MrFURB
Madman of the Girders
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- Jan 31, 2013
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That reddit post does a good job explaining certain things, but it is better to know the mechanics behind the numbers so you can create your own reactor designs on a ship to ship basis instead of relying on only a few sub-optimal designs you\'ve learned.
Power regen comes from two sources. First is the simple one, a set 25/sec per block you have, no matter what.
Second is what is called the box dimension bonus. For each group of power blocks with touching faces, the game adds up the total x, y, and z dimensions of the group and adds bonus regen based on that number (It goes through a simple formula first). This bonus scales up the larger your boxdim is, but caps at a total of 1,000,000 bonus regeneration a second (For the entire ship, not just the group).
So let\'s say you have a single power block. It starts with 25 regen and has a boxdim of 3, because it takes a 1x1x1 box to fit it.
How about a line of 10? That\'s 250+(Boxdim bonus of 12 (1x1x10).
The reason that having two separate power blocks is better than having a group of two, yet having 50 connected power blocks is much better than having 50 separate ones is because an isolated power block has a starting boxdim bonus of 3, whereas adding another block to it only adds 1 to the boxdim number. Once your boxdim bonus for a single group gets high enough it scales up quickly, becoming more efficient than a \'sponge\' reactor.
That is why you should never use a sponge reactor unless you\'re trying to fill a tiny space. If you can fit in 10-15 power blocks effiiciently (Meaning all blocks in one group, all adding to the boxdim), you\'ll end up better and more organized than filling the area with a sponge. Using a sponge pattern for anything not tiny is not very efficient.
Hope this helps!
Power regen comes from two sources. First is the simple one, a set 25/sec per block you have, no matter what.
Second is what is called the box dimension bonus. For each group of power blocks with touching faces, the game adds up the total x, y, and z dimensions of the group and adds bonus regen based on that number (It goes through a simple formula first). This bonus scales up the larger your boxdim is, but caps at a total of 1,000,000 bonus regeneration a second (For the entire ship, not just the group).
So let\'s say you have a single power block. It starts with 25 regen and has a boxdim of 3, because it takes a 1x1x1 box to fit it.
How about a line of 10? That\'s 250+(Boxdim bonus of 12 (1x1x10).
The reason that having two separate power blocks is better than having a group of two, yet having 50 connected power blocks is much better than having 50 separate ones is because an isolated power block has a starting boxdim bonus of 3, whereas adding another block to it only adds 1 to the boxdim number. Once your boxdim bonus for a single group gets high enough it scales up quickly, becoming more efficient than a \'sponge\' reactor.
That is why you should never use a sponge reactor unless you\'re trying to fill a tiny space. If you can fit in 10-15 power blocks effiiciently (Meaning all blocks in one group, all adding to the boxdim), you\'ll end up better and more organized than filling the area with a sponge. Using a sponge pattern for anything not tiny is not very efficient.
Hope this helps!
I was really having a hard time figuring out exactly what the mechanics were. I kinda sorta knew most of what you said, but I wasn\'t entirely sure if that was the case, and I certainly didn\'t know the numbers behind it.