I've just read the entire thread up to the point of my (tentative) reply.
I'm hesitant to add any input to the conversation, as in the past I've offered both a perceived problem that could significantly impact both enjoyment and immersion as well as a possible solution that would not break the game if it were implemented directly to an audience including members of the Schine team - at which point the response was dismissive, mocking, and generally has acted as a bar against my offering any further opinions or suggestions. This paragraph is an attempt at promoting understanding of the importance I'm placing on a reply. And also an understanding of why no avatar, low post count, etc, etc.
I see four primary "main problems" which are identified, and which this philosophical basic game design change is meant to address. Also, you outline three steps to design. I'm going to start my comment with the steps in design.
1 - Identify the problems: What is the methodology to identify the problem? Are you identifying symptoms, or are you drilling down to the lowest level root cause of the issue? Is changing the power system the actual root of all the problems you listed? The power system currently is on paper very simple, but like Othello (the game), in practice very complex. Others have made that point better than I could attempt to as they understand the complexity better. The power system's knock on effects to other aspects of the game are also highly complex and at times emergent.
2. Find out what causes the problems: Again, what was the methodology? Was the focus on identification through design and perception of the design, or on hard numbers? (To quote Heinlein: "And to how many decimal places?")
3. Try to eliminate those causes with new mechanics: Okay, but are NEW mechanics the only way to address the problem? What about removing mechanics? Or changing mechanics in a way currently outside the box? (Rather than changing power generation entirely, what about changing the enforced volumetric math for optimal shapes? How about using radius of spherical continuous blocks of power reactors? What about changing it so that, instead of XYZ axis dimensions, number of power blocks directly touching each other with required path to power capacitor blocks? Or just requiring that power systems be physically connected through circuit blocks to power capacitor tanks? Tweaking balance may be a pain though; there are possibly changes that could be made that would not radically and completely change the entire underlying design philosophy in a way that, I think, this change may lead to in the long run.
Where are the other steps of "lean six sigma" or similar problem addressing flows? After 3, there should be at least two more - 4. Re-evaluate the problem: Is it still there? Why? Maybe that indicates the root cause was not properly identified. Then 5. Revise: Use data gathered to revise understanding of the problem and how it's addressed. After that, go right back to 1 - perpetual circle of development.
This thread is a good idea and I think most of 4/5 is something already understood (I mean you're already doing iterative development) but you're proposing that you're already up to step 3 and are seeking comments on proposed new mechanics. I think realistically we're still somewhere around 1.5 - there is some room for identifying the problems and investigating what causes them.
Moving on, though... Forced Design Choices aren't really a problem so much as a symptom of any system anyone is going to make. There will always be an optimal way of doing things, or a very few. There will always be a forced design choice at the very start - do you make a ship that is highly functional, or highly aesthetic? (In my case, ship shapes I prefer cannot be highly aesthetic without being large primarily because of voxel based building. Curves are never smooth enough unless there's a lot of volume to shape them. Also heptas. So. Many. Heptas.) The basic system underling all of StarMade strongly biases towards rectangular polygons unless you want to be very creative and deal with some angles that will never quite look like what you've got in mind.
Lack of complexity - on paper, it does seem that way; in practice, though, I would argue that there is a lot more complexity than most people will look for in building ships. Some additional complexity would be a good thing (heat shielding against suns that will destroy you, or at least some subsystem that will tell you "In 20 meters, your ship will start to explode because of heat from a sun that isn't affecting those asteroids 100 meters closer" as an example); making physical circuit board connections do something; systems being affected by those blocks around them/physically touching them would be a way of adding design complexity to ships without rewriting StarMade from the bottom up. In general, though, I don't find lack of complexity to be a problem - and this change to me reduces complexity in ship design by simplifying the problem considerably. I place a radiator here. Or here and here. And my ship will have to be shaped like this to avoid the heat issue. Maybe you could clarify or offer further insight to how that heat system would work regarding penalties... the explanation makes it clear there is some kind of penalty but I don't know exactly what that penalty will do or how it will effect things beyond "don't put systems in heat boxes" - a forced design choice in building a ship.
Too many blocks? Not a problem. For every reduction in number of blocks needed for power, more blocks will be added to do something else. People that build big ships will continue to build big ships. There may be interior. Or maybe now the ship has great cargo capacity. As far as crafting of blocks and resources... I don't see a problem, outside of hot asteroids sometimes being inside the "death zone" around a star. Gathering enough materials to make literally millions of power blocks has never taken longer than an hour or two. Many times, far less than that.
Focus on regen - starting players and even myself focus on this a bit, but really as someone else mentioned - it depends. Sometimes regen is better. Sometimes capacity is better. Sometimes, I don't know that I need 14 million e/s but I'm going to build it because I have empty space in this station and I like to run 50k factory enhancers on automated logic triggers.
This thread was going to get some negative replies. It's always going to happen. I understand that some replies will be personally offensive and or upsetting to developers and team members. However, when making a change that will, in time, have further effects that have the potential to change at its core the very design philosophy underlying practically every mechanic in the base game (how volume or block numbers affect efficiency and potency of a given mechanical system (the basic maths under the game) and seeking feedback, a lot of the discourse will not be productive. The emotional response from some players is in itself a valuable metric of impact of the proposed change. Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater because said baby was bathing in the normal toxic froth of internet hyperbole.
As others - is there even a soft, cast in slightly warm gelatin, timeline for proposed design phase to test phase of the change? (As in, hopefully you don't already have coding taking place while the design is still so much in debate.) If you were to tell us "this will be in probably about 3 months" it would significantly lessen the drive for me to continue designing ships or stations until more information is available. Since that's most of what I do (on a multiplayer server), it may impact my actual play time.
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TL;dr version of wall of text above: I like that you are pursuing radical, outside of the box thinking in attempting to address perceived problems. I'm not entirely sure this is the problem to be addressing. Some of the problem likely comes not from mechanics, but from player style differences. What about radically changing constraints on block placement to support reactor style ships, without entirely scrapping the current block as a simpler, less fundamentally game altering way of addressing the issue? **This change suggests that the entire mechanic underlying block placement philosophy will change. First for power; then the same or a similar change will have to be applied to weapons/systems - because they all have the same problems in practice.**
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I could be wrong. In fact, I expect many people to reply and tell me point blank, in no uncertain and possibly highly uncivil terms, that I am wrong. But this is just my reading of the past 11 pages or so.
