- Joined
- Jul 11, 2013
- Messages
- 277
- Reaction score
- 20
Hi everyone!
First off, good to be back again - I have taken a rather long break from SM but kept checking up regularly on the updates and I'm very impressed with the amount of progress made by the relatively small team on the game. So many features that we wanted over the years have eventually come to fruition even though we thought they were not possible or too difficult to work out at the time.
And now for my shot at fame:
With more and more intricate features and changes afoot as well as a fairly complex base game, I think SM could do with a little bit more depth still. Granted, there are literally billions of miles of depth but please do consider this and feedback to me on this thread, all feedback and criticism is welcome.
Nevertheless, Heat Management is a key feature of many space games of late: in particular, Elite Dangerous, in which flying close to a sun is actually rewarded with fuel but also becomes a risky balancing act for the player to collect fuel and avoid getting too close to the sun for the sake of his own safety.
I believe that addition of Heat and Heat Management could have a positive impact on the depth and immersion of the game - and may offer some interesting gameplay mechanics and design paths for players to make use of it.
Schine has proven that they have the technology and the know-how to implement new and interesting features, I believe this could be viable now and could add so much more depth into the game.
Before I start, I am aware of one thread on this, published in 2014 by Aracturus here: Heat.
This is my own take on this system and not a copy, however it may draw similarities in the general sense.
1.HEAT
In space, any light hitting your ship will cause it's surfaces to heat up. This is what we consider sun damage.
Sun in a sector heats any ship or object. The closer you are to it, the more your ship heats up and likewise the farther you are from it, the more it's allowed to cool down.
But in space there are other sources of heat such as weapons, generators, factories, shields, thrusters etc. Basically anything that uses or creates ''energy'' will also create heat. All ship and station systems should produce heat.
2. HEAT GENERATION
Passive systems such as computers, AI, logic etc. will only produce an arbitrary constant per-block value of heat.
Active systems such as shields, capacitors, generators, thrusters etc. will produce an arbitrary constant per-block value which will also scale with the size of the arrays. Additionally, heat generation will increase depending on how heavily the systems are used.
Weapons will generate heat depending on their power when used, meaning they will spike heavily in use and drop when not in use.
Generators will generate heat according to how much energy or shield power they output but will drop to minimum when fully recharged.
Capacitors will generate more and more heat as they gain energy or shield power. The more charge they hold, the higher their heat generation.
Thrusters will behave similar to weapons but since thrust can be split between directions and movements, they will spike at different rates when in use depending on how they are used.
All of these systems will have a minimum idle heat generation value that will scale with their size.
The total heat produced by all systems is summed up. That's how much heat you are generating right at that moment. This value will change depending on the use of your systems and other penalties such as sun damage and heat from attacks by other ships.
Your actual heat will depend on your ships mass and it's ability to dissipate it.
Likewise, your armor value will dictate how much heat you can tank safely before any effects happen.
Your ship will always try to equalize it's current heat level with what it's generating and/or receiving through penalties and attacks. Essentially, larger ships will take longer to do this and smaller ships will take less time to do this.
3. HEAT EFFECTS
So we have produced a whole lot of heat and we are sitting next to a neutron star. How screwed are we?
Well, firstly, your ship cannot get hotter than it's heat generation. That's the maximum it will try to reach. Unless you are under attack or next to a star, that's the limit.
If you generate or receive too much heat and go beyond a safe threshold, your ship will first try to limit itself to reduce generation and cool down. If you cross the second threshold, the ship will overheat and start taking damage. If you cross the third and final threshold, explosions will start occurring which will eventually destroy your ship.
Thresholds and effects:
- <100% heat - no effect, normal operation
- 100 to 150% heat - ship receives a penalty to all systems, 1% for every 1% over 100% i.e. at 140% your ship is 40% less effective. Up to 50% penalty can be applied.
- >150% - damage starts occurring. Blocks start glowing red and take damage. Will not be destroyed but when affected, can be rendered useless and require repair
- >200% - random explosions happen across the ship until it is destroyed. Blocks will be destroyed in the process, requiring a rebuild/refit. There isn't much you can do now and total failure is almost imminent unless you act fast or evacuate.
4. HEAT MANAGEMENT
So your ship is overheating. How do you manage that?
Firstly, you are protected by your armor up to 150% heat value. So if you go OTT on your capital ship, it may simply blow a fuse and keep running slower.
Also, ships will always lose heat at a certain rate according to their mass, which will be a % of their total heat remaining. So the hotter you get, the quicker your heat radiates away. But larger ships will lose less heat than smaller ones.
This means that even though smaller ships can withstand less heat in total, they may never even begin to overheat under normal operation as they dissipate heat very quickly.
If you find you need to manage your heat though, here are some solutions to this problem:
- Heatsinks - a passive system, designed to dissipate heat. It does not use any energy to run, simply dumping excess heat into space via radiator arrays. If your ship reaches 75% heat threshold, they will start glowing and will change their hue according to how hot they are. Cheap, moderately effective and need to be built in radiator-like arrays, leaving at least 1 block of space empty in any direction but greatly increasing efficiency if connected together into large arrays.
- Active heat exchangers - a cooling array which reduces heat at the cost of increased energy consumption. These are connected to specific systems via their computers and reduce the heat produced by those systems when active. They can be set to on, off or automatic. They will eat a lot of power to do this so be careful how you use them.
- Heat regenerators - a highly advanced array that can harness some excess heat and convert it into boost energy for the system it's connected to. It will not be very efficient and will use a small amount of power to operate. It can however be used in conjunction with heat capacitors to devastating effect.
- Heat capacitor - used with a regenerator, harnesses and accumulates ''heat'' energy that can be used as an effect in a weapon system. It adds a heating effect to the weapon, converting a proportion of it's damage into extra heat damage, causing enemy ships to heat up quicker. The efficiency of this system will depend on the array size and stored heat.
TL:DR
1. You generate heat or receive it in penalties
2. Various ships of different sizes have different properties and deal with heat better or worse
3. Too much heat can cause you to lose power, take damage and blow up
4. Heat can be managed with passive and active systems, even weaponised.
5. Glowing heatsinks!!
6. New gameplay strategies and choices - if you can deal with the heat, you can fly close to stars or out-tank your enemies.
7. Vastly increased depth but learning curve will mostly remain simple - it's not a necessary system and ships will mostly operate fine without any design changes. Only in heavy duty, combat or emergency situations heat management might be required.
Whaddaya think? Leave comments below and i'll try to get back to you. Any criticism and feedback is also welcome, after all it's only a suggestion and you may help make it better or may decide against it. Let me know what you think!
First off, good to be back again - I have taken a rather long break from SM but kept checking up regularly on the updates and I'm very impressed with the amount of progress made by the relatively small team on the game. So many features that we wanted over the years have eventually come to fruition even though we thought they were not possible or too difficult to work out at the time.
And now for my shot at fame:
With more and more intricate features and changes afoot as well as a fairly complex base game, I think SM could do with a little bit more depth still. Granted, there are literally billions of miles of depth but please do consider this and feedback to me on this thread, all feedback and criticism is welcome.
Nevertheless, Heat Management is a key feature of many space games of late: in particular, Elite Dangerous, in which flying close to a sun is actually rewarded with fuel but also becomes a risky balancing act for the player to collect fuel and avoid getting too close to the sun for the sake of his own safety.
I believe that addition of Heat and Heat Management could have a positive impact on the depth and immersion of the game - and may offer some interesting gameplay mechanics and design paths for players to make use of it.
Schine has proven that they have the technology and the know-how to implement new and interesting features, I believe this could be viable now and could add so much more depth into the game.
Before I start, I am aware of one thread on this, published in 2014 by Aracturus here: Heat.
This is my own take on this system and not a copy, however it may draw similarities in the general sense.
1.HEAT
In space, any light hitting your ship will cause it's surfaces to heat up. This is what we consider sun damage.
Sun in a sector heats any ship or object. The closer you are to it, the more your ship heats up and likewise the farther you are from it, the more it's allowed to cool down.
But in space there are other sources of heat such as weapons, generators, factories, shields, thrusters etc. Basically anything that uses or creates ''energy'' will also create heat. All ship and station systems should produce heat.
2. HEAT GENERATION
Passive systems such as computers, AI, logic etc. will only produce an arbitrary constant per-block value of heat.
Active systems such as shields, capacitors, generators, thrusters etc. will produce an arbitrary constant per-block value which will also scale with the size of the arrays. Additionally, heat generation will increase depending on how heavily the systems are used.
Weapons will generate heat depending on their power when used, meaning they will spike heavily in use and drop when not in use.
Generators will generate heat according to how much energy or shield power they output but will drop to minimum when fully recharged.
Capacitors will generate more and more heat as they gain energy or shield power. The more charge they hold, the higher their heat generation.
Thrusters will behave similar to weapons but since thrust can be split between directions and movements, they will spike at different rates when in use depending on how they are used.
All of these systems will have a minimum idle heat generation value that will scale with their size.
The total heat produced by all systems is summed up. That's how much heat you are generating right at that moment. This value will change depending on the use of your systems and other penalties such as sun damage and heat from attacks by other ships.
Your actual heat will depend on your ships mass and it's ability to dissipate it.
Likewise, your armor value will dictate how much heat you can tank safely before any effects happen.
Your ship will always try to equalize it's current heat level with what it's generating and/or receiving through penalties and attacks. Essentially, larger ships will take longer to do this and smaller ships will take less time to do this.
3. HEAT EFFECTS
So we have produced a whole lot of heat and we are sitting next to a neutron star. How screwed are we?
Well, firstly, your ship cannot get hotter than it's heat generation. That's the maximum it will try to reach. Unless you are under attack or next to a star, that's the limit.
If you generate or receive too much heat and go beyond a safe threshold, your ship will first try to limit itself to reduce generation and cool down. If you cross the second threshold, the ship will overheat and start taking damage. If you cross the third and final threshold, explosions will start occurring which will eventually destroy your ship.
Thresholds and effects:
- <100% heat - no effect, normal operation
- 100 to 150% heat - ship receives a penalty to all systems, 1% for every 1% over 100% i.e. at 140% your ship is 40% less effective. Up to 50% penalty can be applied.
- >150% - damage starts occurring. Blocks start glowing red and take damage. Will not be destroyed but when affected, can be rendered useless and require repair
- >200% - random explosions happen across the ship until it is destroyed. Blocks will be destroyed in the process, requiring a rebuild/refit. There isn't much you can do now and total failure is almost imminent unless you act fast or evacuate.
4. HEAT MANAGEMENT
So your ship is overheating. How do you manage that?
Firstly, you are protected by your armor up to 150% heat value. So if you go OTT on your capital ship, it may simply blow a fuse and keep running slower.
Also, ships will always lose heat at a certain rate according to their mass, which will be a % of their total heat remaining. So the hotter you get, the quicker your heat radiates away. But larger ships will lose less heat than smaller ones.
This means that even though smaller ships can withstand less heat in total, they may never even begin to overheat under normal operation as they dissipate heat very quickly.
If you find you need to manage your heat though, here are some solutions to this problem:
- Heatsinks - a passive system, designed to dissipate heat. It does not use any energy to run, simply dumping excess heat into space via radiator arrays. If your ship reaches 75% heat threshold, they will start glowing and will change their hue according to how hot they are. Cheap, moderately effective and need to be built in radiator-like arrays, leaving at least 1 block of space empty in any direction but greatly increasing efficiency if connected together into large arrays.
- Active heat exchangers - a cooling array which reduces heat at the cost of increased energy consumption. These are connected to specific systems via their computers and reduce the heat produced by those systems when active. They can be set to on, off or automatic. They will eat a lot of power to do this so be careful how you use them.
- Heat regenerators - a highly advanced array that can harness some excess heat and convert it into boost energy for the system it's connected to. It will not be very efficient and will use a small amount of power to operate. It can however be used in conjunction with heat capacitors to devastating effect.
- Heat capacitor - used with a regenerator, harnesses and accumulates ''heat'' energy that can be used as an effect in a weapon system. It adds a heating effect to the weapon, converting a proportion of it's damage into extra heat damage, causing enemy ships to heat up quicker. The efficiency of this system will depend on the array size and stored heat.
TL:DR
1. You generate heat or receive it in penalties
2. Various ships of different sizes have different properties and deal with heat better or worse
3. Too much heat can cause you to lose power, take damage and blow up
4. Heat can be managed with passive and active systems, even weaponised.
5. Glowing heatsinks!!
6. New gameplay strategies and choices - if you can deal with the heat, you can fly close to stars or out-tank your enemies.
7. Vastly increased depth but learning curve will mostly remain simple - it's not a necessary system and ships will mostly operate fine without any design changes. Only in heavy duty, combat or emergency situations heat management might be required.
Whaddaya think? Leave comments below and i'll try to get back to you. Any criticism and feedback is also welcome, after all it's only a suggestion and you may help make it better or may decide against it. Let me know what you think!
