I thought the point of reactors was to power other systems.
I could be misreading, but it's looking like Schine literally wants to use reactors to control every aspect of the game meta. I worry that in order to accomplish this, they are going to make power so convoluted and non-intuitive that every benefit gained by re-building power from the ground up in the first place - an effort consuming most of the last year - will be rapidly lost. It could easily become so entangled and contorted that it becomes just as difficult as previous reactor dynamics to adapt to new systems and dynamics and inhibits future development every bit as much or more.
I think you've nailed it. At some point, probably right near the start of the whole power thing, the goal of the update changed from "Let's make a simple to use, powerful energy system to remove the ambiguity of the old one" to "how can we change power to control how people build their ships?".
At this point the sheer amount of crammed-in rules and restrictions is making a complete mess of things that should really be very simple. The old system was essentially "Want power? Place a power block. Want a weapon? Add weapon blocks". It's simple. It's intuitive (with the exception of its scaling, but that's more of a bonus for smaller ships than a penalty of any sort), it's fast, it's easy, it doesn't dictate your ship design. All things that a power system should be.
The new one is hamfisted. You require stabilizers to get power, it's no longer a case of placing down a power block and receiving power. They can't be too close to the reactor or you get no juice, so now they have to be placed away from your reactor, which forces you to construct a lengthy ship along one dimension if you want to run your thrusters at all. Oh but they can't be at an angle that intersects empty space or you'll have a magic vulnerability which requires a third block type to fix. You can't make conduits to block it either because lel integrity - yet another thing to keep in mind.
Then to top it off the reactors go boom if they get hit, because everyone loved core drilling so much and Schine totally didn't design an entire HP system designed to prevent it.
It's a mess of a post, but it's a mess of a system. They should not spend any more time and money on it, scrap it, go back to the drawing board. Just because you spent months on something isn't a compelling reason to force it in, it will harm you in the short term and cripple you in the long term. Don't throw good money after bad.
I realise that turned into a giant rant, but I haven't had a good one in a while. If your sanity is still intact after getting through it then you've got one up on me.
