I was reading a thread about tweaking batteries and grid power came up. Naturally, the reason for grid limitations came up as well... trying to reign in the ability to equip to many very powerful weapons, and thus avoid nerfing some of our more interesting weapons.

Tweaking batteries is a great idea... tweaking grid might be cool too. Perhaps we can tweak grid without getting overly powerful weapon load outs...

Three equip-able items:

The Grid Lock Mk I:
Availablity: Corvus/Nation barracks stations
Requirements: 800 Corvus+1 KoS/700 Home nation/only members of the nation may buy it/must be active military
Small port
License: 5/5/5 (4/4/4 Corvus)
Weight: 850
Adds 25% to grid by sacrificing a weapon.

The Grid Lock Mk II:
Availablity: Corvus/Nation barracks stations
Requirements: 900 Corvus+1 KoS/900 Home nation/only members of the nation may buy it/Must be active military
Large port
License: 7/7/7 (5/5/5 Corvus)
Weight: 950
Adds 45% to grid by sacrificing a weapon.

The Grid Lock Mk III AKA: "The Care Bear Killer":
Availablity: Corvus/Nation barracks stations
Requirements: PoS Corvus+3 KoS/UIT PoS+KoS (I realize it can't happen yet... but I can wish) or more realistically Hated/Serco PoS+Itani KoS/Itani PoS+Serco KoS
Large port
License: 8/8/8 (6/6/6 Corvus)
Weight: 600
Adds 60% to grid by sacrificing a weapon.
(I realize this one will not be popular with certain people but... it gives the most so it demands the most.)

What totally uber, zero to hero loadouts would these enable that they're so retardedly balanced?

Like the old penny in the fuse box trick they should also cause your ship to explode at random intervals

Doc,
The numbers are just cause I needed and example... I do apologize if you were under the impression that those were how it was going to be implemented when the devs put it in game as I am currently holding their loved ones at an undisclosed location.
I assure you that is not the case, as per the agreement... I released their loved ones upon the implementation of the new faction system, and as per the new agreement... I will be releasing their pets as soon as they get it right.

PaK.
I am all for random horrible things happening to ships, but IIRC Inc is not up for the random roll of the dice style systems... but who knows.

-1

In this proposal, you get 25, 29, 32 grid sacrificing one port and adding weight. Clearly aimed at allowing more top-notch guns at once.

Seems balanced, but makes no sense from engineering/electrical perspective. Grid should be either a powecell property, or inherent to ship's chassis.

instead, relate this to powercell changes, since for me it makes no sense that all them offer the same grid.

Personally I have always thought grid power should be a part of the battery specs.

PaKettle, Grid Power is a part of the battery specs.

While I agree that a grid power expander module, and other similar modules, should be in the game, I think adjusting batteries, and possibly adding additional variants of each type, should be done first.

The wording "...by sacrificing a weapon" is a little redundant and doesn't serve a purpose. Obviously if it is loaded into a small or large port you will have to sacrifice a weapon.

some stuff work from cargo bay, you know... (OT: that should become public feature!)

And I guess what Pak refers to it changing Grid along with other specs, intead of fixed. Larger batteris not only stores more charge, they aso provide more current, and that is locked in VO. Since Watts=AxV and in VO both Amperes (grid) and Voltage are fixed, thus larger bateries produce the same amount of power.

Quick comparison, if one small reactor can power up a small town, a larger reactor can power up a much larger city, more devices connected at once. All electric grid must be adjusted acconding, to support that additional cargo. Replace reactor with batteries and remains true. One "car battery can make one eletric engine run, but not two. But two batteries linked, or a larger "truck battery" can sustain 2 engines. But in VO from the smallest to the largest reactor can only sustain the same city size, or feed the same fixed amount of engines / weapons.

So, OP can become a ship addon, to enable using the additional current, reinforcing the wiring grid. That would be the best: Heavier bateries provide more grid, but to use it for weapons you need to install a Grid Amplification Module on cargo bay, while we dont have E-port.

Required balancement, we'll have to adjust powercells weights. makes no sense they all weight the same. I will make another topic for that.

To borrow allohs analogy grid power is closer to the wire sized used. You can in fact cheat it for a bit by using a higher voltage (ryans device) but the more current you draw and the longer you draw it increases the risk of failure of the connected devices due to the incorrect voltage. it is not dice rolling - just a few curves.

No, it's still dice rolling. Unless you want to add an HP stat to the equipment, which will gradually deplete, or have a sensitivity stat and make the more sensitive equipment fail when the ship reaches 10% damage or whatever.

But if you just say "increases the risk of failure", without any explanation, then that implies dice rolling.

Can we all agree that some type of risk to the ship for certain items/cargo/maneuvers... would be cool as hell?

Pretty off topic here, but...

an increase in damage if you're attacked while carrying things that could go BOOM... would be cool.
Risk of damage while running certain ships at full turbo for extended time or carrying very heavy loads/weapons?
Chance of stalling when going from full speed to reverse suddenly?

I am okay with some randomness here and there. In general though I prefer it to be non-random, but rather implemented in a way where the impreciseness of human pilots results in the "random" results. E.g. rather than scoring a random "Critical Hit!" once in a while, a ship could have certain points that are weaker, and hitting those would do more damage. So if you stopped both ships and lined it up, you could reliably reproduce the action, but in an actual fight, the motion of the ships would make it effectively random - though a skilled and knowledgeable pilot could aim in the general areas of the weak points to maximize his chances of hitting them.

Or for volatile stuff, rather than having it be truly random, have some randomly set stats per item which dictate how much abuse they can handle, and a non-random way of applying the abuse. E.g. this specific crate of Solid Explosives is more volatile than the rest, and will explode if it suffers an acceleration of 5G, rather than being able to handle 15G the way most units of Solid Explosives do. Then if the player happens to accelerate at 5G or more, BOOM. But since it isn't totally random, but rather pre-set, if you load up your ship and do some intense maneuvers, and nothing explodes, you know that this specific load will stand up to abuse. So you could potentially test your cargo in a bus before leaving in an expensive ship to cross through hostile territory. (But obviously that would be a slow process.)

Another example: ship components can have HP and various tolerance stats. Being hit in the vicinity of a blaster mount would impart a certain amount of damage to the blaster, based on these resistances and whatever armor the ship itself has remaining around the unit. Sharp movements and explosions could also impart various amounts of damage to the device. As the unit's health deteriorates, it could behave erratically or lose effectiveness (e.g. fire wild shots, fire at a lower rate or velocity, get stuck shooting at an angle, etc.), with the effects increasing until it is destroyed.

Any equipment designed to be used in a fighter should be able to handle any accelerations the fighter can produce on its own, unless it's some kind of overcharged shady-mechanic deal. But the accelerations caused from concussion weapons could exceed those thresholds. Also, stock gear should not have much if any randomness in their tolerances, though shady gear could (but preferably have a way to examine it, once the item is in your possession).

+1 to everything Pizza said!

+1 to Pizza also.

+1 to pizza - stock equipment should not cause problems but this item is as you say an overcharged shady mechanic deal...its failure would cripple the ship....