True, you can still place them where ever.
However I still feel it is forced, as no one is going to place stabilizors in low effciencey zones when trying to build a remotly compedative ship. There is no reason anyone would ever do that except to shoot themselves in the foot. You just have to build around it.
While that would give you the most efficient on paper, that does not mean it will be just as good in combat. Adding armor blocks will always make your ship less efficient on paper, it costs more and it reduces your thrust:mass ratio. Whether armor is strong or weak, does not matter in this case since it will always reduce weapon damage in some way which could be the difference between life and death.
A simple example with the new power system could be that the reactor is explosive unless you have 100% stabilization. If you go for the most efficient configuration (cheap, lightweight for a given power regeneration). You would end up with stabilizers at one end of the ship at exactly the same amount of reactor blocks (1 : 1 ratio or else it would be a waste).
Depending on game mechanics, putting both your reactor and stabilizers at the extremities of your ship, it could mean that at least one group suffers combat damage rather quickly in comparison. If you put your stabilizers in a spot that will most likely get hit, you will instantly go below 100% reactor efficiency as soon as you start losing those blocks, only making your reactor explosive again and resulting in a ship that will go downhill fast.
Ideally, you would make your stabilizer group big enough, or make multiple groups, to make sure you don't go below 100% efficiency immediately. That though, adds more cost and mass to your ship.
I do not dismiss the issues that people brought up though, such as the 2 part ships with a large distance in between and the spaghetti ships OP brought up (which is also an issue in the old power system as he mentioned).
Just pointing out that the most efficient ship is not always the best one. Or at least, it shouldn't.
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efficiency drop off is very rapid in 2.0 rapid and over a small physical range . it is also easy to 'see' the drop due to the HUD graphics. Therefore I assume hardly anybody will build a reactor which is so obviously inefficient, unless they are trying to re-fit a pretty hull.
[doublepost=1508490430,1508490225][/doublepost]also: adding an 'inefficient block' in 1.0 (unless it cross-links/short-curcuits 2 separate strands) still increases power by small amounts, whereas inefficient blocks in in 2.0 drop whole power output.
I agree, the current config and regeneration calculation really encourages you to not build them in lower efficiency zones, it's one of the critiques we noted down that were brought up before.
The efficiency drop can be changed by just changing 2 config values so it shouldn't be too hard to find a good zone, we could even allow you to put them at 10-20% optimal distance at 5% efficiency or so. While it would never be done, it still makes the transition smoother and encourage people to at least build them at 50% efficiency.
The regen calculation based on power blocks and stabilizers, is also abrupt and you either get full power from the next block, or none. We can make this a smooth transition too so that you still get some regeneration per extra block. Again, unlikely that the majority would do this but it could definitely be useful for small ships if you don't want to care about stabilizer groups. Of course the whole reactor would be explosive when not at 100% stabilization but that could be easily dismissed if the ship is small and cheap, they're rather vulnerable anyway.
