d o i t

Would definitely add an interesting gameplay aspect to the mod. And surely another way to integrate the system into your ships / built ships around the system itself.

warp cores :o [puu.sh]

Originally posted by тѕсм.Obi-Swag Kenobi:

The more I was playing with the mod, the more I found myself desiring a form of way to derive actual energy from the ion beams, think about it. Once the beam is established, it generally doesn't need power to stay active if it's in a proper loop. It'll just keep going until the end of time, or until it's discharged somehow. Therefor, why can't we have a system that lets you harness energy from the beam, and an upped version of that which will outright absorb all the energy from it and cause it to drain and discharge?

This idea will more or less transform the ion beam into more than a weapon, but it'll also be able to act as a power source, think of a giant base or ship being powered by the ion system, and also being able to fire it, but when they do the ship loses main power and switches over to battery power in order to bring the actual ion loop going again. The potential for these kinds of things are endless!

(on a side note, I think the laser should be able to do the same thing, but on a much, MUCH lesser scale.)

This feature can either be accomplished by making a brand new form of harnessing block which the beam will pass through, like a combiner. Or give the combiner an option to harness a set % of the beam's energy, acting like an active emitter. Except it won't redirect the beam, it'll outright just discharge it when it passes through the combiner and convert it into energy.

I really dont know about this as while it does sound and seem really cool, you DO need to charge the beam, every time it goes through a combiner in anything but a straight line it loses some of its energy, and there would be no real way to do it in a fair way because the harnesser you talked about would need to gain more energy per unit of laser energy then the laser energy took to make (so if it takes one watt in a generator to make one unit of laser energy, for the harnesser to work it would need to generate say 2 watts) and since there is no way to tell if a system is in a grid it just doesnt seem very easy to make (with that said, I did just think of something, what if the bigger the laser that went into the harnesser, the more efficient it was, so if you had a tiny beam, the harnesser was like .0005% efficient but if you had a huge one it was 300% efficient, so if you draw more power, it makes the beam weaker, then you have lowered the efficiency of the converter, so if you fire the beam, or it gits hit and discharges accidentally, then you need to use the batteries to recharge and recreate the loop)

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)

Last I checked, nothing about this mod is "fair" it can cut heavy armour like butter in literally .3 seconds, and it can RAPE defense shields with over 10 million hp in a few seconds to half a minute at most. This idea would only allow us to make a deadly weapon, into a deadly way to produce power. Much like how the Nuclear Reactors were made to produce power from the same science that made a weapon of mass destruction. It would give the mod more flavour rather than just a super fancy, glowy death star beam.

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.

Originally posted by тѕсм.Obi-Swag Kenobi:

Last I checked, nothing about this mod is "fair" it can cut heavy armour like butter in literally .3 seconds, and it can RAPE defense shields with over 10 million hp in a few seconds to half a minute at most. This idea would only allow us to make a deadly weapon, into a deadly way to produce power. Much like how the Nuclear Reactors were made to produce power from the same science that made a weapon of mass destruction. It would give the mod more flavour rather than just a super fancy, glowy death star beam.

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.

just because its hard hitting doesnt mean its not balanced, making a weapon that can do that is hard and a huge resource sink, and it takes a long time to charge.(in addition, one blast is unlikely to completely take out a ship, it will likely cripple it, but in the grand scheme of things the ship now just has a hole in it and if it was developed with some intention and not just squashed together it should be able to hold up for long enough to either get to safety or counter attack during the recharge time.

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

I've gotten my beams to last for up to 10 minutes with maximum output, trust me. They can and will annihilate ships that are up to 20k blocks in size, it's s t u p id.

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.

Originally posted by тѕсм.Obi-Swag Kenobi:

I've gotten my beams to last for up to 10 minutes with maximum output, trust me. They can and will annihilate ships that are up to 20k blocks in size, it's s t u p id.

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.

On the contrary just having electrical wiring isnt engineering, you can look at the mountains of videos from people like last stand gamer who spent hours analyzing how armour works, creating unique warheads, etc, which is engineering.(though yes they are not the majority, this is just the most blatant example of engineering in the game, even building ships well requires a relatively good understanding of where people are going to fire, how to armour well, weight, thruster placement, fuel usage if you are using hydrogen, etc though just all to lesser extents) Plus if having it be more complex was just alienating people then why did this mod take off at all, its harder to do, bigger, less reliable, most method of firing require moving parts (for the ions specficically as I believe you were refering to the ions when you talked about their power), etc. This is undeniably mountains more complex than a typical static weapon and yet it still ended up pretty well off. Additionally just because you see there as not being a heavy focus of engineering in the base game doesnt mean that modders cant or shouldnt put it in, mods make games better and while yes some people may have issues, lord knows I did, I as well as they, can learn to understand it better. (plus, if they dont understand the harnesser they wouldnt have to use it, just dont make it seem required on the mod page) Also i am not sure where you got dischargers from, i was saying the harnesser should discharge from the loop if its shaken so that it is a bit less reliable and can be shut down if you use it in places it shouldnt be used

(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)

I'm just not gonna argue the semantics of SE's definition of "Engineering" as that changes between half the community and their grand parents.

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.)

Originally posted by тѕсм.Obi-Swag Kenobi:

I'm just not gonna argue the semantics of SE's definition of "Engineering" as that changes between half the community and their grand parents.

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.)

They havent been designed yet at all? Your assuming that your idea has already been "designed" when it hasnt. 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 vs having one loop that everything draws from like a power core (as well as ADDING another layer of complexity since you could just turn up the harnesser in my concept to have it discharge while with the "discharger" you would need to remember and navigate to a completely different block to do so. 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). In adding a "discharger" you are also taking power away from the attackers and giving it to the person who already has an infinite power core, why should the person with the core have the option to instantly, or near instantly, shut it down and take its danger from ten billion to 0 in a flash, it takes away any semblance of unreliablity thereby making the entire system just a place down and get infinite power thing. To further this issue you stated that the harnesser should be used to charge it more, while its charging, meaning that it takes no skill or planning to reload the loop as it essentially does it itself further lowering the risk and skill requirements for whoever uses it. And this is all ignoring the fact that weaponry and power generation cannot both follow loops and be even close to streamlined, my suggestion was one that proposed a simple system, make a loop, put a harnesser, done, BUT one that had deeper levels of complexity which, while you didnt NEED to think about or manage if you didnt want to, it would pretty much be a nessesity if you want a reliable reactor, wheras your suggesting to have a reactor which a person has to manage intently as almost a fulltime job deciding when to discharge when to charge what to put the harnesser at, etc, to just get bursts of power generation, which further increases the complexity requirement. 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.
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.

Alright, here we go again.
----------------------

"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.
-------------

"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.
-----------------

"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.
----------------------

"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.
----------------------

"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.
-------------

"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.

Originally posted by тѕсм.Obi-Swag Kenobi:

Alright, here we go again.
----------------------

"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.
-------------

"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.
-----------------

"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.
----------------------

"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.
----------------------

"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.
-------------

"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.

(im just going to use numbers because at this point this has expanded so much its just going to get convoluted to say coherently)
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

I love how steam censored half of your technically, but yeah. The batteries could be OP, hence why that part could just be a part of the harnessers / dischargers, or just be a normal battery capable of storing like 100mw of power with insane input potential and normal output potential, making it more like a transformer rather than an actual power storage.

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.

Personally, I'd like to see a "Laser Fusion" reactor type block that has a H2 input on top and bottom, and laser inputs on side faces, inspired by inertial confinement fusion. Requires full power laser input on each face every few seconds to generate output power, possibly from multiple beams per face, so using capacitors gives better power returns than networks of lasers to maintain constant stream of laser input.

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.