Making Reactors More Interesting

[Aeonic]

These are my thoughts on how reactors could be given more variety.


-- Generic Variables --

value - How much the reactor is worth.

mass - How much the reactor weighs. Generally speaking heavier reactors can generate more power and/or have greater efficiency.



-- Fuel Efficiency --

Each reactor is assigned an optimal usage point, which is the amount of power being used (for example, 50MW of a 200MW max reactor). The closer the power usage is to the reactor's optimal usage point, the more efficiently the reactor will function. This way, reactors could be designed to function best near capacity, or function best with low power usage. Buying an extremely high powered reactor may actually be detrimental to your fuel efficiency if you're not using very much of that power.

For example, a reactor may have a peak efficiency of 20, but a minimum efficiency of 8. We'll say the reactor peaks at 200MW, but its optimal usage point is 50MW. Then suppose the player is using 80MW of power - we scale from between 100k and 40k and find out that the player is running at 17.6 efficiency. On the other hand, if the player was only using 25MW of power, he would only be running at 14 efficiency.

optimalUsage - The reactor's optimal usage point.

minFuelEfficiency - This is the reactor's fuel efficiency value when it is furthest from its optimal usage point.

maxFuelEfficiency - This is the reactor's fuel efficiency when exactly at its optimal usage point.



-- Fuel Technology --

minFuelTech - The reactor will not accept any kind of fuel below this level. If this value is -1, then the reactor has no minimum fuel tech level.

maxFuelTech - The reactor will not accept any kind of fuel above this level. If this value is -1, then the reactor has no maximum fuel tech level.

fuelAttributes - a list of attributes that each fuel unit must have in order to be used by this reactor.

maxFuel - How much fuel the reactor can hold. (Although quite honestly I'd rather have this be either another item or a player ship variable, or both...)



-- Reactor Overloading --

When a reactor is attempting to generate more power than it is safely capable of doing, there is a risk that the reactor will overload. On a similar note, some reactors may actually require a certain amount of power generation to function safely, and reducing power usage past a certain point may cause issues. When a reactor overloads, it does not damage the reactor, but it will fry whatever piece of equipment caused the reactor to overload. So if you attempt to fire you 25MW particle beams on a 10MW reactor, those particle beams will get damaged and will turn off.

maxPower - This is the maximum amount of power that the reactor is rated for. Technically the reactor can generate more power than this, but every moment that the reactor is over this point is a moment that could result in overloading.

overloadPoint - This is the absolute maximum amount of power that the reactor can generate before it WILL overload. Anything in between the reactor's maxPower and its overloadPoint provides a chance or a time limit for the reactor overloading.

underloadPoint - This is the minimum amount of power that the reactor can generate before it will get underloaded, which will result in the reactor being damaged, which reduces the reactor's maximum power generation (and thereby increases the reactor's chance of overloading when used past maxPower). Having an underload point means that, while a reactor may be really powerful and efficient, it could also come with an awkward limitation if you find that you're stuck in a position where you just need to power down and wait something out.

underloadTime - To prevent issues while switching equipment, a reactor which can be underloaded will also have time limit meaning that the reactor must remain underloaded for this length of time before any damage will occur.

Because of the difference between maxPower and overloadPoint, it may be possible to push some reactors past their rated limits, but only if the player is willing to accept the risk that a reactor may overload while doing so. If the reactor's overloadPoint is reasonably higher than the maxPower, then it might be fairly safe to go a bit over the reactor's max power for short periods of time, such as to fire a weapon periodically. A bell-curve formula might be nice for determining the reactor's chance of failure between maxPower and the overloadPoint.



-- Additional Features --

damageResistant - (Known as DR) Applying this value to a reactor gives a percent chance that the reactor will resist damage done by device damaging weapons. Such a damage resistant reactor would be inherently more expensive, meaning a player would have to choose whether they want to invest in a reactor that's going to stay at its current power, or take a cheaper reactor that could end up getting damaged.

overloadFailsafe - (Known as OFS) If the reactor attempts to use more power than its maxPower will allow, the overload fail safe will kick in and disable whatever attempted to generate the excessive power demands before it can do anything. This feature, available on some reactors, will prevent the reactor from being overloaded and damaging your equipment. It will also prevent anyone from attempting to "overclock" their reactors past the maxPower limit.

interconnecting - Reactors with this feature can be connected to form reactor assemblies. That means you can install multiple reactors on your ship which will work together. Yeah, I'm not expecting this feature to be implemented either, but it would sure be cool.

warningPoint - this is either the percentage or the amount of fuel that the reactor must have less than before it will start flashing and warn the player that they are running out of fuel.

fuelProtection - if used, this is the point at which the reactor will disable all installed equipment in order to protect the reactor from running out of fuel.

[Betelgeuse]

one thing that would be interesting would be a device that allows you to go overloaded for a short time. Kind of like a heat sink that would need some time to dissipate that heat. You could also do that kind of thing for emp damage.

[Aeonic]

If we had the ability to add reactor-enhancing devices, I can think of another slew of ideas for those.

[Aury]

If we had the ability to add reactor-enhancing devices, I can think of another slew of ideas for those.

I think we can... there's hex codes for them.

[Prophet]

For starter's I'd just like to be able to access the reactor power in code.

shpGetMaxPower
shpSetMaxPower
shpGetUsedPower
shpIncUsedPower

Mainly, I'd like to be able to control power usage of device and perhaps create some other items as additional methods of upgrading reactors.

I believe if we had these functions and put some events in the reactors almost all of those suggestions would be possible. The fuel suggestions may require overwriting dsRefuel though.

[Aeonic]

How many of those suggestions are doable with exiting functions? If I could upgrade the interestingness of reactors, I wouldn't have any problem overriding the default reactors. There are only seven of them, and they're in a very boring linear order of increasing power, and those descriptions are both mind-numbing and restrictive.

When one considers creating new reactors, they must also consider that the SN2500 is the most powerful reactor of its size, and the Koshiba-500 is the most powerful fusion reactor in existence. Therefor, any reactors with power over 250MW must weigh more than 5 tons, and anything generating more than 500MW must be non-fusion-based.

[Aury]

then again, this is a modder were talking about. you could just edit the descriptions.

[Aury]

quick note on fuel tech min and max; setting min to 1 makes no bottom limit, as min tech is one, and setting max to 25 means no max limit.