Dibs Walts Intention in his initial post was to make them a viable choice, not a replacement.
Ideally I would like larger reactors to be generally the better choice on larger ships such that most larger ships use them, but for smaller reactors to still have uses.
Atarlost The math (graph theory specifically) says you can only have one source for your conduits in a section. A dual core system will not work as long as conduits cannot cross and Cosmoteer is 2d. Conduits crossing negate all the redundancy you want from dual cores as long as conduits chain react. If conduits do not chain react a single core can be armored such that the redundancy of dual cores is not needed.
With the mechanics as I originally described them, you could still potentially supply a single power storage from multiple reactors.
SpaceCat Maybe there was a missunderstanding what i meant with "layer" here.
Trying to explain: "Doors" are technically a "Layer". Not a layer you have to switch to but one that is always visible! You add them on existing parts - thats how i would see the conduit/cable "layer".
So like, would they go inside the walls or something? I don't really understand how your proposal would work.
Dibs The real question i have at the moment is how much can one of these larger power generators support.
My best guess at the moment:
- 3x3 reactors will produce triple the power and cost twice as much compared to a 2x2 reactor.
- 4x4 reactors will produce 8x the power and cost 4x as much compared to a 2x2 reactor.
I think these amounts will "feel" pretty right, but I worry that without something like conduits, the cost/space efficiencies of the larger reactors won't be sufficiently advantageous.
Dibs I am pretty sure they are designed to be a passable challenge for players progressing through single player, not PVP efficient bringers of noob death.
Correct, though even saying "designed to be" is pretty generous. Mostly they're just ships my friends and I have made that I threw in to the game so players would have something to fight against.
Once I get around to revamping singleplayer, I suspect most of the existing ships will be relegated to "classic" status and won't be spawned in singleplayer, which will instead have ships designed much more intentionally to have different challenges and skill levels and will likely be themed according to their factions.
Atarlost Since Walt's goal is to have centralized power like the Enterprise's warp core or the hypermatter reactor on a Star Destroyer, he must intend to somehow let reactors scale such that a single reactor core -- whether one component or a cluster -- can operate the largest scale he considers reasonable.
Probably not to the extreme that a ship the size of a Crescent Wrath or Archangel only needs one reactor, but if I could replace each reactor cluster in those ships with single 3x3 or 4x4 reactors, that would be good.
Atarlost The point of the idea was to not need larger reactors. You just honeycomb together more 2x2s.
Giving reactors some sort of adjacency buff is an interesting idea, I'll think about it. But from a lore/fantasy perspective, I still want to have larger reactors.
Ageofdoom I thing that the current power storage stock piles should be replaced with distribution banks that power all components in their field of influence thus centralizing power stockpiles but preventing reactor armoring, it also lessens the amount of leg work your crew need to do but it does mean that the distribution banks need to explode like the ammo stock piles.
I am almost certainly not going to do this, because it would greatly reduce the importance of crew, which is something I don't want to do.
Ageofdoom The other thing to do is make warp tiles for crew. They would be extremely expensive slow for a broken amount of armoured decentralization but would put moving walkways to shame.
Having transporter rooms that crew could use to teleport long distances at the expense of power could potentially be interesting (and also might be a way to board other ships).