APOLLO (0.26) - Discussion Thread

[Context]

Current shield as its coded in the game is just not going to work. First, the hard coded timers just don't work. I have to assume these are just temporary measures until power systems are placed in the game to create more natural soft barriers creating diminishing returns but still allowing a decrease in recharge time. As well as the many many other aspects to shield that make them actually interesting and worth for organizations to actually pay/employee shield system designers for more than just waiting some time for some talents and then plopping down the items.

 

Suggested additions as NQ designs power systems (if you are not already planning these specifics which part of me thinks you are):

 

Shields do not just turn on and off instantly with full power, they take time to generate a strong field. Once a shield is up, well no system can fight entropy it's not a zero loss system. Set the naturally energy loss just from being on to a small amount of say 0.01% per minute, however after a certain point of "over-charging the shields the base energy cost lost from entropy goes up on an exponential level, lets say a full 1% a minute at +50% total charge. Reactors and storage are both important. For storage have both batteries and capacitors. Capacitors would have a lower energy storage per cubic meter and but can release it faster, thus a ship would need both, capacitors to quick charge the shields when first turning them on, allowing them to be off or simply at 50% max capacity to limit energy drain (which honestly ignore the previous hypotheticals, the correct balanced amount will need to be tested by players until we fix all the loopholes which would make combat boring). Batteries would allow for higher energy storage density but the rate of output would be much slower.

 

Some focus on reactors now. Taking from current technology trends, there are two types of promising fusion technology being researched, tokamaks (specifically the stellarator design) and inertial confinement fusion. For the sake of sci-fi story telling lets say both types of fusion are successful with both having pro's and con's. Inertial confinement could be more efficient producing more energy per input of hydrogen, as well as an additional step in logistics of having to manufacture the hydrogen pellet's (like lots of them, and to make it interesting make the process of producing them simple but lots of time, so to supply a single confinement reactor someone has to run lots and lots of industry units just to maintain, similar to warp cells except more time and more industry to keep the supply up. Also, don't make this type of reactor a simple single entity, make it modular and code it so the larger you make it the more efficient it becomes but the more energy it produces. Also make it only viable on statics and space cores. This way there is a place for stellarators on both the ground and in space. On a smaller scale a stellerator is both simpler and much much smaller (assuming the confinement methods smallest size is always bigger than even the largest stellarators). Just add raw hydrogen and it's a single (or very small number of interacting) part(s). Either way both systems will be very heavy.

 

If power reactors and the large amount of batteries/capacitors required to make shields tanky are heavy enough, it will make those ships much harder to be fast and nimble. Thus a more natural balance between fast and protected will be met. Until power systems are introduced no amount of balancing will matter because we will always need a significant rebalance once power systems are introduced. Those are like half my thoughts on it, but the rest are reserved for response and for when what style of power systems are envisioned by NQ.