quote:
Originally posted by Suicide Junkie:
The easy solution is to make one star in every system, hidden as a pure-black masked square. Then your reactors always work.
When your reactors generate as much as they store, there is no diff between single, binary and trinary systems.
I wouldn't expect that to work, though, if the ship has other supply storage aboard. I.e., a ship with such a generator AND a supply storage compartment, I would expect to get its storage filled up by an amount proportional to the number of stars in the system... which again, seems worse to me than the problem it attempts to fix.
Seems like the black-masked sun would cause other possible sillyness as well, such as the ability to hit it with a core instability, sun destroyer, or to build planets without a star, and not be able to create a star in the system, and solar collectors working without a "real" star, etc.
Moreover, although I do have some solar supply generation in Proportions, in general I'm not really happy with it, because supplies to me represent ammo, food, parts, etc, as well as fuel/energy, and these components allow theoretically unlimited operation without returning to resupply those. I don't mind that much because it's ok for the game's abstraction level, and several types of supplies would likely complicate play for marginal gain. However, this to me is a reason against wanting to give engines supply generation - really they should convert fuel to energy - not generate unlimited fuel.
quote:
Originally posted by Suicide Junkie:
Sooo ... the fact that they generate energy from fuel ... means that they can store more fuel than a dedicated powerplant/fuel tank.
No. As you know, adding engines increases fuel consumption as quickly as it increases supply. So, if you have a design with X engines, and room for either another engine, or the same space in supply storage, adding an engine will not increase range, but adding supply storage will. Engines include some fuel (the supply storage ability), and (the way I rationalize it) the ability to convert engine fuel to energy, both for movement, and as a side-effect of generating movement. A ship with more engines may also have a more efficient (economy of scale) and certainly a more powerful system than a ship with fewer engines, and this is abstractly fudged in the only way that seems acceptable to me in current SE4, by the supply storage. (Actually, this is a rationalization of the de facto SE4 system rather than a cause and effect.)
As I've said before, I see engines and supply storage as different types of device altogether (apples and oranges). Their shared ability (supply storage) is an abstraction forced by SE4's single type of supplies. Engines probably take less design space than they actually involve if they were an internal system, but are limited by the max engines spec of the design. A non-engine component for generating energy for the ship without propulsion, I would probably give more supplies per kT than a supply storage component, but make much more expensive than a supply storage component (the supply storage components in Proportions are quite cheap).
As an example, suppose you have a Proportions ship design with 4 engines, some supply storage, and room and design allowance for two more 10-kT engines, or a 20-kT supply storage component, and for argument assume the engines have twice the supply rating that the 20-kT supply storage would have. If you add two engines, the ship will be faster, but will have less range (greater consumption, and the other non-engine supply will be constant, and so used up sooner). If you add the 20-kT supply, the ship will be slower and less expensive, but will have greater range. If the ship is defensive and doesn't move far from a supply source, the ship with more engines will have more shots with its weapons (more total supply, representing more efficient and powerful energy generation from fuel).
For the unmodded set, I think of it the same way, except the very high expense of supply components wants an explanation. I tend to think that this is to make extending fleet range a more expensive proposition, and assume there are a number of possible rationalizations for why it could make sense and exactly what it could represent, but I've never bothered.
Not entirely consistent, but about as good as other rationalizations, given the limits of the system, it seems to me.
PvK
Re: something I do not like in gold patch
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