Just from browsing the forum a lil I see a lot of people complaining about the depth/complexity of power and such and decided to throw forward an idea I had that I haven't seen yet but I don't know for certain. Pick it to pieces if you want it's just a thought I had.
This change will not break old ships but would hopefully add some depth to newer ones and increase the desire for multicrewed ships.
Basically the idea is that a gui similar to the thrust gui is implemented, but for power instead. There would be two sliders and a a proportion slider (like thrust proportion circle/triangle thingy).
The first slider would be overdrive (or something similar to avoid confusion with the overdrive effect, over clock maybe?) this slider is at 0 by default which means normal power generation. The more you slide up this slider the harder your reactor works and increases power output by up to 50%. However, the more overdrive you apply the more heat your ship generates (indicated by a new hud bar can also be used in display modules). If heat reaches 100%(cap based on ship mass) the player is kicked out of the core and the ship starts overheating (no damage but catastrophic in battle) and needs to be rebooted.
A new block, heatsinks, can be used to combat heat. They are extremely fragile blocks (no armour, little health) and they passively reduce heat. The amount is dependent on the amount of them + their distance from the core (optional but discourages people from putting them inside a ship). Like power aux they can be "opened" from the hotbar which drops the vessels shields and doubles heat reduction.
Shoot an opponent's vents and cause them to generate more heat.
The second slider is for fuel consumption. The slider by default uses no fuel. But can be increased to inject more fuel into the reactor. This is not normal fuel however. Think like nitrous gas in cars. The fuel is put into the reactor and...reacts? Increasing power output by up to 50%. The higher the slider, the more fuel consumed per sec and the more power generation. When fuel runs out, the ship goes back to normal power output.
No penalty. Fuel is stored in a similar way to cargo, but is extremely explosive.
(Hide it inside the ship and a lucky shot could blow your ship in half or, put it outside so that it's easier to hit but does less damage if it does due to it being further from systems)
The third thing is the power proportion circle slider. This is like the thruster proportion slider and can be used to limit the amount of power a certain system can use to boost others. Eg weapons, thrusters, (shields? Jump drive?).
This whole GUI could be accessed by pressing r on a power reactor or maybe include two new consoles to bring up thrust and power GUIs.
These power settings would be adjustable on the fly and would encourage having an engineer aboard your ship. ("Give us more power to shields Scotty!", "I'm givin her all I can Cap'n!")
All of these changes would be optional as well as not breaking older ships, above figures are not final just placeholders, feel free to suggest more and pick apart the idea.
[heat]/[heatCap]/[heatPercent]
[venting](true/false)
[fuel]/[fuelCap]/[fuelPercent]
Can also be included.
Thanks for reading, sorry for wall of text, using mobile so harder to format.
This change will not break old ships but would hopefully add some depth to newer ones and increase the desire for multicrewed ships.
Basically the idea is that a gui similar to the thrust gui is implemented, but for power instead. There would be two sliders and a a proportion slider (like thrust proportion circle/triangle thingy).
The first slider would be overdrive (or something similar to avoid confusion with the overdrive effect, over clock maybe?) this slider is at 0 by default which means normal power generation. The more you slide up this slider the harder your reactor works and increases power output by up to 50%. However, the more overdrive you apply the more heat your ship generates (indicated by a new hud bar can also be used in display modules). If heat reaches 100%(cap based on ship mass) the player is kicked out of the core and the ship starts overheating (no damage but catastrophic in battle) and needs to be rebooted.
A new block, heatsinks, can be used to combat heat. They are extremely fragile blocks (no armour, little health) and they passively reduce heat. The amount is dependent on the amount of them + their distance from the core (optional but discourages people from putting them inside a ship). Like power aux they can be "opened" from the hotbar which drops the vessels shields and doubles heat reduction.
Shoot an opponent's vents and cause them to generate more heat.
The second slider is for fuel consumption. The slider by default uses no fuel. But can be increased to inject more fuel into the reactor. This is not normal fuel however. Think like nitrous gas in cars. The fuel is put into the reactor and...reacts? Increasing power output by up to 50%. The higher the slider, the more fuel consumed per sec and the more power generation. When fuel runs out, the ship goes back to normal power output.
No penalty. Fuel is stored in a similar way to cargo, but is extremely explosive.
(Hide it inside the ship and a lucky shot could blow your ship in half or, put it outside so that it's easier to hit but does less damage if it does due to it being further from systems)
The third thing is the power proportion circle slider. This is like the thruster proportion slider and can be used to limit the amount of power a certain system can use to boost others. Eg weapons, thrusters, (shields? Jump drive?).
This whole GUI could be accessed by pressing r on a power reactor or maybe include two new consoles to bring up thrust and power GUIs.
These power settings would be adjustable on the fly and would encourage having an engineer aboard your ship. ("Give us more power to shields Scotty!", "I'm givin her all I can Cap'n!")
All of these changes would be optional as well as not breaking older ships, above figures are not final just placeholders, feel free to suggest more and pick apart the idea.
[heat]/[heatCap]/[heatPercent]
[venting](true/false)
[fuel]/[fuelCap]/[fuelPercent]
Can also be included.
Thanks for reading, sorry for wall of text, using mobile so harder to format.
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