I think you're blowing this out of proportion. Especially when compared to a "fill er up" situation where you'd be even more fucked if you wanted to make your ship longer or shorter. Besides, it's not like power scaling from silhouette needs to be super absolute either, there could be a range of acceptable values or a penalty/bonus system. In the worst case scenario, it's still fewer blocks to add or remove than a "fill er up".
I feel like you went on a bit of a tangent here, the topic was balancing power output, not the ship itself. But i definitely agree with you, it's just natural that a smaller ship that somehow could power a larger mass of systems than a larger ship that doesn't make full use of its potential reactor output is going to be more effective even in a "silhouette" scenario.
Are you reading the thread? The point is to have less systems, not none. And if a heavier ship somehow manages to power itself and fights an identical silhouette ship with less mass, obviously the heavier ship has an advantage. This would be true in any system. The ships simply wouldn't be "completely filled", because you wouldn't be able to power that much. That would leave room for crew areas further down the line in development.
Okay, the ship on the right now has mostly filled systems. The ship on the left is still better.
Your last point is stupid in star made and real life. Let's go with real life first. Basing on silhouette the cruise ship should be more powerful than the frigate armed with anti ship missiles. Let's see how well that goes for the cruise ship.
ive preplanned the mass of every ship ive ever made since the system was introduced and tied into the games mechanics.
Yes, IF it can power them, that's the point.
That discussion should probably go here
God damnit, the topic was reactor output.
"OK, time to build a ship. I need it to compete with my enemy ship that has X mass, so it should be around that mass. If it's too much more mass it'll be overkill and start an arm's race, and neither of us want to have to mine 5 times as much, so I'll just avoid that. Now, f I want to kill it I'll need at least A mass in weapons, and I need to be able to tank its opening ion beam alpha salvo so I'll need B mass in shields.... how much power is this going to need? OK, I need C and D mass in power reactors and capacitors. How's my mass doing? OK, I still have X - (A + B + C +D) = E mass left for my thrusters and armor and the rechargers for my shields, that's plenty. I'll put a little bit more of my mass allowance into power and weapons for a faster kill now." [SHIP IS THEN BUILT]
Yes, just incorporate point #1 into power 2.0 immediately (and while you're at it increase the minimum stabiliser effect from 0 to a small but useful value), it's trivial.
This is illogical, because you're assuming that one mass sum equates to the same amount of ability, and the same qualities. I'm sure there are actually many different configurations you could go with that can achieve the same mass, while being more or less formidable, and having vastly different loadouts.
Effectiveness is impossible to quantify due to the nature of the game.
this is true, depending on scale. if you take two identically shaped ship hulls both filled as efficiently as possible with systems, and hull A has basic hull, however, hull B has 2 layers of advanced armor. so B will always have more mass even though they both have identical block counts. if the ships are small, A would likely win because B has much fewer systems, less defense, offense, and mobility. mid sized ships B as the advantage because the systems difference isnt enough to offset the increased armor. but if you get big enough, the massive difference the the 2 layers of advanced armor vs 1 layer of basic make in mass does not make your ship better by default, it actually might become a hinderance because you now have to dedicate more room to thrust, and power for the thrusters.
Spaghetti monsters are a consequence of balancing around DIMENSIONS. Both power systems encourage them through dimension based balancing- either dimensions of power lines, or, in the new system, stabilizer distance.
Then you aren't balancing on dimensions. You are balancing off mass and forcing people to build oversized, empty ships, for no reason. Or, rather, an awfully stupid version. A reason of "I want to force people to have empty space so they'll put interiors in" instead of giving an actual reason to have interiors, that being crew.
A 10k mass spaghetti monster will take out a 10k mass "normal" densely filled minmaxxed ship. From this we can definitely say that when balancing by mass spaghetti is meta.
So, all things being equal, the thing with greater dimensions being stronger, how on earth can you say this is mass based balancing at fault?! The ship with the larger dimensions is BETTER.
The amount of mass in a 1km long "normal" ship can vary by tens of thousands just by adding one "layer," for lack of a better word, in a dimension, because of how long the ships are. I don't think it'd be very easy to judge things based on dimensions at this size because, again, dimensions do little to reflect how much stuff a ship actually has on it.
