Solar concentrator?

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4xel
Space Floater
Posts: 16
Joined: Thu Apr 18, 2019 10:56 am

Solar concentrator?

#1 Post by 4xel »

Playing v0.4.7.1

How does it works, specifically?

The differences between say RIS article and solar concentrator/solar web are striking.

The former is concise clear explanation followed by paragraph of sci-if blabla. The later have them both blended. I can't even say if living hull are necessary for the base bonus. I can't say if solar web bonus of "up to 130%" is accounting for the base bonus, or aother multiplier. It is ambiguously worded as if the effect stack, which would be exceptional in this game and would deserve being disambiguated, as regular things are. I can even read solar web as "it does not matter where the concentrator are in the system, al organic ship will receive the effect, even those without SC".

I'll wait your input or do some test and propose a better wording. I'm new to this so I'm not sure exactly how to go about it, I suppose it involves github and proposing an edit of a .txt somewhere.

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Oberlus
Cosmic Dragon
Posts: 5713
Joined: Mon Apr 10, 2017 4:25 pm

Re: Solar concentrator?

#2 Post by Oberlus »

Certainly, the description needs polishing.

The exact effect of it is scripted in here.

Only organic hulls with SC benefit from it. The actual equation (without the extra factor from the star type):

Code: Select all

max(
    min(
        min(
            (([[COUNT_OF_LOCAL_SOLAR_CONCENTRATOR]]) / 2),
            (([[COUNT_OF_LOCAL_SOLAR_CONCENTRATOR]]) ^ 0.5 ) + 4 ),
        15)
,3)

4xel
Space Floater
Posts: 16
Joined: Thu Apr 18, 2019 10:56 am

Re: Solar concentrator?

#3 Post by 4xel »

Ok, it work just like RI:S. I made a detailed answer explaining my foundings (through the option shows generated description) but forum decided to ask me my password and ditch it :x

I guess one could copy the style of RI:S then to polish the description.

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L29Ah
Space Squid
Posts: 84
Joined: Thu Oct 06, 2016 3:19 pm

Re: Solar concentrator?

#4 Post by L29Ah »

Solar concentrator is just another piece of unbalanced garbage, don't use it. It adds on average much less than the laser technology refinements and cost a shitload of PPs for the best case bonus being equal to another (cheaper) laser, unless you buy the sentient hull and fill all its external slots with lasers, leaving yourself w/o any sensible amount of armor.
Team S.M.A.C.: play multiplayer with us!

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LienRag
Cosmic Dragon
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Joined: Fri May 17, 2019 5:03 pm

Re: Solar concentrator?

#5 Post by LienRag »

L29Ah wrote: Sat Jan 25, 2020 9:55 pm Solar concentrator is just another piece of unbalanced garbage, don't use it. It adds on average much less than the laser technology refinements and cost a shitload of PPs for the best case bonus being equal to another (cheaper) laser, unless you buy the sentient hull and fill all its external slots with lasers, leaving yourself w/o any sensible amount of armor.
I really love the way Solar Concentrator works differently than the rest of the equipment in the game, what do you think would be needed to make it balanced ?
One thing I don't like is how it encourages building massive ship stacks rather than maneuvering, but removing that effect would remove one of the originality of the SC...

Should it have a better bonus on small hulls (due to the better surface-to-volume ratio) ? Would that be both credible and strategically interesting ?

Should it allow the use of cheap "Solar panels" as External Slots that would reinforce the laser power (so as to have more bang for the buck) ?

wobbly
Cosmic Dragon
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Joined: Thu Oct 10, 2013 6:48 pm

Re: Solar concentrator?

#6 Post by wobbly »

My suggestion would be to redesign it for the core slot (sentients have 1) and make it only require 1 present (but affect all organics in the fleet). The use case would be extending the power of old laser organics if they have survived to this stage. I suspect it would still not see much use, but have more purpose then it does now.

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