i failed at finding this idea out there but please stop me if you've heard this. Solar Panels, they're everywhere, always getting in the way. put them in space you say? brilliant. a "synchronous orbital solar siphon", a player-built high altitude platform comprised of many solar collectors rigged to a machine that collects and directs a condensed beam of photons downwards to a receiving machine planetside. to add more purpose to the new addition of tar and to delight all those polluters out there i propose hydro-carbon generators. again stop me if you heard this suggestion, na. i'll just stop, thanks for reading. Edit: ah shoot i posted this in the wrong category
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Sounds nice, don't think I've heard of it before! I'm assuming these things would power like lights and doors or some magical stuff the dev team codes?
yeah like the whole base the player built or to electrify a powerful device like an energy cannon used to boar holes deep into a planets surface or to recharge a starship.
Could be used in place of fuel for some things (like generators?)! Great idea! I feel like I saw something about solar panels somewhere else, but can't seem to find it now.
thanks. i was wondering if the Devs build stationary turrets, the photon director could use the same coding to be aimed towards different receivers. one receiver may be the player to energize ridiculously powerful weapons, sure the player would have to replace combat armor with specialized equipment to collect the photobeam and protect the player from being burnt to a crisp like so many unfortunate ants on summer days.
I would love to have various things to use power on, not necessarily doors and lights, but what about laser drills? Automated miners? Particle accelerators to create and store antimatter? blast/arc furnaces that are in the foundry process of Tiytanium? forcefields? not just normal laser beams but GIANT FRICKIN' LASORS that burn anything near them to a crisp? your giant supercomputer9000 that simulates the universe ahead of itself so that you gain prescience? That's the kinda stuff that I wanna be able to use the power for.
I see what you did there. Well played sir, well played. Also, if they haven't added this yet, they should.
Considering they have that new high-altitude system and plan to do asteroid belts, it would make sense to build solar panels up there. With no atmosphere in the way solar energy would be more efficient. It would be cooler to base the amount of energy also on the strength of the sun. No need to do astronomical calculations like distance and wavelength of light and all, but something simple. Say: Sun Strength - Atmosphere Depth = Solar Power Output Deeper you go into the atmosphere the less power you get, and hopefully a boolean to check if there is background tiles that would instantly nullify solar since the panels are inside.
I, for one, think that games try to simplify things far too much. I would love to have all sorts of calculations on power, such as if the star is this color, then a specific type of solar panel might be better (maybe there's power 1 2 and 3, each one steps up, but they get a 10% boost if the light is red, blue or white for tech 1, 2, and 3 panels respectively. this means that you might want to spam tier 2 panels if you have the space, rather than upgrade them to tier 3 panels, because 10% extra power isn't bad.) You could take this even farther if you wanted to, by implementing specific wavelengths, deciding on a distance from the sun, whether it should be on a Lagrangian point or no, and other fun stuff for orbital panels. Though you don't have to do any of this to get an acceptable power levels, you could just put them into orbit around the planet and be done with it. This is for the minmaxers, or people who want to run a server monopoly on energy, which they beam out to other people for a price. Or those people who are working on an insanely power-sucking project, like mining the entire place dry, down to that impassable bottom that the devs were talking about.
I like this Idea. I would build a big ass power plant on a planet next to a sun and fill it with solar panels and nuclear reactors. I would visit it every once and awhile and sell energy.
with the flood of gameplay videos about, ive noticed starships seems to be able to receive any kind of energy source. having a hydrocarbon generator at this point might be redundant. slapping coal in an intergalactic spacecraft is fun and all but i still want more, like pouring crude oil (tar) into it. for that we'll need liquid containers. not sure if thats a plan for the devs but i feel it should be. if you think playing space cops and cosmo-robbers around the base is fun just wait till you accidentally blast open an oil drum! thats right! burning crude seeping through the vents and into your starter pet ducklet hatchery! bad cop! what if that was tier 5 anti-matter flasks you just shot up?
Energy management itself would be a nice feature. But I thought of some general questions: Distinguish between electrical and chemical energy or just say everything can be powered by everything? Vehicles would need their fuel, auto-turrets would need a connection to a power plant. This leads to the next, how are things connected to a power supply? Cables lying around everywhere? Connect a power plant to a structure by some special plug that can be placed at the building, so everything inside the building is powered automatically? Batteries that have to be replaced time by time? Are there different types of fuel, do they have different energy densities? I would like to have at least a fuel system for vehicles and spaceships. Electrical power for buildings/items and such would be too much you'd have to regard I think.
Considering we're already starting to manufacture Electric vehicles for commercial use, and that Starbound is set in the space age (Which we are very far off if FTL travel is even possible) I don't think vehicles using electricity would seem all that strange. ^_^
How about a sphere with solar panels? The "Bipolar Orbital Omission Begetter". It would have a cool acronym too.
That might be right but that is exactly the question I asked myself: Shall everything be powered by a uniform energy type (electricity) or can we distinguish into different energy carriers for different purposes. While there might be advanced electrical vehicles did maybe appear some new form of fuel with a super high energy density that is better for larger or even all moving vehicles (e.g. spaceships and large mechs or drills). In some other thread dealing with "Oil or not oil" I also wrote the idea for some harvestable fuel liquid that appears in the ground or so. I'd like that more than everything being powered by electricity. EDIT: Still having power plants and electrical power would be a nice feature, but we'd have to think about "how" not only "what".
Well, there's a wiring system already in place, it could probably be used to power stuff as well. My guess would be that if this is so prevalent, then we'd probably want several different energy sources. Possibly going from oil, to fuel (refined oil) to solar power to fusion/antimatter. Ideally each would have its place even when you tech up to the next level. I made a really long thread about research that includes some of these concepts.
