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Edit: on my suggested idea, it may also be a good idea to do something like, if you are suddenly moved like by getting hit by a rocket it will draw more of the laser's charge, so if your craft is shaking due to an onslaught of rockets the grid will deteriorate making it only practical as a late game, specialized power solution which has its "infinite" power potential countered by its hard to maintain nature, potential to lose power during combat, and explosive consequences if it gets hit (because, you know, thats like having an orbital laser, inside of your ship, firing out, probably not a good idea)
Also I don't see how being struck by incoming weapons fire would affect the "beam reactor loop" unless if you have a mod that requires energy to counter the incoming fire, like the defense shield.
As for the late game, yes. This idea would be mid game to late game thanks to its setup, but what's cooler to have in your late game super station?
An arc reactor, a Deuterium Fusion reactor
Or a giant construct allowing beams to pass through your whole station like a particle accelerator to provide energy for everything as long as it's being maintained by some generators to loop the power back into the it.
On the topic of being hit affecting the loop, I didnt say that it would i said that it SHOULD effect the draw of the harnesser (not its efficiency mind you, specifically its draw, so it draws more which in turn can weaken the loop, even if you have it set to only draw power from say 1% of the laser energy that goes through it) to make it a more fair power generation system which both can be overcome and wont affect non power generating systems, you can make free power, have their be a drawback. To relate it to your nuclear reactor example, it took years, and mountains of money to make those safe enough to be used on a mass scale, and most importantly, it took engineering, for a game called space engineers, I would much rather have people who engineer their systems be rewarded.
For the coolness factor, I would personally see having to actually fine tune your reactor and stabilize it using different methods as way cooler than just having a perfectly stable, infinite, no resource cost (after the up-front), power generation box
And yes I agree totally that a game called "space ENGINEERS" should have engineering in it, but seeing how keen ♥♥♥♥♥♥ up at that most basic level and designed SE with no form of engineering like let's say, electrical engineering with cables and wires, or atmospherical engineering with actual pipes. Most people in SE don't actually do e n g i n e e r i n g in its proper sense, hence why the mod shouldn't be made any more advanced than it already is. I know several people who has issues with the beam, simply because it requires ingenuity, the harnessers and dischargers ontop of that would make it even more taxing as you'd need space for those too to make them do their job, much like the combiners or active emitters.
And yes, the maintenance, tuning and stabilizing the reactor is something i'd simply love too.
I'd love to see a frequency produce more power but deteriorate the beam faster aswell, or produce less power and become more stable, or a form of wavelength to which changes how the beam acts. Hell the colour could prob be influenced by these things alone.
(for the wavelength thing I feel like that could very easily either just end up being yet another value that people have to keep track of or just end up forcing everyone who wants to get power to have the same coloured beams though it does sound interesting as a concept, I just dont know how well it could be applied as I worry it could easily over complicate things)
Harnessers weren't designed to drain the loop, it was designed to harness the loop's insane potential for clean energy. However it does chip away at the loop ever so slightly in the process. But the whole premise of this idea is the continuous loop of generators charging it, only for harvesters and dischargers to suck up the energy and send it back in again. Each Harnesser would have a conversion rate where it changes energy in the beam to electrical power. Let's say, from nothing to a little over the default output of a large uranium reactor. Which wouldn't make it OP, but it would make it better.
The Discharger is more like a safer way to shut down the loop and gain even more power from doing so than if you did it with the Harnessers. Thereby maintaining the somewhat standard for the Ion beams which is: charge, fire, recharge repeat. And while it's slowly charging, harnessers could draw power which could be used to charge it even more, the more it's charged, the more they output until it's fully charged. That's where dischargers take over to vent all of that power in a much large output to charge systems or give a quick boost in emergencies, hell during an emergency like a losing battle. Being able to quickly undo the ion inside of the loop is the best bet for survival, instead of waiting for your opponent to put a hole in it and compromise the loop, only to have all your energy be fired out of your ship and make a nice hole while doing so.
In essence it's like comparing a hole in a dam, to the actual flood gate in the dam. However seeing how energy in general functions within SE, outputting more power would just be a waste of the resource unless if you have TONS of batteries to absorb this enormous amount of electricity so it actually can be used. Therefor, dischargers and harnessers alike could prob have an internal capacitor just to make sure it ain't wasted. The whole point of this idea is to make the ion beams a viable source of power instead of it just being yet another hazardous lightshow on the steam workshop.
(Wavelengths, Frequencies, Tuning, Stabilisation. All these things would have already overcomplicated this mod. That's why I never proposed these things from the get go, the addition of Harnessers and Dischargers would've already broadened the spectrum and variations for designs, setups and configurations to the point where these other things would've bloated the gameplay and made it more taxing.)
Your idea isnt bad but your refusing to see any flaws at all in it so you can make it better, which, if we actually want it to be added, we would need to do.
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"They havent been designed yet at all? Your assuming that your idea has already been "designed" when it hasnt."
You don't know what design means, do you? allow me to assist.
Design, noun
A plan or drawing produced to show the look and function or workings of a building, garment, or other object before it is made.
verb
decide upon the look and functioning of (a building, garment, or other object), by making a detailed drawing of it.
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"Your also choosing to add a completely different block to 'shut it down' which while yes it follows the loop idea, it means a ship that wants both power generation and weaponry would need multiple loops to have any semblance of efficiency"
No, no it doesn't. Active Emitters exist, that's a reminder and a fact. The Discharger would be one block, which wouldn't send the energy further, it would just take it and poof gone. It's literally 1 active emitter and a discharger and it's implemented, unless if you want to be some kind of meme who un-ironically uses rotors with the ion beam.
Granted, if you were to use the loop as both a weapon and your only reactor at the same time, you're just either horribly stupid or in an anime about saving the earth from a bunch of aliens while going on a trek across space in a 1940s battleship with thrusters strapped to it.
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"To further this issue you stated that the harnesser should be used to charge it more, while its charging"
Now, I accept I did phrase the "harnessers should charge the beam" wrong, what I meant by that was since they supply power, that will be sent back to the generators that make the beam and therefor lower the total drain of the whole ship / station, since that's how power works in SE and you can't reroute or designate power grids. My bad sorry.
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"Plus with my concept of having the harnesser be the primary power source you could still MAKE a 'discharger' by setting A harnesser to drain 100% of the charge that comes through it and putting an active emitter to send the charge into it when you want to)"
This alone negates your entire argument to make the discharger a part of the harnesser in total as it would nullify the need for creative thought and planning to actually make a safe and efficient design. Why bother with safety when you can fill the gaps in the loop with harnessers and when something goes wrong you just yeet all of them to max discharge? poof, INSTANTLY discharged and there is even less tension and "balance" than if a discharger block was to exist, which would require planning, thinking, and sheer luck that it isn't destroyed or purposefully targeted in a firefight.
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"Even further to STORE those giant bursts of energy would take a huge array of batteries since each battery has a limit to how fast it can store energy."
Batteries can be modded, oh god they can m o d d e d.. H A R D.
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"Your idea isnt bad but your refusing to see any flaws at all in it so you can make it better, which, if we actually want it to be added, we would need to do."
Thank you, I take my job as an ignorant ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ quite seriously.
1 that is the definition but that isnt how you used it, you used it as if to say it was already set in stone "it wasnt designed for that" with your exact words being "
Harnessers weren't designed to drain the loop, it was designed to harness the loop's insane potential for clean energy"
when this is still complete conjecture and/or brainstorming, if you go by strictest definitions the word "need" is meaningless as you dont "need" to even live technically speaking
(plus that definition didnt even pertain to our situation as that talked about physical design when this is game design but thats really just nitpicking)
2 you said discharger, that is an additional block, though the impression I got when you said to handle its power was use it like you would fire a traditional loop, ie : you charge the beam, the harnessers do, something, I honestly didnt know what you meant to use them for, then you fire into the discharger like you would fire it normally and then the discharger converts like 500% of laser energy into power.
3 that makes a lot more sense now, though I personally would still prefer a more dynamic system that only used one thing that may work, not sure, that would be something the dev would have to actually test
4 That doesnt nullify my point, my point is that through simple things, such as a basic mathematical equation which increases efficiency based on total laser power (instead of a static efficiency rating) you could increase the possible complexity without raising the minimum complexity, if you had it so that the harnesser was able to do that it would :
4a allow for more than one use of the harnesser
4b mirror the laser splitter in nature with its percentages changing pass through (and im assuming we both know how useful those already are given you seem to be at least moderately concerned with maintaining a little complexity)
4c simplify multiple blocks down to one
4d mean the user must think about how to properly use the harnesser
4e (for this im opperating under the assumtion that with the pressence of a discharger the harnesser cant harness 100% of the charge, otherwise, just do that and get power out of it as well) allow for inbetween ussages that we couldnt possibly think of right now, if you give the user the entire range 0% drain of the beam to 100%, they have all of that middle ground to use, for instance say they only wanted to drain 98% of it (strange case but it could happen and its really just a way to show the virtues of making them one block) if you split the blocks then the user would need to add in an active emitter to break it off, and if they want to keep it going the same direction that would take a 5x5 block system (a single harnesser set to 98%) into a 5x11 block system (the combiner, splitter, and another combiner which then feeds into some overly complicated harnesser system)
4f it lowers the points of failure internally, two blocks is more likely to break than one block, and while yes these are conceptually very simple blocks it often times is the simplest bugs that take the longest to figure out
(im just going to stop here, im sure I could think of more but as stated previously this discussion is already way to long and these are all of the main ones I thought of anyway)
5a first off im confused because I thought I was misinterpreting you when you were talking about the discharger but your response to this seems to indicate I wasnt, is the discharger meant to generate a huge burst supply of power at greater efficiency than the harnesser, or be an emergency shutdown. If its the former then I dont see why you would add in an aditional block just for that, and as stated previously I am going for a system which is highly dynamic and changes based on its conditions ie : more laser power, generates more power because there is more laser flowing through it, and is more efficient BUT if your grid is shutting down then it could reach a point where the laser cant recharge itself and you need backup power, as well a dynamic system would let it self regulate to a degree so you dont have to manually fire it to get a huge burst of power. If its the latter however then I still dont see why would have another block for that when you could just let the harnesser take ANY percentage of the loop including 100% and just use that to discharge it
5b While yes your techincally right you could mod them I dont see how that excuses it as a system, first off I would see any mod which has that as easy to exploit in some way or another, I dont know how but someone would find a way, second if they can even STORE enough of that power they would be overpowered, and finally why would you make your system reliant on another mod to function properly?
and Im not going to make a statement on that last part because dependent on the tone of that any number of miscommunications could happen and then we just have another whole mess
Yes, I suppose dischargers can be treated purely as an emergency shutdown thanks to technicality of their function, which is to drain the energy loop at a higher power output than the harnessers, which I've decided to be around 30mw, this over twice the amount of power than a Large Uranium Reactor, so one harnesser can generate a maximum of 30mw, which is tons of power in terms of vanilla and most mods. Especially when you can have several harvesters within the loop at any given time, you could easily reach outputs of hundreds of mw in a large 3x3 loop, however then again you'd need to balance it with the beam generator, or else you'd suck up too much power and suffocate the beam. And Dischargers could output like 60mw of power by sucking up the beam, however that number is more up in the air as 60mw might be too small.
And tbh, I feel like we're just making giant paragraphs now over something as simple as the "tomato tomato" discussion, we both want the same thing. Yet we both have somewhat different views on it thanks to preference, functionality vs diversity, challenge vs ease of use, etc etc.
Though if we want this thing to even become something in the mod.
(which I kinda doubt seeing how it's actually dead)
We have to start with something that's easy to make, easy to use, and not something that'd break from its design, but rather from user error if it was ever to break. We need something stable and functional which can be used as a foundation for expanding this whole idea, different blocks for different things, extra additions, etc etc. But right now, we need the concrete base. And I think we've done a good job at arguing that base in.
Harnessers: Takes a bit of energy to make electricity.
Dischargers: Bigger brother of the harnessers, but impossible to keep a loop active with.
I also came with the thought that if we take your idea and let the harnessers do more drain, then we could also have a safeguard system, like a checkbox in the control panel which stops you from "overclocking" the harnessers. And if you disable it to overclock, you can increase the drain, it'd drain less than a discharger, and still not produce as much power as it, but it'd still let you drain a lot of power. That float 60mw could prob be the max value, and the closer you get to 100%, the more it drains. Who knows, if possible we could get "unstable charge" to be a thing where it might overload and maybe dissipate the whole loop or something, idfk.
A larger ion based power system could have ion input on top and bottom, ion outputs on 2 sides and H2 input on front and back. Requires ion loop to reach peak output every few seconds, at which point it'll consume half the beam to output a burst of power. ion outputs on the sides allow for loop formation, though this could be achieved with a secondary emitter block on the side.
This "ion plasma reactor" would aesthetically resemble a star trek warp core, with upper and lower beam inputs, but larger arrays could have totally different aesthetics.
Taking this idea further could be ion power systems that require a high power feed carried by beam path or conveyor-like transmission, like for example making the ion generator laser-pumped, or laser or ion initiated thrusters, that use electricity (in the form of laser or ion beams) and fuel to greatly outclass hydrogen thrusters in power and efficiency, but at cost of supporting infrastructure, or Defence shields that have a power feed that draws from an ion loop, like ion capacitors.