[Idea] Base Battery
SpacedInvader
Join Date: 2016-01-08 Member: 211083Members
Join Date: 2016-01-08 Member: 211083Members
With docking and docked charging of the Cyclops hopefully in the works, it occurred to me that a full charge of the sub is something none of my bases would be able to do in their current configuration. This is mostly due to the fact that the only way to add extra power storage is to install more power supplies, and I've been shying away from building solar or thermal farms beyond about 4-6. Even a nuclear reactor only has storage capacity for 500 units of power, which would again, not be enough to fully charge a Cyclops. While it might be unlikely that you'd be getting back to dock with only a few units of power left in the cells, even a partial charge would put a strain on the supply of any base that didn't have an unsightly farm of power supplies to hold the charge.
My idea would be a buildable base battery. This would be large enough that it could only fit into an empty room like the large aquarium (specifically so you can't install it into the cyclops), and hold something like 500 or 1000 units of power, though it would have no way to generate that power of its own accord. Instead it would need some other source of power, which would slowly charge it as part of the total capacity of the base. This would allow bases to have a relatively small number of power supplies, while also allowing for a large reserve of power to charge the Cyclops when you dock.
My idea would be a buildable base battery. This would be large enough that it could only fit into an empty room like the large aquarium (specifically so you can't install it into the cyclops), and hold something like 500 or 1000 units of power, though it would have no way to generate that power of its own accord. Instead it would need some other source of power, which would slowly charge it as part of the total capacity of the base. This would allow bases to have a relatively small number of power supplies, while also allowing for a large reserve of power to charge the Cyclops when you dock.
Comments
hell, for a place-holder you could even use the large aquarium and re-skin to opaque (and whoever goes swimming in the grey goo, well they'll probably get lost PDQ)
That grey goo bit got me laughing. Just make it impossible to put hatches on the battery and you'll be good.
I think though a battery should be slightly inefficient. Say 10 energy in only produces 8 energy stored, or maybe it loses energy over time (slowly). That way you're not gonna go building a powerhouse that runs on only 2 solar panels.
I disagree about the inefficiency there. The whole point of such an item would be to allow 2-4 solar panels to store up enough power while you're away from base for a day or two to be able to charge the cyclops when you get back rather than requiring a whole solar or thermal farm to accomplish the job.
I think it was supposed to be external (outside the base) like the generators.
Might be wrong though.
If they do this, they should remove the ability of the generators to store power internally.
Maybe not remove, but reduce. Eventually, everything will have to be found and scanned before you'll have the blueprint to build it, so if you don't have the battery blueprint, you still have to be able to store at least some power.
I'm sorry, I just can't conceive the idea of a submarine like that being fully charged by a couple solar panels. That's OP, totally OP. If you want a self-recharging fuel-less cyclops, it should probably require some other kind of generator for it. Anyway I'm not even suggesting a farm, 4/5 power doesn't mathematically translate from a couple solar panels to a farm, it translates to +1 panel.
You're ignoring the time component... 4 solar panels would take the better part of a day to store up 600 units of power. There is also some info in the daily checkins that indicates that they may be doubling the number of units of power in a power cell specifically so it takes longer to charge, so suddenly its looking like 4 panels would take around 1.5 - 2 full days to produce enough units of power to fully charge a cyclops. Honestly, I don't see how that can be considered OP? If I completely drain the sub and then dock it up, I won't have a full charge unless I've been away for more than 2 day / night cycles, and that is ignoring the potential that I would want to use some of that power for crafting, food prep, or recharging batteries and backup power cells.
You mean in-game days right? Because that's exactly how long you'll be away. A return trip to the mountain takes more than half an in-game day, and lost charge will be, what, 25%? 4 solar panels is really not a lot. IRL you're talking about barely heating a house. You're not propelling a 5000 tonne hunk of titanium through water. 8 titanium and 8 quartz, plus whatever the battery costs equates to a fully-charged cyclops and never ever having to craft power cells again.
More to the point, ignoring the concept of the cyclops, you're basically saying not having a battery is wasting power. No base should be without one. This shouldn't be the case.
This, by the way, is not real life, as evidenced by the fact that we can near magically craft a sub the size of the cyclops in a matter of seconds with only a small variety of raw materials. It is not impossible to believe that solar technology has advanced to the point by the time of the game that a couple of panels are efficient enough at generating power that they could build up that kind of charge in a couple of days.
This item is not meant to eliminate the need for a decent source of power, but rather to eliminate the possibility that docking your cyclops would completely drain your base of all power and then keep it drained until the subs cells have had their fill. The only other option I can see, other than expecting the devs to do some code hi-jinks so that charging a vehicle doesn't suck up power instantly, is to have a field of power supplies large enough to accommodate the charge, which is both ugly and potentially difficult to implement if you are using anything other than solar.
As the game currently stands you are right that the battery's only purpose would be to charge the cyclops. I do think solar power is a stretch however. 3D printing is already a thing, and so are synthetic materials (take industrial diamond for example), but nothing on this earth is able to produce masses of energy purely from sunlight, without taking up a lot of space or time. Rather than reducing a battery's efficiency then, perhaps solar panels should have slightly reduced power-intake, and other forms slightly increased to compensate.
One thing I am adamant about however, is that life can't be that easy, there must always be a catch to keep you searching until the game is completed.
[url="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_cell"[/url]
Problem solved.
lol yeah that could work I mean... you're surrounded by h20, of course you need to spend energy in order to charge said water to separate hydrogen from the oxygen which is where solar panels come into play.
People keep saying this, but I'm having trouble squaring it with the level of technology depicted in the game. I agree that there has to be a mechanism to keep you searching, but I think that mechanism is going to be related to the story and not to raw survival. Sure it should be a challenge to stay alive at first, but between farming (fish and plants), water purification, and fantasy technology, once you have the basic components in place, I just can't see it being hard to stay alive anymore without outside pressure (i.e. something attacking you). As it stands, limiting power source effectiveness won't make survival harder, it will just mean you have to build more, which then drops right back into the question of why bother forcing players to build more if it doesn't make it any more difficult?
I really hope they introduce basic power consumption like this into the game. It would make base building more complicated as each room you add would increase the power draw to keep it up and operating. It would also increase the need for something like this battery as it would make the prospect of completely draining the base power supply more dangerous.
If I remember right, the Devs are planning to implement a battery/powercell charger module. It might work as such buffer as well if it could feed back its stored energy on demand. Six of them plus six powercells would give an instant cyclops charger.
Besides the question of the source stays the same, but it looks pretty simple to me: Time vs quantity.
And I, too, read it somewhere. Let me think... Yeah, here:
http://subnautica.wikia.com/wiki/Accumulator