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.
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.
