Supply/Drain : distance multiplier by slaves, "direction" block rather than 4 different? Sub-system?

[NeonSturm]

Suggestion core:

1. blockBehaviourConfig.xml
   1. PowerTransferBeam
      1. Properties
         1. strength = 140
            
         2. range = 200
      2. Supply-option slave
         1. Efficiency = %empty(target) * %full(source)
         2. EfficiencyPow = linear(1), fullEfficiency(0), noEfficiency(infinite)
      3. Drain-option slave
         1. Efficiency = %full(target) * %empty(source)
         2. EfficiencyPow = linear(1), fullEfficiency(0), noEfficiency(infinite)
      4. Cannon slave
         1. low range, strong effect
      5. Beam slave
         1. long range, weak effect
      6. Missile slave
         1. hits selected everywhere
      7. Pulse slave
         1. hits all nearby
   2. ShieldTransferBeam
      1. ... like above
   3. ThrustTransferBeam (new)
      1. ... like above
   4. LogicTransferBeam (new)
      1. ... like above

About Efficiency : This calculation avoids waste by avoiding supply into full target storage or drain into a full local storage

Spoiler: How EfficiencyPow works, Examples:

• 5354^0 = 1
• 0.23252^0 = 1
• 1^2 = 1
• 0^2 = 0
• 0.5^2 = 0.5 * 0.5 = 0.25
• 0.5^0.5 = sqrt(0.5) = 0.707...

Having a supply and drain -option slave would half these blocks = 2+2 to 2+4 blocks instead of 4 to 8 - not more block IDs or inventory clutter, but less when new blocks are added.

Option blocks may work like Effect blocks.
Possibly you could combine them 50:50 to get an equalizer effect...



Ships could have a thruster which supplies the main ship thrust with few pulse-slave.

• Smaller thrusters have less diminishing returns, but players which build a lot small ones inside ships may waste space to the dock.
  • At <50 blocks, computers, dock and logic clock will be >=10% mass. with supply-modules it's then easily >=20% mass.
• If supply thrust supplies left, right, up, down, forward, backward separately, killing a thruster module will have nice effects on your ship (some peoples with outside thrusters would expect)
  
• Ideas:
  1. Supply-time = suppliers-count * supply-strength / thrust
  2. Supply-strength = something that keeps supply time between 3 and 15 seconds (to avoid lags like with supply every 0.1 seconds).

If power-supply would be inefficient (1/2 mass in blocks more), but thrust/shield-supply not, peoples would make dedicated modules to bypass the soft cap or diminishing returns. But in exchange have power regeneration and capacitors dedicated to this one sub-system.



I think it is great because

I would like to ships which don't have "all power exactly where they need it" when they choose to bypass the requirements for expensive (through resource or space) power-supply without hurting current builds much.

It could add a whole new layer to modularisation if the server admin wants that.​