Maximizing energy production for a given volume

[Cheerfultrout]

Getting the maximum energy production for a given volume is something many ships need to do, so I have set about figuring a way to do just that.
So far I have figured out the best way to arrange reactors to get the most energy possible from all rectangular volumes of size 27 or less, of note is the 3x3x3 design, which turned out to produce more power than the "optimal" 3x3x3 design on starmadepedia:
powerOutput: 2051.6e
5 2 5
2 7 2
5 2 5

Currently the way I've been finding designs was through a program I wrote that tries out every possible reactor design for a given volume but that starts to get prohibitive with larger volumes, can any of you think of a better way to do it?

edit:
sorry, I should probably put the design in a more usable format:
powerOutput: 2051.6e
101 ; 010 ; 101
010 ; 111 ; 010
101 ; 010 ; 101
(in case you were wondering, the first design is what you get by interpreting the latter design as a binary number)

 

[TheOmega]

The problem lies in the game code, my friend. The more reactor groups your ship has, the less power they each produce. If this has been changed to be more logical, I'll be off to build a permacloaking titan.

 

[Cheerfultrout]

The problem lies in the game code, my friend. The more reactor groups your ship has, the less power they each produce. If this has been changed to be more logical, I'll be off to build a permacloaking titan.

Yeah, that's true, my thinking was more along the lines of, say you have some space leftover in a build and you haven't already hit the softcap and have nothing else you would rather do with it, how do you best fill it up with generators.

 

[Gasboy]

Yeah, that's true, my thinking was more along the lines of, say you have some space leftover in a build and you haven't already hit the softcap and have nothing else you would rather do with it, how do you best fill it up with generators.

Lines of generators.

 

[Cheerfultrout]

Lines of generators.

Lines are good when you have a big space to fill up, but if you have a rectangular volume which has less than 9 as it largest dimension, I have found that lines aren't the way to go to maximize production. I'll see if I can attach the document I created so people can take a look at my results so far.

 

[Panpiper]

Oh gods, not another, "let's build tiny cubes for power" thread.

Tiny cubes are the WORST POSSIBLE method of generating power, short of filling space with solid power modules. Do not do it! Plan your ship from the start with long lines of power modules extending in all three dimensions. There are many threads explaining how to do this. It has to be an extremely small ship indeed for me to not be able to generate a million power as a trivial exercise using 3D Xs. And even in tiny ships, I will typically generate hundreds of thousands of power, VASTLY more than anyone who uses tiny cubes.

 

[karkinosz]

Yeah really power is among the first things one should do in a build, if you have to stick extra in towards the end then scrap all the systems and start again.

Also with power lines, if you can make sure you have redundancy. So you can keep fighting or etc even if you suffer a hull breach. (Or at least don't have your energy crippled stopping your escape.)

 

[alterintel]

Oh gods, not another, "let's build tiny cubes for power" thread.

Tiny cubes are the WORST POSSIBLE method of generating power, short of filling space with solid power modules. Do not do it! Plan your ship from the start with long lines extending in all three dimensions. There are many threads explaining how to do this. It has to be an extremely small ship indeed for me to not be able to generate a million power as a trivial exercise using 3D Xs. And even in tiny ships, I will typically generate hundreds of thousands of power, VASTLY more than anyone who uses tiny cubes.

Perfectly said. The only thing that I would add, is the most efficient power per block arrangement is the X,Y,Z axis's adding up to 594. So one long line of 594, or a 2D arrangement of 297 x 297, or a 3D arrangement of 198 x 198 x 198 are all equally efficient.

Good Luck

 

[Keptick]

Ideally power is the first system you want to create since it's the only one with layout restrictions. Well, weapons and power storage too but those are a lot easier to work around. So filling up an empty cube is not ideal, since you'd be better off making a more efficient reactor and placing the blocks it would replace inside the empty cube.

 

[Gasboy]

Lines are good when you have a big space to fill up, but if you have a rectangular volume which has less than 9 as it largest dimension, I have found that lines aren't the way to go to maximize production. I'll see if I can attach the document I created so people can take a look at my results so far.

Well, if you look at the three fighters I've constructed, I don't have a whole lot of room to put stuff. I used lines throughout. I could probably reorganize their internals for a bit more efficiency, but making a cube, even if I have room, won't give them more power than they have now.

 

[Tunk]

Probably because almost every resource you can google includes cube reactors and calls them optimal.
While awesome the wiki includes calcs, it also includes excessive cruft (including 'optimal' cube reactors)

 

[PizzaPress]

I think these power cube things should be removed from all the wikis(Even horribly outdated ones), they're causing too much confusion.

 

[Tunk]

I'll look into cleaning up the power page when I'm done with weapons updates, unless someone else wants to volunteer.

 

[Parameter]

Probably because almost every resource you can google includes cube reactors and calls them optimal.
While awesome the wiki includes calcs, it also includes excessive cruft (including 'optimal' cube reactors)

They are optimal, for their box-dim. If you are constraining a ship to size of 5x5x5, a 5^3 cube reactor is the optimal power layout for your ship. Similarly, if you had a 27x27x27 ship boxdim, a 27^3 cube reactor is the most optimal power design you'll find for the volume.

The problem is when people use a small cube reactor as the power group for a ship with larger box-dims. That is very sub-optimal. For optimality, you should always attempt to maximize the volume your power reactor spans inside your ship, not limit it to a smaller volume.

For drones and small fighters where you constrain one or more box-dim axes, standard cube reactors, or standard cube reactors with "spokes", can be very effective power generation methods. However, most ships need far more than even 10x10x10 cube reactors for optimal power generation.

 

[PizzaPress]

They are optimal, for their box-dim. If you are constraining a ship to size of 5x5x5, a 5^3 cube reactor is the optimal power layout for your ship. Similarly, if you had a 27x27x27 ship boxdim, a 27^3 cube reactor is the most optimal power design you'll find for the volume.

The problem is when people use a small cube reactor as the power group for a ship with larger box-dims. That is very sub-optimal. For optimality, you should always attempt to maximize the volume your power reactor spans inside your ship, not limit it to a smaller volume.

For drones and small fighters where you constrain one or more box-dim axes, standard cube reactors, or standard cube reactors with "spokes", can be very effective power generation methods. However, most ships need far more than even 10x10x10 cube reactors for optimal power generation.

Another note: you probably want to factor weapons penetration and per-reactor-block efficiency into your reactor designs, making these probably sub-optimal for actual use anyway.