Naval Grid OXP

[Slartibartfast]

afaik -- the parts work this way ( pls. correct when i am wrong )

energy banks -- provide the energy for the whole ship
grid - distiributes the energy over the whole ship
E-units - provides the grid with akkumulated energy ( like a capacitor )


matthias

[Cholmondely]

afaik -- the parts work this way ( pls. correct when i am wrong )

energy banks -- provide the energy for the whole ship
grid - distributes the energy over the whole ship
E-units - provides the grid with accumulated energy ( like a capacitor )


matthias

Well, Matthias, the energy banks certainly work like that in Strangers World - they provide the energy for everything in the ship, and the energy comes from using up quirium fuel. No energy + no fuel = press "Space", commander.

But in the vanilla game, the fuel is irrelevant - energy banks just recharge whatever the fuel situation unless they are absorbing damage from attacks.

The historic write-ups of the EEU's (from the old Elite Manual) tend to agree with your reasoning, too:

An Extra Energy Unit may be fitted at planets of Tech level 8 or higher,
and doubles the energy bank replenishment rate. This is the energy unit
with the copper colored top. No other unit looks like it, or lasts like
it.

This is a joke based on Duracell batteries and their advertising campaign back in the old days: No other battery looks like it, or lasts like it.



Our wiki page on the EEU has a different understanding:

Basic energy banks have standard fittings for an additional generator, improving the rate at which your energy banks are able to recharge. Note that an EEU is not the same as an extra energy bank! Manufacturers include Berner Workshops, a subsidiary of Aegidian Industries based at Xexedi.

The reason that doubled energy units are not standard in of-the-'yard ships is affordability.

But the grid is only spoken of in the OXP as enabling flow between Energy Banks & Shields. I know that Phkb's mind-numbing Ship Configuration probably does rather more with it, but I was hoping to come out with something sensible just for this OXP's wiki page!

Yours sincerely,

Cholmondeley

[Slartibartfast]

Hmmmm

I am coming more and more to the opinion, that there is a need
for an energy-floating-diagramm, to make clear witch equipment
does what, where and how.

cheers
Matthias

[Cholmondely]

Hmmmm

I am coming more and more to the opinion, that there is a need
for an energy-floating-diagramm, to make clear witch equipment
does what, where and how.

cheers
Matthias

I totally agree with you. Alas, I lack the skills.

But, further, the oxp's muddy the waters as they tend to espouse different models.

But you are quite right, diagrammes would indeed make things much easier for people trying to work out what on earth is going on!



Reference: How does my Cobra's energy supply work?

[Slartibartfast]

Hello Cholmondely

But, further, the oxp's muddy the waters as they tend to espouse different models.

hmmm ..doesn't matter
a clear line how something (normal) works, makes it easier to show, how an extension works

and including that in a flow-chart -- i thing that, that is not an impossible project.

.. i can try to do that -- but then i need a little ( ore more ) help from our "elite"
and the possibility to upload .ods sheets
( i built one / upload / controll by our specialists / correction / update / upload / and so on
-- till itś o.k.

maybe two versions are necessary vanilla/normal -- i'd like to begin with "normal
cause - i think - thats for the most players

matthias

btw.
afair: i have seen some screenshots where the MFD shows "energy" with more than 100%
how could that be?
energy unit / does not
energy grid / does not
what else could that be?

[Slartibartfast]

Hello
@ mods -- maybe its better to splitt this diskussion

anyway
!!! standard game

where does the energy come from?
- the answer " from the machine" is not satisfying

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
i have just tried -- all fuel exhausted by injection / then stopped flying further on
to be shure that its empty - inititated fuel to energy (oxp)
==>> i have no fuel anymore

now started "range finder" - till my energy is near zero
before zero i stopped this
==> energy banks begin to reload.

where does the energy comes from?
-- fuel is not the answer!
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
====>> alcohol initiated idea
the HQVEE --- (Hawking Qantum Vakuum Energie Extractor )

-> replacing the energie recharge number with the number of max. HQVEE
-- every HQVEE makes 0,1 recharge ( for 3,0 recharge you'll need 30 HQVEE

the max. number of HQVEE should fit to the former energy recharge rate of an actual ship

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
EEU & NEU / why HQVEE?
...to make it logical

the HQVEE produces energy -- but "dirty" energy => only ~10% are useable
EEU - cleans the HQVEE energy so that more energy can be used ( x% )
NEU - cleans to y%
------------------------

for the game
++++ new buyable equipment that doesn't change gameplaying - but makes it more realistic
----- a lot of work for the developpers
++++ could preserve a lot of questions from players / and maybe - helps for making a energy-float-diagram


matthias

[Cholmondely]

Hello
@ mods -- maybe its better to splitt this diskussion

anyway
!!! standard game

where does the energy come from?
- the answer " from the machine" is not satisfying

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
i have just tried -- all fuel exhausted by injection / then stopped flying further on
to be shure that its empty - inititated fuel to energy (oxp)
==>> i have no fuel anymore

now started "range finder" - till my energy is near zero
before zero i stopped this
==> energy banks begin to reload.

where does the energy comes from?
-- fuel is not the answer!
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
====>> alcohol initiated idea
the HQVEE --- (Hawking Qantum Vakuum Energie Extractor )

-> replacing the energie recharge number with the number of max. HQVEE
-- every HQVEE makes 0,1 recharge ( for 3,0 recharge you'll need 30 HQVEE

the max. number of HQVEE should fit to the former energy recharge rate of an actual ship

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
EEU & NEU / why HQVEE?
...to make it logical

the HQVEE produces energy -- but "dirty" energy => only ~10% are useable
EEU - cleans the HQVEE energy so that more energy can be used ( x% )
NEU - cleans to y%
------------------------

for the game
++++ new buyable equipment that doesn't change gameplaying - but makes it more realistic
----- a lot of work for the developpers
++++ could preserve a lot of questions from players / and maybe - helps for making a energy-float-diagram


matthias

Right!

So Oolite is modelled on 8-bit Elite. Bell & Braben were creating a game, Holdstock came along and created Lore, including major chunks of the old ship's manual. The EEU description may well be Holdstock's.

Oolite started off with Aegidian (who modelled it on Elite, but by then there were a dozen slightly different Elites for the BBC, Archimedes, Spectrum, Apple II, etc) - and then all of us lot piled in too!

If I remember correctly, the conclusion of How does my Cobra's energy supply work? was indeterminate for the vanilla game.

The Elite/vanilla Oolite model makes little sense without a massive dose of Handwavium. But, created for an 8-bit game, where only Braben seems to have cared about such things - and was up to his eyeballs in programming rather than supervising, it is not too surprising, what?

Stranger's World rejigs things to make much more sense. I am quite sure that Phkb's Ship Configuration may well do so too, I just don't know it. He may well have a different rejig to Stranger's.
Red Herring: is it not just magnificent how the game is so modifiable that Stranger and Phkb can do this sort of thing!

From Dybal's post (a boffin), above:

The default model, as I see it, would be:

Energy generators -> accumulators (energy banks) -> shields

Extra Energy Unit and Naval Energy Unit are generators, which imply that engines aren't, and there are core game ships with low energy generation and high speed, like the Sidewinder Scout Ship.

In the core game, engines (cruising and Torus, not fuel injectors or wormhole generators) and energy generators are perpetual-motion devices, they work for free.

Now, if you run Stranger's World "HardWay OXP", the model changes:

fuel -> energy generators -> energy banks -> shields
fuel -> engines (cruising, Torus and fuel injectors)

My response

So Dybal understand there to be two perpetual motion machines (pmm's), the engine, and the energy generator.

There would seem to be three possible models on offer:

1) Dybal's dual perpetual motion machine. The EEU is now a third such pmm.
2) My assumption (based on Stranger's World): it is the engine that creates the energy which feeds the energy banks, and the EEU is either an independent power source (a second pmm) - or also feeds off the engine in some way.
3) The third logical possibility that the original Energy Unit/Generator both drives the engine and supplies the energy banks. The EEU only feeds the energy banks, and is a second pmm.

I presume that the game coding does not help clarify the issue (Why should it?).

Following Ockham's razor (entities - especially imaginary ones - should not be multiplied without necessity), I think that the second version of the second theory makes most sense. It also seems compatible (to me, at first glance) with both Stranger's HardWay model, and with Phkb's Ship Configuration OXP.

Niteowl's answer (a very helpful demi-boffin)

Basic Handwavium Premise: The Perpetual Motion Machine that is a ship's drive engine generates Heat.

That Heat needs to go somewhere lest the ship go boom. The Perpetual Motion Machine takes in stuff from space (Dark Matter, Hydrogen, anything else you might prefer). This stuff is then ignited in a combustion chamber resulting in a highly unstable plasma. This burning plasma is then expelled out through a ship's engine ports into the cold void of space in order to drive a ship forward. The greater the speed of a ship at a given moment the greater the amount of plasma generated hence the change in the size, shape, and color of the exhaust plume. It is that ignition/burning process that leads to the excess Heat that needs to be expelled from a ship.

The Extra Energy Unit and the Naval Energy Unit are advanced types of Thermoelectric Generators. These two items recycle a small portion of the excess heat that the Perpetual Motion Machine generates and converts that heat into energy. This converted heat energy then recharges the Energy Banks and, in turn, the Shields, and every other energy consuming device that a ship might be equipped with. The Naval Energy Unit can handle more heat and energy per second then the Extra Energy Unit so is capable of a higher recharge rate.

For something even more powerful and faster than the Naval Energy Unit one needs to look at the Eco Reactor from Norby's ECO LASERS. Highly recommended for the side mounts of your ship.

Disembodied's answer (supreme master of handwavium)

I don't think you need Perpetual Motion Machines … a small tokamak fusion reactor would do the trick. OK, it does technically use fuel, but in such minute quantities that it would be needlessly petty to account for it. A kilo of deuterium and tritium would be enough to keep a ship going for at least a decade or two. The EEU and NEU increase the reactor output by augmenting the tokamak's magnetic pinch-field with a system of rotating monopoles. The EEU has two, and the NEU has eight; obviously, you can't run these both simultaneously, or the whole assemblage would fly apart. This sort of failure is known as an EBVN event - Exciting, Brief, and Very Noisy.

In conclusion, I see this as yet another instantiation of the realism vs playability debate. Elite is playable and is incredibly small, game-code-wise. Stranger came up with a much more realistic modification, which I find enjoyable and playable.

One could invent another oxp to plug the logical gap (I doubt that the developers will do it for the vanilla game) - but Stranger (and Phkb?) have already plugged that gap. They have done so with mechanisms that have other aspects to them (Stranger's more realistic overall physics, Phkb's heat issues). I would suspect that to do something worthwhile here, that the HQVEE would need some special feature adding to the gameplay - some special fuel that can only be obtained by skimming at length around M-category stars for example (and which costs an arm and a leg to buy elsewhere).

[Cody]

Disembodied... supreme master of handwavium.

<chortles> Ain't that the truth!

[Slartibartfast]

hi

need some special feature adding to the gameplay - some special fuel that can only be obtained by skimming at length around M-category stars for example (and which costs an arm and a leg to buy elsewhere).

no no -- not so complicate
its only another "word " for the same thing

ships recharge --- gets energy from ...nothing
HQVEE --- gets energy from vakuum ( which is also nothing )

---------------------
Eample:
as it is-
you buy a brand new Cobra Mk1
the CMk1 has "Energy recharge rate Medium (2.5) "

instead-
you buy a brand new Cobra MK1
XMk1 has installed ( maybe default ) 15 HQVEE
and is able to carry max. 25 HQVEE
-- > you can buy 10 to get the maximun
then the recharge rate is calculated -- 25 * 0,1 = 2,5 ( as before )


I don't think, thats very hard to do
- making one equipment
- making recharge rate calculatable
- setting max items for the ship
- setting default for a new ship


---------------------------

then filling the energy banks may look like this

Code: Select all

[Vakuum Energy] ------> [HQVEEs ] --------------->  [optional EEU/NEU] =======>||                      |  --> "other Equipment"
                                                                               ||                      |
[Fuel] ------> [optional Auxiliary Energy Generator] ------------------------->||                      |
                                                                               || =>> Energy Banks ==>|| ==>> shields
                       [optional Emergency Energy Unit] ---------------------->|                       |
                                                                               |                       |  ----> "other"
                              ["docked at Station"] -------------------------->|

the doubled lines remarks  the extra energy Grid

-----
matthias

[Slartibartfast]

my idea was to convert the "magic machine" to an handable object

cheers