Space Engineers - Say goodbye to Starmade and Blockade runner. - Games

[QUOTE=NoDachi;43727783]Your reactor will only output up to X amount, and you can't make it go over that.[/QUOTE] B-but Scotty! I need more power!

bonus points if the pod happens to have a ramming tip, it points in the direction of the enemy ship, and most of the enemy ship's crew is boarding your soon-to-be-BOOM ship [editline]30th January 2014[/editline] muh merge

[QUOTE=Zukriuchen;43727752]It'd be cool if you could set a power limit for reactors. Assuming they're gonna use fuel in survival, I think that'd be pretty useful. For example, you generate 200 energy but flying with your ship only takes 100, so while you're not doing anything special you could set the reactors to work at 50% power and thus waste less fuel. Also, it'd be cool if the reactors stopped working if you flew for too long over the power limit. They'd either turn off, so you'd have to turn them back on manually; or go on a cooldown timer and automatically turn back on. If you used too much power at once, say, by firing a shitload of guns and using up more energy than you have reactors for, then they'd just straight up explode instead of ceasing to work[/QUOTE] Rather than a limit, why not storage? So rather than having more reactors than you need, the excess gets stored in batteries and released as needed. Also, you could shut off your reactors when your batteries are full.

Hopefully we can someday overload the reactors and use it as a self destruct. Capture my ship? Not todaaaay.

[QUOTE=Psychokitten;43727896]B-but Scotty! I need more power![/QUOTE] reroute it through the conduits and re-polarize the dilithium crystal nodes and that should get your your power

i hope overloading will take some creativity, so you can't just push the [B]MAKE REACTOR POW[/B] button and wait for an X amount of time before it detonates and you'll actually have to mess up the cooling or redirect heat venting in a pecific way or something something something explosion

all this is bringing me back nostalgic memories of dropping overloaded reactors onto planet surfaces in spacebuild :')

[QUOTE=Aathma;43728027]Rather than a limit, why not storage? So rather than having more reactors than you need, the excess gets stored in batteries and released as needed. Also, you could shut off your reactors when your batteries are full.[/QUOTE] This does stretch suspension of disbelief a tad though, considering the power scales the se ships run on, its hard to believe batteries would ever be a feasible option at a reasonable scale

[QUOTE=Shogoll;43728199]This does stretch suspension of disbelief a tad though, considering the power scales the se ships run on, its hard to believe batteries would ever be a feasible option at a reasonable scale[/QUOTE] But have you considered... [B]NUCLEAR[/B] batteries?

[QUOTE=Shogoll;43728199]This does stretch suspension of disbelief a tad though, considering the power scales the se ships run on, its hard to believe batteries would ever be a feasible option at a reasonable scale[/QUOTE] Battery technology in 2077 is going to be pretty awesome. They are currently working on a type of flow battery technology that stores energy in a single fluid that can be stored.

phone internet pls

Batteries in SE would probably provide equivalent power of a rector for like 30 seconds or something. Maybe less. I recall energy storage stats showing up when you turn off reactors anyway some I'm expecting something along those lines.

[QUOTE=NoDachi;43728149]all this is bringing me back nostalgic memories of dropping overloaded reactors onto planet surfaces in spacebuild :')[/QUOTE] A wild Quad-AA appears!

[QUOTE=Aathma;43728687]Batteries in SE would probably provide equivalent power of a rector for like 30 seconds or something. Maybe less. I recall energy storage stats showing up when you turn off reactors anyway some I'm expecting something along those lines.[/QUOTE] The problem I see with batteries is that there's a point where the necessary energy density of the batteries needs to be so high that they're practically reactors in their own right. To put it in perspective, the Jormungandr produces somewhere in the range of 90000 gigawatts, which is equivalent to 1.4 Hiroshima nukes going off every second. It's 39 times the current average total global power consumption. Even if there was a 1000 fold increase in battery energy density from non-rechargeable lithium batteries, which are the highest density actual batteries I can find, you'd still need ~675 cubic meters of battery to power the jormungandr for one second. I frankly find it rather optimistic that battery technology will scale to such levels without out right becoming reactors. [editline]30th January 2014[/editline] I mean you could get insane energy density out of something like a battery that charges by turning energy into matter and anti-matter and getting the energy back out by reacting them, but at that point you're just making a reactor

[QUOTE=blazingfly;43728317]But have you considered... [B]NUCLEAR[/B] batteries?[/QUOTE]there's our excuse for a massive self-destruct explosion

Keep in mind that most of the time reactors have high enough power densities that it's pointless to store excess power inefficiently in something with low power density when you could just scale down reactor power generation and not generate excess in the first place. also muh automerge

i wish there was a way to just swap/replace blocks because my small ships were an asspain to build and they fall apart if you try to retrobuild them with heavy armor [editline]30th January 2014[/editline] doesn't help that symmetry is borked

I think energy storage a-la Gmod LS is a good move.

If energy storage is added, they should add solar panels too.

I don't see how the batteries become reactors. One is storage and the other is a source. It's not supposed to be a replacement. Their use would be that they would be cheaper than a reactor. Also, they can be cheap backups if you accidentally run out of reactors or some of them are destroyed. They would be a good compliment to reactors.

[QUOTE=Aathma;43731105]I don't see how the batteries become reactors. One is storage and the other is a source. It's not supposed to be a replacement. Their use would be that they would be cheaper than a reactor. Also, they can be cheap backups if you accidentally run out of reactors or some of them are destroyed. They would be a good compliment to reactors.[/QUOTE] They're talking about the technical bits and realistic limitations.

[QUOTE=Aathma;43731105]I don't see how the batteries become reactors. One is storage and the other is a source. It's not supposed to be a replacement. Their use would be that they would be cheaper than a reactor. Also, they can be cheap backups if you accidentally run out of reactors or some of them are destroyed. They would be a good compliment to reactors.[/QUOTE] A reactor is like a non-rechargeable battery based on Uranium Ignots, a battery is like a reactor that can convert between uranium and electricity at will depending on the situation. Just because of physics in general the added necessity of reversibility in the reaction will make a battery less energy dense than a reactor on equivalent power output. I've had quite the extended discussion with other people regarding the subject already, however, and I suppose my current state on the matter is that I can suspend my disbelief enough for their existence in certain uses, even if I don't feel like they make a particular amount of sense.

We were talking about the batteries and solar panels in the Dev-test group. What about using them for space stations? You can charge you batteries, and run your lights/computers off your small-ish panels, then, if the situation requires it, you can drain your batteries, to use defense turrets and the like.

[QUOTE=Wazbat;43731358]We were talking about the batteries and solar panels in the Dev-test group. What about using them for space stations? You can charge you batteries, and run your lights/computers off your small-ish panels, then, if the situation requires it, you can drain your batteries, to use defense turrets and the like.[/QUOTE] Space Engineers is not set in a universe where energy is hard to get. Solar panels are indeed out of the scope of this game.

[QUOTE=blazingfly;43725583]Only trouble is that this could cause a bajeebus amount of lag unless they fix the lighting mechanics.[/QUOTE] I don't get any lag at all from interior lights, it's the spotlights that drag my fps into the ground

[QUOTE=Aathma;43731105]I don't see how the batteries become reactors. One is storage and the other is a source. It's not supposed to be a replacement. Their use would be that they would be cheaper than a reactor. Also, they can be cheap backups if you accidentally run out of reactors or some of them are destroyed. They would be a good compliment to reactors.[/QUOTE] Agreed. I was thinking something like this: Reactors output some amount of energy each second. A battery of the same level is the same size, and stores as much energy as a single reactor produces in about five minutes. Reasoning: Imagine you want to fire a weapon (or do something) that requires, say, ten reactors worth of power to fire once. Instead of needing a reactor room with ten reactors, you need one reactor to charge a few batteries, and if you want to fire multiple times, you'll have to wait for your batteries to recharge. I also think reactors should be very expensive to build, "fairly" cheap to keep running, and very explosive if destroyed. This, mostly because explosions are awesome and you can never have too many.

[QUOTE=Mbbird;43731376]Space Engineers is not set in a universe where energy is hard to get. Solar panels are indeed out of the scope of this game.[/QUOTE] Where did you pull that assumption from. Maybe in creative but in the realistic mode it require finding, collection, refining, and distribution. I don't think you can make that call yet.

[QUOTE=Aathma;43731606]Where did you pull that assumption from. Maybe in creative but in the realistic mode it require finding, collection, refining, and distribution. I don't think you can make that call yet.[/QUOTE] Because the reactors we're working with pump out mindblowingly large amounts of energy each second using whatever fuel it is that they're using.

[QUOTE=Shogoll;43731247]A reactor is like a non-rechargeable battery based on Uranium Ignots, a battery is like a reactor that can convert between uranium and electricity at will depending on the situation. Just because of physics in general the added necessity of reversibility in the reaction will make a battery less energy dense than a reactor on equivalent power output. I've had quite the extended discussion with other people regarding the subject already, however, and I suppose my current state on the matter is that I can suspend my disbelief enough for their existence in certain uses, even if I don't feel like they make a particular amount of sense.[/QUOTE] Maybe it's that new flywheel tech that NASA is working on? Converting between uranium and electricity? Batteries are for store electricity... nothing to do with conversion. Maybe you worded this badly and meant something else. Energy density has nothing to do with power output. [editline]30th January 2014[/editline] [QUOTE=Mbbird;43731637]Because the reactors we're working with pump out mindblowingly large amounts of energy each second using whatever fuel it is that they're using.[/QUOTE] And solar panels are good for things that may not need a whole reactor... like space bouys. I think the whole point is that solar panels are useful BECAUSE they produce less power and cost less and require no fuel. They really do have uses.

I finally got around to publishing the only ships I really bothered to finish [t]http://i.imgur.com/Aixh2sq.jpg[/t] [url]http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=222656910[/url] Feel free to use them to test your deadly space weapons.