Cosmoteer Release Candidate 0.14.10_rc1 - Ion Beam Prisms!

Catelyn

Walt no like: it works between different friendly ships, but not the same ship.

Walt

Equalizer Would 95% really matter for a final direction changer? That is a pretty small loss. It is just needs to prevent a massive chain of prisms.

If you feed a massive beam through a bunch of prisms, yeah it matters.

Equalizer Smallest beam first results in a binary tree being optimal for beam efficiency I believe, since the beams merged should always have equal strength to avoid excessive loss.

Yeah, and I think binary tree beam networks are the most interesting for ship design.

Currently I'm leaning towards the "smallest beam first" approach but with a condition that discards small beams that would actually subtract from the total power.

Dalas120 Would ignoring the # of prisms solve both these problems? Single prisms would still be viable as direction-changers, but each additional ion beam would be less efficient than the last one, like railgun accelerators.

It solves both problems but I think results in less interesting ship design than a mechanic that encourages "binary tree" beam structures. I'll think about it though, there's definitely something to be said for just keeping things simple.

dafeeeeeeeeeesh

Walt
what if you made the large ion beam a feature where it can fire at 100% efficiently but only for a short time 5-10 seconds and then have a period of time where its efficiently is the same as a small ion beam.

Walt

dafeeeeeeeeeesh Why?

dafeeeeeeeeeesh

Walt
allows a very powerful ion beam without making it always better than having multiple ion beams.

Walt

Dalas120 So I'm experimenting with making the dropoff based on final output power (i.e. number of beam emitters) instead of dropping off at each prism. One weird problem with not having any power dropoff between prisms is that closed prism loops can build up rather ridiculous amounts of power:

Terket

Walt I'm fine with stored power, as long as it doesn't build up fast.

Lafiel

Walt For the phasers I need power only instead emitter numbers but the same problem would still apply. So why not make it optional to set a max power a prism can emit regardless of input.
I don't mean it as a UI option but as setup setting...

Dalas120

Walt That's one beautiful red blur

RedAndCosmoteer

Dalas120 indeed

RandomCommander

So I found this in the Ask-Walt section of the discord. Whoever made this should get an award.

RedAndCosmoteer

RandomCommander Okay now that is genius.

Nordwolf

Walt Some thoughts and ideas about fixed omni-angles.

So far I have made the odd angled prisms work, here's an example:

Prism focus
A very rough idea representation

And here were my steps:
1. Turn off ion emitters
2. Target structure on the other side of the armour holes with prisms
3. Lock prism rotation
4. Untarget the prisms so they don't damage friendly structure
5. Turn on Ions

And now I have working angled prisms, but it takes an unreasonable amount of time to do so it's not really viable in normal games.

Among many ideas here's one I that I think is easiest right now:
Allow prisms to "link" or point to friendly structure, with it being saved.

This would both solve it from the UI perspective and you don't need to add a bunch of functionality to save turret angles in designs (Although I would still love for that to be possible) and it makes such designs possible and reasonable to use.

Lafiel

Nordwolf Dumb If it's simple bugs or thing then here but if it's something new then post in suggestions or if it's related to something already posted then add to that threat e.g. https://forum.cosmoteer.net/d/9053-prism-concentrate-on-me-component-network-feature

Nordwolf

Also a major feature to make it possible - when spawning a ship, spawn it with prisms already rotated to their link target, that way your can set the prisms to have locked rotations even if they are linked to a target located at an odd angle.
(And you would want a fixed angle in case the structure you are targeting gets destroyed or disconnected from the ship)

Dumb

Just wanna confirm before posting my idea,should suggesting additional features for the prisms be in here or should i just create an idea and suggestion post?