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Proposal for a neutral energy system


Zarcata

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Since I am thinking about how to proceed with an "energy system", I have written down some ideas that I could imagine without such a system degenerating into a kind of permanent commitment.


I would be in favor of an energy system if it were some sort of roleplay or design idea. As an example, one has an industrial plant and it needs (number) a lot of electricity, the bigger this plant, the more electricity I need.

Now I can imagine, I need:

- Solarpannel /blast furnaces/coal factories/atomic piles/wind turbines/water pumps/totally creative alien technology stuff.
 I then need to place these on the core or the area (? area would be better to build it more stylishly into the terrain) so that they generate electricity. 

After that I have to lead them with lines to substations or transformer stations or into energy storages ...... - and that's it.

The energy is always generated, depending on the type of current, no calibration, no maintenance or any compulsory play. The setup for this has to be appropriately costly and the more industry you want to run, the more of the power stuff I need.

You could also go and introduce some kind of overproduction, then offer it in an energy exchange menu and trade it. If someone wants only green power or others do not want any power generation at all for style reasons on the area....


I have translated the whole thing, since I am not sure if the translations are always correct, here is just my original.

Quote

 

Moin. Da ich mir Gedanken mache, wie es mit einem "Energiesystem" weitergehen wird, habe ich mir dazu einige Ideen aufgeschrieben, die ich mir vorstellen könnte, ohne, dass ein solches System in einer Art Dauer-Verpflichtung ausartet.


Ich würde ein Energiesystem befürworten, wenn es eine Art Roleplay oder Designidee sein würde. Als Beispiel: Man hat eine Industrieanlage und diese benötigt (Zahl) viel Strom, je größer diese Anlage, desto mehr Strom benötige ich.

Nun kann ich mir vorstellen, ich brauche:

- Solarpannel /Hochöfen/Kohlefabriken/Atommeiler/ Windräder /Windturbinen/ Wasserpumpen/ total kreative Alientechnologiedingszeugs
 Diese muss ich dann auf dem Core oder dem Gebiet (? Gebiet wäre besser, um es stilvoller ins Gelände zu bauen) setzen, damit sie Strom Erzeugen. 

Danach muss ich also diese noch mit Leitungen zu Umspannwerken oder Traffo-Stationen leiten oder in Energiespeicher ..... - fertig.

Die Energie wird je nach Strom-Typ immer generiert, kein Kalibrieren, keine Instandsetzung oder irgendein Pflichtspielchen. Der Aufbau dafür muss entsprechend kostenintensiv sein und je mehr Industrie man betreiben möchte, desto mehr von dem Stromzeugs brauche ich.

Man könnte auch hingehen und eine Art Überproduktion einführen, diese dann in einem Energie-Börsen-Menü anbieten und handeln. Fall jemand nur Ökostrom möchte oder andere gar keine Stromerzeugung aus Stylegründen auf dem Gebiet will....

 

 

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10 minutes ago, VandelayIndustries said:

3 years this has been discussed.  If NQ could of done it would have by now.  


 

I assume that from NQ's perspective, an energy system should limit players in the first place. But since currently mining has already been removed and a fixed limit has been built in through the calibrations, you don't need an energy system to give further restrictions to the players. therefore, the system as such could simply be built in as a design element here, which could then also be used as a trade in energy for large industrialists on the side. 

It should not be another serious restriction. (Except for those with mega factories) but an interesting and fun content that brings some variety to the game. 
 

I think good games thrive on creating content that is fun, has creative elements, and connects players to each other in a positive way without getting too deep into the individual player's whole game. At the moment, DualUniverse still lacks variety for me.

the energy system offers enormous design possibilities, new elements, a new demand on the market. At the same time, I would also bring more "housing elements" into the game. More, furniture, more plants, trees, flowers (By the way, there are over 500,000 different types of plants in the world, if you took those 1:1 into the game, it would be gigantic content, and everyone could grab a part of it as a player and build it up to provide for other players. There could be parks, forests, tropical forests, there's a tremendous amount of design possibilities because of that. Likewise, you can use that to build other systems of the game world on top of that, because you can create other things out of plants as well. You can make potions, medicine, buffffood or pigments for color designs and much more. I don't understand why there are so few creative possibilities in the game.... the possibilities are endless, as is the time players could spend on them.

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I think we need both the passive + the active. Similar to what you envisioned there should be several passive power sources limited in number a player can own (per tile?), but also a baseline power level that is allways available if a tile is active, and then some generators for the really big users... plus a few storages for the passives, so they can maintain an equal output throughout the day. Something akin to those orders of magnitude:

 

Baseline power 15Mw, let's just call em MW for the example's sake.

Passive like something up to 10 units at 50MW, output highly dependant on environment + expensive elements.

Active like 150-200-250MW according to fuel, guzzles about 5-20kl a day, but cheap elements.

 

A refiner, or metalwork, or electronics industry would take 1-5 MW (1 for basic, 5 for exotic), the larger assemblers would need quite a bit more than that.

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I would like to see power take over for taxes and timers for inactive constructs. 

You must keep power in all constructs. The power fuel could last weeks or more. 

If NQ wants a quanta sink, make fuel only obtainable with quanta.

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2 hours ago, Endstar said:

I would like to see power take over for taxes and timers for inactive constructs. 

You must keep power in all constructs. The power fuel could last weeks or more. 

If NQ wants a quanta sink, make fuel only obtainable with quanta.

 

We don't need any more Quanta departures, what we really need is game content. Many players, myself included, just want to build - so why do I need quanta? Quanta has already been introduced for schematics as a constraint, as well as taxes being brought into the game as another constraint. Why should even more paternalism be added to the game if no game content can be created with it?

The energy system can be a lot of fun neutrally and can also offer great design possibilities depending on the implementation. However, if it becomes like a tax and penalty for players, more players will leave the game.

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Power management IS game content, having to take the power requirements for your bases and ships into account shoudl be an integral part of design and managing your constructs. Games like Space engineers show how complex and multifacated this can get with fairly simpe means.


I posted on this months back here..

 

And I've seen quite a few good suggestions and idea floating around. Unfortunately none of it even got the attention of NQ as it is increasingly obvious they do not read and/or followup on such posts, eithere with us or internally.

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4 hours ago, blazemonger said:

And I've seen quite a few good suggestions and idea floating around. Unfortunately none of it even got the attention of NQ as it is increasingly obvious they do not read and/or followup on such posts, eithere with us or internally.

 

They know. Its likely more about old problem of "disign debt". NQ cant change feature X (even if they want) because it connected with feature B, but to change B they need W[ipe], and this they can't afford. 

 

So they walking in circles how to change things without chaning them too much, so anti-wipers not tear them apart. Hostages to own foolish promises.

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  • 3 weeks later...

I see energy as more as a pvp addition, making players favor design choices that are specialized. It kind of reminds me of an FPS called MAG on PS3, where every weapon, attachment, grenade, and even armor had an equip value. 
 

You could run heavy armor, but then you had to run more cqc oriented weapons with smaller attachments or less grenades. On the flip side, you could run light armor and have the ability to run a silenced weapon, sensor jammer (add this plz), and motion detectors to be a glass cannon of sorts.

 

DU should be the same. Max energy output could be determined by core size. From there, each combat element would have a set power drain. That way, they could drop the restrictions of having only certain weapons on certain size cores.
 

Maybe you run bigger shields, and fewer weapons. Maybe you run bigger guns, but weaker shields. Do you run a warp core so you can bug out/ambush? You can, but it would lessen available energy for other combat capabilities. They could even introduce CCS restoration lasers that use a lot of energy, so you could have ships that could specialize in healing friendly units.

 

This could work for mining lasers, too! Have a similar mini game to mining units, and when you’ve found the ore, you can engage your laser to blast a tunnel directly to the ore. But make sure you have a friend nearby, because you won’t be able to defend yourself or warp out as quickly.

 

I’d also make it to where efficient designs engage warp more quickly and use fewer warp cores, if you have a surplus of unused energy. That way heavy combat ships have a harder time chasing down and getting the drop on weaker ships and specialized haulers can move about more efficiently.

 

Honestly, if energy is done correctly, it could change the game for the better in so many ways.

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32 minutes ago, Novidian Prime said:

Max energy output could be determined by core size. From there, each combat element would have a set power drain.

Thats a fake restriction that limits creativity. 

 

I am all for power requirements being added to the game.  But power generation should never be tied to core size.  Power generation should be tied to generators. and power storage should be transferable from core to core.  If you want to have multiple power generators on a single core, so be it. If you want to have multiple power storage and have your ship run off only batteries so be it.  

 

Your limiting factor then becomes the size of the items on your core, The weight of the items on your core, the cost of the items on your core, The cost to maintain (fuel) those items on your core. 

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On 2/14/2022 at 4:20 PM, RugesV said:

Thats a fake restriction that limits creativity. 

 

I am all for power requirements being added to the game.  But power generation should never be tied to core size.  Power generation should be tied to generators. and power storage should be transferable from core to core.  If you want to have multiple power generators on a single core, so be it. If you want to have multiple power storage and have your ship run off only batteries so be it.  

 

Your limiting factor then becomes the size of the items on your core, The weight of the items on your core, the cost of the items on your core, The cost to maintain (fuel) those items on your core. 


So when that goes live, no one can do anything until they literally run to market and everyone has to completely redesign their ships (because size is a restriction in this scenario.)?

 

We already have to run an excessive amount of elements just to make functional crafts, I’m not a fan of having to jam even more of them into ships and bloat builds more than they have to be.

 

Now, if they buffed flight elements and brakes to where you don’t need 20-60 wings and 20-40 brakes to not die in a fiery disaster, it could work. Even then, it’s massively inconvenient because it would turn every design that came before it on its head. 
 

All in all, as things are now at least, I would hate to see more size restrictions imposed on builders. Perhaps every ship could have a baseline amount that is reasonable, but you could add generators to boost those numbers. That seems fair, at least.

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On 1/21/2022 at 12:19 AM, VandelayIndustries said:

3 years this has been discussed.  If NQ could of done it would have by now.  

Nah I disagree with that statement. It sounds cool as a sound bite but is actually just not true. 
 

They could have cleared the crap off all the market place landing platforms years ago. Instead they jumped through all sorts of ridiculous and intricate hoops requiring a relatively large amount of effort - redoing all the markets. Some of us said it wouldn’t work and in the end, as expected, their efforts achieved nothing.   Moving the institutes away from the markets merely added inconvenience to players trying to do their tutorials and adding extra landing platforms and spacing out the ships is a great example of patching the titanic with gum tape. 
 

Yesterday, cores on aphelia property started to be abandoned and within 48 hours they will all be gone. Thus “if they could have, they would have,” is not correct. 
 

clearly abandoning cores could have been done a year ago when people were initially complaining about marketplace trash but they chose not to. 
 

I believe “they can but they choose not to” Is a more accurate statement in this case. 

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19 hours ago, Novidian Prime said:


So when that goes live, no one can do anything until they literally run to market and everyone has to completely redesign their ships (because size is a restriction in this scenario.)?

Sorry, 

"Your limiting factor then becomes the size of the items on your core, The weight of the items on your core, the cost of the items on your core, The cost to maintain (fuel) those items on your core. "

 

should read 

"Your limiting factor then becomes the physical size of the items on your core, the weight of the items on your core, the cost of the items on your core, the cost to maintain (fuel) those items on your core."

 

I am not reffering to limiting L items to L core.  I am refering to only being able to fit 10 expanded XL containers onto a small core before you cannot place any more inside the build box because there is no more space. 

 

I also feel anytime a new items goes to live it should never be required for the first month.  For instance if power ever gets added to the game it should never be required on day one. Put the power generators and storages devices in. put the UI in to show our power collection/storage/usage/required.  Allow players to get the schematics to build the power stuff. and the days that will be required to build those items. Let the players go scan territories for good thermal, or wind power. Allow players to get ships and factories setup so when power is required all there stuff is already working. 

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Energy systems for ships should be very simple. They need to add a point system similar to gunner chairs to dynamic cores. Every core size has a certain number of points to be spent and every element costs points. Example:

 

Small Core - 10000 pts

  • 3 Large atmo engines = 3000 pts 
  • 1 Large atmo tank = 1000 pts
  • 10 Large adjusters = 1000 pts
  • etc.....

This may seem like a nerf but what would happen is NQ could now actually balance the game where you only need a reasonable amount of elements to make a viable ship. The current system rewards just sticking as much stuff on a core that can fit. There is only one downside to adding more and more elements to a ship... fuel efficiency. That is not a big enough downside to able to make all in one/hyper capable ships with very little effort in engineering. This would also make elements of higher rarity become exponentially more important to ship capability. They could even introduce rarity to cores that have higher core point counts or add a new element that is extremely heavy but add to core point count making heavy/tanky builds possible but niche. They will never be able to balance the game without some sort of limiter like this in the game. Imagine gunner seats with no point limit. It makes about as much sense to not have it on cores. 

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