Energy production/use

[elliotg]

I agree that we need a better view of how your weapons energy use relates to your reactor energy output.

We'll add a line in the Weapons panel on the Design screen to show the "total weapons energy use per second". You can then relate that to your reactor energy output to better balance your designs.

[lancer]

Goodaye Elliot,

We'll add a line in the Weapons panel on the Design screen to show the "total weapons energy use per second". You can then relate that to your reactor energy output to better balance your designs.

Sounds good.

Any chance of telling us how a Stars energy output stats impact on passive Energy Collectors?

Cheers,
Lancer

[Gertjan]

Elliot, please also adjust the AI designs in a more optimal way (for people that dont like to micro this aspect). For example, by increasing the nr of reactors to benefit fully from all the weapons capability a ship has.

[Fishman]

It's interesting to note how in every 4X game to date, AI ship design has always been crap, even though the art of AI designing was perfected back in 1982 with Eurisko in Traveller TCS.

[Sliverine]

My guess is, energy output is per second. fuel burnt is per 1000 energy produced which when multiplied by (energy output / 1000), gives fuel consumed per second. Energy storage is the amount of energy it can store (or rather, the amount of energy it will attempt to store) so for a basic reactor with 59 energy output and 105 storage, assuming the reactor just started running with 0/105 energy, at 1 second, it will have 59/105 energy and by the 2nd second, it wld have maxed out. If we assume that the ship has 0 energy consumption (a theoretical value), the reactor will shut off after its energy banks have been filled. A better way of thinking in order to understand this whole thing is to assume that all energy usage will be subtracted from the storage (batteries) and not from the engines. The energy generated will go straight to the storage and nowhere else. Therefore, if your usage is greater then your production, your batteries will run dry and when that happens, certain components will shut down to allow other components to run (makes no sense for complete ship failure just because you use 1 more energy then you can produce with everything running). Now if only we knew in which order will components shut down during a shortage of power...wld it be weapons first? or sensors? or maybe shields?

On further thought it would be nice if this game was customizable to the extent where we can define which components are 'mission critical' and which components are 'secondary' so that we can always be sure some components will be prioritized in the event of energy shortage. It wouldnt be much use to shut down engines in battle so that scanners can be operated (assuming standard circumstances of course...). And on even further thought, if there can be 'stances' that can be set for each ship on-the-fly to quickly switch the priority of energy distribution (like for example, aggressive stance prioritises weapons and evasive engines) it would be even nicer.

On a side note, there should be some ship or components designed to disable ships or to evade detection (like emp or cloak or smth similar). It wld add more tactical playability to the game. Furthermore, you guys should really include a research base template. Its sort of irritating when u have more then one different star base design and when u select your construction ship, it doesnt state which design its making, merely the generic template : star base.

[JonathanStrange]

As one who loves to tinker with optimal design, I like the discussion! I think a Galactic Emperor would have more "important" matters to deal with but if you're into ship design...

It's interesting to note how in every 4X game to date, AI ship design has always been crap, even though the art of AI designing was perfected back in 1982 with Eurisko in Traveller TCS.

I would think that pre-designed (by the game creator/developer) ships would be at least adequate but allowing the AI? Risky business that.