Read by Council A better reactor design

[GRHayes]

With the current system the most efficient reactors are a simple strait line up to the point the gain in power starts dropping off.

My proposal is actually simple in design but would allow players to be creative and work well with small to massive size ship design and encourage players to be creative.

The idea is you have two things to work with potential power and current or power flow. This is actually stolen from electrical voltage and current. Electricity travels on the outside of a wire for those who don't know. The more surface are the greater the amount of flow that can be handled.

The idea is the number of blocks connected to each other determine what the potential power is.
The greater the volume they take the greater the bonus each block gains.

The amount of surface area they have determines how much flow a second can be delivered.
Then have a bonus for combined surface area.

This way it wouldn't encourage someone to just put individual blocks down.

If for example a block produce 150e and each side could only transfer 50e/sec as a base then a 0.01% gain for the volume and 0.05% gain for the surface area.

It would also discourage plopping down large solid blocks of power like we have now. It would actually make people think a little about the power design and give them bonuses for doing so.

The require gaps to allow for surface area could be filled in with capacitors. which would act as immediately available power. Which could be dumped in a massive quantity. In short no change to them.

 

[Malacodor]

The greater the volume they take the greater the bonus each block gains.

Volume of the blocks or of the bounding box?

 

[the_Grey_Sky]

My only issue with this idea is that you are using the idea of a wire to produce energy, if we really wanted to see a change, than these reactors should have ends on the wire, make the length of the system x the diameter/ surface area between the end blocks determine the max power output.

Just a possible addition.

 

[jgames666]

I like the current power system for now. I am always open to suggestions, but I'm not sure this is the best system for everyone. I've been trying to think of a better system myself, but keep coming up against brick walls. I do think we need more options than one power reactor. That is for certain.

 

[GRHayes]

My only issue with this idea is that you are using the idea of a wire to produce energy, if we really wanted to see a change, than these reactors should have ends on the wire, make the length of the system x the diameter/ surface area between the end blocks determine the max power output.

Just a possible addition.

Technically I'm not using a wire for generating power just borrowing the formula from it.
This would actually lend to people building different reactors of different shapes having different power production and delivery efficiency.
For example if you made a solid block it would not be as effective as creating a reactor with a hollow interior. Which of large enough could fit another reactor inside of it.

Or another example is if you made a reactor that was 2x2x10 wouldn't be as efficient as one that is 1x4x10. The second has more surface area for delivery.

In short it would allow people to get the power they need and work a balance out for the power of delivery they need to fit pretty much any ship.

If you wanted though adding a power distribution block basically a breaker box could be done to go with the design. You could then have linking from various systems to each reactor or distribution system. That way you could prevent one system from draining power from all systems. That would allow load control. My problem with making the power system much more complex is it would be fine for someone with a good understanding of systems like that other people want more simplistic they aren't wanting it to feel like work.
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Volume of the blocks or of the bounding box?

Actually both. I'm not talking about letting people create simple reactors that look like 3 legs. Which is why I suggested the combined surface area of connected blocks.