What Are Your Thoughts On - Spaceship Power Management?

[BOYCOTT S-T-E-A-M!]

I'm curious what other people think about the spaceship power management in the game. By power management I mean both the combat aspects (moving your power pips around between your weapon systems, engine, shield, and grav drive) as well as the ship building aspect (reactor giving you X amount of power pips and weapons, engines, shields, you add determining the total amount of pips for each system.)

So, what do you think about it?
Do you find it fun and meaningful?
How do you allocate your power pips?
How does its implementation impact or affect your gameplay?
Would you make an changes to the mechanic and if so what?


Personally, I'm not overly keen on its implementation although I didn't mind it in other games that used it such as the, obvious inspiration for this, Elite Dangerous as well as similar systems like that used in FTL (Faster Than Light) or even in ancient space games, like X-wing and Wing Commander and the like, where you mostly were just adjusting shield strength to the front / back or even sides of your ship.


In combat or just space travel in general it doesn't really seem to affect much and for me is more an minor annoyance than anything tactical. Unless I'm jumping to another system my Grav drive is always empty. My shields are always full because you never know when you'll get jumped. So that just leaves me with managing my weapons and engine and even that doesn't factor in much for me as I typically just keep ~2 pips in engines at all times and everything else is just split among my weapons. Minimal power to engines is usually sufficient for general moving around and minor space conflicts. I don't need to increase it for regular travel since that's typically just handled with "setting course" and other forms of fast travel.

The only time I find myself really altering it is if I need to really get more speed for a given combat. The weapons I only really change much if I have a specific need like turning off an auto-turret so it doesn't blow up a thing I'm boarding.

I haven't even bothered with moving pips around as damage occurs. If I'm taking enough hull damage for systems to be getting messed up then I typically have more pressing concerns to worry about than micromanaging my pips.

When it comes to ship building its something I pay attention to but it largely just feels like its limiting my ability to be creative with ship designs. Even the smallest of weapons add 3-4 pips so you can't really pack a bunch of smaller weaker weapons on and use a "volume of fire" strategy like you can in other games like Elite Dangerous or Star Sector. I feel like you're largely forced into just using a single one of the biggest and best of a given weapon you're equipping.

I think I'd enjoy the system more if it worked in combat as more of a "consumable" temporary boost thing. Cut out the Grav drive and just leave the weapons / shields / and engines. Then, based on your reactor, skills, crew, and the power draw of your various weapons and parts it would determine the amount of charges (uses of the power consumable) and the cooldown time until you recover a charge.

In this way, instead of juggling pips around you could just be like "oh hell I'm getting wrecked" and slap a short term boost on your shields or turbo-charge your engines to get into a better spot. I just feel like it would be more enjoyable than allocating pips with the games current combat implementation and that it could provide more meaningful tactical choices.

As for the ship building part I'd tie it into the consumable concept mentioned above but largely it wouldn't change too much...

I would have auto-turrets have a full 360 degree rotational arc, which they don't seem to have currently, but also have them not benefit from the consumable power charges. So it would be a trade off decision to make on whether you wanted to use manual weapons that would be able to be boosted at times but would require you to manually aim them or to have automated weapons that are always just "what they say on the tin".

Adding additional weapons of the same type would have a reduced power cost. So if you add one Cannon it would have the base draw mentioned, but adding a second wouldn't drain as much. This way you could choose to have single larger weapons or more smaller weapons.

The more you push the limits of your reactor the worse your cooldown times for your power consumable boost would get as well. So you'd have to decide things like if you want a weaker shield that you can just overcharge when you need or a stronger one that will be regularly reliable but not as often able to be boosted. Do you want a constant fire of weaker guns or that big laser that you can just overcharge when the time is right? Huge steady engines or smaller ones that you can kick on the nitro for a clutch maneuver?

Obviously a reactor would have limits so if you put too much power draw with the things you equip your cooldown could be massively high and you could even take enough of a penalty to the charges that you don't have any charges to use at all. Going too far would have to have some kind of limit either in the form a hard stop, like "not enough power to equip part", or in a soft stop, such as having exponentially stacking debuffs to things like your weapons damage, engine speed, grav jump ranges, fuel use, etc. Much like how the game has a soft stop to your carry limits by heavily stacking the penalties onto your Oxygen usage and CO2 buildup rates.

Just my thoughts on it. Curious to know how other peoples experiences have been with the power management system.

[Bearsuit]

I think its "okay", especially when combined with the flight modes - and if you bust the shields and want to super power your missiles or ballistics, then do it up. But could it be a bit more in depth? No doubt, there's room to grow.

[Happy Birthday!]

It's enjoyable, as it's a similar system to what I've seen before in space games.
If you have enough reactors you can just ignore the system altogether and have everything maxed out.

[ULTRA]

My thoughts are that it's there because of Elite: Dangerous, and it is bad. My plan is to upgrade my reactor until I can basically just level out the power on everything and then ignore it.

[Multirate]

Currently flying a C class with 7 alfa beams (3 top tier and 4 lower tier cuz you cant have the same weapon in different weapon block) weps are full always rest goes to shields and i leave whatevers left for engine or gravdrive. Got 36 pips (34+2 from perk) so if i wanna go full on fortress i can by leaving gravdrive and engines empty. About oxygen use while over carry limit: keep an eye out of perk on backpack that lowers the O2 consumtion when overweight by 75% and helmet that lowers all O2 consuption by another 25%. I can effectively move even with 1T in my inv. Didnt read the whole thing as its a damn novel but thats what i caught while scrolling.

[Multirate]

Originally posted by ULTRA:

My thoughts are that it's there because of Elite: Dangerous, and it is bad. My plan is to upgrade my reactor until I can basically just level out the power on everything and then ignore it.

max power you can probs get is 40 while you have 6x12 blocks to distribute it. You can budget your ship to be able to have all but grav on full power but thats not as effective when dealing with certain double your lvl pois.

[BOYCOTT S-T-E-A-M!]

Originally posted by Happy Birthday!:

It's enjoyable, as it's a similar system to what I've seen before in space games.
If you have enough reactors you can just ignore the system altogether and have everything maxed out.

Wasn't aware you could have more than one reactor! I'll have to give that a shot.

Originally posted by Multirate:

Currently flying a C class with 7 alfa beams (3 top tier and 4 lower tier cuz you cant have the same weapon in different weapon block)

Since you can only have 3 weapon groups (buttons) on your ship at one time (to my knowledge anyway) am I correct in understanding that you're saying of your 7 beams you have 3 top tier of them in one group and then 4 lower tier in another group?

Or are you saying that you have 7 beams (3 top / 4 lower) and have them all bound to one weapon group (button)? If so... how?

Originally posted by Multirate:

Didnt read the whole thing as its a damn novel but thats what i caught while scrolling.

Ha ha. No worries. I mostly type to get the thoughts out of my head to maintain my sanity. If anyone reads or skips it isn't really an issue to me.

I appreciate the tips on how to abuse the carry weight mechanics though. I may have to check that out just to make looting a place after clearing it out less of a hassle.

[Ankido]

The concept of using pips to control your spaceship's movement is frustrating. Having to lower something in order to speed up feels counter intuitive. Whatever happened to the straightforward approach of pressing 'W' to throttle forward? This game seems to have some fundamental issues in its gameplay mechanics. However, it's essential to note that it's not a pure space game; rather, it's a space-themed RPG set against a space backdrop.

[nakoda]

It's like X Wing vs Tie Fighter and it's awesome.

[nakoda]

Originally posted by Ankido:

The concept of using pips to control your spaceship's movement is frustrating. Having to lower something in order to speed up feels counter intuitive. Whatever happened to the straightforward approach of pressing 'W' to throttle forward? This game seems to have some fundamental issues in its gameplay mechanics. However, it's essential to note that it's not a pure space game; rather, it's a space-themed RPG set against a space backdrop.

lowering speed to perform more precise turns is kind of how physics works. look up centripetal and centrifugal force.

[Catsim]

It'd be interesting if it was less cumbersome and less easy to max things i.e. putting power in weapons should lower max engine and max shield and vice versa and to change them have it just shift everything.

So you hold ALT and press up that puts 50% to engines, 25% to weapon and shields. If you press it again it does 75% to engines, 12.5% to weapon and shields. ALT and Left would do the same thing but for weapons, ALT and right would do the same thing but for shields. ALT and down would reset them all to 33.3% (repeating of course)

Get rid of the warp drive power management. Just make it quick while out of combat (in-universe explanation is that it automatically pulls power from all the other systems) and have a set amount of time while in combat. Make the player dodge or put power in shields until the drive spools up.

[zombygunner]

i cant stand it but im probably mostly alone in this. I get it its different its deff harder than nms the firing all of it. Not a fan

[MyKillK]

Comes across as a weird, unnecessary mechanism to make the space piloting more interesting because they couldn't make the core aspects of space piloting more interesting.

[BOYCOTT S-T-E-A-M!]

Originally posted by Catsim:

It'd be interesting if it was less cumbersome and less easy to max things i.e. putting power in weapons should lower max engine and max shield and vice versa and to change them have it just shift everything.

So you hold ALT and press up that puts 50% to engines, 25% to weapon and shields. If you press it again it does 75% to engines, 12.5% to weapon and shields. ALT and Left would do the same thing but for weapons, ALT and right would do the same thing but for shields. ALT and down would reset them all to 33.3% (repeating of course)

Get rid of the warp drive power management. Just make it quick while out of combat (in-universe explanation is that it automatically pulls power from all the other systems) and have a set amount of time while in combat. Make the player dodge or put power in shields until the drive spools up.

Oh a trade off system, like diverting power from engines to shields and such. It would accomplish the same things the game already does without all the fiddly stuff. I like that idea.

[BOYCOTT S-T-E-A-M!]

Originally posted by 1grimmreefer:

i cant stand it but im probably mostly alone in this. I get it its different its deff harder than nms the firing all of it. Not a fan

Originally posted by MyKillK:

Comes across as a weird, unnecessary mechanism to make the space piloting more interesting because they couldn't make the core aspects of space piloting more interesting.

I can agree a good bit with both of these. it does fill like complexity for complexities sake instead of actually adding much to the game. In Elite Dangerous it made a lot of sense since that was a simulator game.

Personally, I kinda just wish Starfield have space combat that was more naval like Rebel Galaxy. Rebel Galaxy had great gameplay mechanics for its space combat. it was quick and fun, but had some depth to it. I was really hoping there would have been a Rebel Galaxy 2 that would have further expanded on those mechanics. *I know Rebel Galaxy Outlaw exists but that's not using the naval combat method with larger ships. its like old Wing Commander and focuses on small ships and dogfights.

[Catsim]

Originally posted by BOYCOTT S-T-E-A-M!:

Personally, I kinda just wish Starfield have space combat that was more naval like Rebel Galaxy. Rebel Galaxy had great gameplay mechanics for its space combat. it was quick and fun, but had some depth to it. I was really hoping there would have been a Rebel Galaxy 2 that would have further expanded on those mechanics. *I know Rebel Galaxy Outlaw exists but that's not using the naval combat method with larger ships. its like old Wing Commander and focuses on small ships and dogfights.

Yeah I definitely think Starfield's bigger ships would fit better for "Frigate vs Frigate" combat instead of "frigates pretending they're fighters". If they wanted to be extra cool they'd let you launch drones too that you could manually control without worrying about dying.