A few quick observations on the new auxiliary generators...

[GRHayes]

Big fat never mind. I had to reinstall apparently. Bug.
Need to re evaluate.

 

[Winterhome]

Put it this way if the auxiliary system was producing power at the on rate you would never want to ever turn it off.

You don't ever want to turn it off.

 

[Olxinos]

Panpiper
I don't know where GRHayes ' confusion comes from, but he's wrong. For instance:
It's quite clear here the recharge rate is around 2m/s ("on" rate) instead of 400k/s ("off rate")

 

[GRHayes]

You don't ever want to turn it off.

Thanks for your insistence on it being the other way. I reinstalled and sure enough you are right.

 

[Winterhome]

Thanks for your insistence on it being the other way. I reinstalled and sure enough you are right.

Aye. It's a bit counterintuitive that there's really no point to turning them off. You'd think that turning your power auxiliaries off would at least make the power less explosive or something.

 

[Panpiper]

Aye. It's a bit counterintuitive that there's really no point to turning them off. You'd think that turning your power auxiliaries off would at least make the power less explosive or something.

That actually is a great idea, making them less explosive if off! Turning off the aux generators would take most ships out of a fight, but in a fleet engagement, it might be the key to a heavily damaged ship surviving the fight or not.

 

[GRHayes]

So I went back re analyzed the system.
Here is the problem to get decent efficiency out of the blocks for continuous power you need fairly large block counts 7200 block will net you 1.23M e/sec. or about 170 a block.

You can shoot a single block out of that 7200 and end up finding huge amounts of it destroyed One instance I shot a single block out and there was only 1666 left. As the group size goes down the explosion sizes decrease. At 7200 it was destroying blocks out around it on average of 4 blocks out when an exterior or near exterior explosion happened. I had one instance where the group looked nearly intact except a few out side holes. On closer inspection the inside of the group was hollowed out. The explosions had simply occurred mostly inside the groups far enough to prevent the explosion from reaching the exterior mostly. Group size 20x20x18. Different group shapes can also be more detrimental to surrounding areas.
Example make a group that is 20x10x36 creates more surface area and makes the chance of an explosion happening near the edge more likely.
The worst case would be to make a 1 block wide group such as 20x360x1 or 200x36x1 the explsions would be the same size as the 20x20x36 and you would need 4 blocks of buffer space on all sides minimal wasting. more than 8 times block space.

I did notice that damage created by one group to another group doesn't seem to generate explosions in the second group. Not sure if that is another bug I am having.

In power comparisons to docked reactors they don't measure up. If you need continuous power you have to leave them in the on position. You also would still need power caps to then store that power.

A docked power system doesn't necessarily need beams to transfer power. You can produce 1.494 million e/sec with 898 reactors 1 core 1 docker 1 rail and 998 caps. That is over 700 e per block. You can dock multiples of them in a chain producing much larger power supplies. You then simply dock or attach what you want to those systems. I've chained 128 of those into a single power supply.

The docked power supply also doesn't explode. It also doesn't need the buffer zone around it to protect surrounding ship structure.

Initially I would not have ever used these that was base on the improper power I was getting prior to re installing the game.
In most cases I still would no use them.

That said very large ships with massive amounts of room to space these systems out and they would need a lot more other structural to counter the loss of these do to explosive volatility. You would need enough shielding and armor to effectively protect that portion of the ship.

I have ZERO use however for the auxiliary system as an intermittent power supply.

 

[Lecic]

So I went back re analyzed the system.
Here is the problem to get decent efficiency out of the blocks for continuous power you need fairly large block counts 7200 block will net you 1.23M e/sec. or about 170 a block.

You can shoot a single block out of that 7200 and end up finding huge amounts of it destroyed One instance I shot a single block out and there was only 1666 left. As the group size goes down the explosion sizes decrease. At 7200 it was destroying blocks out around it on average of 4 blocks out when an exterior or near exterior explosion happened. I had one instance where the group looked nearly intact except a few out side holes. On closer inspection the inside of the group was hollowed out. The explosions had simply occurred mostly inside the groups far enough to prevent the explosion from reaching the exterior mostly. Group size 20x20x18. Different group shapes can also be more detrimental to surrounding areas.
Example make a group that is 20x10x36 creates more surface area and makes the chance of an explosion happening near the edge more likely.
The worst case would be to make a 1 block wide group such as 20x360x1 or 200x36x1 the explsions would be the same size as the 20x20x36 and you would need 4 blocks of buffer space on all sides minimal wasting. more than 8 times block space.

I did notice that damage created by one group to another group doesn't seem to generate explosions in the second group. Not sure if that is another bug I am having.

In power comparisons to docked reactors they don't measure up. If you need continuous power you have to leave them in the on position. You also would still need power caps to then store that power.

A docked power system doesn't necessarily need beams to transfer power. You can produce 1.494 million e/sec with 898 reactors 1 core 1 docker 1 rail and 998 caps. That is over 700 e per block. You can dock multiples of them in a chain producing much larger power supplies. You then simply dock or attach what you want to those systems. I've chained 128 of those into a single power supply.

The docked power supply also doesn't explode. It also doesn't need the buffer zone around it to protect surrounding ship structure.

Initially I would not have ever used these that was base on the improper power I was getting prior to re installing the game.
In most cases I still would no use them.

That said very large ships with massive amounts of room to space these systems out and they would need a lot more other structural to counter the loss of these do to explosive volatility. You would need enough shielding and armor to effectively protect that portion of the ship.

I have ZERO use however for the auxiliary system as an intermittent power supply.

Have you experimented with internally armored reactors?

Can you imagine what it would take with the aux system to replace the following docked power supply. Remember these produce continuous power. I have a ship I am building with 5 of these in it. Plus the primary hull has its own power system.
In truth I could dock the 5 together and come off the last one and get a combined amount of power. There are no beams used in this power transfer system at all.

If spending 48 hours docking 800 super-minimum-optimized docked reactors on a capital ship means being a pro, then I don't want to be good.

 

[GRHayes]

Have you experimented with internally armored reactors?

Yes, hull is a waste it blows right through it. Standard armor does work seems to hold back the explosion from passing through.
But you get that mass issue.

Right now this is what I am playing with.
Approx 100 million e on base ship The two docked modules have about 190 e/sec I will be running shields off of the docked modules and hull and weapons. Thrusters will get power from primary ships power.
Weapons will draw from docked modules there are 4 more docked systems going in. 2 on each side.
Those power blocks on the side are 128 1.494 million chained systems
Reading off the last one says 275 million e that is because the base power also chains up.
It looks like I will need to add more ram to my PC before I can finish it though.

 

[EricBlank]

If anything happens to undock your modules, your server admins will be very upset with you :P

You really, really need to armor these things, though; just had one blow inside my frigate after a high-penetration cannon round punched through ~30m of blocks, including ~8m advanced armor, took out 40% of my hitpoints because the blast took a big chunk of other systems with it. I didn't remember to use armor around the reactor, and I didn't really need that extra power anyway; the system runs fine without it, and all the other junk it took out. However, the escape pods work like a charm!

Mistakes are made, lessons learned.

 

[Bladeriker]

So then, to get to say 100mil e/sec I would either need to hit soft cap and then (brick it), or have several smaller Aux systems to push to desired level.

As I see it, the new power system allows for adding an additional yet volatile battery/generator, to surpass the soft cap, which for some medium ships and large ships types would allow for better performance. All the while removing lag producing docked reactors, and adding a level of trade off, in which having higher regen than soft cap is countered by possibly exploding due to that higher power. Think of a high voltage transformer hitting water... lots of power but very volatile, or even a nuclear reactor, no one would want one of those hit with a missile.

Also this may be the way the developers wanted it to be from the start.

 

[Panpiper]

...or even a nuclear reactor, no one would want one of those hit with a missile.

Off topic perhaps, but nuclear reactors would not explode if hit by a missile. The missile's explosion might wind up being 'dirty' but that is all. Nothing can cause any nuclear reactor to 'explode'. The explosion at Chernobyl was not the reactor, but the reactor containment's lid popping off. The reactor itself simply burned. (And I should note that all the world's reactors except a few criminally negligently designed ones, like Chernobyl's, from the old Soviet Union, cannot 'burn' either.) The worst that could possibly happen is to have to permanently shut down the reactor and encase it in concrete for posterity, that and venting gasses, which will certainly terrify an ignorant populace, but do little harm otherwise.

 

[Madman198237]

Off topic perhaps, but nuclear reactors would not explode if hit by a missile. The missile's explosion might wind up being 'dirty' but that is all. Nothing can cause any nuclear reactor to 'explode'. The explosion at Chernobyl was not the reactor, but the reactor containment's lid popping off. The reactor itself simply burned. (And I should note that all the world's reactors except a few criminally negligently designed ones, like Chernobyl's, from the old Soviet Union, cannot 'burn' either.) The worst that could possibly happen is to have to permanently shut down the reactor and encase it in concrete for posterity, that and venting gasses, which will certainly terrify an ignorant populace, but do little harm otherwise.

Yes and no. No, a reactor will not ever (Unless intentionally, SOMEHOW, changed) detonate like a nuclear bomb. However, you can get similar conditions (Widespread radiation and even a bit of fallout) if the reactor gets past overheating, like Chernobyl. As the reactor heats up, pressure builds in the steam system, before eventually exploding. That's the most dangerous part of a reactor, not the nuclear material/containment vessel. The steam system can and will explode like a conventional bomb if overloaded. If, however, the steam system explodes or the containment vessel is other made less of a container and more a leaky cardboard box, then you will have flash-fires start (Nuclear reactions are hot) followed by a Chernobyl-esque inferno of death, basically.

If this got loosed inside a ship, then the ship would be doomed, unless it's incredibly vast (Vast enough that the subsequent rush of heat and steam doesn't melt or blow out external walls, vast enough to have additional, safely distant reactors that can keep the ship alive)