11 pages...I'm a bit late to this party. My personal view on power, for as long as I've been playing the game, is that the current system just never made sense from any kind of realistic perspective. I can't think of any existing, or sci-fi, scenario in which ship's power production comes in the form of long lines threaded throughout the entire ship from bow to stern. The checkerboard requirement that results from the mechanic also leaves players trying to fill in the gaps; so that you have long lines of shield or capacitor blocks (typically.) These long lines also mean that any physical damage that the ship takes is likely to impact overall power production, and players spend time digging through the entirety of their ship looking for missing/damaged power blocks buried throughout.
Lastly, the current need for power in long lines has some of the greatest impact on the shape and appearance of any ship in the game. It restricts the design of ships by creating a need for the ship to be long in at least one dimension in order to achieve the best power output with the least number of reactor blocks. For all the impact on design, it doesn't provide anything useful to the ship's aesthetics. If I want to interact with my ship's reactor as a crew member, it's all make-believe. I mean, I can put together some decorative blocks with some glowy bits to look like a reactor, but it has no real function in the game. I may as well write "reactor" on the side of a cardboard box and make "beep-boop" noises.
So hear we have the opportunity to replace one of the more immersive breaking components of the game with something that is more efficient in size and shape, provides more function, and delivers more immersive game play. The new system allows me to place a reactor in a suitable location that won't dictate the overall ship design. If I suffer a power loss, I can head straight to the reactor to begin repairs. As a role player, I will enjoy being able to have an actual working engineering section with access to the reactor rather than just some decorative blocks.
There's something else that I hope stems from the reactor change - crew viability. I have at least one friend for whom the game's success hinges on whether the game provides a real need for crew on a ship. That is, any ship will perform better when there are more players operating on a ship, and those players feel like they are necessary and useful for the entirety of their stay on board. That means that they are more than just boarding party defenders or manning a turret during combat. That they are more than just passengers that wander a ship's corridors while one player flies and fights the ship. A new reactor-based system will not alone achieve that, but I hope that the developers will put some consideration into what may be achieved in this regard with the new system. Assuming that a reactor system can be made readily accessible by players, it would be an added bonus if that reactor could then be manipulated by them - adjusting the amount of power to various systems, or balancing coolant levels ala "Archimedes: Bridge Simulator" and "Pulsar: Lost Colony."
