Cosmoteer: Starship Architect & Commander

Cosmoteer: Starship Architect & Commander

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MMCT rework - power cables and stuff
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Tags: Mods
File Size
Posted
Updated
8.803 MB
28 Feb, 2024 @ 3:21pm
19 Aug @ 5:13pm
11 Change Notes ( view )

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MMCT rework - power cables and stuff

Description
This is a modified version of yobeefjerky's MMCT Cosmoteer mod.
Uses art assets and ideas from original mod, with permission from original author.
Warning: This is not exactly a drop-in replacement. Some ships will work, other will require complete redesign.
I am publishing this so more people can test and comment, it was troublesome to download and install this manually.


Changes compared to original

- Cables only connect with sides to each other.
- Cables and substations must be touching to connect as well.
- Substations can power everything in their radius, except for cables which have to be touching substations to exchange power.
- Capacitors can connect to cables and substations and push power to them, but then again, must be touching sides to work.
- Capacitors exchange power with all power_storage parts.
- Only wireless transfer is from substations (area around or line in front).

- Fixed larger hyperdrives to not be power black holes.
- Added stats to most parts

- Modular reactors are behind tech tree unlocks.

Mod compatibility

It should work out of the box will all new parts (they need TypeCategory `uses_power` and have BatteryStorage or LocalBatteryStorage Component) and capacitors (with TypeCategory `power_storage` and BatteryStorage Component).
This mod does interact with reactors with new part - connector. It will, among other functions, extract power from reactors and feed power grid without any crew interaction.
If a mod author does not add type category or battery storage is named differently, their part will not be recognized as one that uses power.
Most modded reactors and capacitors should work. If they inherit from base capacitor they will even distribute power between each other (beware of capacitor size differences). I they do not inherit, it will interact with cables in it has `power_storage` TypeCategory.
Most parts that require energy should work, unless their author on purpose or by accident did not made them as outlined above (that is, will not work if it is missing correct type category or has battery storage named differently).

Problems / Challenges

This system is made inefficient by loops in power grid. It will work, but with poor transfer rates as parts of energy will travel back the conduit.
To make it efficient, please make sure that there are no loops in cables (including most trivial case of four cables in a square) and no substation is in range of another substation (with some exceptions that can be found by experimentation).

With proper design, a single conduit line can power indefinitely 12 ions. With some tinkering and pushing power from both ends of line, there can be up to 24 ions constantly firing on a single line (more ions will simply have no power to operate as it will saturate conduit bandwidth).

Parts

- cables: corridor and armor pieces (1x1 and 1x2) - transports power.
- substations: area and line variants - distributes power to parts that use power.
- connector: a one way cable/substation hybrid. Can also drain power from reactors and power storages without any crew help. (design is not final, functionality of this part might change - please comment in a discussion thread!). Requires medium reactor to unlock.
- thermal modular reactor: reactor core, thermal pipes, steam turbine and transformers - can produce massive amounts of power (48 batteries/sec for single turbine setup, up to 4 turbines for single reactor core). Requires large reactor to unlock.

Ships?

Yeah, there is one ship that can be selected as a starter ship in career mode, normal difficulty, available from ship library.
Maybe in future enemy ships will contain parts from this mod to make them properly hard to beat.

Gameplay impact

Base game progress is limited by number of crew members you can have. Since this mod remove most of power delivery crew, it is possible to build much bigger and stronger ships with similar crew size, accelerating progression at mid game. Late game, it reduces crew requirements 2 to 5 times, depending on a ship design.
This mod also allows to create almost indestructible shields (think: large shield that receives 48 batteries every second. This is extreme case but possible), however so far I wasn't able to build something that had no counter (lots of EMP from disruptors or EMP rockets overpower shields quite easily. Also nukes - no way to tank those!).
Some of this is balanced out by additional command point requirements that some parts from this mod have and by logistic requirements (or puzzles) when creating efficient power grids.
Lastly, this mod promotes health among crew members as they no longer need to carry glowing plasma batteries in their bare hands.

Issue tracker if anyone cares is here.[github.com]
Popular Discussions View All (1)
3
29 Mar, 2024 @ 4:35am
New part: one-way connector
Garagoth
82 Comments
AnonaCraffter 9 hours ago 
can you add everything from the og mod like the high voltage cables and step up and step down transformers?
Drakos 11 hours ago 
Hello
I'm currently using this mod and have noticed that the cable corridors often don't work with the substations.
Despite being connected to a cable corridor, no power is being transferred. Only replacing them with cable armor establishes a connection. It would be great if you could fix that.
Drakos 11 hours ago 
AIs it possible to add the cable belts from the previous version back? That would be great.

Would it be possible to adjust the connector so that it can transfer power from all three sides to the front, not just from the back to the front?
I use the Functional Solar Generators mod to build micro ships. Unfortunately, the connector only works when the back is connected to the solar cell, not when it's attached to the side, so I can't build around corners with it. It would be great if that were possible ;)
STR4NGER_D4NGER 19 Aug @ 11:51pm 
"Planned/to do:
- heat management: heat consumers and producers!"

Turning heat into standard power would be so cool (Totally not imaging self powered OC shields)
Garagoth  [author] 19 Aug @ 5:16pm 
Hi!

I just updated the mod adding a bit of support for scorched status, overclocked capacitors (and reactors too), updates some part descriptions.
I am also working on new parts that interface with new heat system in base game, stay tuned!

If you notice any issues, please let me know!
M0DFAN1000 18 Aug @ 1:45pm 
@Garagoth Sorry I should have worded that better, I didn't do any real testing but just based off the numbers provided I came to the conclusion of a bottleneck as the large reactor has a twenty point twenty five generation rate and the cables state they can do fifteen a second if this actually isn't a bottleneck I apologize for the misunderstanding.
Garagoth  [author] 17 Aug @ 3:14pm 
@M0DFAN1000 "unable to support large reactor in overclock" - how so? What is your setup and outcome and what you expected to happen?
As far as I can see overclocked reactor generates batteries faster and produces batteries of bigger size (but size is not important for cables anyway).
You can connect more cables to reactor / connectors / feed more substations using crew and still max it out.
If you need to write more or attach screenshots you are welcome to do that on GitHub (link at the bottom of description).
Anyway, I am playing with heat and overclocking right now trying to test and asses what changes are needed or possible to keep things interesting, I am debating whether to create reactor turbine that feeds from heat or add steam boiler as alternative to reactor core and a new heat sink.
Any other suggestions for changes / improvements are welcome, but please to describe the use case in detail - and possibly on GitHub, it is much easier to track things there.
M0DFAN1000 16 Aug @ 7:23pm 
Quick question. Do you plan on increasing the power transfer rate because of the new overclocking feature, currently this mod is unable to support the large reactor in overclock?
Garagoth  [author] 16 Aug @ 5:37pm 
@JajajTec, could you please elaborate on "substations sometimes compleatly loose power and stop working until rebuilt" ? Any repeatable scenario?
Garagoth  [author] 16 Aug @ 5:23pm 
Thanks for report @JajajTec, I will try to fix it once I figure out how to handle overclocked parts.