My take that is part from my own feelings on the subject and part based on the millions of these threads.
Planets would have strong, cheap geothermal reactors. These could be susceptible to sabatoge, causing your base, and a sizable area around it, to explode. This would be good for ground combat/infiltration, as it adds a goal to attack and a reason to use planets. If smaller ships slipped past defenses easier, this would give piloting a fighter additional use.
Solar panels would be cheap, and decent. They would cost less mass, but take lots of space. This would make them ideal for civilian craft, and space stations. Small stations that are meant to be hidden might want to go with the zero-point reactors.(Assuming that block count(not mass) makes stations more/less detectable in the future.)
Fusion would require hydrogen, which would be plentiful(duh) and regenerating, and a fairly large amount could be stored(say, 10% of your ship stores an hour's worth, since you might run into a battle, configurable). It would not require any conversion system or such.
If you have a gigantic titan, it's going to take up some extra space, and make it a pain to run around refueling a bit. Makes it much better to just run a smaller ship(engine diminishing returns compete with storage space and salvager beam arrays, making them inefficient and a large target, rather than just making them a huge expensive pain that still dishes out too much pain, which would make everything just painful).
Zero-point energy would cost a little bit more(1.5-2x the hydrogen reactors), and generate a little less. They might have more diminishing returns. In return, they always work and never explode(if any do). Good for a non-combat ship, especially a distress shuttle.
There'd be a premium reactor, which barely sips an expensive, time-consuming to produce fuel. Perfect for a high-performance fighter-shuttle, that can outrun anything it can't outgun.(The idea being that in the future, small ships would be very good at evading detection and escaping from large ones.) Add overdrive(for weapons and speed), and you've got a pint-sized ship that packs, and costs, a punch.
Anything large would get expensive, and you wouldn't want to risk it. Ideally it'd be cheaper and better in most circumstances to just bring a larger fleet.
Perhaps reactors could be separated into two parts, one which is necessary for any reactor, and another which is the specific fuel-guzzling(or not) reactor. That way it's not quite AS painful to try to use backup power/toggle fuel types, allowing you to better use multiple reactor types for more varied gameplay. This depends on how much space reactors and fuel storage take, and might not be necessary.
There could be additional "low-tech" reactors, not really used outside of starting from scratch/low-tech NPC civs.
Planets would have strong, cheap geothermal reactors. These could be susceptible to sabatoge, causing your base, and a sizable area around it, to explode. This would be good for ground combat/infiltration, as it adds a goal to attack and a reason to use planets. If smaller ships slipped past defenses easier, this would give piloting a fighter additional use.
Solar panels would be cheap, and decent. They would cost less mass, but take lots of space. This would make them ideal for civilian craft, and space stations. Small stations that are meant to be hidden might want to go with the zero-point reactors.(Assuming that block count(not mass) makes stations more/less detectable in the future.)
Fusion would require hydrogen, which would be plentiful(duh) and regenerating, and a fairly large amount could be stored(say, 10% of your ship stores an hour's worth, since you might run into a battle, configurable). It would not require any conversion system or such.
If you have a gigantic titan, it's going to take up some extra space, and make it a pain to run around refueling a bit. Makes it much better to just run a smaller ship(engine diminishing returns compete with storage space and salvager beam arrays, making them inefficient and a large target, rather than just making them a huge expensive pain that still dishes out too much pain, which would make everything just painful).
Zero-point energy would cost a little bit more(1.5-2x the hydrogen reactors), and generate a little less. They might have more diminishing returns. In return, they always work and never explode(if any do). Good for a non-combat ship, especially a distress shuttle.
There'd be a premium reactor, which barely sips an expensive, time-consuming to produce fuel. Perfect for a high-performance fighter-shuttle, that can outrun anything it can't outgun.(The idea being that in the future, small ships would be very good at evading detection and escaping from large ones.) Add overdrive(for weapons and speed), and you've got a pint-sized ship that packs, and costs, a punch.
Anything large would get expensive, and you wouldn't want to risk it. Ideally it'd be cheaper and better in most circumstances to just bring a larger fleet.
Perhaps reactors could be separated into two parts, one which is necessary for any reactor, and another which is the specific fuel-guzzling(or not) reactor. That way it's not quite AS painful to try to use backup power/toggle fuel types, allowing you to better use multiple reactor types for more varied gameplay. This depends on how much space reactors and fuel storage take, and might not be necessary.
There could be additional "low-tech" reactors, not really used outside of starting from scratch/low-tech NPC civs.
