Fission (nuclear), fossil, FTL and fusion (better in every way nuclear) fuels and power.

[wolfboyft]

So, starting off with the nuclear powers.

Fission.

Our power generator blocks would all become nuclear fission reactors (don't worry, just use the replace filter to go fusion ) which is cheaper to make, and less expensive in credits, but worse and more volatile.

(Oh, umm... maybe the power generators should work with all the power sources? Or maybe it should be all power's got it's own power generating block. You guys decide.)

Anyway. We need somewhere to put our refined uranium rods. Use a new type of storage, the nuclear reactor.

Our old power generators are all actually nothing but the uranium processor things that actually make the power. They've got cute little steam things inside them. You know, the turbine and all that? So, once you've put your uranium (found everywheres) inside, just wait and it will be used up and making power. YOU WILL WANT POWER CAPACITORS (which work with all the power sources), else you WILL waste lots and lots and lots of power.

There's a button in the nuclear reactor system in the weapons menu (BTW you will wanna turn it on like a radar-jammer) called intelligence (toggle-able) intelligence makes it turn off when you've reached the maximum power cap in your ship, and also ensures that it will lower the power creation usage when needed, such as when you are at the power cap but moving in such a way that the power wobbles in levels, so the nuclear reactor will produce power, but at the right speed. All on by default, no worries.

There's an output area with the nuclear fission. It... has... toxic waste capsules in it.

Yuck. Dispose of them, the shops don't want them.

Moving on to fusion power.

IIRC, nuclear fusion power is this.

You have a deuterium fuel supply, and put it into a fusion reactor's input. Around the input is a ring, which has plasma within it. The plasma is so hot it... it makes turbines turn (with steam? Like in nuclear fission?), which makes electricity like fission.

You will want one of those fusion reactor blocks (it's a small model of a nuclear fusion reactor) and then the nuclear fusion power generators.

(BTW no power generator requires C+V connections)

So, anyway. You put deuterium and 500 power in, and it should start up a process, in which 500 power is used per 5 seconds, and 50000 power is outputted every 5 seconds. If someone shoots and destroys the high-HP'd and high armour'd nuclear reactor, it might spill a small amount of plasma everywhere. Beware. OUCH for the crew!

That about wraps it up for the nuclears. Going into fossil.

Oil is a fluid found in martian, terran, ice and a lot of the time desert type planets.

It is not good in it's raw state, so...

Make a refinery! Uses up small amounts of power, to make a yellow liquid called refined fuel. I know, copying buildcraft but that's not too much of a matter, right?

So, it's a pretty bad fuel source, but it's certainly abundant. If you mine enough, it can serve you as well as nuclear power.

Anyway, in a combustion engine, you put your fuel capsules. (I might put some fluid capsule stuff in my fluids are fluids thread)

And finally, FTL fuel.

This is only a start to my idea of FTL fuel, so it may not be too good.

So, you get an FTL fuel input area. Place it anywhere you want, and put FTL fuel capsules in (I'll get to making them in a bit) and then, each jump consumes one piece of fuel.

So, making fuel capsules. Simple, you just place down an FTL refinery, put uranium capsules in and wait for the power and refinery to do its work.

That's it!

 

[starhaiden]

why uranium? why no water and make hydrogen fuel using the sun to split the hydrogen from the oxygen

 

[blurb357]

why uranium? why no water and make hydrogen fuel using the sun to split the hydrogen from the oxygen

uranium is used in FISSION because it has, in its refined state (uranium 235) 235 protons and neutrons making it highly volatile.

 

[Megacrafter127]

Why not go all they over fusion and continue the chain until the fusion-product is iron(the star-murdering element).
Also, there should be an infinite power source remaining in the game. Just make the fuel-requiring ways much better.

 

[karkinosz]

Why not go all they over fusion and continue the chain until the fusion-product is iron(the star-murdering element).
Also, there should be an infinite power source remaining in the game. Just make the fuel-requiring ways much better.

You probably aren't going to reach iron in an artificial generator the energy/pressure requirements for fusion above deuterium and etc is way greater.

We probably will keep some form of permanent power source like solar cells, (with extremely deep capacitor storage.) Since most stars are unlikely to die in the playtime of the average starmade player. (Discounting the impossibility of immortal no-lifers). This of course assumes people like the new suggestion.

Nuclear waste - > Dirty bombs for use on terran planets.

This idea also requires power storage to increase in orders of magnitude(to make power system management more tactical). Which could lead on to balancing cloaking mechanics on mass/power storage instead of mass/power generation (if we make turning generators on decloak a ship). Since gaining power in this situation takes resources stealth ships will be hard pressed to fly about cloaked all the time and will not be able to attack after decloaking without using precious fuel. (Take this on a tangent at your leisure. But it might make stealth systems becoming more mainstream balance-able)

 

[FunnyBunny14]

The game isn't ready for this yet. There are still a lot of features that need to be implemented, and anything to delay that isn't welcome (by me).

 

[Megacrafter127]

You probably aren't going to reach iron in an artificial generator the energy/pressure requirements for fusion above deuterium and etc is way greater.

You don't know how advanced SM-technology may be. *wink*
Besides, getting to metals using fusion would also add another aspect to economy.
And gigantig diamonds!

 

[karkinosz]

Bunny more or less is right, I mean this seems pretty minor to implement but its a huge overhaul balance wise and thus will take a lot of time. And mega even with more advanced technology you would still need excessive amounts of energy with decreasing returns, no civilization would do that for metals when 99% of the universe is hydrogen(fuel).

 

[Megacrafter127]

And mega even with more advanced technology you would still need excessive amounts of energy with decreasing returns, no civilization would do that for metals when 99% of the universe is hydrogen(fuel).

The lightest element, which's fusion doesn't free more energy, than it takes, is iron, which is why iron is the star-murderer.
Also: there will also be one civilisation crazy enough to do it even if there were better solutions.

 

[NeonSturm]

Also, there should be an infinite power source remaining in the game. Just make the fuel-requiring ways much better.

true. Stars = infinite power? :p :D

---

I imagine an ultra efficient reactor with just one down-side :

It produces a power spike every second (like 250 every second at 100% storage).
The less storage % you have when they trigger, the larger but later the next power-spike (like 5'000 every 20 seconds at 0%).

It could also fill 2x as much, but immediately drain 1/2 of it's refill, including the risk for a power-outage if your storage is too small to catch excess.
Everytime it causess a power-outage, the spike decreases by 50% until it actually caused 1 turn no power-outage.​

We could call this reactor Ma-quad-rium-Reactor
EDIT : changed the name (which is an Example!) from Naquadria-Reactor to a NOT copyrighted one :p

 

[Ithirahad]

...Again with the Stargate, Neon? Naquadria is copyrighted; I don't think so. And that sounds like a really strange reactor. :P

 

[NeonSturm]

And that sounds like a really strange reactor. :p

And it promotes power tanks :p
It would be ideal for short bursts and high endurance, but discourages a long burst initial in combat.

 

[clawson200]

If you had the fission reactors and things set to where they need to be arranged in a certain pattern then it would be like rail craft with coke furnaces. You can make the reactor but it requires fuel and there is waste, the up side being that it makes allot of energy and takes up less room than the amount of normal generators need to produce the same amount of energy. It would still be nice to have the normal generators we have now if we did decide to implement these.

 

[wolfboyft]

If you had the fission reactors and things set to where they need to be arranged in a certain pattern then it would be like rail craft with coke furnaces. You can make the reactor but it requires fuel and there is waste, the up side being that it makes allot of energy and takes up less room than the amount of normal generators need to produce the same amount of energy. It would still be nice to have the normal generators we have now if we did decide to implement these.

Well, the whole point is to replace old generators... so... needs to be an optional thing. In configs.

 

[clawson200]

Ok, but for people that don't want to mess with having to keep track of fuel and things wouldn't be easier to just have both in game? Yours having certain advantages over the originals. That way nobody needs to go diving into config files.

 

[Shadss]

May I suggest, for FTL travel, A Dark Matter Converter? Technically, if you consider darkness it's own entity rather than an absence of light, darkness IS faster than light. Put a few hundred thousand shards into the Converter, you get one canister of Dark Matter or something, and then use one per jump and / or fuel for a long period of time.