- Joined
- Aug 14, 2017
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It's a suggestion for encouraging players to build systems in more discrete blocks that could be easily identified and are not wrapped around each other in some kind of weaving pattern. Which in theory should make designing and refitting ships easier.
1. System blobbification
System power scales linearly (more or less) with the number of blocks and gets a bonus (up to around 50% from the base power) if it fills most of the bounding box of the group . With a formula for total power going something like this:
Power Total = Power By Block Count x (1 + ( 0.5 x Block Count / Group Volume))
This way any rectangular shape will have a full 150% of what basic block power provides and complex shapes with twists and turns will have less.
Optional: A variable could be added to Group Volume to lower the restriction allowing for some detours from completely rectangular shape. So that say block Count would be divided not by full Volume but by a certain percent of it (0.9, 0.8, 0.75, etc.), still never allowing for more than 150% of total block power.
2. System division
All system groups must not touch or they will lose effectiveness. A single block of empty space, armour or anything else is enough. Basically what (now old) reactors have. Only with systems being much bigger and actively discouraging different weaving patterns. Systems that have other systems touching them lose 10% of their total power.
Optional: Progressive penalty could be added to systems touched by multiple other systems.
3. System vulnerability
All systems have a certain (pretty low) amount of System HP and could lose a lot of it from a single direct hit by a weapon. Much more than HP of destroyed blocks. In fact it is possible to shut down a whole group by a single hit if it has enough damage and maybe also an explosive effect.
This encourages players to split their systems in multiple groups.
Optional: Systems don't have special System HP and instead lose power for destroyed blocks, but lose it exponentially. 1% at 1% of blocks destroyed, 9% at 3% of blocks destroyed and 100% at 10% of blocks destroyed.
4. System interference
All systems that affect the whole ship (Shields, thrusters, reactors and any others) lose power if they have multiple active groups working on the same dock chain. The loss in power progresses exponentially with first couple of groups giving only minor penalties and after around 10 they become very much unpleasant.
This encourages players to have as little groups as possible and weight it against their vulnerability.
Example formula:
Total Power = Base Power * (1 - ((Number of Groups-1)^2 / 1000) )
Notes and Problems:
-This system really needs proper Armour System in the game so that all systems won't be one shotted the moment shields go down.
-Rectors could be used in any numbers and even on docked entities but they will lose effectiveness hard if there is too many of them. Bigger ships are very much encouraged to have multiple reactors so that they could not be easily sniped (small ships still probably would prefer to have only one reactor due to problems with space) and will want to have them in different parts of their hull to make their destruction harder while still avoiding to have too many of them.
- Shields and thrusters get into the same boat as reactors. they are no longer a filler block, unless you want to tank your system effectiveness and using shields as ablative armour becomes a little harder, or at least needs a little more planning than just filling everything with them.
- Weapons are the most problematic part due to the current block count needed on some of them. It probably would be a good idea to scale them down while upping their power / energy consumption per block as well as mass and HP. This way it would be much lesser strain on RP builds. Though modifier on Group Volume around 0.7-0.8 may be enough to remedy that without scaling.
- The other part is that weapons ideally should count as a single group with their secondary and tertiary effects, but without an overhaul on how they are designated it will be hard to do.
1. System blobbification
System power scales linearly (more or less) with the number of blocks and gets a bonus (up to around 50% from the base power) if it fills most of the bounding box of the group . With a formula for total power going something like this:
Power Total = Power By Block Count x (1 + ( 0.5 x Block Count / Group Volume))
This way any rectangular shape will have a full 150% of what basic block power provides and complex shapes with twists and turns will have less.
Optional: A variable could be added to Group Volume to lower the restriction allowing for some detours from completely rectangular shape. So that say block Count would be divided not by full Volume but by a certain percent of it (0.9, 0.8, 0.75, etc.), still never allowing for more than 150% of total block power.
2. System division
All system groups must not touch or they will lose effectiveness. A single block of empty space, armour or anything else is enough. Basically what (now old) reactors have. Only with systems being much bigger and actively discouraging different weaving patterns. Systems that have other systems touching them lose 10% of their total power.
Optional: Progressive penalty could be added to systems touched by multiple other systems.
3. System vulnerability
All systems have a certain (pretty low) amount of System HP and could lose a lot of it from a single direct hit by a weapon. Much more than HP of destroyed blocks. In fact it is possible to shut down a whole group by a single hit if it has enough damage and maybe also an explosive effect.
This encourages players to split their systems in multiple groups.
Optional: Systems don't have special System HP and instead lose power for destroyed blocks, but lose it exponentially. 1% at 1% of blocks destroyed, 9% at 3% of blocks destroyed and 100% at 10% of blocks destroyed.
4. System interference
All systems that affect the whole ship (Shields, thrusters, reactors and any others) lose power if they have multiple active groups working on the same dock chain. The loss in power progresses exponentially with first couple of groups giving only minor penalties and after around 10 they become very much unpleasant.
This encourages players to have as little groups as possible and weight it against their vulnerability.
Example formula:
Total Power = Base Power * (1 - ((Number of Groups-1)^2 / 1000) )
Notes and Problems:
-This system really needs proper Armour System in the game so that all systems won't be one shotted the moment shields go down.
-Rectors could be used in any numbers and even on docked entities but they will lose effectiveness hard if there is too many of them. Bigger ships are very much encouraged to have multiple reactors so that they could not be easily sniped (small ships still probably would prefer to have only one reactor due to problems with space) and will want to have them in different parts of their hull to make their destruction harder while still avoiding to have too many of them.
- Shields and thrusters get into the same boat as reactors. they are no longer a filler block, unless you want to tank your system effectiveness and using shields as ablative armour becomes a little harder, or at least needs a little more planning than just filling everything with them.
- Weapons are the most problematic part due to the current block count needed on some of them. It probably would be a good idea to scale them down while upping their power / energy consumption per block as well as mass and HP. This way it would be much lesser strain on RP builds. Though modifier on Group Volume around 0.7-0.8 may be enough to remedy that without scaling.
- The other part is that weapons ideally should count as a single group with their secondary and tertiary effects, but without an overhaul on how they are designated it will be hard to do.