Best Reactor Type.

[<SCRIPTKITTY>]

There is often debate on the best kind of reactor setup.
I have just started work on my first large ship, so I needed to know what is the best way to set up reactors so I can fire a weapon that need 7m energy per shot.

So I decided to publish my findings in the form of a video.
Maybe this will help someone other than me.

 

[BDLS]

long separated lines. a single line around 900m-ish long will get you 1m e/sec IIRC
most likely that length isnt viable, but the just shows the longer the line is the better the bonus
just checkerboard long lines, done.

cubic reactors are just an excercise, most ships aren't tailored to where they are the most efficient

 

[Heillos]

Pretty much what Biddles said. If you wanna be a nerd about it, read the official wiki already, power is well-documented there:
https://starmadepedia.net/wiki/Power_Systems

 

[Groovrider]

This kind of information is good for creating compact docked reactors. thanks.

 

[Jaaskinal]

With what Biddles said, there's something kind of wrong about that I tested a very long time ago, but haven't tested myself since, but I've heard other people say it.
There's a point with reactor length where efficiency goes down (and it has nothing to do with the power soft cap.) And this length is about sixty blocks long. Basically, several sixty block long reactors will be more efficient than a single length.
Also, look into docked reactors. If you need seven million power a second, you're going to have a tough time getting it on the main ship. It's doable, but docked power is much more efficient.

 

[Groovrider]

With what Biddles said, there's something kind of wrong about that I tested a very long time ago, but haven't tested myself since, but I've heard other people say it.
There's a point with reactor length where efficiency goes down (and it has nothing to do with the power soft cap.) And this length is about sixty blocks long. Basically, several sixty block long reactors will be more efficient than a single length.
Also, look into docked reactors. If you need seven million power a second, you're going to have a tough time getting it on the main ship. It's doable, but docked power is much more efficient.

whats the difference?

 

[Tunk]

Difference is each docked reactor can reach good efficiency (149 or 650 e/s/block depending on your design goals) once you hit the cap, rather than having to spam tens to hundreds of thousands of reactor blocks for 25 e/s ea.

Single group docked reactors also don't suffer from the inefficiency of having multiple reactor groupings.

 

[StormWing0]

hmm useful since things like this are a pain to figure out but lets see what we can cook up for as many shapes as possible. So we can all know what works in what space.

 

[BDLS]

With what Biddles said, there's something kind of wrong about that I tested a very long time ago, but haven't tested myself since, but I've heard other people say it.
There's a point with reactor length where efficiency goes down (and it has nothing to do with the power soft cap.) And this length is about sixty blocks long. Basically, several sixty block long reactors will be more efficient than a single length.
Also, look into docked reactors. If you need seven million power a second, you're going to have a tough time getting it on the main ship. It's doable, but docked power is much more efficient.

Interesting, I'll have to look at it again later this week.

 

[Tunk]

Never noticed a efficiency issue at that level, only really major break point is the 101 block mark where you have to start adding capacitors.
After that you are home free until the 594~596 mark, then diminishing returns kick in until you hit the cap at around 980ish.

 

[Planr]

Docked reactors are good in theory but they never play out that way in practical game application. Lag on multiplayer servers slows down/breaks logic relays frequently. Also, there are bugs with docked entities not managing power properly that causes them to drain power from the mother-ship when they should be supplying power instead.

 

[Tunk]

Sounds like a cascade power failure back to the main ship.

As a side note, yep supply beam based reactors can do that.
Far too fiddly, though still useful in some instances.

 

[MrFURB]

I tend to utilize docked reactors in all of my larger blueprints. Mostly to use a higher weapon block to total block ratio, and so far the additional lag from them has been negligible. Keep in mind though that I tend to have a smaller number of larger turrets and only a few point defense turrets.

The most docked reactors I've had on screen at once was 48 (6 strike cruisers at 190L, 130W, 45H each), and the drop in framerate was noticeable but not crippling.

My biggest beef with them is it creates a weak point that enemies can exploit, though with good design or rail trickery that can be covered up quite well.

 

[Jaaskinal]

Docked reactors are good in theory but they never play out that way in practical game application. Lag on multiplayer servers slows down/breaks logic relays frequently. Also, there are bugs with docked entities not managing power properly that causes them to drain power from the mother-ship when they should be supplying power instead.

Lag is a funny topic. It's not impossible to melt servers with logic.

 

[AndyP]

Good video,
the 5x5x5 reactor looked a bit too symmetric, and I have the imagination it was built a bit different, but anyway, the room efficiency is almost the same, as long as you can make sure you add to the covered-virtual-box-dimension with each placement, and they do not touch by accident.

I described the change and the reasons about this here:
Thread: What happened to box dimensions bonuses for power regen?

However, you may really want to look into docked designs, that push their energy via energy supply toward the host ship.
Sure at a certain loss, to the beam, but when closing in to the soft-cap and thus lowering overall efficiency, the loss by single reactor size quickly exceeds the loss by the beam. Getting the right modular size, for the room you have to spare for your power generation is some sort of science then. Values around 450.000e/s to 750.000e/s should be targeted then, below that you can still get a good bonus by adding dimensions, above you are most likely down to plain add per block, and dimension does not yield any additional bonus anymore.

- Andy

 

[Dellexe]

Lag is a funny topic. It's not impossible to melt servers with logic.

Funny. Today, in the chat, I learned that you made a clock that ticked fast enough to warp reality itself. We had a nice discussion on the possible offensive uses of a Lag Machine(tm).
-
There was also talk of a way to reduce lag by stacking the reactors on each other instead of each one being attached to the main ship. I think it was specifically about having all of them stacked together and using a power-supply beam drawing enough power to drain the entire stack, but not draw from the main ship itself. I don't know how it works. Space-magic.

 

[Jaaskinal]

Funny. Today, in the chat, I learned that you made a clock that ticked fast enough to warp reality itself. We had a nice discussion on the possible offensive uses of a Lag Machine(tm).
-
There was also talk of a way to reduce lag by stacking the reactors on each other instead of each one being attached to the main ship. I think it was specifically about having all of them stacked together and using a power-supply beam drawing enough power to drain the entire stack, but not draw from the main ship itself. I don't know how it works. Space-magic.

The person who originally made that was AtraUnam, they helped me develop my clocks a lot. That idea is a little bit odd and I've been thinking about it. The issue it has is very strange and would make it better for a different purpose than a typical docked reactor, so I'm giving it a new name. What I am working on are docked batteries, since they do not generate power while drained (which is a requirement for them as opposed to docked reactors.) They could be very useful as a non-constant/instant source of power. I imagine they'd have very high capacity and comparatively low regen.
Unfortunately I do not believe they would have any positive effect in ship design. A ship with docked generators and capacity on the main ship would be more efficient.

 

[aceface]

Docked reactors are good in theory but they never play out that way in practical game application. Lag on multiplayer servers slows down/breaks logic relays frequently. Also, there are bugs with docked entities not managing power properly that causes them to drain power from the mother-ship when they should be supplying power instead.

this

I really really wish docked reactors wasn't a thing, because big ships can get CRAZY dps with them. I made a 290 000 block reactor which I timed and calculated to give 29 million power per sec. It is basically one big plate with 40 docked 1 mil e per sec reactors. Guess how much fps I got when I activated it? went from 100 someting to 10. And I'm using only 1 beam per reactor that produces 1 mil e / sec. Small ships become absolute garbage, and on top of having to deal with the immense lag of titans, we have to then deal with the lag of docked piece of crap reactors. I and 3 other friends faced 4 ships everyone had somewhere in the neighbourhood of 20 + docked reactors 2 days ago, resulted in my fps staying at a constant 1-2, and as soon as the first reactor took damage, instantly crashed the server. And I have an above average PC to, R9 280x (250 dollar) and AMD FX6100 6-core.

 

[BDLS]

The community should try to design ships with externally docked power packs instead of internally. Then when the docks break they won't crash servers with massive collision checking.

 

[Lecic]

The community should try to design ships with externally docked power packs instead of internally. Then when the docks break they won't crash servers with massive collision checking.

That's a horrible weakspot, though. Once you're below 50% shields, you lose your power gen.

Honestly, though, here's my opinion on docked reactors- I don't like them, but they're currently a necessary evil for most large ships. I'd like for docked reactors to be removed, and for a fuel system that allows you to generate over the softcap to be added. It'd give a maintenance cost to high power generation on large ships, and people wouldn't even need to refit much if they use internal generators since they could convert the space for generators to a fuel tank easily.