Power should EXPLODE!

    Lecic

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    Here is a situation:
    Large battle between 2 titans, 2 carriers, and many fighters.
    A titan hits the opposing titans powertanks.
    A large explosion ensues, crippling the titan(thanks to damage mechanics).
    This gives the edge to 1 team over the other in about 10-20 seconds.
    There is no way to counter this except have less massive ships.
    This limits creativity, something that nobody wants.
    So the enemy titan took a gamble, putting all of their eggs (power tanks) in one basket. If they had used multiple chunks of tanks, they might have had less power, but wouldn't have been crippled by a lucky shot. This encourages varying designs of ships. You can balance the risks and rewards of your builds.

    Anyway, with shields and the way weapons are, once the shield goes down, you're pretty much screwed anyway. If I designed a fleet, I would have a few damage dealers that would knock out enemy shields, and then have a heavy missile launcher fire a BB at the shieldless ship. It'll be vaporized by the massive explosion.
     
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    So the enemy titan took a gamble, putting all of their eggs (power tanks) in one basket. If they had used multiple chunks of tanks, they might have had less power, but wouldn't have been crippled by a lucky shot. This encourages varying designs of ships. You can balance the risks and rewards of your builds.

    Anyway, with shields and the way weapons are, once the shield goes down, you're pretty much screwed anyway. If I designed a fleet, I would have a few damage dealers that would knock out enemy shields, and then have a heavy missile launcher fire a BB at the shieldless ship. It'll be vaporized by the massive explosion.
    You need massive banks of power tanks to field a titan...
     
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    No chain explosions!
    Just the one vital killed by non-aoe weaponry (amc, not missile as it already has aoe) cause one aoe-effect...

    You can already core-drill any ship (also titans) in 20 seconds. With equal mass in turrets/fighters compared to a ship.

    And the best defence is to make the capitals be a swarm of fighters in one ship instance -> huge miss rate -> limits creativity <- even currently. Do you not agree here, too?
    Guess what won't matter? Core drilling!
     
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    I think chain-exploding would be terrible under the current system. However, I think the current system for power grouping is stupid. Right now, it's just about getting maximum box size of each group and as long as you have at least one group that's large enough, you hit the soft cap and have essentially not lost anything. Power hits the limit way too fast with way too few blocks compared to the amount of blocks in the ship since you only need a linear increase in power blocks for a cubic increase in ship blocks.

    A system in which chain explosions could work is one in which adjacent power blocks connect to form a single reactor. Each reactor's output would be completely independent of any other reactors (no extra power from having multiple groups) and only based on mass, not on box dimensions. Total power would scale superlinearly with mass (not quadratic, but above linear).
    You could make really long reactors right now, or boxy ones, or even psuedospherical ones. When one part of the reactor is hit, it would distribute most of the damage to adjacent power blocks, thus giving it effectively more HP. Once a power block is destroyed, it would explode and damage the nearby power blocks. Thus, when one block goes, it will probably take out the nearby damaged blocks with its explosion, but not (if things are properly designed) the whole reactor. Additionally, because reactors scale superlinearly with mass, it would be best powerwise to have large reactors that might get blown to smithereens once the attacker drills in, but better battlewise to have many small ones that don't provide as much power, but contain the damage from being hit.
    The best part? Current ships would not become unusable, just more optimized for power over survivability in a more extreme way than currently (it's already better for survivability to have many smaller reactors).
     
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    I think chain-exploding would be terrible under the current system. However, I think the current system for power grouping is stupid. Right now, it's just about getting maximum box size of each group and as long as you have at least one group that's large enough, you hit the soft cap and have essentially not lost anything. Power hits the limit way too fast with way too few blocks compared to the amount of blocks in the ship since you only need a linear increase in power blocks for a cubic increase in ship blocks.

    A system in which chain explosions could work is one in which adjacent power blocks connect to form a single reactor. Each reactor's output would be completely independent of any other reactors (no extra power from having multiple groups) and only based on mass, not on box dimensions. Total power would scale superlinearly with mass (not quadratic, but above linear).
    You could make really long reactors right now, or boxy ones, or even psuedospherical ones. When one part of the reactor is hit, it would distribute most of the damage to adjacent power blocks, thus giving it effectively more HP. Once a power block is destroyed, it would explode and damage the nearby power blocks. Thus, when one block goes, it will probably take out the nearby damaged blocks with its explosion, but not (if things are properly designed) the whole reactor. Additionally, because reactors scale superlinearly with mass, it would be best powerwise to have large reactors that might get blown to smithereens once the attacker drills in, but better battlewise to have many small ones that don't provide as much power, but contain the damage from being hit.
    The best part? Current ships would not become unusable, just more optimized for power over survivability in a more extreme way than currently (it's already better for survivability to have many smaller reactors).
    Ok... but then you have power storage... and titans need massive amounts of those, just to fire your weapons. Hell, my smaller ships need a lot of them.
     
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    Well, glad I found this thing again. Instead of creating a new thread, I figured why not just add it to this one?

    With the overdrive modules now in the game, I thought that we could add the ability to attach one of those to a power group. When it is active, power is massively more effective for that group. However, it also causes every "overloaded" block to become explosive, similar to disintegrators. This way, there would be a reason to take the risks of your ship exploding, as it becomes drastically more powerful (pun intended).

    Just a random thought I had while building a cloaking destroyer, as it takes a huge amount of energy (especially if I want it to still look decent and be effective in combat).
     
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    Maybe if there was a percentage chance that a power tank will explode when hit. I don't agree with power reactors exploding though, they are just too numerous.
     
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    Maybe if there was a percentage chance that a power tank will explode when hit. I don't agree with power reactors exploding though, they are just too numerous.
    Kinda why I specified only when blocks that are being effected by overdrive. Too much power tends to make things unstable, right? Plus, it would allow people who don't want the effect to avoid it completely, but it offers great benefits for using it.

    (I would have created my own thread, but as it is only a small modification to an already existing thread, I posted here. Seems extraneous otherwise.)
     
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    Snk

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    This is one of those threads where the people who just want to build ships clash with people who actually want decent gameplay.

    Guys, this is a good suggestion. Just because you spent a lot of time building your ship doesn't mean the entire game community should have to suffer. Great idea, +1.
     
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    This is one of those threads where the people who just want to build ships clash with people who actually want decent gameplay.

    Guys, this is a good suggestion. Just because you spent a lot of time building your ship doesn't mean the entire game community should have to suffer. Great idea, +1.
    Its not just that, its the fact that you need a ton of power to run good systems (I'm not even talking titans) basically you need 25% of your ship to be power gen/storage or more to keep it functional (I think that it should be a bit more than power/no power but that's another thread...) So basically you want that to become explosive, I could see it working but it can't be a cascade effect or it would be too damaging to combat. On the other hand I'd like to see weapons damage/disable systems as well so there's that. I'd put it down as make hitting a system worthwhile and maybe but a nice bang in every once in a while when you hit the power or weapons array.
     
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    I would think there should be a change of exploding plus a change of chain reactions.
    That varies with size.
    For example, a fighter sized power generator might have a 30% change of explosion and a 5% change of a chain reaction, while a titan-sized generator might have a 10% chance of explosion plus a 30% chance of a chain reaction.
     
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    I would think there should be a change of exploding plus a change of chain reactions.
    That varies with size.
    For example, a fighter sized power generator might have a 30% change of explosion and a 5% change of a chain reaction, while a titan-sized generator might have a 10% chance of explosion plus a 30% chance of a chain reaction.
    This is a horrid idea.... It doesn't solve anything because you can just break up the generators.
     
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    This is a horrid idea.... It doesn't solve anything because you can just break up the generators.
    That's how they are supposed to work, ever heard of auxiliary power? Plus I'm not trying to solve anything here, what is there to solve?
    If you decide to break up your generators, fine, you won't get a lot of efficiency out of your engines.
    If you build powerful engines you run the risk of exploding them.
     

    NeonSturm

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    Agree

    Real life car motors run on 70% power, because old grandmas should be able to use it without getting it to explode.

    But if space rockets fail at start, they may explode violently.
     
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    That's how they are supposed to work, ever heard of auxiliary power? Plus I'm not trying to solve anything here, what is there to solve?
    If you decide to break up your generators, fine, you won't get a lot of efficiency out of your engines.
    If you build powerful engines you run the risk of exploding them.
    Do I think the engines exploding would be neat? Yes. It doesn't allow for 1 shot kills if you get unlucky, but it adds a nice tactical layer. Power shouldn't explode because you need so many of them.


    Agree

    Real life car motors run on 70% power, because old grandmas should be able to use it without getting it to explode.

    But if space rockets fail at start, they may explode violently.
    Stop trying to bring real life into things. It's annoying.
     

    NeonSturm

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    Stop trying to bring real life into things. It's annoying.
    YOU are annoying (too) Vyor!
    The one who never committed sin throw the first stone :p

    I basically said that it is not unrealistic (to negate any arguments saying that this is unrealistic) like
    Maybe if there was a percentage chance that a power tank will explode when hit. I don't agree with power reactors exploding though, they are just too numerous.
    and supported exploding parts (power reactors). You like the nice additional tactical layer.

    You basically said that it is annoying that I agree on the same part as you do.