internal reactors

[Ithirahad]

It's kind of a catch 22, you want your powerdrain beams to be able to hit docked modules but you don't want AMCs or Missiles from your own ship destroying docked ships. Schema would have to program in an exception from the hit protection for powerdrain beams. The original reactors are all broken because the bug that let you blow off your own turrets got fixed.

Honestly if they wanted to specifically program in ways to get around the soft cap, I would think they would just adjust the power equations first. The soft cap is currently the only balancing factor for huge ships, at least until we need shipyards making building larger and larger ships increasingly impractical.

Even with shipyards, I'd kinda like to see a technological limiting factor rather than just an economic one...

 

[Sven_The_Slayer]

Even with shipyards, I'd kinda like to see a technological limiting factor rather than just an economic one...

I would like to see a component dock myself, where you gain all stats from the docked items, this way we can make truly modular ships and could lead to some interesting gameplay (1). This however is probably too simplified a solution as you could easily dock large chunks of shields and power without the diminishing returns of adding them to your main ship so there would have to be another balancing factor.

1. I could see servers disallowing the construction of complete ships but ships had to be built out of modules, modules could be pre-made and actually have varied outputs so some are better than others. Players would make ship shells and mount these modules to form the completed ships. In combat if you kill another player you can simply harvest any modules their ship has that are better than yours and individual systems can be damaged and destroyed at will.

 

[Keptick]

Just use massive slowly regenerating power pools. Chances are that your opponent/you will die before even using up 50% of the power.

 

[Unnamed25]

Yeah, and then when you need to recharge buy some sort of big power regen tank or have a homebase with lots of power regen

 

[Dragleones]

This however is probably too simplified a solution as you could easily dock large chunks of shields and power without the diminishing returns of adding them to your main ship so there would have to be another balancing factor.

I already made this manual reactor which requires 1 person to permanently shoot powerdrain/supplybeams. Apart from that the same system could be used with automated weaponcomputers using the upcoming logic system. (I'm already planning the next generation)
(You probably already know above stated anyways since you also posted on that thread ^^)

The interesting thing about the construction was that all systems to make it to make it not only working but also efficient required a lot of space (temporary energy storages, powerdrainarrays, powersupply arrays, even more temporary storages and ofcourse the power generators).
Therefore a system using powersupply/drainbeams is not as effective as you might think.

1. One single 648 long power segment:
   Recharge: 808 494.633 e/sec
   Dimensions: 648 x 1 x 1
   Volume: 648
   Recharge per volume: 1 247.676 902 e/(sec*m³)
   
   
2. I remember seeing this as a 1 million powergenerator with the smallest dimensions (pretty old):
   Recharge: around 1 000 000 e/sec
   Dimensions: 22 x 22 x 22
   Volume: 10 648 m³
   Recharge per volume: around 91,914 350 e/(sec*m³)
   
   
3. My prototype provided theoretically (didn't test it yet):
   Recharge: 107 034 675 e/sec
   Dimensions: 222 x 104 x 91
   Volume: 2 101 008 m³
   Rpv: 50,944 439 e/(sec*m³)
   Note: Rpv increases slightly with increasing size/decreases with decreasing size.
   
   
4. Chunks of energygenerators build to reach around 100 000 000 e/sec
   Recharge: 99 168 100.28 e/sec
   Dimensions: 158 x 158 x 158
   Volume: 3 944 312 m³
   Rpv: 25.142 052 e/(sec*m³)
   Note: Rpv approaches 25 e/(sec*m³) with increasing recharge.

As you can see: In a system where you simply dock modules to add their stats to the ship the regeneration would be twice as high in the same volume than if you would use the system with powerdrains/supply.
On the other hand the powerdrain/supply system would provide only twice as much energy as simply placing a bunch of blocks making it imo with the upcoming thruster changes far away from overpowered

I think that if the powerdrain/supply system won't get fixed it it would be a good system to increase the complexity and diversity in the construction of large ships.
With such a system the player is encouraged to design and construct additional power recharge rather than just placing a bunch of blocks.
In addition this system would also give the upcoming logic system more functions and therefore more depth.
And it finally gives powersupply-beams a function, since if a ship really relys on power storage its always better to go for powerdrain-beams, since the also have a combat use and don't take much space on ships big enough to rely on power storages.

I personally hope it won't get fixed and already thought of a suggesting a similar way to provide shieldregen/anything else for a ship using shieldinjector/support/whatever-beams.
As stated above: if you build a big ship now you just have to place giant chunks of shield blocks/power generators/powerstorages/etc... .
Since many systems are getting reduced with increasing size, it would be an interesting mechanic overall to dock additional modules with less efficiency due to the requirement of transferbeams.
Small ships would still have much higher efficiencys per blocks/Big ships wouldn't benefit too much and have new vulnerabilitys.

 

[Sven_The_Slayer]

I already made this manual reactor which requires 1 person to permanently shoot powerdrain/supplybeams. Apart from that the same system could be used with automated weaponcomputers using the upcoming logic system. (I'm already planning the next generation)
(You probably already know above stated anyways since you also posted on that thread ^^)

The interesting thing about the construction was that all systems to make it to make it not only working but also efficient required a lot of space (temporary energy storages, powerdrainarrays, powersupply arrays, even more temporary storages and ofcourse the power generators).

I was talking about a new system with a new docking module that would give all systems to the mothership without the need for powerdrain beams. That way you can throw on auxiliary shield generators, power cores, and thrusters. Perhaps even weapons if you gain the ability to manually fire them, but right now we can already use docking modules as hard points to mount fixed AI operated guns.

Just be wary, the thing that allows one turret/docked ship to hit another IS A BUG and is a known bug because it was brought up in the livestream. Unfortunately until Schema goes into bug squashing mode it may go unfixed... And yes I say unfortunately unfixed because I would much rather have my missile turrets not destroy everything else on the mothership than I would like to use auxiliary reactors.

 

[Dragleones]

Why did you just quoted the first two paragraphs...?

I was talking about a new system with a new docking module that would give all systems to the mothership without the need for powerdrain beams. That way you can throw on auxiliary shield generators, power cores, and thrusters. Perhaps even weapons if you gain the ability to manually fire them, but right now we can already use docking modules as hard points to mount fixed AI operated guns.

You already stated above that the raw stat adding would be too powerful.
In my post i discussed if the supplybeam/drainbeam-EXPLOIT (which could be used effectivly with the upcoming logicsystem (if not patched away)) is overpowered.
And if you would have read to the end you would know that from my standpoint its nowhere near to that. (i used above approximate calculations to do so).

In the last three paragraphs i explained then why i think the game would benefit from implementing this EXPLOIT/BUG as a FEATURE instead of just fixing something away that encourages the player to build creative and complex designs rather than simple grids/patterns.

And for one more time: I know that turrets hitting each other is a annoying bug. BUT this doesn't change or have any impact on my opinion: that the BUG that powersupplybeams and powerdrainbeams can hit your own ship/other turrets (and only them) is beneficial to the game, opens up creative uses on game mechanics and should therefore not be abolished with the next bugfixes.

I've never stated anywhere that it isn't a bug/exploit/whatever.

It might be rough to read through my posts since english isn't my first language and i tend to post very long texts, but please completely read through my posts if you want to answer to them...

 

[Trafalgar]

If you're concerned that people might not be reading your posts because they are too long, feel free to do what I generally try to do, when possible: Find the friendliest, fastest way to make your point. The shorter, and friendlier, the more people will want to read what you wrote. The longer, the more they will tune out. The more antagonistic, the more they will argue.

P.S. Obviously you can't condense math, but a summary for everyone whose eyes glaze over at the sight of math is the next best thing.

 

[Sven_The_Slayer]

I read it but I skipped over the numbers bit, because without a base comparison raw numbers mean nothing to me. Also, I'm not arguing against the addition of auxiliary generators and I would actually much rather see it go beyond simply allowing power drain beams to hit docked modules. I don't see the point in patching the bug but adding extra code just to add an exception to allow this bug to keep it's advantageous side effects. I imagine a module docking system could be implemented that is as balanced as the current exploit while being more useful (such as working with shields and engines as well) and more available to a wider audience.