Fuel Cells (The un-green power alternitive)

    Joined
    Nov 17, 2013
    Messages
    12
    Reaction score
    0
    Introduction: Fuel Cells would use fuel and produce more energy with less diminseions and weight (compared to the regular power blocks), but would use up their fuel as they produced power.

    Have you ever had that idea for the ultumate cloaking or fighter ship, but could never make it work because you would have to have power banks a mile wide? How about that 2 km long behemouth with the weapons array that can blow up a planet, but can't turn faster than 20 per minute because its power system is 2 million mass?

    My solution: light-weight Fuel Cells.

    This would require two additional blocks be added to the game:

    1) Fuel Cell Core

    This would be the actual power producer. Each Fuel Cell Core (FCC) block would use a set amount of fuel per unit of energy produced per second. Lets make it 1:1 for ease of use. The FCC's would group much like weapons, with power output and outputs per second increasing with group size. So one Fuel Cell Core block could produce 1,000 power per second (using 1000 fuel) and 10 FCC blocks grouped could produce something like 40,000 power per second (using 40k fuel).



    2) Fuel Tank

    This would be something like the existant power tank blocks. It would store a value (lets make it fuel) and the Fuel Cell Core blocks would access the fuel tank value and reduce the value per second per amount of power produced. If the FCCs are not producing power (IE: power bar is full) no fuel would be taken from the tanks. Since the ratio of fuel to power is 1:1 in this instance, the amount of fuel in each fuel tank would need to be pretty high: 10-50k fuel or more.

    Power output would be limited by the number/ group size of the Fuel Cell Cores (FCC's) and the amount of fuel available. 1 FCC block, producing 1k power per second, could produce 10k power over 10 seconds with one 10k fuel tank block, but 3 FCC blocks producing say 5k power per second, could only produce full power for 2 seconds with one 10k fuel block. Similarly a ship with 100 fuel tanks and 1 FCC would be able to produce 1k power per second for: 100 blocks x10k storage per block/1k used per second= 1,000 seconds. All of these values would need to be tested and balanced of course.



    Refueling

    Since the fuel tanks are essentially just energy storage with the unit fuel rather than energy, refuling would work just like current energy transfer between ships. A ship could dock and use the power systems of the mother ship to refill its tanks (recharge) or another ship could use a power transfer beam on it. The transfer of power from host/beam to fuel would be something like 1:1 again. To get power out of fuel tanks only be able to happen through FCC's. Self recharging would have to be blocked somehow. Either once you place regular power blocks, you cant place FCC's and fuel tanks, or ships with normal power blocks are disalowed from recharging fuel tanks attatched to them. Otherwise, fuel cells would just be a better power tank block.
     
    Joined
    Nov 17, 2013
    Messages
    12
    Reaction score
    0
    Please excuse my grammar, Im on about 4 hours of sleep and only one lame-a** cup of coffee.
     
    Joined
    Aug 21, 2013
    Messages
    240
    Reaction score
    24
    • Community Content - Bronze 1
    WE HAVE DISCOVERED INFINITE ENERGY GENERATORS, FUEL IS OUTDATED BY A VERY LONG TIME! However I\'d like to see in StarMade museums people re-create the first space shuttle, and use OPTIONAL fuel in the tank etc.
     
    Joined
    Jul 3, 2013
    Messages
    119
    Reaction score
    9
    I don\'t really see why we need another type of energy source.

    If this is implemented, power to fuel conversion is a no. Fuel would have to be manufactured and bought. And fuel would have to be expensive enough for the current power system to be useful to use.
     
    Joined
    Nov 28, 2013
    Messages
    20
    Reaction score
    2
    Why couldn\'t we have both, even on the same ship? In real life power cells work in both directions

    Having the fuel as a fuel as a incredably dense energy storage device (fuel tank) but it can only be turned back into energy at a set rate (the number of fuel cells).

    While Bigger ships or stations could have the current power system to power themselves and generate fuel
     
    Joined
    Nov 17, 2013
    Messages
    12
    Reaction score
    0
    It would essentially be an alternative to the bulky energy generators. I dont know about you guys, but it is nearly impossible to make a cloakable ship with any kind of combat ability close to its class.
    You would be able to create small fighters that could have a lot of energy available but for a short amount of time.

    I guess you could have them on the same ship. Now that I think of it, it could work. I was trying to avoid cutting out the usefullness of power tanks though. If you could just store your infinite energy production (regular power blocks) into the fuel tanks and then get it back out with fuel cells it would bypass power tanks I think.

    The idea was for a compact energy storage device that had a limited amount of power available but could still be useful in smaller or light wieght craft.
     
    Joined
    Nov 17, 2013
    Messages
    12
    Reaction score
    0
    I like that Idea. It is really meant as a low mass small footprint power alternative. It would need to be balanced to be as good as the regular power system.
     
    Joined
    Nov 17, 2013
    Messages
    12
    Reaction score
    0
    That would also work as long as they didnt make the actual power bar size larger (like power tanks do).
     
    Joined
    Jul 3, 2013
    Messages
    119
    Reaction score
    9
    I dont know about you guys, but it is nearly impossible to make a cloakable ship with any kind of combat ability close to its class.


    That is purposeful. It shouldn\'t be possible.
     
    Joined
    Nov 21, 2013
    Messages
    85
    Reaction score
    3
    This is actually wrong. If you\'re good at squeezing power out of reactors you can make a cloakable ship that can fight. You just have to understand how power works and get the most recharge you can out of every power block you place. My cloakable fighter can infinite cloak, infinite radar jam, is almost the same size as the Isanth, moves just as well as the Isanth, does more damage than the Isanth and has 6 times the shielding. This is good for something that can be entirely invisible as long as it wants in my opinion.

    It\'s harder on large ships kind of but not impossible if you pay attention to how your reactors are built, and keep in mind that even adding power blocks increases the power requirement for cloaking, so you can\'t just add them wherever, you\'re going for multiplied increase.
     
    Joined
    Aug 9, 2013
    Messages
    10
    Reaction score
    -4
    The reason we need some type of fuel is one of practicality. These ships are for the most part for a single user to use. Well whats to stop all of us from having 1 or 2 km length ships? How many times have you seen games shut down or lagged cause a huge ship is stumbling by ? Mr an Mrs keep up with the jones would be hard pressed to keep building larger and larger ships if they had to fuel them.



    Failing the acceptance of the idea of fuel... i would like to see a entropy effect on ships of a certain size. ships so large that enery dissipates before being able to power weapons engines ect...other wise we will all be flying death stars