Reactor Weight Limitation and More Reactors

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Kourtious
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I think there should be more reactors and they should be differentiated by weight. Each ship should then have a limitation to the weight of the reactor they can install. This prevents all ships from installing all kinds of reactors and allow more varied types of reactor for each tier. For example, there could be the "nova" tier of reactors that may extend to 500MW but would be very heavy and may take up two device slots. I think this makes sense because it's unfeasible to think a Hornet-class battlepod to carry a gigawatt class reactor. This would then make it more realistic that weaker smaller ships would have a harder time using more powerful weapons. I know there are some disadvantages to this suggestion but I am open to hearing opinions.
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The reactors we have do get progressively heavier (which hurt Sapphire and Wolfen before 1.2 or 1.3 years ago, EI500 was largely unaffected). Late-game reactors are already quite heavy. Due to ships gradually leveling up their items until ten, they generally need power, at least 500 MW, preferably 1 GW, by endgame. As for more reactors, if it means crowding out the basic reactors the player needs to function, I would not want them.

Ships can have a maximum power limit, which sort of serves the same purpose. Power limits were unused before 1.8 or so, but if they are used now due to inheriting human tech, it is probably 1 GW (which can be overridden). For that idea to work, probably need to promote starter ships to midgame upgrades and give player new junk ships (like EI100, IAVs, and Ronins) with low power limit. Hornet appears to be a ship you can slap a power limit of say... 100 MW or 250 MW. There needs to be incentive to upgrade ships during the game.

For part 2 or Vault of the Galaxy, reactors are effectively built into ships and cannot be removed. Swapping reactors seems limited to adventures in Human Space.
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Ferdinand
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There are mods (Renegade comes to mind) that introduce different reactors. Using for example Uranium rods as fuel and having different power characteristics.
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AssumedPseudonym
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 If I was going to introduce a weight limit, it wouldn’t be on just one <DeviceType> like reactors. I’d do it on a per-device-slot basis with a one slot minimum, so any device less than one slot counts as a one-slot device. (In fact, I did this on the Gull in AE Playerships (though with an exemption for reactors since changing ships wasn’t a feature in vanilla at the time), and the system works fairly well on the whole.) So, for example, if you make a ship with a 5tps (ton per slot) limit, you would be able to equip a six ton CLAW (two slots), but not a six ton Urak mass driver (one ton). Granted, taking that approach would probably require a fairly radical device mass rebalance, since there’s currently very little resembling rhyme or reason involved when a Level 2 kinetic weapon weighs six tons per slot while a Level 9 positron weighs one-and-a-half.

 TBR also introduces a few new lines of reactors, one of which can only be refueled at stations and another of which require two slots to install.
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AssumedPseudonym wrote:
Tue Nov 19, 2019 4:15 am
So, for example, if you make a ship with a 5tps (ton per slot) limit, you would be able to equip a six ton CLAW (two slots), but not a six ton Urak mass driver (one ton). Granted, taking that approach would probably require a fairly radical device mass rebalance, since there’s currently very little resembling rhyme or reason involved when a Level 2 kinetic weapon weighs six tons per slot while a Level 9 positron weighs one-and-a-half.
Also, some items can have "massBonusPerCharge", which can change their eligibility for that mass system on a dime. One time, I considered charges for (ammoless) launchers as an alternative to leveling up (because launchers cannot have variable levels), and upgrading them made them heavier as a side-effect (because the upgrade method I chose effectively merged two items into one).
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It isn't a terrible idea to have more diversity in items, but I've said before in other places that there's a danger in making item balancing too realistic. Capital ships would logically have vastly larger, and therefore more powerful, equipment than can be mounted on gunships, making them impossible to fight with a gunship without much higher level equipment. The combination of friendly fire and ships being much larger than their "real" size in the spacial scale makes large swarms ineffective. And the engine doesn't really support controlling a capital ship well, even if the player could obtain one. Plus, obtaining a capital ship or fleet of gunships would require much more grinding for money than outfitting one gunship currently does.
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Quite alot more is possible whit reactors.
For example,

Have bigger reactors to power bigger engines, this can be Energy Volume ( currently ingame weight)
Weight 1 can be small weight -> ect ect -> weight 10 can be dreadnought


And more power for better shields weapons and equipment can be Energy Density ( currently ingame 25mW to 1GW )
laser kinetic and 1st grade missile launchers can use low power density, while high power density is needed for ion ect ect


Anyway, all chances to current system would lead to different gaming experience, and therefore up to George.
Nevertheless, i like the idea.
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