So, i have somewhat read most of the discussions here on this thread and i want to put my opinion on the matter on power and so on. I agree on what Darkkrat (sorry if i butchered your name) said, this power system is a tad too complicated and limits the creativity the players had before. I would strongly suggest to make this system simpler and have an actual dropback when trying to go for a huge power generation. An idea i had is making the reactors generating heat, similar to the first proposal. The only difference is that the reactor will act like a reactor of a ship, in that the more it generates, the more heat it makes and the riskier it gets for the player who has said ship. This is where stabilizers would make a lot of sense.
Instead of making a distance requirement, allow the players to place the stabilizers anywhere close to the reactor area, something that people have been asking for a lot through out this thread.
I would also suggest making the chamber system seperate. Not only does that simplify what each block does for said player, but it also gives more options for developers such as yourselfs to expand upon. Of course, you will have to link the chamber system to a power source.
Having this option would also allow different types of power generation that have different requirements. Some examples are; fuel reactor/generator that gets powered from a type of fuel, solar power that gets power from light, ect.
The reason i thought up of such opinion is because of a developer/teacher who keeps telling us in our classroom "keep it simple, stupid", a joke that also serves as a reminder that keeping a balance between simplicity and complexity is key.
Give me your thoughts about this. Do you agree that the system needs to be a tad simpler that it is right now? Do you like the idea of having a variety of different power generation that are about equally simple?
I'm actually thinking this is a great idea. Basically, have reactors generate heat based on size of the reactor group. The bigger the reactor, the more heat it generates. Have this heat cause damage to nearby players and blocks if it gets too hot (similar to how your ship gets damaged flying close to a star). OR, alternatively, have excess heat reduce the efficiency of the reactor. Or both.
Have ways to manage heat so that players are required to build in a certain way to keep their reactor cores from melting down or blowing up by themselves. For example, you can have core shielding blocks that have a higher resistance to heat and have the core blocks surrounded by these to keep the rest of the hull from taking damage. Also, you could have coolant conduit blocks and radiator blocks. The radiator blocks reduce heat from the reactor when connected via coolant conduit blocks, but MUST be exposed to vacuum on the outside of the ship. Radiator block groups reduce heat on a linear per-block basis, but power and heat scales exponentially with reactor size - thus exponentially increasing radiator size needed. That way you have a potential weak spot that smaller ships can exploit on larger ones, because larger ships require larger radiators, which become targets in combat since radiators can't be covered by armor. (although you can design your radiator areas in such a way where they are still protected. For example:
| A | A |
| R |\a|
| A |\
| A | A |
Not really to scale, but the gist is that you have a small overhang of armor blocks that protect the radiator - the radiator still works cause it is exposed to vacuum, but unless you shoot at a very specific angle it is impossible to hit without hitting the overhanging armor. Plus it'd give your ship's outer hull a pimp-ass looking groove for aesthetic purposes.)
(You can also design a logic system that uses blast doors or forcefield blocks to cover an exposed radiator while in combat. This of course keeps the radiator from working, but the idea here is that heat buildup occurs gradually and you can run for a short time before the reactor heat reaches a critical level, at which point you open the doors/forcefield and let the radiator vent that heat.)
Not only would this be more realistic in regards to the thermodynamics of a ship, but it would allow for much more freedom in design and implementation. You can put the radiators anywhere so long as they are on the outer hull of the ship and connected via conduit, but radiators don't have any armor and destroying them increases reactor heat putting your ship and crew at risk. Plus, a conduit being destroyed could possibly disconnect from a reactor and cause overheating/meltdown as well. It basically makes it to where a larger, more powerful ship is forced to have weak spots in the form of radiators and conduits, but these can be placed strategically to minimize combat risk and be aesthetically pleasing. Having these weak points on larger ships also makes combat more fair versus smaller ships - being smaller and more agile they can slip around to the radiators on a larger ship and target them more accurately, weakening the larger ship. (One could set up so that reactor cores can be turned on or off, off generates no power or heat, thus allowing for a system where reactor power and heat output could be reduced to compensate for damage to radiators, etc)
EDIT: Couple of other things I should mention:
Firstly, the entire idea of the power system was to allow for more empty space inside the ship. I can see this working better by increasing the per-block effectiveness of chambers and things like thrusters and weapon groups, but having a diminishing return threshold that scales with the total dimension of the ship (not ship mass or block count but the length, width, and height of the ship. The larger this value, the more blocks you can put into a weapon group before it starts suffering from diminishing returns. This would prohibit people from just filling up their hulls with thrusters or weapon groups, as there would be no need to. )
Secondly, in regards to my reactor idea above, I'm thinking of something along the lines of being able to fit a reactor able to power the entire ship into a small section of the ship, more along the lines of what most sci-fi ships use. Basically, you should be able to fit the reactor into an "engineering room" no larger than, say, 10%-20% of the ships total volume. Furthermore, it make sense for actual core blocks, whether overheating or not, should not be exposed to the interior of the ship - I mean, it's not exactly healthy to stand right next to an exposed fuel rod from a fission reactor, now is it? So perhaps nauts take radiation damage if they're in the same space as reactor core blocks, further necessitating the need for shielding.
