Seperate Batteries into Storage and Generation

[Ian S]

As requested, I'm cutting up my other post into individual sections for easier commenting.

I'd like to see regeneration removed from batteries and the addition of power generators. That will allow the player to more finely  tune their ship power handling. A ship with enough generators to run everything will be much heavier, but have no problems with running out of power. Any power from the generators not being used would then be used to charge any batteries. The Super Capacitor would still be a viable part, though it really needs a new name as the whole point of a super capacitor is that it CAN be charged, and really fast as well.

The same thing could be applied to the fuel system.

[Lurkily]

I do appreciate your effort to divide everything up; it makes it easier for us, and easier for the devs to categorize your ideas and use these forums as they were meant; as a tracking system for what the community wants.

I think a ship should require at LEAST one storage battery, and should only be  able to provide as much power as the batteries can hold; in other words, if your ship draws 50 energy, and you only have 40 batteries, you're going to come up short, even if you have extra power.

Though come to think of it, the reason for the problem may not be obvious to the player; perhaps it is too confusing for a new player, who might stack more and more generators and wonder why his shields won't stay up.

[ManTheMister]

I would agree with Ian rather than Lurkily on this one. Generators power should go directly to components.

[Lurkily]

I guess I would like to see it require more than just replacing half my batteries and then everything's the same.  Right now we're just talking about complicating energy infrastructure for a net gain of nothing.  I get that it's more realistic, but what's realistic isn't always what's fun.

 

[Entity]

Sounds pretty much what I suggested before...

 

 

[Ookami-sama]

Having generators and batteries instead of just generator batteries would make it so that one can decide whether to have large power sustain and minimal storage, for a spaceship with constant power usage (for digging, magnet contraptions, weaponised spinning-tops...), or large storage but minimal sustain for a craft with uneven consumption (heavy one-shot-disintegration armament, burst of any kind though I fail to imagine any such aircraft). The middle ground is present in the game right now (storage + production), so for all these middle ground spaceships, with on and off firing, digging etc. this would introduce no change of any kind, except that one would need two kinds of components rather than just one.

To make it different from now, but equivalent in space taken, such a system would need to feature storage and production parts with at least twice the power per square unit of current batteries (10 energy produced per second, or 100 energy stored, per 1 square unit); the middle ground spaceships would thus not be effected, but constant-use ships would require half as many square units of power production.

To make it realistic, it would require very low power production (unless it is on nuclear fission / fusion, in which case the explosion damage could be multiplied by a fair 1 000; or another, brand new, futuristic infinite source of energy, at which point I would expect the Nimbatus to be equipped with a long-range energy transfer device to power drones from afar, removing the need for batteries of any kind) and very slow battery dis/charging (otherwise the plug heats up tremendously and fries; or you choose to go the futuristic route again and make batteries that can somehow charge and discharge in an instant); but that would be little fun, or the future kind of unrealistic, i.e. not any better than the current version.

This would make building ships more difficult (two components rather than one; need to carefully choose them, and calculate it all again every time some powered device is added), without adding much for the potential majority of ships that require some power, some times, which are pretty much set with the current system. As Entity suggested, this would indeed cripple spacecrafts that rely on factories to produce batteries, but this can also be done by forbidding these from printing capacitors (ugly solution I know) and disabling energy transfers through the atmosphere. As in: only allow devices to take power from batteries they are linked to, much like a logic splitter does for, well, logic.

 

I do not think it is too good of an idea. It would introduce a kind of difficulty that I feel is out of place, because it is artificial (i.e. not meaningful: it is really just forcing two components instead of one for most users), and would be difficult to justify, even with this-is-future shenanigans. I believe the military would come up with something a lot better than solar panels if they were able to craft lasers as powerful as to vaporise rock, and mount them on an aircraft.

[Lurkily]

It's a little difficult to parse your meaning, but to clarify a few things, energy does not transmit to disconnected parts currently.  Subdrones need a battery of their own.  My current favorite suggestion for relying on factories to print new batteries-  which is a cheat, in my mind - is to print all batteries and fuel tanks as initially empty.

[ManTheMister]

2 hours ago, Lurkily said:

It's a little difficult to parse your meaning, but to clarify a few things, energy does not transmit to disconnected parts currently.  Subdrones need a battery of their own.  My current favorite suggestion for relying on factories to print new batteries-  which is a cheat, in my mind - is to print all batteries and fuel tanks as initially empty.

I think a better solution is to make it so that energy/fuel can’t flow through a factory part, much like how with resource tanks you can’t fill printed ones unless the harvester is attached to them, except instead of resource not being able to flow out through I factory, it would be energy and fuel not being able to flow in through a factory.

[Lurkily]

 

7 hours ago, ManTheMister said:

I think a better solution is to make it so that energy/fuel can’t flow through a factory part, much like how with resource tanks you can’t fill printed ones unless the harvester is attached to them, except instead of resource not being able to flow out through I factory, it would be energy and fuel not being able to flow in through a factory.

My Only problem with that is that it requires a change to how energy and connectedness works that may not be obvious to a player.  They may put a capacitor on a subdrone, and keep adding more power, unclear on why they capacitor isn't filling. 

Spawning them empty clearly shows you what's going on, prevents any factory - based infinite fuel/energy shenanigans, and permits your subdrone to fuel up, if it needs to, before separating, without any need to change the fundamental way that energy behaves. 

[Ookami-sama]

9 hours ago, Lurkily said:

It's a little difficult to parse your meaning, but to clarify a few things, energy does not transmit to disconnected parts currently.

Here is a gif file showing that disconnected parts can power e.g. shields on the main unit, and a battery (or, here, a tank) on the main unit can power appliances detached from it. This does work with capacitors, as well. It does seem like this is not intended behaviour, as properly decoupled parts indeed won't work this way, so I mixed together a bug and a feature yesterday.

The last crafted battery seemingly won't run out because there are a lot in the open already, and they power the shields through self-recharging. You can see the tank on the main unit running empty from the detached thrusters, too. Said batteries could be printed empty that it would not really hinder this craft's capabilities, except for the capacitors since they cannot recharge.

As it stands though, I do not possess the entirely up-to-date game, and rely on a pirate copy of it until it is available for sale without having to go through Steam (I hate Steam and most of what it represents, what with being pushed to consume games and all). This glitch might have been resolved already, although I doubt it since I could not see any post about it on these forums. Just in case, I'll make a post about it.

As for the rest of my earlier post, I fundamentally disagree with making energy a complicated mess just to optimise a few specialised crafts.

[Lurkily]

I have actually made the error of making subdrones without a battery, and not having my weapons fire. If fuel is connecting like this, it's almost certainly a bug; or your pirate copy is from the closed alpha, where it wasn't a glitch, just default behavior. 

You should talk to the devs about the possibility of paying them directly to get a key, if you don't want to support steam.  If you don't even want to install it, you should post a suggestion for them to host on a different service.

[Ookami-sama]

Version number is 0.5.5, branded "early access" in the main menu. Do find the bug report in the appropriate section if you have anything to add.

[Lurkily]

Will do, of course,  but it will have to wait until I get home. I want to retest with fuel as well, first.