Read by Council Different settings for power reactors/capacitors on a base or ship

    Benevolent27

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    Now, you might be asking yourself, why in the world would we want power reactors and capacitors to behave differently on a base or a ship?

    Here's why:

    It opens up a new form of gameplay based on FUEL for those players who want fuel-based gameplay. It would change nothing for anybody who doesn't want to use a fuel based system. It could have other uses besides as well. Here's an example of how a server could be set up to utilize this functionality:
    1. Power reactors are set to a soft cap of 100,000 e/sec on ships, but 4,000,000 e/sec on a base.
    2. Power capacitors are set to keep exponentially increasing on ships well past the normal soft cap, but operate as they do now for bases.
    3. Weapons are set to use four times as much energy.

    This would make people need to use power transfer beams on a base to fuel up their larger ships. Though smaller ships will still be able to operate well enough while a person is establishing themselves. To add realism, this could be stated that "large power reactors become unstable with movement."

    Here's an example of how someone might conduct an attack on a base using this system:
    The warships fuel up and move out, and begin the siege on a base. Energy runner ships would then run back and forth between their home base and where the attack is taking place, to supply the warships with power. For longer sieges, a temporary base is created nearby to shorten the distance the supply runners need to go. The fighters would need to not only pay attention to shields, but also their power, and if they get too low, it might be a good idea to jump away, or maybe they have a reserve fuel pod they activate for that extra bit of power they need to finish off the enemy base.

    Though I do not think this is a complete solution for people who want fuel based systems in Starmade, it would at least be an easy way to throw a bone to the players who want this kind of gameplay, without changing the base gameplay at all.

    Thoughts and suggestions are welcome. :)
     
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    Interesting way of going about it. Shifting the metagame from having constant regeneration of power to having slower regen and massive power capacitors for large ships would add a new facet to gameplay.
     
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    This is actually a really great idea. But i think it causes a huge Problem with NPC ships as they can not "restock" their power. On small or vanilla pirate ships eveything is fine. But hat about Custom pirates iwth 1 Million power or more?
    It would be really great if it would be possible to set pirates ships to unlimited power or something.
     
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    This is actually a really great idea. But i think it causes a huge Problem with NPC ships as they can not "restock" their power. On small or vanilla pirate ships eveything is fine. But hat about Custom pirates iwth 1 Million power or more?
    It would be really great if it would be possible to set pirates ships to unlimited power or something.

    Well you see the pirate ships still have power generators onboard, its just that power generators will be nerfed on ships and power capacitors will be buffed. At the end of the day the vanilla game is more important than some custom content only a few people use.
     
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    I understood what you wrote in the first place.

    At the end of the day the vanilla game is more important than some custom content only a few people use.
    Well, i mean the top 10 MP-Server. And they all have custom pirates. The problem with pirates is that they stop shooting forever if the power drops to zero. To implement your idea is quite easy with editing the block behavior.
    To implement power as a real ressource to limit the bigger ships is great but we need more intelligent NPCs
     

    Benevolent27

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    This is actually a really great idea. But i think it causes a huge Problem with NPC ships as they can not "restock" their power. On small or vanilla pirate ships eveything is fine. But hat about Custom pirates iwth 1 Million power or more?
    It would be really great if it would be possible to set pirates ships to unlimited power or something.
    You are absolutely right. I had not thought of that. But here's an idea: Outfit the pirates with power drain weapons alongside their conventional weapons. Also, in the server configs, increase the range of the power drain beam to make it shoot as far as lock-on missiles. This would allow pirates to charge up during an attack.
     
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    There comes the Problem with the AI again. A pirate will always try to stay on max weapon range. If you Change the range ob the beams to the same as Missiles it is not possible to use cannons anymore. The pirate would fly to the range of the beam and the cannon projectiles do not reach the other ship.
    We need one of These two things:
    More intelligent AI
    or the possibility to implement new function blocks.

    Secnd would make new power blocks possible independent to the vanilla ones. That way yyou could create a powerblock with 1 Million recharge and place it on a pirate.

    I am still figuring how a Server could implement your idea. I have to start a poll in our own Forum for a test week or something
     
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    Benevolent27

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    There comes the Problem with the AI again. A pirate will always try to stay on max weapon range. If you Change the range ob the beams to the same as Missiles it is not possible to use cannons anymore. The pirate would fly to the range of the beam and the cannon projectiles do not reach the other ship.
    We need one of These two things:
    More intelligent AI
    or the possibility to implement new function blocks.

    Secnd would make new power blocks possible independent to the vanilla ones. That way yyou could create a powerblock with 1 Million recharge and place it on a pirate.

    I am still figuring how a Server could implement your idea. I have to start a poll in our own Forum for a test week or something
    Alright, then a solution here would be to make lock-on missiles have less range and increase the range of cannons. :)

    But I do agree, more intelligent AI would be a good thing.
     

    Benevolent27

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    There comes the Problem with the AI again. A pirate will always try to stay on max weapon range. If you Change the range ob the beams to the same as Missiles it is not possible to use cannons anymore. The pirate would fly to the range of the beam and the cannon projectiles do not reach the other ship.
    We need one of These two things:
    More intelligent AI
    or the possibility to implement new function blocks.

    Secnd would make new power blocks possible independent to the vanilla ones. That way yyou could create a powerblock with 1 Million recharge and place it on a pirate.

    I am still figuring how a Server could implement your idea. I have to start a poll in our own Forum for a test week or something
    I wonder, did you ever test this kind of config out?
     
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    From what I've heard this is the intended use, and the reason there is a soft cap on reactors and the capacitors give increasingly more. But I still like this, especially because I don't think the balance, as is, is good enough for it to work as intended, and then there is the whole power supply beam problem, with docked reactors....
    As for the problem with pirates and having power, there could be a custom block added, like an enhanced reactor, or they could spawn with extra power, like 200% capacity or so.
     
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    This would be a quite gigantic change to pretty much everything but you need to keep in mind that not everybody plays with groups. I do like the idea of running out of fuel, electricity. But the change would be so big that I can't decide if it will be a good thing. Also, the developers will then piss off the whole existing community except the very few that haven't build any ships.
     

    Benevolent27

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    This would be a quite gigantic change to pretty much everything but you need to keep in mind that not everybody plays with groups. I do like the idea of running out of fuel, electricity. But the change would be so big that I can't decide if it will be a good thing. Also, the developers will then piss off the whole existing community except the very few that haven't build any ships.
    Well, it would just be a setting in the server config. The default settings would be for it to act as it already does. There would just be the option for a person to implement different values for bases and ships. (I think the same could also be done for weapons, shields, etc.)
     
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    Well, it would just be a setting in the server config. The default settings would be for it to act as it already does. There would just be the option for a person to implement different values for bases and ships. (I think the same could also be done for weapons, shields, etc.)
    If I'm not wrong I believe it is already possible to change some numbers. Otherwise it will be later when the API is released.
    I think most servers wouldn't do it because of the fact that they need players to have a popular server and when every player needs to build a new ship on the server I doubt people will come.
     
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    it is somewhat possible to do it, by adding a custom reactor-block only for stations, and changing the current soft cap. But I don't know how the two reactors types would interact on a station then.
     

    Benevolent27

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    If I'm not wrong I believe it is already possible to change some numbers. Otherwise it will be later when the API is released.
    I think most servers wouldn't do it because of the fact that they need players to have a popular server and when every player needs to build a new ship on the server I doubt people will come.
    Have you seen how many threads in the suggestion forum are for fuel? Now, I don't know if every server will utilize this to make a more "fuel" type system, but I think many servers would like to play with it anyhow, to help make bases stronger, giving more regen and capacity to bases perhaps, to keep base size down.