Why exactly is power broken?

[Ithirahad]

The fun is not something that can be measured and depeds on each person, but can you explain better why is not intuitive?

The oldest form of power generation known to man was burning wood and brush to create a fire. Then we moved to more advanced closed furnaces, then eventually steam engines, then liquid-fuelled internal combustion engines and coal-fired turbines, then nuclear reactors, and someday soon we'll begin making fusion reactors...

A fire is a primitive, open sort of a central chemical reactor core (burning wood is a chemical reaction), with the 'system' that it powers (probably some food that you're cooking, or a pot of water you're boiling, etc.) sat near it within transmission range. Power output more or less scales with size.

A furnace is a chamber (chemical reactor core), with whatever 'system' that it powers (again, probably cooking food or heating up some metal or whatever) near it or inside it, within transmission range. Perhaps the energy is conducted from that core by stone or some other material. Power output scales with size, design, and fuel type. If too much heat or any fire goes where it isn't supposed to, you will have problems. :P

A steam engine is a central furnace (chemical reactor core, really!) driving some kind of rotary device, with whatever it's powering hooked up by mechanical transmission - belts and pulley-wheels, chains and sprockets, gears, cranks and wheels... whatever you can hook up. If you like, you can also hook up a turbine to generate electricity from the steam pressure. Power output scales with size, heat, and some other factors of design that I'm not familiar with. Excess heat or pressure vessel ruptures can dangerously compromise these systems.

An internal combustion engine or generator (simplified) is a collection of one or more cylinders (chemical reactor cores) with pistons that drive some sort of shaft. The energy is then transmitted either mechanically or electrically to whatever it's powering. Power is commonly known to scale with the number of cylinders (cores) and the design of the engine. Several failure modes are associated with these devices, but the more memorable ones can involve destructive overheating and/or lots of fire.

A nuclear fission reactor (again simplified) is a collection of one or maybe more(?) nuclear reactor cores, heating up water which then drives a turbine (rotary device) that generates electricity, which is then conducted to whatever systems need it. I'm not certain about how the power output scales, but I'm fairly certain that size and design are major factors. Loss of heat control can result in overheating and pressure explosions; other catastrophic failures are possible.

A nuclear fusion reactor is a fusion reactor core, producing energy in some form, which is then distributed to wherever it's needed. I'm not familiar with how it scales, but design and the fusion fuel you use are factors in this. Fusion reactors are pretty damn safe, but depending on your design I suppose you could still have pressure vessel ruptures that make fairly large explosions.

Most Sci-Fi reactors are one or more reactor cores, generating some form of power which is either immediately useful or converted to a useful form by some attached device, then distributed to whatever systems require the energy via some type of wire, conduit, or occasionally via wireless power transmission within a certain range. Power output typically scales with design and size. They are also commonly known to make big, pretty explosions when destroyed.

StarMade reactors are clusters of spaghetti. Power output scales with the size of the box that can be drawn around the spaghetti, independent of other aspects of design or the actual volume of the reactor. Total power aboard a ship tends to scale with how good the player is at packing in the spaghetti and getting maximum box dimensions. Power is transmitted 'magically' to other systems. These reactors will reduce in output when broken, transmitting a slightly or vastly reduced amount of power based on where the spaghetti was broken and how much of it broke.

Which one is not like the others?

 

[Edymnion]

Ithirahad I ask about an answer about what is the reasson the current system is not intuitive and you asked to me a question which implies the answer.

Go to the point and do not fill this thread with more letters, we both know the answer of the question you trowed, and if you are one of those who believe that the current system is not intuitive, if you do me the favor of explaining why you think that, maybe I can understand that.

1) You asked why it was not intuitive, and he gave you the short answer for the entire history of power generation known to man, and points out how it is nothing like what we have in game in any way, and you dismiss that? Dude answered your question perfectly, with far more grace than I would have.

2) If you want to see how intuitive it is, find anyone that has never played the game, and tell them to power a ship. See what they build. I will bet you real money that a random person who has never seen the game before is not going to figure out bounding box reactor lines. As I said, I have spent more hours than I can count building demo pods to illustrate how to make box reactors and reactor lines for efficient designs to try and teach new players how to build them. Many of them still couldn't figure out how to properly build a box reactor, because it is not intuitive at all.

3) Human history of invention says that things are essentially modular. Your car has a defined engine. Your car has a defined gas tank. Your car has defined wheels. Even the simplest of people can be shown "Gas goes in here, that gets burned in the engine over here, that makes these things turn". Discrete building blocks that make up the whole. Starmade has that in other things. Weapons need to be in solid clusters. Capacitors do best in solid clusters. The things that don't work best in solid discrete lumps are (aside from power generators) gap filler that don't need any special layout at all. Power Gen is the ONLY block that requires very esoteric layouts to be even remotely efficient. And those layouts are not like anything in either reality, fiction, or other games. And nowhere in the game itself does anything say how to make it work. Someone either tells you how to do it, or you find out through trial and error. That isn't intuitive. Intuitive means you can see how something should work just by looking at it. A big red button that says FIRE! on it on a control panel that shoots missiles is intuitive. Having to order a pizza, pick all but two pepperoni off of it, feed it to the cat, then wait for the cat to poop and then shoving the poop into a coin slot to fire the missiles is not intuitive.

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For something to be intuitive, it must be something that the general person can look at and go "Oh, that makes sense." and be able to do it without being explicitly told.

Is the proposed new stuff 100% intuitive? No, its not. But the idea of "You need to make this kind of confined structure" is MORE intuitive than "Make this complicated 3D ball of wibbly wobbly timey wimey spaghetti".

Again, I've yet to see anyone that just naturally assumes invisible bounding box sizes are the way it should work right from the get go.

 

[Edymnion]

1. I do not have anything against modular things, fuck if I am a somtaaw for rp, what if I have against it is that it is abused using ships of several entities because they are not balanced to be used without abuse [docked radars for example]. But the modular systems used in combat generate problems for the server, I do not think you will deny me this.

I was one of the first ones here to suggest docked trushters that can change position using logic.[If you do not believe me i can search for that post]

You misunderstand my use of modular. I don't mean it as referring to docked entities. I mean it as it's actual mundane definition.

Most people understand the concept of a reactor, or an engine. That it is a discrete part of the vehicle or whatever that produces the power for the rest of said whatever.

Reactor lines are not modular, they are not discrete "Its over there" style packages. They can be made into such by using nested reactor boxes, but that isn't as efficient as the long spaghetti lines.

3. Sorry can not get the point you are trying to explain with the "peperoni and misiles" mixed with intuitive stuff.

Exactly, see?

When its "Push the big red button" to get results, its easy. When you have to describe a 27 step system, none of which said steps seem to have any relationship to each other, then it gets hard.

"These are reactors, they make power. These are coolants, they stop you from overheating. These pipes connect them together." That system is intuitive and easy to understand from even the quickest of explanations.

"These blocks have to be laid out so that each additional block increases the bounding box of the entire structure in either the X, Y, or Z coordinate direction. That means picture a big box around it, if any block you put down makes the box bigger, then it retroactively multiplies the power output of all blocks in structure. If it doesn't, it only increases the output using a flat additive system." Most people won't be able to read that and figure out how to build an actual working power system from it.

Even when you know how to do it, it doesn't really click in an "ah hah, that makes sense!" kind of way, like say how a turret axis works. There is no "Oh duh, this piece spins around this one, that piece spins around that one!" moment. There's just a "Well I know logically this works. I don't know why it works beyond thats how they made it, but it works".

 

[Wolflaynce]

Having to order a pizza, pick all but two pepperoni off of it, feed it to the cat, then wait for the cat to poop and then shoving the poop into a coin slot to fire the missiles is not intuitive.

That made my day. Thank you. Thank you very much!

 

[Scypio]

When its "Push the big red button" to get results, its easy. When you have to describe a 27 step system, none of which said steps seem to have any relationship to each other, then it gets hard.

What's the problem with current system ? Expect the part about power regeneration that doesn't make sense at first. Put enough regen, enough capacity and then put down your computer and weapons system. Shoot at each other. It's pretty simple, isn't it ?

I mean, really. When was the last time you sat down and thought "Hmmm... now how am I going to fit power into this?" When was the last time you had to make a design choice when it came to power?

I do it everytime tbh. Guess everyone's prioritizes aren't the same when building.

 

[Raisinbat]

I'd like the [probable minority] few players to post here that actually think power is broken, and explain exactly why.

• lack of difference in ship doctrine

Power is the most fundamental mechanic to ship design; it's what everything you do depends on, yet it has no design space. More regen = better power system, provided your ship can utilize said regen. This fundamentally limits the types of ships that can be built; all efficient ships follow the same basic principle of go forward and shoot, and maybe backing off when they lose shields. This means there's no real timing element to combat; no ships that are stronger for a short period but need to recharge between bursts,

battery system cannot be implemented since the regen system is already ridiculously fast and batteries would need to be much faster to make any sense, otherwise why not just add more reactors? Since power generation is dirt cheap in mass cost compared to systems this also greatly limits how many different systems can be put on a ship, since systems that aren't online 100% of the time are just dead weight.

No variety in ship doctrines will make combat very stale very fast.

• Ballance favoring thousands of small craft

This isn't an issue right now, but once the ai stops being retarded fielding thousands of small ships with long range weapons are going to dominate 200k+ mass ships with ease. 200k+ mass is easy to hit at 7km, 200mass fighter is impossible with anything other than lock on missiles.

Aside from being smaller targets they're much faster and more mass efficient, with no real drawbacks. Granted there's a lot of other areas that can be ballanced to aleviate this, but power is such a fundamental advantage i'm not really sure what can be done.

• Modular design superior

This is more of an opinion thing but i just don't think strapping hundreds of entities together to make your ship better is a very sensible mechanic. It lags, it's completely unintuitive (not that advanced ship building needs to be) and the softcap indirectly limits the size of weapons that be implemented; once you go past the softcap turret building with docked power in the turrets just gets ridiculous.

Current power does have the upside of making rail based weaponry like gatling guns relevant, but i think that can be done in other ways...

With reasons different/unique from those in the power overhaul thread (which, again, we already quote bombed and all proved false), WHY exactly is power broken? What exactly have you personally been so absolutely unable to accomplish in-game that you think StarMade is broken unless we have a "power overhaul"?

I posted these in the original power thread and never saw a response to it. IDK if i missed it but here you go.

 

[Edymnion]

I do it everytime tbh. Guess everyone's prioritizes aren't the same when building.

I've never found power to be a problem on anything but the tiniest of ships. Generally speaking, I can build whatever hull I want and toss in reactor lines and hit the power cap quite easily without ever having to plan around where said lines will have to be beforehand.

 

[Gasboy]

I've never found power to be a problem on anything but the tiniest of ships. Generally speaking, I can build whatever hull I want and toss in reactor lines and hit the power cap quite easily without ever having to plan around where said lines will have to be beforehand.

Yep, it's harder for smaller ships, unless you like long, cross-shaped ships. XD

EDIT: Assuming you have something of an interior, that is.

 

[Bladeriker]

While I know that they are going to vet this new power idea, which I think could be interesting.

I fall into the category of: Power lines are okay but hinder interesting ship development. What I mean is thus, the current way of ship build requires power to be spread out all over the ship, with lines going everywhere. Now if this was power being carried from core/reactor to different nodes and modules that is one thing, but currently it is not and if there is a break in the power line instead of said system losing power, the ship as a whole loses power regeneration. A central reactor while in some ways more vulnerable to directed fire would allow for more interesting ship design or so I believe. A reactor type system would also allow for more clearly defined ship types, as larger ships would have larger reactors or even multiple reactors, and conversely smaller ships would have the smallest reactors.

Not sure how much I like the heat thing, but it is one way of managing this power overhaul. Having worked as an electrician for some 14+ years I can tell you that for power to be the most efficient it needs to be running as cool as possible. and that heat is a power killer. This could require heat sink blocks, or using cooling pipes (Those water in pipe blocks) for actual cooling.

One way or another it seems that as they vet this idea we will get more information regarding it, and though it would require me to revisit all of my ships I see it as a step in the right direction.

 

[Edymnion]

One way or another it seems that as they vet this idea we will get more information regarding it, and though it would require me to revisit all of my ships I see it as a step in the right direction.

Honestly I think they seriously need to do something to utterly and completely break everyone's ships.

I mean flat out restart from scratch on everything.

WAY too many people around here seem to be WAY too attached to their old designs for their own good.

 

[Brokengauge]

I don't feel like power is broken, or even hindering in any way. It just isn't fun at all. I can change a weapons abilities by changing its size and shape, and there are pros and cons to that. Literally no other system is as fun to mess with than weapons, because every other system you either just need an amount for your desired outcome, or with power you have to build it a certain way. There are no advantages for installing power in any way except what is the most efficient.

I want some more variables to constrain me, so I can actually be challenged to improve my design ability!

 

[JinM]

Honestly I think they seriously need to do something to utterly and completely break everyone's ships.

I mean flat out restart from scratch on everything.

WAY too many people around here seem to be WAY too attached to their old designs for their own good.

Coz using the replace tool and rearranging some systems will take at least 60 hours of workload even on a 20m long vessel. Just think about that workload on a titan that might fight once in a year in multiplayer!!! A S D F

 

[Scypio]

I've never found power to be a problem on anything but the tiniest of ships. Generally speaking, I can build whatever hull I want and toss in reactor lines and hit the power cap quite easily without ever having to plan around where said lines will have to be beforehand.

Then we're not building the same. Building power up to the cap is easy, using aux reactors that can take shots and still work after or simply redundancy in your power design generally isn't easy task. Sure i can place down some big chunks of power reactors to go up to the cap all around my ship lenght or height, that won't be efficient but i can still do it. If you just want to place blocs and still get it to work it will always be the case and it should never be different from that, the game need easy mechanics that even a monkey could understand for newbs and access.
However if you start to go crazy and into considerations in your build, it's far from being an easy task, even with the current system and telling something else is just playing the blind. For the anecdote i was forced to redo all of my power system twice on my last build as i wasn't satisfied with it. Again, it's up to you to choose what you want, do you want something optimised or something that just work. It'll be always easy to work and optimised is far from being easy, even with the current system.

 

[Ithirahad]

With aux, there's probably some easy optimal pattern out there, and it's probably fairly straightforward. In fact, someone probably already found it. Just that we don't generally share those kinds of things with everyone when we find them.

There isn't all that much choice in design with those either.

 

[Edymnion]

Then we're not building the same. Building power up to the cap is easy, using aux reactors that can take shots and still work after or simply redundancy in your power design generally isn't easy task.

I didn't say anything about Aux Power, I said Power. As in Power Generators. The spaghetti lines.

I have never once had any problem at all fitting in power generator lines to get to cap in anything but the tiniest of ships.

With aux, there's probably some easy optimal pattern out there, and it's probably fairly straightforward. In fact, someone probably already found it. Just that we don't generally share those kinds of things with everyone when we find them.

There isn't all that much choice in design with those either.

Aux is easy, it scales like capacitors so big blobs. I think the optimal size for pure power was something like 9,860 blocks per blob.

Coz using the replace tool and rearranging some systems will take at least 60 hours of workload even on a 20m long vessel. Just think about that workload on a titan that might fight once in a year in multiplayer!!! A S D F

If it takes you 60 hours of manwork to do ANYTHING on a 20 block long ship, you're very, very bad at this game.

 

[Deserea]

Coz using the replace tool and rearranging some systems will take at least 60 hours of workload even on a 20m long vessel. Just think about that workload on a titan that might fight once in a year in multiplayer!!! A S D F

itd take me about 20 minutes to delete all the systems on board my titan O_O and that thing is huge as hell.

 

[Scypio]

I didn't say anything about Aux Power, I said Power. As in Power Generators. The spaghetti lines.

You cannot talk about something and simply elude half of it. Auxiliary power and Power reactor are two blocs in starmade but they are both the power generation of the game. It's like talking about a car and excluding their motors from the discussion.

 

[Edymnion]

You cannot talk about something and simply elude half of it. Auxiliary power and Power reactor are two blocs in starmade but they are both the power generation of the game. It's like talking about a car and excluding their motors from the discussion.

I can when the context of the conversation leading up to it was all about spaghetti lines. Not my fault you decided to ignore the conversation and throw in stuff that wasn't being discussed.

 

[Qweesdy]

Hi,

From my perspective, the power system is not broken, but could be improved. Improving the power system is currently (in no specific order):

• Less important than finishing NPC factions
• Less important than finishing NPC crew
• Less important than adding an additional "fuel" game mechanic
• Less important than adding an additional "heat" game mechanic
• Less important than adding some form of "randomly generated quest/mission" thing
• Less important than improving the shield systems
• Less important than improving the thrust systems
• Less important than improving "NPC pilot AI"
• Less important than updating NPC stations and NPC ships to bring them up-to-date
• Less important than removing deprecated stuff (e.g. the old docking system)
• Less important than performance optimisations
• Less important than fixing bugs

 

[Az14el]

There's been some good reasons why it's "broken" posted here, interactions that directly encourage proliferation of laggy/low-performance-hardware-wise designs is probably the strongest. But also in that many of the broken mechanics you rightly pointed out are in part to blame on not having a very flexible framework to balance/fix/implement them on in the first place.

While some of them ARE ongoing already (performance optimisations and bugfixes), and others have been directly shot down by schine already (fuel)