StarMade v0.199.214 Auxiliary Power, Better Graphics, Better Textures, and Bugfixes

[Lecic]

Can we stop focusing on the mechanics of the solution and worry about the currently somewhat awful placeholder texture?

Yeah, kupu definitely went with the Jump Inhibitor route for this new texture... probably since the new pack is coming soon?

And finally, if we're worrying about the softcap so much, why not just increase it again?

The current softcap is fine.

 

[Lone_Puppy]

I've never used docked reactors, but I thought it was quite cool to think that somebody build a technology in a game that did not have it natively.

I like the idea of a component based ship, where you could physically connect/disconnect a system to cause a functional/mechanical effect. Docked reactors provided this nifty game play.

Sure it seems to have been a laggy burden, but logically this is how starships would actually be put together. They wouldn't be a superglued mass of blocks. I feel it kind of negates the whole idea of modular structures. If the lagging issue was addressed, I feel this new system would not be necessary.

Anyway, this new power system will be an interesting new system for me to learn and I'm looking forward to it.

As for shipards pulling from factories, that is awesome! Can't wait to build a combined shipyard factory. And the ability for non faction builds, does this mean we will see public access shipyards?

 

[kupu]

Yeah, kupu definitely went with the Jump Inhibitor route for this new texture... probably since the new pack is coming soon?

Exactly this. We will see a unique texture for Power Auxiliary blocks in the new texture set. No point doubling work loads

 

[Lancake]

UOTE="kulbolen, post: 308400, member: 425744"]
lancake your entire post about the old system not being challenging, graphs and all, is contradicted by the fact that most peoples ships had suboptimal docked supplies. also evidenced by people thinking that 194 e/s/b peak is ...an improvement.
[/QUOTE]

Adjusted my graph to show a less efficient/more accurate in-game reactor:


The only time when a docked reactor would not scale linear is at low block count or at a very high one (trying to go past the softcap for whatever reason).
Each power supply block you add, consumes 60 power per block, per second (including cooldown).
It provides 50 power per block, per second (including cooldown).

This means that, if your power reactor regen is less than 60 per block average, you'll not scale linear but in an S-curve. However, the only time you're at this state is at at the beginning, and at the very end.

You would to really need to try to make your power regen scale awful compared to your power supply, at that point you might as well go back to the drawing board and figure out how power reactors benefit from dimensions.

And 193 e/s/b average IS better than any usable docked reactor we had before. Theoretically the max of a docked reactor is 200 but it would need to have a dimension of about 1500x3x3 to be able to get there. Anything remotely close to a normal size is close to an efficiency of 150-175. That's also being generous since in-game lag makes power regen act in odd ways.

The place were docked reactors had the most efficiency is at 1.2 mil power supplied per second, about 7000 blocks big IGNORING the fact that a reactor also has power caps, some shields, some logic blocks, ... Meaning that the power per second per block efficiency curve would be even lower in-game than displayed here.

theres a cascading reduction in challenge and engineering complexity not just limited to docked power (or shields) which i think you understand very well based on your comment about modular shipbuilding taking a hit. contradictions woooooo.

Modular ship building wouldn't work well at all in terms of efficiency. Power is the limiting factor, but there's no way for you to actually use 100% shields on each of your modular entity. Weapons on your modular parts can't be aimed either when fired by logic.
Modular ships are a cool concept, but they don't work in PvP or PvE.

Either way, in previous parts of my post you see that there's still complexity involved with the new replacement block, even more so than before in some areas.

I don't see how the modular part contradicts everything I've mentioned before. A sentence later I said it was even possible to have modular ship power transfer back again without a problem...So not sure why you even mention that. If you're saying that the current version is lacking well...welcome to Alpha, it's not the only thing missing in the game.

still, maybe the changes will steer people into smaller ships, which yes, just got a subtle yet major buff. wonder how long itll take them to catch on.

Assuming the new block is somehow totally not well balanced and doesn't offer the same amount of capability or regen efficiency that docked reactors did before...Then yes, small ships got a slight buff.
Ironically, buffing a pea-shooter by 50% still makes it a pea-shooter. Not a Leopard 2 tank.

EDIT: Removed double posted images

 

[TheFloorMatt]

People are upset at this update? All I see is an innovative new mechanic that will pave the way for future additions to the game. Solving lag and giving people new things to consider when building at the same time in a way I couldn't even imagine myself. Bravo Schine & Council!

 

[AtraUnam]

- 6: The word "Your" is not spelled "Y - O - U - ' - R - E".

For the record you're as in (you are) is perfectly acceptable spelling.

 

[TBterra]

doing some testing to work out the maths behind the aux power blocks, and found that the storage capacity of a group is:
500*[blocks in group]^1.1
this is oddly different to the normal capacitors due to the 1.1 growth factor rather than the 1.05 growth for normal capacitors.

was this intentional and if so why?

 

[Madman198237]

Maybe because, unlike power caps, these things tend to explode when hit?

Just a thought, really.

 

[MaartenAll]

So only ships that are docked to each other get influenced by the config option right, and not two separed ship? Because I'm 60 % done building a station with an enormous power and shield supply beam and I would hate to see it's main function be wasted.

 

[Olxinos]

short version/Tl;dr: Compared to docked reactors, this new block is indeed lag-free (or nearly free, I mean, it's Starmade! :D), still I can't help but feel disappointed since instead of a power mechanics overhaul or a super-quick-and-dirty fix, we get a new block which you obviously spend some time designing and implementing... but which doesn't bring much to the game, has inconsistencies, and is to be bound temporary itself since it only solves one problem (the lag).

imo, a couple super-quick fixes to at least reduce some problems:
- decrease the regen nerf (or even make it a buff) when disabled and/or have the auxiliary power don't lose power when they're enabled and your main power pool is full
- decrease their SHP a bit (25 or 50 instead of 100 sounds more reasonable and I think it's still quite big, I mean, you're likely to destroy a couple dozen in a chain reaction, losing your power is already a big downside no need to make the ship lose too much SHP as well)

----

I’ve seen people say that it requires a lot of skill to make power reactors, but it’s not. What you need to know is the concept, then it’s child’s play.

Why?
Because docked reactors actually scale linear. The power supplied by a docked reactor isn’t limited by the power reactors till you hit the soft cap, but by the power supply blocks.

Reaching 2 mil regen requires 2000-3000 blocks give or take, depending on how efficient you can make their shape. 1000 blocks sounds like a big difference in efficiency, till you look at the power supply blocks required to supply it all down to the main ship…6600!

First of all, they provide 0.8 power for every 1 power consumed. You can’t make a reactor that provides more than 1.6 mil regen without bringing your efficiency down.
To provide 1.6 mil you need to have about 6600 blocks power supply blocks. That’s at least twice as much than you need power reactors, that’s not even to mention the few power capacity blocks you need to make sure each tick has enough power in storage and game lag doesn’t cut it off. Add some shields to that since well, extra safety is good. Let’s say about 7000-8000 extra blocks on top of the 2000-3000 power blocks.

The limiting factor on docked reactors isn’t the power reactor group (which scales better depending on the pattern you make them => skill based). It’s based on the power supply blocks that are completely linear (put them down wherever you want and there you go => not skill based). Add a simple logic clock to it and you’re pretty much good to go.

Why reactors are so “unique” is that people just don’t realize this is a way to bypass the power softcap when they play the game for the first few months.


Of course there are variants with 2 computers, alternating fire and eliminating any delay between beams but that’s already accounted for in the block count provided above, it assumes perfect power transfer.


If you put this in a graph, compared to the normal reactors you get this.

[GRAPH]

X-axis: Block count
Y-axis: Power regen/sec

As you can see, the docked reactors are pretty much linear linear even though the power reactor block itself doesn’t scale linear. It starts going down after 1.6 mil but that’s because you can’t go higher than that without also resulting in linear power regen.

The power reactor curve is only 1 group, but it’s the same curve with multiple groups just widened on the X-axis. That would also make the docked reactor curve slightly less linear but barely noticeable.

This is not skill based. There’s no ultimate shape that makes your special engineered reactors 2 times better than an equal sized one of your opponent.

“Make power supply scale non linear too then”. Why would I do that when apparently power reactors are fine right now, a great skill based addition with tons of depth?

I don't like docked reactors, but I think your logic is flawed here. Your argumentation basically boils down to the point that because most of a docked reactor is made of power supply blocks and capacitors which scale linearly (or nearly linearly), the supplied power per second of docked reactors is also a quasi-linear function of its block-count. So far, it's true.
Then you say that because they scale nearly linearly, docked reactors require no skill at all.
I disagree.
Depending on how you place the reactors inside your docked reactors (and to a lesser extent which size you use), and according to your numbers you still get a ~10% efficiency gain. Of course it's a bit low, but it isn't negligible either. Making efficient reactors don't require more skill than making efficient docked reactors, the only difference is that bad docked reactors are better than bad reactors. As for:

“Make power supply scale non linear too then”. Why would I do that when apparently power reactors are fine right now, a great skill based addition with tons of depth?

This isn't required, you could very well make power supply consume 10x and supply 5x more power than currently, they would still scale linearly, and that would make docked reactors much more different depending on how you build them.
Not to mention that power reactors certainly aren't "apparently fine right now". Of course, rewarding block placement is great, and I like shaping reactors... but the gap between a bad reactor and a good reactor is far too big! (there's a middle point between +10% and something like +4000%) Besides they're the only block with actually interesting placement rules, so of course they'll shine compared to everything else.

Yet, I agree that docked reactors needs to go, be it only for the lag issues when they undock.

Replacement block
The graph shows that that at any given point below 1.6 mil regen, the power regen scales pretty much linear with the block count of a reactor...each reactor has its own softcap…

We replace the docked reactor with an onboard block that has a soft cap per group! Let them scale linear too!

Unfortunately, the linear scale wouldn’t work since that would mean the soft cap wouldn’t work. No group based softcap would mean everyone could spread them out over the ship as single blocks or as small clusters.No one actually uses thousands of docked reactors because it’s tedious to make and dock. We had to stay to the core idea of a few medium to big reactors.


Which means we have to keep the softcap per group idea, and get rid of the linear regen.

The downside of docked reactors is that the group was focused on 1 spot and that it was easy to destroy (once you found it on the ship, see navigation markers), as I mentioned before. Another reason why we couldn’t allow everyone to spread them out since that moves away from the docked reactors.


The middle ground is to make them scale faster till they hit the softcap. Reaching peak efficiency at about 1.9 mil regen/sec. Which they do after about 9500 blocks.

I’m simplifying numbers here since that’s easier to read but currently it’s peak efficiency is 193 power per block in a group. They start at 25 power per block.
Even if you make a line of this, it would be 9500 blocks long which is simply still easy to hit on a big ship, even on accident.


The only downside about this complete system is at this stage...There’s no navigation marker, it’s impossible to know where they are. You could spread them around in non cubic shapes, it would take ages of random fire to bring most reactors down to individual groups where they’re worthless. Or even in cubic shapes, you would never know you’re hitting an important spot.

And here comes the explosive part. Because they’re part of a group it’s easy to make them scale properly with randomized explosions. The best thing about this is that it promotes you to keep them more in a small dimension group than spreading them out as long lines. The explosion power doesn’t decrease, and it will would create a lot more system damage if 50 explosions went off along a long line instead.


Why do they have internal storage cap? Because power reactors also had a battery variant. These blocks were 90% power capacity and a little regen. They were used in bursts, to give your power capacity back to 100% after firing your first alpha volley. After that they were pretty much useless for a while till they were full.

These internal storage ones, scale worse at the start compared to the normal power capacitors, but they do scale faster. Going beyond the reactor size of peak efficiency could give you a large internal storage at the cost of a bigger to hit target and less efficiency. The explosive power does become weaker past the peak efficiency so really big reactors wouldn’t lose that much from 1 explosion event.


Its internal regen is probably too high but those are values we can tweak along the way. The important part is that we get the functionality of 2 types of reactors into 1, and the build style determines which one is going to be the most effective.


At the end, what we get is:

• A system that promotes keeping groups into smaller dimensions (they look like docked reactors)
• A system that has a better efficiency than linear regen (better efficiency than actual docked reactors even)
• A downside that makes them lose efficiency when hit (docked reactors share the same disease, except that they are more easily found).
• Little to no performance hit. Explosions are set at the start of an explosion event, reducing explosion impact (which is negligible in small radiuses).

You're replacing the uninteresting docked reactors by a block which mimic them as much as possible.
This is no improvement (except for lag issues) and this exactly why I don't like this system at all.
Not to mention that you've also introduced a couple of useless and/or problematic mechanics:
- why have a softcap per group?
I understand that their power shouldn't scale exactly linearly because then you could just put them in small chunks all over your ship (and you don't want that because you want a single shot to disable a lot of them at once) but this has nothing to do with a softcap. You could very well have a function which looks like:
or

instead of the current

(If you're curious the energy/block/second with those formula looks like this (first=red, second=green, current=blue): )
The softcap has no point here and only encourages players to slap multiple 10k blocks (and no more!) chunks of power reactors in their ships.

- why have an auxiliary pool/having a disabled mode?
There's currently no point on having power batteries (or auxiliary as they're called now) disabled. Sure they'll charge the auxiliary pool but you can't use the auxiliary pool unless you transfer it to your main pool so why not doing that directly? You could argue that it virtually increase your power capacity, but since the transfer is extremely fast (you empty the batteries in ~7s) and the extra power transferred which goes over the cap is lost, you'd need an awfully huge "regular" power capacity to benefit for his "extra virtual capacity" (to the point it doesn't really benefit you anymore).
Besides, most big ships will need them enabled all the time to even move, and I haven't even talked about the -80% nerf to auxiliary power regen when it's disabled...

- This block adds complexity (new block, new rules), but no depth compared to docked reactors
Sure, there's this new explosion mechanic and you can play around making your power batteries safer with armored blocks etc... but you could do exactly the same with docked reactors. I don't say docked reactors were great, but that this system is equally bad set aside the lag.

- I don't think turning big ships into flying bombs is a good idea
Granted, you can "protect them" for instance with adv. armor, layering your reactor with glass doors/whatever..., and/or by hiding them deep inside your ship. Still, ship-piercing meta-weapons exist, they are easy to make, quite small, and were already quite efficient so I don't think it'll make much of a difference. Besides, these blocks have 100SHP each, which means that if only one them are hit, the whole ship will lose a fair amount of SHP.
Having weak points isn't a bad idea, but the higher the damage, the harder it should be to reach. With those (as for docked reactors), the most critical system -power generation- is the easiest to take down... not to mention weak points would be more interesting to have if your opponent could actually aim for them, and it's quite difficult to do when most battles are long to medium range battles with AI aim.

- Docked reactors were also known to be problematic because they were used to bypass the power softcap too easily... but at least we all knew they were bound to disappear. With this block you're kinda legitimizing it, which may make it harder to have more "sane" power mechanics in the future since it'll be more ingrained in the mechanics

 

[Mr.Steam]

Personally I am thrilled to see systems that explode. Not that I want to see my large vessels destroyed. But unfortunately that is the nature of warfare. Considering that we are flying around in giant weapons of war it makes sense that there are some explosive things on board. Seems to add much more realism. The battleship Arizona was destroyed in WW2 when a bomb dropped down into a magazine causing a huge secondary explosion. Even the Lusitania was sunk in WW1 when a torpedo supposedly hit its nearly empty coal bunker stirring up coal dust which ignited and exploded. Once better explosive effects are added it will make for some awesome gameplay.

 

[Madman198237]

The Lusitania sank because of the torpedo----coal dust doesn't have the explosive force necessary to cause much damage, even if contained in a bunker. Which, by the way, it wasn't (In a bunker). At this point, if the torpedo detonated coal dust, it had breached the bunker, making it fairly useless.

The only cases of coal-based detonation I've ever seen involve spontaneous ignition in coal bunkers placed too close to powder storage areas.

 

[Gonzalo]

<3 aux power

 

[StormWing0]

Docked Shield Reactors weren't nearly as bad as docked power reactors though mostly because people couldn't figure out how to use them correctly and just ditched them. XD

 

[FatCobra]

The Lusitania sank because of the torpedo----coal dust doesn't have the explosive force necessary to cause much damage, even if contained in a bunker. Which, by the way, it wasn't (In a bunker). At this point, if the torpedo detonated coal dust, it had breached the bunker, making it fairly useless.

The only cases of coal-based detonation I've ever seen involve spontaneous ignition in coal bunkers placed too close to powder storage areas.

Actually coal dust explosions are devastating. Coal dust - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[Mr.Steam]

The Lusitania would still have probably sank, just not as quickly without a secondary explosion. The coal dust thing is only one theory, it has never been proven. Another theory is that the ship was carrying secret munitions. Another theory is that a high pressure steam system ruptured. All we know is the sub captain reported seeing a secondary explosion that was bigger than a normal torpedo explosion.

The point is sometimes stuff on ships explode.

 

[Kingofanime]

- why have an auxiliary pool/having a disabled mode?
There's currently no point on having power batteries (or auxiliary as they're called now) disabled. Sure they'll charge the auxiliary pool but you can't use the auxiliary pool unless you transfer it to your main pool so why not doing that directly? You could argue that it virtually increase your power capacity, but since the transfer is extremely fast (you empty the batteries in ~7s) and the extra power transferred which goes over the cap is lost, you'd need an awfully huge "regular" power capacity to benefit for his "extra virtual capacity" (to the point it doesn't really benefit you anymore).
Besides, most big ships will need them enabled all the time to even move, and I haven't even talked about the -80% nerf to auxiliary power regen when it's disabled...

I've been thinking this exact same thing. The only reason I would need the 7 second power boost from the auxiliary storage is if I had a power shortage. And the only reason I would have a power shortage, would be if I left my auxiliary reactors turned off.

Maybe the auxiliary reactors should be permanently on, and the toggle should only affect the auxiliary storage power dump.

 

[JinM]

Ok guys, I want to point some things out because I am concerned about the way Starmade gets developed too.

1. Community oppinions vs the loudest who sound like the community:
The ones who don't like this system are a minority of hardcore players. They are the loudest, but not neccessarily the ones who know whats fun. They think they have figured out how THEIR Starmade has to look like, but if they would look into the mirror they would see that there are only 10% (what do is say, 5% or less make ships so big that they needed this docked reactor system) of the players who play Starmade so much that they have the time to make 1km long capital ships. Many of the casual players don't write in the Starmade forums, the majority writing are very commited gamers.

2. Cutting away depth and complexity by limiting its usage for hardcore projects:
System of the complexity like docked reactors are fun, if they would be usefull on normal sized ships. I don't understand why the devs listens to a small player base of 5% who have the time making 1km or longer capitals. Thats nice, but content should be focused on all player groups. Long term goals are important, but the following fact for games counts in EVERY CASE: The journey is the goal. And what is with the majority of the gamers, who don't invest hundreds of hours building capitals. Where is their complexity in the mid game? They want to make complex frigattes too. The whole concept around the docked power supply was wrong, because the complexity was reserved for a really small purpose. Capitals are unusual in day to day multiplayer. So why have a complex and fun system so far in the lategame and with very small daily usage? The guys who mourn about the lost complexity and fun of docked supply generators should think of new complexity that could be added and is actually usefull in every state of the game and not only in the mega-lategame.

Also the complexity for the super projects was not cut away totally, hardcore players got a very nice substitute. A substitute that is in almost every part of mechanic as good as its predecessor.

3. Balanced multiplayer and accessibilty for the more important casual gamers who are in fact the community:
Does anyone really enjoy playing a game among other hardcore players and throw casual players out of your community by beating them with your captials again and again? Or can you beat a capital ship suited with docked reactors and shield supply with a certain number of normal sized ships that in total are equal the mass of the capital? I believe capitals are not fun because a normal player can't ever compete to them. Now people say "hey thats the point of capitals, you need more to take them out". I say: It's unbalanced and favours hardcore players over casual players. Every competetive game must be balanced for booth sides.

4. What all the players want:
The first reception of this game change did not tell very much about how good or bad docked generators were, but told more about a very important thing: What the community really wants. And this seems to be complexity and strategic rewarding building experiences. It's important to focus on this need imho. But there are many ways to give new complexity and strategic building.

Let me bring examples:
Improved logic for everything: turrets, text sending between docked ships, variables that contain important number of shields and power.
Shield toggling and moving shields from one part of the hull to the others (all power to the front shields, we can take some hits on the thrusters).
Fleet commanding via interface. Fleet commanding via blocks in your capital.
Ship raiding, via hull breaching and deactivating important systems with a close combat weapon.
NPC Characters, interaction, story and quest lines player made or from the devs (or player made via workshop includable).
More risk-reward systems in ships, that can be targeted as well. Maybe only targeted with a certain new weapon, like jump drives have a anti weapon too. Lets say a shield recharge generator that need no power but uses power up if it gets hit. (Now what system do you target: shield gen or power gen, the first one may make it impossible to hit the ship in its core because it regenerates the shields faster, the second one makes more damage to the ship but might be guarded heavier).

5. What the players don't want:
A very strange late game mechanic, that caused server shutdowns in every case and was something that only some Spaceengineers devs would accept. A complexity that is not so complex at all. A mechanic is fun if its easy to learn but hard to master. Docked generators were hard to learn (long text reading and formula understanding) but easy to master once figured. Its the opposite of well thoughtout gameplay imho. =)

If you have read this far: Thanks for reading, its a tl;dr text I know.

 

[nightrune]

I think what a lot of people want is depth as well. I think the aux system can be expanded to really add a bit of depth (not going into it now) but docked reactors added complexity and depth. This mechanic has depth and removed the complexity. Complexity is not great for making the game approach able for a large audience. I don't think this is the aux power systems final form, but I think it's a damn good step. Let's play with it for awhile before bashing it. If it sucks they'll change it, but I don't think that's case so far.

 

[Lancake]

So only ships that are docked to each other get influenced by the config option right, and not two separed ship? Because I'm 60 % done building a station with an enormous power and shield supply beam and I would hate to see it's main function be wasted.

It's only outputting 0 when it's hitting something that belongs to its own docked chain (up or down).
If a power supply beam turret hits its structure it's docked to => no power supplied.
If it hits a fleet ship => power supplied.

imo, a couple super-quick fixes to at least reduce some problems:
- decrease the regen nerf (or even make it a buff) when disabled and/or have the auxiliary power don't lose power when they're enabled and your main power pool is full
- decrease their SHP a bit (25 or 50 instead of 100 sounds more reasonable and I think it's still quite big, I mean, you're likely to destroy a couple dozen in a chain reaction, losing your power is already a big downside no need to make the ship lose too much SHP as well)

First of all, thank you for the constructive feedback! Much appreciated.

I put their SHP to 100 because it's way easier to reduce SHP than to increase it. If it needs to be increased, a database migration would need to happen. 100 is most likely too much but I can't do large scale testing on my own. 2 weeks of people using it should give enough feedback to see if it needs to be reduced.
The internal storage one isn't a fix to reduce problems since it would need to be undone at a later point. It wouldn't address the issue you're talking about, which is that you can't dump it without turning your power on and adding to the cap. Sounds like that functionality needs to be split up.

This isn't required, you could very well make power supply consume 10x and supply 5x more power than currently, they would still scale linearly, and that would make docked reactors much more different depending on how you build them.
Not to mention that power reactors certainly aren't "apparently fine right now". Of course, rewarding block placement is great, and I like shaping reactors... but the gap between a bad reactor and a good reactor is far too big! (there's a middle point between +10% and something like +4000%) Besides they're the only block with actually interesting placement rules, so of course they'll shine compared to everything else.

Doing that makes the old docked reactors more than twice as effective. It also removes the linear part of the docked reactor since then you need more power reactor blocks than power supply. Making the reactor depend on something that doesn't scale non linear.
That does make it slightly more skill based but putting down rows of power regen is pretty much the best you can do, not that much skill involved. Although time is required to fine tweak it unless you do the math before hand.


A bad reactor that is 4000% worse than the best one means you need to go back to the drawing board. That's not a reactor, that's a ship where you put a few power supply blocks on. The efficiency would be worse than the linear regen on a normal reactor.

You're replacing the uninteresting docked reactors by a block which mimic them as much as possible.
This is no improvement (except for lag issues) and this exactly why I don't like this system at all.

Could you mention your better system? I'm interested to know what you would propose as an alternative. The formulas you present below seem to just be about the power softcap per group so I'm not sure that is your alternative system.

- why have a softcap per group?
I understand that their power shouldn't scale exactly linearly because then you could just put them in small chunks all over your ship (and you don't want that because you want a single shot to disable a lot of them at once) but this has nothing to do with a softcap. You could very well have a function which looks like:

or

instead of the current

(If you're curious the energy/block/second with those formula looks like this (first=red, second=green, current=blue): )
The softcap has no point here and only encourages players to slap multiple 10k blocks (and no more!) chunks of power reactors in their ships.

The soft cap per group encourages people to either spread out their big reactors. Or to go oversized to make increase their internal storage efficiency at the cost of losing regen efficiency. Whether the internal storage values are good or not depends on play testing.

Your formula would make people slap multiple 10K blocks together in 1 group, so I don't really see how that is an improvement. Especially when their power storage cap benefits the most of a single big group. It also makes the explosive system too overpowered.

- why have an auxiliary pool/having a disabled mode?
There's currently no point on having power batteries (or auxiliary as they're called now) disabled. Sure they'll charge the auxiliary pool but you can't use the auxiliary pool unless you transfer it to your main pool so why not doing that directly? You could argue that it virtually increase your power capacity, but since the transfer is extremely fast (you empty the batteries in ~7s) and the extra power transferred which goes over the cap is lost, you'd need an awfully huge "regular" power capacity to benefit for his "extra virtual capacity" (to the point it doesn't really benefit you anymore).
Besides, most big ships will need them enabled all the time to even move, and I haven't even talked about the -80% nerf to auxiliary power regen when it's disabled...

Hm, it's a one time use now, at the beginning of a battle or between "breaks" where you're currently not shooting or just coasting around.
It seems better that the switching aux regen from main ship to internal and back is bound to the left mouse button.
And the "dump power" toggle is bound to the right mouse button.
This feels convoluted but splitting up this functionality seems to be a solution to what you're talking about. How we would split it up is something we can figure out later. IF this is indeed what you mean.

About that power being lost if it can't fit, that's intentional to prevent it from being used too much of an extension to your second power storage, and to have it more act like a burst storage. There's a config option to switch between both though so you can experiment with that yourself. (Block behavior config)

- I don't think turning big ships into flying bombs is a good idea
Granted, you can "protect them" for instance with adv. armor, layering your reactor with glass doors/whatever..., and/or by hiding them deep inside your ship. Still, ship-piercing meta-weapons exist, they are easy to make, quite small, and were already quite efficient so I don't think it'll make much of a difference. Besides, these blocks have 100SHP each, which means that if only one them are hit, the whole ship will lose a fair amount of SHP.

Their SHP is most likely too high yes, we can reduce that next release if needed. As a counter to those deep penetrating weapons. The reactors explode very slowly, provide inner armor to those and after they're done exploding, they still provide 1/4 of their power (at least, would be more if I bothered making a more complex armor layout) which is 4-5 times more efficient than linear 25 regen.

Before docked reactors were taken down even faster, shoot for the markers and win.

If we replaced docked reactors with a better scaling power block ,then there's no weak spot whatsoever. And you would just fire to kill SHP, not to kill power (how would you know you hit something that provides a lot of power?).

Docked reactors were also known to be problematic because they were used to bypass the power softcap too easily... but at least we all knew they were bound to disappear. With this block you're kinda legitimizing it, which may make it harder to have more "sane" power mechanics in the future since it'll be more ingrained in the mechanics

Like I said in my original post, we were fine with these reactors before. Their efficiency was high too high initially but that got nerfed to a more acceptable level. These reactors were weak points which countered their efficiency. It only started becoming a problem when they were used in larger scales and count, causing major lag.

You have a choice after you've reached a certain size. Either stick to the bad linear power regen of normal reactors. Or switch over to the more effective ones that have downsides, just like before. Or do a mix of both.

If you have a much better power system in mind, feel free to make a suggestion post about it and if you have done that already, make sure to tag me so we can go through it together ^^