build to just turn around and rebuild. Fearing some hull designs won't work with the new system etc

 

[CrazyMLC]

Server load shouldn't really be an issue, guys. It's a one-time check when a block changes of seeing if some groups are connected and doing a couple box collisions to see if there are other systems in the reactor's heat zone. It will be very light on performance compared to half the stuff Starmade does every frame anyway.

The only way it could impact performance in any significant way is if someone uses the advanced build tool to place a gazillion blocks, and the system isn't optimized so it tries to recalculate the power for every single one of those block placements instead of waiting to calculate until they're all placed. But I'm sure they'd figure that out.

 

[Tech-priest]

This is our future?

 

[Matt_Bradock]

This is our future?
View attachment 38601

Seems like it. Doombrickers are a small minority in the Starmade community, but apparently they are a large enough thorn in people's sights to cry for fundamental changes in power that'll lose a lot of experienced players who'd think it's not worth learning everything about ship systems again from the ground up. Yet the goal will stay unachieved, because some people WILL keep min-maxing.
How minor the actual doombrick issue is, can be observed by looking at the Blood and Steel tournaments, which were hardcore PvP tournaments with specially built PvP ships only, and count how many doombricks were there out of how many contestants... and then I have to point out that a doombrick NEVER WON it. That is hard statistical evidence that doombricks are obsolete and are only used by inexperienced players who are still in the process of learning or players who can't improve (a.k.a noobs).
A skilled builder, even a PvP focused one, who takes pride in their work, will strive to, and will be able to, build a ship that doesn't only look good inside and outside, but also perform well in a PvP situation, and stand toe to toe with an umimaginative doombrick of the same size category.
Plenty of PvP players did that. Even the much hated Vaygr put effort into making their vessels (which, I think we can all admit, are wicked strong ships, whether you love or hate them) look presentable. The most esteemed veteran PvP factions of this community won't touch a doombrick with a 10 foot pole. So far, I have yet to see any evidence that doombricks, (or other unimaginative chunks of systems), are a prevalent enough phenomenon to alone justify a complete rework of the power system, especially a rework that forces significant interior space to be unuseable for system blocks.
As for the scaling, I'm in the group that believes the construction and use of oversized dozen-million-block ships should be discouraged. Those are just simply not fun to fly. You're dead slow, you move slow, turn slow, barely get a shot off with fixed guns, and generally just end up being a turret match. There was a very good reason the major PvP tournaments had a hard mass cap. So I think that aspect of the current power system (diminishing returns) is perfectly fine. There must be a limitation, a practical one, not an enforced one, to keep the game challenging, interesting, competitive, and performance-friendly.

 

[Criss]

Right, great summary of all the problems with the proposed power overhaul. Schine keeps contradicting themselves. More intuitive for new players. More complex. Less complex. End result is just bad.

I would like to comment on this as I was skimming through the thread. The system starts simple. The first ships a new player builds will likely be smaller than the official assets we have created, all under 150 meters. In that range, the power system is easy. On drones and fighters you won't have to worry about heat at all.

Increase the size and heat becomes a problem, one that you must deal with. And that is where the complexity to the system comes into play. And that makes sense I think. A larger ship should grow in complexity. The reactor design will matter.

This is our future?
View attachment 38601

In a more physically appealing way, sure. It looks like that is a scaled down and simplified version of what would be on a larger ship. That is of course with the most basic premise behind this system being applied in game.

We have read through a lot, although I am sure there is more to read through. We understand the concerns with chandelier ships and how they would influence builds and are trying out ideas to work around that.

 

[Tech-priest]

Why we can`t use the radiator scheme?

 

[MacThule]

Painfully reminded this morning of why this proposal is so frustrating.

Power works.

TRUE STORY:
This morning I logged into a MP server to do a bit of shipbuilding and get a defensive fleet of drone fighters out around an outpost of mine. I have lots of mats there, and some good BPs - this'll be EZ, right?

But there was some kind of bug preventing my (previously firing) turrets from firing and a random pirate was lurking nearby at missile range keeping my PD turrets busy nonstop (which were working for some reason), so I wanted to fix my anti-ship turrets and get rid of him before spawning in ships that might get hit in the crossfire. Tried some resetting, relogging, deleted and replaced some stuff - no dice. So after 15 minutes of failed troubleshooting... I decide to scrap my whole ship and respawn it to try and fix the issue.

Of course I can't scrap a proper ship in a shipyard because of 6 turrets and 3 drones. So 40 minutes and 3 error disconnects later, the ship and all docked entities are successfully salvaged. But I want to recycle the parts of course, and about 1/3 of the materials ended up in the ship's hold before I remember to switch cargo. So that of course dumps into space. My bad.

No worries - let me just pick those... NOPE. Crashed the whole server trying to pick up a small pile of dropped materials! So now I've lost almost an hour doing what we were told almost two years ago shipyards would do in a minute, in addition to the time lost trying to address the problem before scrapping/respawning. Well, that's pretty much my play time for this morning - so much for spawning those fighters. Not even sure what was wrong with my missile turrets in the first place; they're normally so hyperactive.

Got to get to work now though. Hopefully tomorrow works out better, but that's about 50/50 cause days like this are... more the norm than not in my experience. Yay.

But let's go ahead and spend anywhere from 3 to 12 months rebuilding the (WORKING) power system and all of the systems dependent upon it.
Sorry, I know, I get it - long term planning - but it's upsetting.

 

[Ithirahad]

Painfully reminded this morning of why this proposal is so frustrating.

Power works.

TRUE STORY:
This morning I logged into a MP server to do a bit of shipbuilding and get a defensive fleet of drone fighters out around an outpost of mine. I have lots of mats there, and some good BPs - this'll be EZ, right?

But there was some kind of bug preventing my (previously firing) turrets from firing and a random pirate was lurking nearby at missile range keeping my PD turrets busy nonstop (which were working for some reason), so I wanted to fix my anti-ship turrets and get rid of him before spawning in ships that might get hit in the crossfire. Tried some resetting, relogging, deleted and replaced some stuff - no dice. So after 15 minutes of failed troubleshooting... I decide to scrap my whole ship and respawn it to try and fix the issue.

Of course I can't scrap a proper ship in a shipyard because of 6 turrets and 3 drones. So 40 minutes and 3 error disconnects later, the ship and all docked entities are successfully salvaged. But I want to recycle the parts of course, and about 1/3 of the materials ended up in the ship's hold before I remember to switch cargo. So that of course dumps into space. My bad.

No worries - let me just pick those... NOPE. Crashed the whole server trying to pick up a small pile of dropped materials! So now I've lost almost an hour doing what we were told almost two years ago shipyards would do in a minute, in addition to the time lost trying to address the problem before scrapping/respawning. Well, that's pretty much my play time for this morning - so much for spawning those fighters. Not even sure what was wrong with my missile turrets in the first place; they're normally so hyperactive.

Got to get to work now though. Hopefully tomorrow works out better, but that's about 50/50 cause days like this are... more the norm than not in my experience. Yay.

But let's go ahead and spend anywhere from 3 to 12 months rebuilding the (WORKING) power system and all of the systems dependent upon it.
Sorry, I know, I get it - long term planning - but it's upsetting.

Whoa. I understand the sentiment, but what's this about not being able to do this with a shipyard? I've scrapped stuff using shipyards (and then rebuilt via blueprint) and nothing anomalous has happened... The only bug I'm aware of has to do with actually building the ship using a shipyard, and IIRC that only triggers with something like 10 or more docked entities. (Don't quote me on that last bit, though.)

 

[linwe talion]

I like it, definitely. Everything that differs from the now existing system is good.
I would like to propose some core elements that would add spiciness to the new power system. Yes, we all have heard about them in the past, but with this revamp I consider it to be actual to review their possible future.
1) Fuel. Reactors should use one. Other way, what is reacting inside them?..
2) Radioactivity. Besides the heat, reactors should be producing radioactive effect, which damages systems slowly and wounds players , unless you use special...
3) Insulation blocks. e.g. some kinds of terrain (which are useless now and by this new use could achieve real sense of existence). Some blocks should insolate radiation, others - heat.
4) I like those radiators, it is a really cool (hehehe) idea, though looks like the chambers are the same as radiators in some ways.
5) Remember to add necessity to connect systems to the reactor with the conduits!!! The "tesla power wireless spreading" inside ships makes me sick for ages.


What I don't really like is the idea of filling the ships by inner armor. This is a wrong part. You made a great progress in proposing a way to force the ships to have inner space, please, don't screw it all over.

 

[MacThule]

Whoa. I understand the sentiment, but what's this about not being able to do this with a shipyard? I've scrapped stuff using shipyards (and then rebuilt via blueprint) and nothing anomalous has happened... The only bug I'm aware of has to do with actually building the ship using a shipyard.

Maybe they fixed shipyards? I haven't been using them at all for about 6 months now because I got sick of random docked entities shooting into space, or left drifting after a scrap, or appearing in adjacent sectors or worse - spawning in with the ship fine, then after docking and re-logging appearing far away and no longer attached to the ship.. I spent most of their first year working with them, trying to adjust to the kinks and work around them, then ditched them and I haven't bothered with them since because after a year they still weren't working properly. Are they not occasionally having issues with docked entities anymore?

 

[Ithirahad]

They might have issues making docked entities that are properly attached to ships, but they seem to scrap things properly, last time I checked.