How to possibly fix reactors

[jontyfreack]

"how to balance the power in a few simple steps: have reactor efficiency scale negatively ship mass and have stabilisers ONLY be needed to counter this (also having reactors explosive would be nice with stabilisers making them not explosive) have a min and a max distance for stabilisers to prevent players from placing them too far or too close to reactors and to prevent spaghetti ships" - The-Pipe-God-Emperor 2017

Starting off by quoting myself to use as a TL;DR incase I actually do end up waffling on for a bit.

So a large problem with the new power 2.0 is the stabilisers and the thread entitled "literally just invert the stabiliser distance" covers what is wrong with them. And I was inspired somewhat when that thread was created and I started thinking about power after 2 hours sleep in 3 days. Here is what I think:


Stabilisers should only be needed to stabilise a reactor, this means that they should only be used to prevent a reactor from exploding and improve its efficiency. To balance stabilisers being used like this I propose a maximum and a minimum distance for stabilisers from a reactor, basically a stabiliser cant be too close nor too far from a reactor.

Reactor efficiency (power produced per block) should start very VERY high, something around a large number per singular block in very small ships, and this efficiency will see a decrease as the reactor size or ship mass increases (personally I'm going towards ship mass). The stabilisers as stated above will counter this negative scaling of efficiency so with enough stabilisers you could have a very small reactor in a very large ship, however lose a stabiliser and you will need to get a lot of power from somewhere.

I like the idea of changing between reactors for doing different things, and this idea for stabilisers and reactors supports the idea of having backup reactors and having somewhat interesting ship designs that are not spaghetti ships, because hopefully this idea doesn't force the meta for ship building unlike power 2.0 is doing currently.

If any form of meta in this idea, it would be having at least 2 reactors armoured in the depths of a ship if the ship is large, and having lots of small fighters. Simply put, the meta would be somewhat realistic ship-to-ship/fleet combat. Somewhat.


While I am on the subject of new reactors, who the bloody hell thought it was a good idea to have shield reactors that produce a bubble for what blocks are protected? This ENCOURAGES dumbbell ships with how the systems 2.0 are currently.

However I see what was trying to be done, making shields more interesting than placing down two shield blocks and then the entire 2.3km ship is shielded, so I guess that is a plus and an actually interesting idea on Schines behalf.




Praise pipe!

 

[Dire Venom]

"how to balance the power in a few simple steps: have reactor efficiency scale negatively ship mass and have stabilisers ONLY be needed to counter this (also having reactors explosive would be nice with stabilisers making them not explosive)

I LIKE.

have a min and a max distance for stabilisers to prevent players from placing them too far or too close to reactors and to prevent spaghetti ships" - The-Pipe-God-Emperor 2017

Plz no :<( That doesnt fix spaghetti. They require a seperate fix without needing to self-destruct the power system to do it. All that would result in is long lines of reactors with long line of stabilizors nearby.
Ships should beable to come in all shapes and sizes (within reason), and not require ridiculous placing limits.

Breaking this down:

-I like basing it on ship mass. Far easier and more intuative to work with than some of the other suggestions.
-Easy to plan out for a ship, knowing that you need to dedicate (x)% of your ships mass to stabilizors to get 100% stabilization.
-NOT limiting in block placement... untill you get to the second part. All it does is limit ship designs. Removing the distance limits does not make the ship more powerful, just allows for more creative designs without needing to make the reactor a giant blob.
-Distance placement limits like this do not prevent explotive ships.
-The devs have taken explosive reactors (with stabilizors preventing this) on board and have said they will test this idea.

I started thinking about power after 2 hours sleep in 3 days.
Praise pipe!

This is how the devs produced the new power system btw^^^

If any form of meta in this idea, it would be having at least 2 reactors armoured in the depths of a ship if the ship is large, and having lots of small fighters. Simply put, the meta would be somewhat realistic ship-to-ship/fleet combat. Somewhat.

While I am on the subject of new reactors, who the bloody hell thought it was a good idea to have shield reactors that produce a bubble for what blocks are protected? This ENCOURAGES dumbbell ships with how the systems 2.0 are currently.

However I see what was trying to be done, making shields more interesting than placing down two shield blocks and then the entire 2.3km ship is shielded, so I guess that is a plus and an actually interesting idea on Schines behalf.
Praise pipe!

Thing is having more reactors increases your ships mass and takes up more space, plus switching is not something you can really do in combat. I very much doubt most ships would have more than one main reactor.

Also eh?????? With shields??? Anyone care to explain what these 'shield reactors' are about?? As far as I know shields apply to the whole ship, and 50% to docked entities.

 

[Jojomo]

Plz no :<( That doesnt fix spaghetti. They require a seperate fix without needing to self-destruct the power system to do it. All that would result in is long lines of reactors with long line of stabilizors nearby.
.

It does if reactors gain bonuses for being spheres/cubes.

The "limits" shouldn't be hard though, they should be soft: effeciency outside the target distances should be low but not zero.

 

[Dire Venom]

It does if reactors gain bonuses for being spheres/cubes.

The "limits" shouldn't be hard though, they should be soft: effeciency outside the target distances should be low but not zero.

Thus for 2 similar mass ships, for one I can design a giant flying wing that gets penalised for having a "flat/strechted out" reactor, and I can design another entirely around building an effcient reactor without caring about asthetics.

I don't think a ship design should be penalised for having an odd shape.

 

[Jojomo]

Thus for 2 similar mass ships, for one I can design a giant flying wing that gets penalised for having a "flat/strechted out" reactor, and I can design another entirely around building an effcient reactor without caring about asthetics.

I don't think a ship design should be penalised for having an odd shape.

What penalties? The flying wing gets standard power per reactor block. The spherical reactor get a relative bonus, if we make the assumption that the flying wing isn't deep enough to fit its reactor as a sphere.

Do you think any system should be allowed to be built in any shape? I.e. the only thing that matters in design is the number of each block type? That would be very, very boring, and utterly unlike real world design.

If you wanted more power in the flying wing you could add more reactor blocks. There's no good reason to expect that "if I take this ship and rearrange its blocks into a different shape without considering where they are with respect to each other I should get identical performance". That would be awful.

 

[Dire Venom]

What penalties? The flying wing gets standard power per reactor block. The spherical reactor get a relative bonus, if we make the assumption that the flying wing isn't deep enough to fit its reactor as a sphere.

Do you think any system should be allowed to be built in any shape? I.e. the only thing that matters in design is the number of each block type? That would be very, very boring, and utterly unlike real world design.

If you wanted more power in the flying wing you could add more reactor blocks. There's no good reason to expect that "if I take this ship and rearrange its blocks into a different shape without considering where they are with respect to each other I should get identical performance". That would be awful.

Some good points you made. I guess as long as the effciencey loss isn't too great I wouldn't find it too restrictive.
The old power system was like that, especialy with cloakers. They would need to be built in specific shapes to be viable let alone be able to cloak at all.
As long as reactor design is somewhat flexible I don't see any issues, I just don't want to have to build the reactor first for all my ships or be stuck with a crippling power reduction.
I'd like not have to completly scrap all my old ship designs because they are noticably in-effcient :/

Thanks for the disscusion! I would also been keen to hear what your thoughts are on power storage in the new system.

 

[Magrim]

"how to balance the power in a few simple steps: have reactor efficiency scale negatively ship mass and have stabilisers ONLY be needed to counter this (also having reactors explosive would be nice with stabilisers making them not explosive) have a min and a max distance for stabilisers to prevent players from placing them too far or too close to reactors and to prevent spaghetti ships" - The-Pipe-God-Emperor 2017

I like the output based on ship mass part of the suggestion. It would fix a great many issues while freeing up ship design. Stabilizers though wouldn't need to have a min/max range to kill meta noodles, your mass idea would do that anyway.

Do you think any system should be allowed to be built in any shape?

For power, yes. Otherwise, that is how meta ships are born. Power at the very least should not contribute to this issue since it is central to all other systems.

 

[Jojomo]

For power, yes. Otherwise, that is how meta ships are born. Power at the very least should not contribute to this issue since it is central to all other systems.

You can't get rid of meta in any game without making something that is no longer a game. What you need is meta that isn't too far from "normal" building, or at least nothing crazy like spaghetti meta.

 

[Magrim]

You are correct but that's not what I'm saying.

In a spaceship building game, why would you have the core mechanic favor one shape over another? Balancing other ship systems off of an inherently unbalanced mechanic will lead to problems.