- Joined
- Sep 5, 2013
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I’ve been trying to create more modular ships that add an extra level of realism with their design. As such, I’ve been creating separate engines, power reactors, and anything else that seems practical, then docking them together. Thus you have a ship with an actual engine compartment, power room, what have you.
It seems as though my latest design attempt has run into a limitation with the docking system. Let me explain: based on the fact that a turret will draw power from the main ship in order to fire its weapons, I’ve worked under the assumption that any docked entity will draw power from anything in the chain above it to which it’s docked. On the other hand, nothing in the chain above a docked entity can draw power from something docked to it.
Thus, when I create a ship using my new modular ideas, there is the main hull, which has power reactors docked to it, which has thrusters docked to them. All I have to do at that point is turn on “inherit thrust from docked entities” and away I go. Except my premise turns out to be wrong. The main ship is indeed inheriting the thrust from the docked thrusters, but the thrusters aren’t drawing power from the docked power reactors in the chain above it. They are instead trying to draw power from the main ship, which doesn’t draw power from the reactors below it in the docking chain.
I didn’t realize that this was the case in the past because I was using docked reactors with energy beams transferring power to the main hull. I’d always thought that the thrusters were draining power directly from the docked reactors, and any extra power was being transferred to the main ship, but it seems (now) that I was just lucky.
So, here’s my question: would it be possible to change the manner in which all entities draw power to match my premise above, as with turrets? If there is some exploit that this would create I could understand it not working this way, but it seems quite natural to have it work as suggested otherwise. Thanks.
It seems as though my latest design attempt has run into a limitation with the docking system. Let me explain: based on the fact that a turret will draw power from the main ship in order to fire its weapons, I’ve worked under the assumption that any docked entity will draw power from anything in the chain above it to which it’s docked. On the other hand, nothing in the chain above a docked entity can draw power from something docked to it.
Thus, when I create a ship using my new modular ideas, there is the main hull, which has power reactors docked to it, which has thrusters docked to them. All I have to do at that point is turn on “inherit thrust from docked entities” and away I go. Except my premise turns out to be wrong. The main ship is indeed inheriting the thrust from the docked thrusters, but the thrusters aren’t drawing power from the docked power reactors in the chain above it. They are instead trying to draw power from the main ship, which doesn’t draw power from the reactors below it in the docking chain.
I didn’t realize that this was the case in the past because I was using docked reactors with energy beams transferring power to the main hull. I’d always thought that the thrusters were draining power directly from the docked reactors, and any extra power was being transferred to the main ship, but it seems (now) that I was just lucky.
So, here’s my question: would it be possible to change the manner in which all entities draw power to match my premise above, as with turrets? If there is some exploit that this would create I could understand it not working this way, but it seems quite natural to have it work as suggested otherwise. Thanks.
