RELEASED FrackinUniverse 6.4.3

I suspect that, one of the reasons the quantum uses "more" fuel is that it doesn't turn off when it maxes the batteries out like a fission generator does. The fission generator tends to shut off when nothing is actually drawing power from it(at least if it's attached to batteries). I'm fine with the fission generator being more efficient with radioactive fuels compared to a quantum generator and the quantum being more effective with the harder to acquire fuels. Overall I think the quantum should also turn off if all of it's batteries have hit 95% power and re-activate when they drain to 85%. That way there is more control over how much power it has to put out, rather than using up all of it's fuel. If anything, making the quantum generator turn itself off when it maxes it's batteries would actually make it, imo, competitive with fission reactors. It can only use bio fuels or much harder and less practical to use solarium/elder fluid while fission reactors have access to more easily accessed radioactive fuels.

So it ends up, which I am guessing your intention is:

When using bio fuels: Quantum reactor beats Fission Reactor, but both reactors have reduced efficiency with them. I actually found this to be 100% true by charging batteries. I will say however, Fission reactors can sometimes from what I saw, "fizzle" a bio fuel cell and "deplete" it early. This can happen with radioactive rods to, even including enriched plutonium and ultronium. A fission reactor CAN easily charge a 1,000 battery to 75% on a single protocite fuel cell if you are lucky, however, while a quantum only reaches 50%(although it reaches 50% every time).
When using Radioactive fuels: Fission Reactors beat quantum reactors using Bio Fuels. This is actually already true, I tested enriched plutonium vs protocite(3 units each) in duration. It may have been luck, but the enriched plutonium lasted a whopping 5x longer than protocite. The protocyte only lasted about three minutes, the enriched plutonium lasted a full 10.
When using Rare fuels: Quantum reactors beat fission reactors using Radioactive fuels. I haven't found the rare fuels yet, this may also be why I'm already biased towards fission reactors, it's a case of "simple yet awesome always beats awesome but impractical".

The quantum reactor seems somewhat in the "awesome but impractical" range, which may be why people feel it's using fuel up so fast.

So it ends up:
Rare fuels(Quantum)>Radioactive(Fission)>Bio(quantum)>Bio(Fission)

Quality vs quantity.

I also noticed though, I tried testing a quantum reactor with ultronium, thinking it could work, and like the other radioactive fuels it didn't actually work. I'm guessing however that's intentional.

Lastly it does seem to be that quantum reactors always put out the maximum power even if you put in regular bio fuel. I am not sure if thats intentional or not.

 

Sorry for being stupid, but i have a problem.
So Im trying to power up my power intensive objects, but im really bad at wiring.
I want to power up my objects only when i needed so i can save the batteries uses, but no idea how to wire these up.
so there are 2 questions i have.
why is there 2 blue nodes on those batteries? and what is the best wiring for this picture?

 

A fission reactor can easily charge a 1000u on a single Protocyte fuel cell to 75%, but it won't do so reliably. Quantum generators can power a single 1000u to about 50% with one protocyte fuel cell. Two protocyte fuel cells WILL provide more power than a singe 1000u can handle.

A fission reactor with fissable fuels, especially enriched plutonium or ultronium, can easily provide 3,000u-4,000u from an estimated guess based on the fact that fission reactor's can run 5x when using radioactive fuels. Not to mention the fact that your getting 4 or 5u of fuel based on which of those two fuels you use. Enriched uranium...I hadn't used it that much, as it's at best an alternative to protocite bio fuel. I should test those sometime.

Edit: Corrected a statement about fission reactors and protocyte fuel.

Another thing: Fission reactors tend to, it may be my luck, but REGULAR bio fuel will outlast erithium bio fuel cells, and erithium bio fuel cells will outlast protocite bio fuel cells. On the other hand though, protocite bio fuels tend to be better in general for fission reactors. Only use erithium bio fuels if you don't need that much power. But never use regular bio fuel cells, they may last long but you cannot get anything out of only 1-4u power. Like fuel rods, more separate stacks = more power. But you can only get up to 12u from bio fuels(protocytes provide 3u each).

Here is a good idea, I would never use Thorium or Neptunium though.

Bio Fuels:
Regular: 1u, last longest
Erithium: 2u
Protocite: 3u, shortest lifespan(though again, this MAY be due to my luck, since bio fuels can fizzle early).
Fuel Rods:
Plutonium/Uranium: 2u(although, I never used regular plutonium so I 'may' be wrong here)
Thorium/Neptunium: 3u(I think, I may be wrong)
Enriched Uranium: 3u(good alternative to protocite)
Enriched Plutonium: 4u(best fuel imo, very practical when collected from toxic moons)
Ultronium: 5u(refine it from solarite, don't use Thorium or Neptunium to make this, I can see this, so far, being practical made of solarite from an irradiated planet or anywhere solarite is abundant).

The argument against using Thorium or Neptunium is that you can use the resources to make more fission reactors for even more power, or a quantum reactor. I made that mistake and it set me back significantly. But three fission reactors can out-power a single quantum even on enriched plutonium: 16u * 3 = 48. Two will out-power a single quantum on Ultronium. This is why I prefer fission for general purpose ATM: I just keep it away from where I generally craft things and relay the power through batteries.

 

My situation is a quantum reactor with solarium fuel connected to six batteries and (usually) doing nothing to any of them.

 

Well how much power are the batteries each putting out? If they are 1000u batteries, you 'should' be able to charge them barely. If they are however 2,500 or higher, your likely running into issues if each of them are putting out 5u: the remaining 4u from the quantum is likely rounding down and not charging them once it's divided up.

Remember a quantum can generate 34 power at a time. 6 batteries would divide that down to 5.2(which may translate to only 5u each) for each battery. Generators/reactors divide power evenly to everything they are attached to. It may be they are draining as fast as you are charging them. Any more powerful batteries, say a 4,000u battery, well you can only effectively charge 4 of those. You can only expect to effectively charge 3 8,000u batteries if they are also discharging at full power.

I needed 60(yes, 60) erithian bio fuel to charge 4 4,000u batteries each powering 3 hydroponic trays. Thats 12 hydroponic trays drawing 24 power from 4 4,000u batteries. My main issue to be honest is that, if I put more than 60 erithian bio fuels into a quantum reactor charging that many batteries, that the power has to go to waste atm: it doesn't turn off when it fully charges them like a fission does. I think this also creates an issue people have with getting the most out of a quantum reactor: they feel a need to use every ounce of power rather than allowing for a remaining 10-14u to charge the batteries the thing is attached to. It forces the player to micro-manage the thing like it's a combustion generator, resulting in fission "out-performing" even though I found the fission reactor to be unreliable with bio fuels.

Fission reactors end up "better" even if they begin running out of fuels when it comes to batteries, since they simply "slow" the battery drain, giving the player time to refuel them before power runs out. If they cannot successfully charge the batteries they continue running. When they are operating at maximum and exceeding battery output, they shut off every time a battery reaches 90%-95% power while re-activating every time they detect a battery dropping below a point, ensuring the player gets 100% use of the power.

 

Currently nothing but the generator is attached to the batteries.

And having just tested it, I also seem to be unable to charge more than two with a fission generator as well.

 

Here is some math for effective Quantum reactor use:

Quantum reactors generate 34 power. This divides into only 8.5 when split into 4 batteries. Only 5.6 when split into 6. This means a Quantum reactor can, unless the batteries are 4u, can actually only support 5 2,500u batteries, 4 4,000 batteries, or 3 8,000u batteries(34/3 = 11.3). You need at least 1u left over to consider effectively charging a battery.

 

Strange, I wonder if the two input nodes actually mean something different. I've another thought: Are you using normal bio fuels to test it? Quantum reactors need time to "warm up", and will never reach 100% efficiency unless they run a short while. Regular bio fuels fail to even reach that maximum in small amounts.

I'll check my world very fast and see what I have my quantum reactor charging, maybe the nodes have something to do with it.

Edit; Ok I just went in and saw my reactor isn't specifically wired to any specific input node on the batteries. It still charges them fine. I would do the following:

Always keep quantum/fission reactors on a switch. Flip it on/off to make sure they are off.

Try dismantling/replacing them.

ALWAYS use a power reader. It doesn't lower the power output, and only tells you how much your getting.

With fission reactors, pay attention to it's spin-rate. A faster spin rate means the fission reactor is operating at higher power, and putting out more radiation.

Also with fission reactors: They will never charge near or fully charged batteries, they'll turn off on there own.

I also don't know but, I think wire relays don't actually transfer power to anything. I tried it, it wouldn't work with my solar power, why would it work with reactors/generators? I know batteries work, but not the wire relays meant make it easier to extend wire range.

 

Use the red to power your devices, make sure the battery has enough output for your devices. If you can, place ship lights directly above the solar arrays, that way they'll even work at night . I don't think the blue nodes really matter, it'd be nice if I could turn batteries on/off to have some control as to where my reactors were sending power.

 

Ah didn't know I had to have excess power even if there wasn't a draw. Working much better now.

Second question: My batteries that are attatched to more batteries charge slower than the ones that aren't, but they don't charge the batteries they're attatched to.

 

I increased the script recursion limit and counting interval by 100x and battery-battery charging and generator-multi-battery charging works much better now.

Still only about 50% of the time, and if it breaks I have to restart and reconnect the generators

 

thx for the answer, ill try that one!

 

After some more testing, i modified a post i have written before about 4 swords i was using.

4 one-handeds sword to be specific

Captains's Blade, Assassin's Blade, Molten Sword, Frost blade

They all share a very similar recipe yet their power is all over the place.
Forst blade only do 6.4 damage for 1.9 speed while a easier recipe for the Molten sword do 18.7 damage for 1.2 speed. Sure they are a little faster and have frost, but after testing them in combat they are bad. Their damage is just to low to be viable and they have no special effect.

Assassin's Blade and Captain's Blade share nearly the exact same recipe. I was wondering if the Assassin's blade was meant to be a dagger ? Because for now both are shortsword yet the assassin blade have a really high speed with low damage.

Finally Molten sword vs Captain's blade. Both are fire weapon, both have similar stat but for what i could guess molten blade is suppose to be the higher tier with it need for more crafting item and 2 crafting station.
For now they are the same with just one slighty faster and another one hitting slighty harder.
Also Molten is blue and captain is green in color.

Of course i'm not here just to repeat myself with slightly more detail.
Is there a way to unlock the monster plate armor ? I was searching for a Tar immune armor and found that on my test Character. Yet even after being really advanced in crafting on my main the recipe is still hidden.

The irridium shotgun as a class is noted as "machine pistol". It act as a shotgun but it still a tad confusing.

Edit: I forgot to mention, i love the new batterie and arc smelter skin. Goodjob

 

Actually batteries don't charge from other batteries, that might be the problem your having. Batteries cannot charge other batteries, I know it doesn't seem to make sense. It'd be nice if they could IMO, then I'd happily string batteries together to extend their lifespan in my setup: 4,000u batteries are kind of cheap to make imo.

 

even after doing the frozen waste mission 3 times i still laugh at how sail starts to glitch out like crazy.

 

thanks. added that stuff to my list to investigate today.

As for monster plate: I am actually not sure. Now that you mention it, I don't see it on my station either. I'll fix that up.

 

Live on Github


based no all those posts:

Increased Quantum Generator efficiency per fuel, and also added the ability for it to use all radioactive rods as fuel in addition to the other fuel it uses. That should be the final nail in the coffin to make it surpass the Fission.

reduced general fuel consumption a bit.

Fueled Ticks (higher = more efficient. The worst fuel/consumption rate is basic Bio-Fuel.)

"biofuelcannister" : 20,
"biofuelcannisteradv" : 30,
"energiflower" : 40,
"vialproto" : 50,
"biofuelcannistermax" : 80,
"solariumstar" : 90,
"liquidelderfluid" : 120,
"uraniumrod" : 30,
"plutoniumrod" : 40,
"neptuniumrod" : 50,
"thoriumrod" : 60,
"ultroniumrod" : 110



Max Power rate: 40 as compared to 34 previously

 

Considering everything from the costs of building a quantum reactor to extra micro-management of one I think this is fair.

 

By popular demand, I just added the battery-check code to the Quantum Reactor. Sayter will push it live soon.

 

I don't mind dying or losing once in a while, I just prefer it to be my fault and for it to be a learning experience (in fact I hate games when they get to easy to fast).

I'll say that I actually enjoy the vastly increased dangers of the enemies and what the planets have to offer and I commend the mod for it. From what I read above, I can't wait to try the new version on github. So far I enjoy that planets difficulty ratings are also not exclusively tied to the types of environmental hazards associated with them, unlike the unmodded starbound of "dangerous = radiation, extreme = cold, inconcievable = hot". I like that even a planet with no special environmental hazard could even have an "extreme" danger rating. It's a nice touch. I also love how enemies can destroy me up close. It feels more like what a normal difficulty should be for starbound imo.

I think I may go on unknown planets again sometime, just with an emergency teleport.

And no, not someone who just wants easy easy, I enjoy challenging gameplay, just prefer it to be fair.