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  • Walt

  • Post #12

Dalas120 reduces depth (less crew management)

Is there actually any interesting crew management in how engine room pods were designed before this update?

There was some concern that decreasing congested crew speeds in non corridor rooms (as I did in the balance prototypes but haven't yet decided whether to include that in this update) would really hurt engine room pods. Allowing crew to deliver power to the engine room is in part a reaction to that concern, but also I just think it's cool.

Dalas120 And it's a HUGE buff to engine rooms, which were already must-haves.

I'm considering reducing the engine room buff back down to 50% as it was originally intended.

Dalas120 also, did I miss something? It sounds like this has been discussed already, but I didn't see anything on the discord

It's been discussed before yeah, but I don't remember where.

Dalas120 In the experimental balance mods, wasn't the nuke storage explosion reduced?

Yes, I might still do that.

Dalas120 Or, why not make the nuke explosion instant? That would get rid of any weirdness, and is probably a lot easier than making lots of physics changes.

Because I don't like how that feels, plus it's better for performance if the damage is spread out over multiple frames.

            • Walt

            • Post #13

            SpaceCat I know @Walt said this was tricky - but crew does decisions based on distance all the time - so i speculate it might be not too tricky.

            The problem is that when crew are delivering power to and engine room, they have no idea which thruster will receive the power. The engine room itself decides that on arrival.

              • Walt

              • Post #14

              newageofpower Uh. It still looks much worse than a regular nuke or two in Nord's video.

              The ship in that video is getting hit with 16 nuke storages. Pretty sure 16 real nukes would do a lot more damage than that.

                Walt Is there actually any interesting crew management in how engine room pods were designed before this update?

                Once you've built an optimized stand-alone engine pod I don't think there's much, but (for me at least) crew does have a lot of influence over how you arrange engines and reactors. Especially on smaller ships that try to power engines, shields, and weapons from the same reactor.

                Walt There was some concern that decreasing congested crew speeds in non corridor rooms (as I did in the balance prototypes but haven't yet decided whether to include that in this update) would really hurt engine room pods.

                That's a good point. I'm not sure it's necessarily a bad thing though - it might force people to plan room for corridors and walkways around thrusters.

                newageofpower Engine rooms are dominant in Elimination/Arena, but almost unseen in Domination; I wouldn't call them "must have".

                Isn't that because many Dom ships are too small for engine rooms, or don't even bring reactors (which makes engine rooms bad)? Almost every medium-large ship I've seen has used engine rooms by all thrusters.

                      Dalas120 Bug: when filling up a boost thruster via an engine room, crew bring many more batteries than are needed.

                      Also expierienced by now. No matter if used in normal mode or after depleting in boost mode.

                      Might this be in conjunction with (?):

                      Walt The problem is that when crew are delivering power to and engine room, they have no idea which thruster will receive the power. The engine room itself decides that on arrival.

                            SpaceCat Also expierienced by now. No matter if used in normal mode or after depleting in boost mode.

                            Already fixed.

                              Walt Uh. It still looks much worse than a regular nuke or two in Nord's video.

                              The ship in that video is getting hit with 16 nuke storages. Pretty sure 16 real nukes would do a lot more damage than that

                              Then again it is hard to fire 16 nukes at once - but still easy to deliver the storage bomb!
                              In the clip you see the ship igniting long before it gets to the target.
                              Nukes rly should explode in a short flash and not dragging for so long - not saying instant damage but very short.
                              (maybe making nuke anchoring obsolete ...)

                                Dalas120 Isn't that because many Dom ships are too small for engine rooms, or don't even bring reactors (which makes engine rooms bad)? Almost every medium-large ship I've seen has used engine rooms by all thrusters.

                                More that the majority of Dom combat is about trying to control the nodes; if your ship is insanely fast but regularly flies out of the node its usually a bad thing. Once the fleet sizes go up faster ships dedicated to hunting other ships can be useful, but zone control is the bread and butter of competitive domination.

                                And yeah, I play mostly 1.5m Elimination/Arena, where everything but turning thrusters (and usually those too) are always mounted on engine rooms. But the complaint about engine rooms being ubiquitous on 1.5m+ ships is like complaining shield generators are almost always featured under armor or weapons.

                                Dalas120 That's a good point. I'm not sure it's necessarily a bad thing though - it might force people to plan room for corridors and walkways around thrusters.

                                That would make thruster blocks further away from a reactor unworkable. Already even with storages touching the block , fed by double walkway can deplete on some of my centralized reactor designs.

                                      To me it seems like crew doesn't have a good idea of the ER power consumption, they seem to wildly underestimate the amount of crew needed to deliver the power, like half the crew stays in their bunks/quarters most of the time when ER is slowly running out of power. This is very noticeable on medium distances from a large reactor.

                                      Nordwolf I found a bug where crew don't consider thrusters to be connected to an engine room until it's operational. Could this be related?

                                        CaptainRedstone I don't think it is, it's mostly related to the fact that crew doesn't consider pickup delay on larger reactors. It's every noticeable in ERs because of the huge needs in electricity there and low supply on each thruster individually.

                                            • Kroom

                                            • Post #23
                                            • Edited

                                            Walt Its possible to add an option to the MultiAmmoStorage similar to DistributeEvenly but for all the combined amount? so when adding ammo or removing ammo all storages will have the same amount or the same percent amount.

                                            Also there are cases where crew don't want to deliver power to the thrusters.

                                            • Walt replied to this.

                                                Nordwolf To me it seems like crew doesn't have a good idea of the ER power consumption, they seem to wildly underestimate the amount of crew needed to deliver the power, like half the crew stays in their bunks/quarters most of the time when ER is slowly running out of power. This is very noticeable on medium distances from a large reactor.

                                                Can you please send me a saved game?

                                                CaptainRedstone I found a bug where crew don't consider thrusters to be connected to an engine room until it's operational. Could this be related?

                                                This is intentional.

                                                Kroom Its possible to add an option to the MultiAmmoStorage similar to DistributeEvenly but for all the combined amount? so when adding ammo or removing ammo all storages will have the same amount.

                                                If I understand you correctly, that's basically what PrioritizeLeastAmmo does.

                                                      Kroom Also there are cases where crew don't want to deliver power to the thrusters.

                                                      Yeah, if a thruster is connected to an engine room, crew will never delivery power directly to the thruster.

                                                          Walt If I understand you correctly, that's basically what PrioritizeLeastAmmo does.

                                                          What i mean is that every time the combined storage receive or remove ammo the combined amount of ammo will be distributed evenly within all parts.

                                                              Kroom I still don't understand. Can you give an example?

                                                                  Walt

                                                                  If you press 1 and fire it for a bit, you'll see that thrusters run out of power all the time while not utilizing the available crew, adding more crew obviously doesn't help.

                                                                    Nordwolf That's not a bug or the game's fault. It's a weakness of this system because instead of each thruster requesting to be supplied it all is funneled through the ER. Hence, ER surges are harder to cope with for the few crew that can supply it.

                                                                      Lafiel Yeah, that's exactly why I posted about it, crew doesn't realize the power consumption rate and undersupplues the ER. We had a similar problem back in the day when TBs were not being able to be supplied by no matter how much crew, but I believe the causes were different back then.

                                                                      • Walt replied to this.

                                                                          Not really necessarily different. The basic problems remain the same: 1. number of crew that can supply a part is limited 2. limited surface->limited door access->congestion
                                                                          Similarly, it's why larger reactors or higher production isn't necessarily an advantage...
                                                                          So this feature is great for small to medium ships but large ships will suffer.