More than 100% Chamber point usage (for a prize of course)

[Lord Daro]

It might add more posibilities to play around with system setups if we could go over 100% with the chambers.
Of course this extra capacitiy for a reactor would have to be purchased.
I think every Percent over 100 could cost maybe 5% Reactor stability. This might seem a bit high to some but if overcapacitiy comes to cheap, it would remove any conceivable reason to use multiply reactors in certain setups. Also, this value would have to be tested out for proper balancing anyways.

To avoid exploits reactors could stop working at all, if they are at 0% stability or less.

 

[MacThule]

Sounds interesting. Stability could be a good balance to overclocking reactors, since if it lowers enough it not only makes your reactor more fragile, it directly reduces your power generation potential, but wouldn't people just pour absolutely loads of stabilizers onto their ship to compensate for a reactor that runs at like 300%? Or would the stability penalty be added after calculating base stability (i.e. not possible to compensate for with additional components)?

 

[Ckeeze]

Sounds interesting. Stability could be a good balance to overclocking reactors, since if it lowers enough it not only makes your reactor more fragile, it directly reduces your power generation potential, but wouldn't people just pour absolutely loads of stabilizers onto their ship to compensate for a reactor that runs at like 300%? Or would the stability penalty be added after calculating base stability (i.e. not possible to compensate for with additional components)?

Yeah but if you have like million stabilazers for a medium sized reactor your ship will be underpowered for it's mass no matter how much chambers you have...

 

[MacThule]

Yeah but if you have like million stabilazers for a medium sized reactor your ship will be underpowered for it's mass no matter how much chambers you have...

Only if we assume a minimum speed or something similar must be achieved, I think. Otherwise it becomes possible to maintain identical weapon & shield power, crank reactor points up to 300% by pouring on stabs, and just accept a ship that moves slower. And not a lot slower, with the way thrusters were buffed. So overall, yeah, "underpowered" in a way, but if someone is going lag meta and not relying on maneuver at all, just jumping around like a mobile defense platform loaded with super turrets then it starts to look a little unbalanced maybe. Though maybe not... maybe if reactor overclocking were allowed with a hardcap somewhere along the lines of 125-150%...

Hard to say. Worth testing out in dev at some point though maybe.

 

[Raisinbat]

What happens with tiny drones where you have reactors too small to require stabilizers? Can they just fit all the chambers?

 

[dwwojcik]

Nah they should just start to require stabilizers once you go over 100%.

 

[Lord Daro]

but wouldn't people just pour absolutely loads of stabilizers onto their ship to compensate for a reactor that runs at like 300%? Or would the stability penalty be added after calculating base stability (i.e. not possible to compensate for with additional components)?

but if someone is going lag meta and not relying on maneuver at all, just jumping around like a mobile defense platform loaded with super turrets then it starts to look a little unbalanced maybe. Though maybe not... maybe if reactor overclocking were allowed with a hardcap somewhere along the lines of 125-150%...

Hard to say. Worth testing out in dev at some point though maybe.

I would make this penalty for overclocking be compensable with extra stabilazers. If we go with high costs like my proposed 5% stability, just going to 120% would already mean up to double the amount of stabilazers. With so many stabilazers added, I would guess something like a jumping defence platform would not do all that well against quite a few different designs. At least when we look at designs of similar sizes/masses.
A hardcap could help to prevent abuse, however since I am not a big fan of such measures I would first wanna see how the suggested mechanic works without.

What happens with tiny drones where you have reactors too small to require stabilizers? Can they just fit all the chambers?

Well, technically small reactors just start out at 100% base stabilization wich gradually goes down as the reactor gets bigger. So you still would have to add stabilzers, if you wanna keep a high level of stabilization while going over 100%.

 

[Skwidz]

What if for every 5% of additional over-rc capacity it requires some of your e/s? I.e. every 5% requires 1.5-2% of the generated output

 

[pigghoti]

Or at least allow the ability to increase or decrease the RC usage of the chambers.

 

[Skwidz]

Or at least allow the ability to increase or decrease the RC usage of the chambers.

You can already do that by changing the settings in the block config.

 

[Edymnion]

I do like the idea of overloading a reactor to get more chamber capacity at the cost of needing more stabilizers. It would actually give a pretty interesting reason to have stabilizers.

 

[EricBlank]

I think this could work, actually. Go over capacity and you start losing stability quickly, and maybe draws extra power (like the proposed .2% of generated for every 1% over the RC cap) too?

The question then is, if the need for extra stabilizers outweighs the benefit of having every single chamber available at once. Does a ship following that meta get such an advantage that it dwarfs more specialized ships of similar mass/power generation, despite being bloated with extra stabilizers?

Id guess not, if the penalty to stabilizer efficiency is roughly equal to percent over rc cap or there abouts. If you used 195% rc capacity then youd in that model be losing 95% of the points your stabilizers provide. Youd want to achieve at least 25% stability, so you dont lose power generation, so youd at least have to have 5x as many stabilizers as you normally would just to achieve that? Dont trust my math, im doing this in my head...

Thats still almost double rc usage, youd be able to fit an entire extra systems tree in, not just an extra defense chamber. For the low, low cost of more than quintupling the necessary stabilizers. So thats a lot already.