Activation Module and Energy/Shield/Thruster Systems

[Viridis00]

I've been thinking about this for a couple days now, and I think that a ship's energy, shield, and thruster systems should be able to be linked and turned on and off with activation modules. This naturally means both energy reactors/capacitors, and shield capacitor/rechargers. Generators stop generating, and tanks purge their current load. Thrusters drop their plume effects if enabled. The result of having all systems shut down would remove the marker for your ship on screen and in the navigation pane as well as on the minimap once. This is fundamentally like radar jammer, except without any source of power, naturally your ship cannot move, fire, or project shields.

While this seems like a pure novelty, I think it would offer some actual benefits.

• Hiding your ship on a multiplayer server when you are away from a docking port or home base.
• Keeping your frigates and corvettes in deep space hidden after pursuit from the enemy.
  
• Turning off shield regeneration to reduce energy consumption (ex: your ship's energy tanks have been damaged and you are having trouble keeping stable energy in the middle of a fight).
• Turning off shield regeneration and projection to test new weapon systems raw energy needs, or using ships as "live targets" for weapon testing without having to gut the shields manually.
  
• Selective engine control. Disable separate thrusters to lower acceleration, but conserve energy. Conversely, enable additional engines that push your power cap otherwise.
  
• RP purposes ("Red Alert, shields up!", etc.).

The only thing needed outside of the suggestion itself to make this practical is allowing activation switches to be assigned to the weapons bar.

 

[color98dove]

I agree with this, But I suggest that we add the ability to charge up, but not activate things, like say lights don't just flick on they charge on over time, and with more power hungry systems, it takes longer up to a full minute before its operating at full power.

 

[Magrim]

+1 Im all for more control of my ship's energy systems. I also want to divert power from one system to another, with the ability to "overclock" a particular system for boosted performance, with some sort of negative effect being applied of coarse.

I also think there should be some sort of cooldown or charge up of the systems after they where shut down

 

[jayman38]

A lot of people like the power management systems from the FreeSpace and X-Wing franchises. With this idea, power management could be done in StarMade with logic.

Examples:
1. Divert energy to thrusters = turning on more sets of thruster groups
2. All power to shields = turning on all shield blocks and turning off all but one thruster group
3. divert power from shield storage to shield generation for a mid-combat advantage = turn off a group of shield storage and activate all shield generator blocks
4. lower thrust for faster fire rate = turn off a group of thrusters, and activate all blocks in a slaved cannon weapon group.)

 

[Snk]

Would make crewability important, +1

 

[Jegan Reavus]

I would love to have this ability, for all the reasons stated above. +1