This is inspired by the comments on the recent news post, where Inc states that he wants to make (1) a weapon that drains energy and (2) be able to disable ships, meaning "their engines stop working and they're sitting in place"

The solution is easy: make standard thrust use energy as well, say 5 or 10 units/s, and buff all batteries to provide extra charging to offset. This achieves two goals: (1) disabling the battery means disabling the ship, and (2) using the engine less allows you to charge quicker and/or fire more often, which seems like a good thing.

[This can tie into giving the user more customization options, e.g. a 'booster' utility slot equipment that provides extra thrust at the cost of extra energy use, but then we first need utility slots (and engine slots and real battery choices, i.e. make the ones that charge more quickly also heavier...)]

This is unnecessary. An argument could be made that the normal function of the engine is supported by a cell built-in. Auxiliary power comes from the power cell addon.

As for your other points, bigger variety and usage of cells is needed, I think what you're suggesting over complicates things.

Why is this unnecessary? You'd figure normal thrusters would use power just like turbo does. Maybe make them drain 1/sec or 2/sec depending on ship type. That would give a recharge advantage to ships that are sitting still or at least not changing their course.

I think that 1 or 2 is too little to be noticeable.

With an empty fast charge battery (50 e/s), the firing rate of a neut3 is 3.57 shots/sec, while a neut2 is
4.55 shots/sec. To me, it would make sense if not using the engine should increase fire rate of the neut3 to about halfway to the fire rate of a neut2, or aroung 4 shots/sec. That is enough to be noticeable, but probably not enough to be breaking, especially since not using your engine 100% of the time is suicide.

To increase the firing rate to 4, you need 6 extra energy per second.

If we keep the nicely round number of 5 energy/second, or 10% extra charge rate on a fast charge, firing rates for some popular blasters are:

xgx: 6.94 -> 7.64
neut2: 4.17 -> 4.58
neut3: 3.57 -> 3.93
aap: 2.94 -> 3.24

To me, those values make sense as a good "bonus" for not using your engine. If you feel this makes energy weapons too good comparatively, you can 'recenter' those values by e.g. making the engine use 5/sec but only increasing charge rate by 3.

(and remember that flying in a straight line does not use the engine, but only changing direction/speed)

Energy heavy weapons are already severely nerfed in this game because of powercell charge rates.

Also, you forgot to account for the quantization of time...

Anyway, what this really stands to affect the most is F/A mode, since it runs your thrusters all the time. Basically anyone using F/A would be starved for energy vs someone in physics mode.

+1 to general idea. Not gonna comment on numbers, those are something I'd have to feel out in actual gameplay. But I love this idea, as long as it gets balanced right.

@ARF

I think quantization affects rate during the burst phase (e.g. when time delay is the limiting factor, not charge time) more heavily then when battery is the limiting factor.

> Anyway, what this really stands to affect the most is F/A mode, since it runs your
> thrusters all the time. Basically anyone using F/A would be starved for energy vs
> someone in physics mode."

Well, that's at best an argument for limiting the effects; if your fly-by-wire is running the engine, you are using fuel...

EV Nova.

Yeah well this is the corollary of that other thread. The only problem is the numbers we have at the moment don't look too good for this and it has the potential to slow combat down. Like if you have to sit still or slow down every 30 seconds. There's a point at which you are just adding tedium to the combat experience that we don't want to reach which is why I think its something worth exploring after we get proper powercell diversity.

At the moment the best thing to do is just to combine other disable mechanics with the power drain. Even if it's the case that power drain weapons will completely drain your power and keep it at zero it can hardly be considered a disable. The pilot can still dash around madly and fire flares etc.. which is why I asked the question about additional mechanics.

We still don't know and now the thread has descended into talk about bangin' chicks embedded into cars and the dumbest [phaserlights] in VO telling me to shut up about game discussion so they can talk about their [phaserlighteds] so doesn't look like we'll actually get an answer either.

/me calls the Austrailian Wambulance Service on TRS's behalf.

I've never been to Austrailia, is it nice?

Wow, is Austrailia a new country/town? Never heard of its like.

It's not new, it's just very covert. It is the land under Down Under. Populated by the mole-men, it consists of a vast network of tunnels within the Earth's crust, situated roughly below Australia. The similar spelling allows people to mention its name in public and have it be dismissed as a typo, maintaining the secrecy. The perpetual lack of sun, poor ventilation, and preponderance of wide paved tunnels result in them having a thriving wambulance industry. The acoustics don't hurt either.

Anyway, what this really stands to affect the most is F/A mode, since it runs your thrusters all the time. Basically anyone using F/A would be starved for energy vs someone in physics mode.

Not really. If you increase throttle in F/A, all it does is run the thruster until your desired forward velocity is reached, or when changing directions.

Yeah, for every little tiny turn your ship makes F/A strafes against that movement to make your ship fly like an airplane. The only time it's not using your thrusters is flying in a perfectly straight line.

Try this some time: Fly full turbo with a loaded moth into an asteroid with F/A on and with F/A off.
You'll notice as you spin, F/A will strafe your ship to dead stop where physics mode will just send you hurtling off into space.

Oh okay, yeah, I see what you're saying. I misunderstood.