Ok, I've now built and tested a reactor that can go into overdrive mode, effectively increasing the power output for a short time while consuming more fuel. I won't get into the technicalities here.
Now the possibilities have exploded.
A reactor could have it's own dockscreen to customize it's power output balanced with fuel efficiency. Reactors could go into hibernation mode and essentially shut down and stop using fuel.
Anyways, just wanted to put these options on the table.
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That all depends on where/how you want them to show up.
- Randomly showing up in stores is less reliable but doesn't require any overwriting.
- Adding a new station is a much greater undertaking but grants a greater amount of control.
- Overwriting an existing station to include specific items is easier and ensures screen time of the items but may collide with other mods that also overwrite the same station. If this option were used, I would vote for overwriting the Drydock as a logical choice for reactors, drives and maybe some other device. This could also solve the problem of the linear upgrade restrictions to reactors.
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And you're always talking like any change will cripple the reactor. I'm not talking about reactor crippling changes, I'm talking about give and take changes. You could have the choice of paying more outright for the reactor, or paying that money over time because the cheaper reactor uses more fuel. Do you want that powerful reactor NOW and make the payments, or do you want to save up for it? A reactor might be the same price as another reactor with half again the power output, but its efficiency allows it to go two or three times as long without refueling.
I don't think anyone will even notice non-crippling changes, just like you don't notice the fuel consumption of a device until it's so high you can't keep up with it. It's either good enough, in which case nothing else approaches the importance of power output, or it's not good enough, in which case it's a trade good.
Of the possibilities in that thread one is absurd (underload point is physically nonsensical) The others already exist or are impossible to script for the foreseeable future, except overloading and interconnecting. And Prophet's reactor overdrive is manual I expect, not automatic, which makes it not very useful. Hibernation is nearly if not entirely useless, the same effect being acheivable through shutting off devices with the 'b' menu. Automatic overdrive would require onFire and some sort of objOnItemInvoke to pick up on things like jumpdrive activation (or break every single mod with an invokable device that consumes power) and an onShieldDamage for ships as well as weapons. Two of those are on the timeline, but without the third automatic overloading won't work with invokable devices.
That leaves linkable reactors as the only thing that is currently scriptable or expected to be scriptable in 1.0 or 1.1 that will do what you actually want it to do. That's a matter of doing item swappings and will probably lose enhancments, though I can see a way to preserving them so they can be recovered when the assembly is broken into its constituent parts.
I replaced the "upgrade reactor" option with a purchase screen and added some code to give the drydock reactors and drives of levels 3 above the system level. while this is not balanced it does allow the opportunity to purchase whatever equipment you want rather than follow the predetermined upgrade path.
Alot of the options that were put forth in the other thread are not possible with the current script and having them added to a future version will probably not happen.
A comprehensive mod with many variations of reactors and drives is far overdue, considering the importance of reactors, I assume most modders just make their own. Drives can be very useful but are neglected in favor of more useful, combat device.
I, personally modded all the starting ships to come with installed reactors and drives and 2 extra slots, so they can upgraded throughout the game without sacrificing a slot (I consider them both to be essential, not optional)
I also dropped their base power and thrust down to 5. I wouldn't suggest going this far, it's a personal choice that may not be for everyone.
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I, personally modded all the starting ships to come with installed reactors and drives and 2 extra slots, so they can upgraded throughout the game without sacrificing a slot (I consider them both to be essential, not optional)
I also dropped their base power and thrust down to 5. I wouldn't suggest going this far, it's a personal choice that may not be for everyone.
This is very interesting, ships should always have a drive and reactor. Starting ships have a virtual reactor if you don't install one, so that at the first purchase you don't get an uninstalled one in your cargo.
Such a low base power and thrust without any drive can be problematic when you encounter Ventari ships, and your drive get damaged in the middle of the battle.
What I don't understand is why installing a drive and reactor take up device slots when they're replacing an existing drive or reactor. I suppose you could reason that the ship's starting reactor is never removed, which is why it never ends up in inventory, and same for the drives.
Personally I would very much like to have the game setup the way Prophet has it setup, where ships start with their own drives and reactors and these are removed in order to use something else. One big reason for this is that ships can never downgrade a drive in any area. You can never trade a ship's default drive to one that provides less acceleration but more top speed, or more acceleration and less top speed, than what the ship started with. Drives are only allowed to upgrade what your ship already has, and if one aspect of the drive is less than what you already have, it just won't affect anything.
In my opinion, anything that removes the choices and just creates a linear upgrade line, as it is with reactors, is just a bad setup.
Wolfy - just be glad Ventari don't have tractor beams.
Last Cause Of Death: Destroyed by Karl Svalbard's last Lucifer missile, right after I blew him up. And the crowd cheers.
Regarding reactors, what I'm thinking is that there could be a set of alternatives for each level of reactor upgrades.
You have 25, 50, 100, 150, 250, 500 and 1000. You could also perhaps throw 350 and 750 in there.
For each of those levels, there could be some variations, so you have a choice what you get based on what your ship is using and what you're trying to get out of it.
Say you're upgrading from a 50MW to a 100MW. You have some options:
- A standard Nova-100, fairly balanced in all respects.
- A reactor that has a higher power output but is less efficient.
- A reactor with a lower power output but is more efficient.
- A slightly more expensive reactor with a bigger fuel tank.
Maybe it makes a difference to you, may it doesn't. If it doesn't, just get whatever is cheapest. If you're a power freak, get the more powerful reactor. If you like efficiency, get the efficiency. Maybe you hate having to fuel up, so pay a little more for the bigger fuel tank.
In the end, I figure its like putting oil in your car. Frankly, most people don't care what kind of oil goes into their car as long as the thing keeps running, and that's fine. You're not required to care. But some people do care, and they want to optimize their car's performance by giving it oil designed for what their car does. A race car may need specialized oil, but if you put that oil in an economy car that doesn't need it you're throwing your money away. Maybe a big-rig needs more robust oil than a tiny coupe? It never hurts to have more choices, but its up to you whether you want to care about them or not.
Personally, I like having options, and I really don't give a crap what the military wants to use.
@Prophet - For some reason I'm paranoid about overriding things in the game that might create conflicts for something else, so I'd MUCH rather have a new station that handles installing reactors and/or drives. If you want to make the code for it, I can work on a custom station model.
Last Cause Of Death: Destroyed by Karl Svalbard's last Lucifer missile, right after I blew him up. And the crowd cheers.
digdug wrote:Such a low base power and thrust without any drive can be problematic when you encounter Ventari ships, and your drive get damaged in the middle of the battle.
This is a very good reason not to use preinstalled drives and low base thrust.
Just don't make the stock drives so low that you can't get the ship where it needs to go with them. As long as all the custom drives are at least a little better than the ship's stock drives, it shouldn't be too much of a problem.
Wouldn't be so much of a problem if there were items that would allow you to repair things such as your drives. Perhaps a drive repair kit. They can do it in Star Trek, why not Transcendence?
Last Cause Of Death: Destroyed by Karl Svalbard's last Lucifer missile, right after I blew him up. And the crowd cheers.
- New station that will sell mostly starship devices, no tradegoods, limited weapons, armour and shields. Actually, I've already started making a Merchant Convoy ship/station with something like this in mind. It's a ship that runs a traderoute with stations, traveling around the system. The player can dock with it (It only moves at a speed of 2) and buy/sell just like a station. It's not necessarily set in stone but it's something different to think about.
- Expanded reactor selection and drive selection. I know you've already got tons of ideas for these! We can make dozens of variations and set the frequency to "notRandom" so they are only available at the store we specify to avoid them showing up in loot all over the place. Even with veryRare if you have enough new items they show up.
- New playership variants with pre-installed drives and reactors and changes to the device slot allowances. The 3 vanilla ships (and maybe some of your other playerships?) in a separate file so players can choose to just have the station and new items or the new/changed ships or both. The biggest problem is the wolfen with a speed of 30 and a thrust of 300, it's drive is better than the Titan 440 (speed 25 and thrust 300) for 4250 creds and a power usage of 30 mW. It's total power draw is 37 mW (far above it's starting 10 mW reactor)
This would be a big step towards calculating each ship's starting worth and balancing them either by adding starting creds or equipment.
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I think you'll just wind up drawing attention to the stuff that doesn't make sense. If you give the Wolfen a "Titan 440a" with an extra 5 max speed you'd have to give it a 40mw reactor to compensate, but it'd still be unplayable because you can't feed a 30mw drive in a level 1 or 2 system. There's just not enough fuel in loot or enough income to buy fuel without exploits. Mining is not at all viable here because with a 30mw drive it won't pay for the fuel it takes to mine.
You're also either letting the sapphire and wolfen take free drive upgrades (since they'd normally stay with the starting drive to save slots) or taking away a slot neither can spare. Either will change the balance between the starting ships.
I like the idea of the slow-moving ship station, and I want to add more reactors, but I'm not sure about adding more drives or replacing default ships with them at the moment. I think replacing default ships would simply be too awkward with the way the game is setup, since it would essentially make any new player ships that get downloaded not compatible with the way the game works.
Regarding drives though, there's no reason why ship's can't have their drives replaces with unique, custom designed drives built just for their ship. If the Wolfen needs a unique drive with a high output and low cost for starters, that's fine, it won't necessarily need to upgrade right away. There's no need to improve the reactor.
Last Cause Of Death: Destroyed by Karl Svalbard's last Lucifer missile, right after I blew him up. And the crowd cheers.
