T2 Energy: Specialisation Avenues

Antimatter generator then?

Yes. That's the point where I conciously take into account that this is a game that aims to be awesome, not realistic. Otherwise why would we even bother with nuklear power plants instead of fusion, which would neither explode nor radiate?

And I went with explosion over radiation, because nuklear missiles work the same way and it's good to be consistent.

Edit: Also, it doesn't actually matter at all if it explodes, radiates or creates a black hole that sucks your units into it. The point I want to make is the availability of a power plant which has a high yield and takes little space, but has a high risk of causing damage to surrounding entities.

This could also be an ongoing effect. Ie. destruction of the plant does nothing. But while it runs, everything near it will suffer continuous damage. But since this is not a very common concept, it might be more confusing to new players. A nuklear power plant, that goes out with a bang, I'm sure, matches almost everybody's active set of tropes.

I think volatile resources are good. It worked in the past, it's fairly intuitive, it creates weak points in bases, and it discourages excessive turtling and spreads bases out. It is also highly AWESOME, because explosions are AWESOME. All good things, in my opinion.

Not to be annoying, but I don't like the idea of putting things in the game that exist in the public consciousness but that are factually wrong. Nuclear power plants exploding is an existing trope, for obvious reasons, I don't think I want to see it in PA because imo it's bad taste. There are plenty of other structures that could potentially explode. (I do think it's an interesting mechanic -- and I even wouldn't mind it if the radiation of nuclear reactors would function similar to explosion, just over a slightly longer time period)

It reminds me of how dinosaurs are perceived. Dinosaurs are forever frozen in the way how they looked in the Jurassic Park movies. That's what spawned the appearance of them in a million cartoons, comics, video games, and so on. However, our knowledge of dinosaurs has evolved over the years, so that much of JP is no longer accurate. The problem then becomes whether you should confuse the public with new depictions that are based on new science, or simply use the old tropes knowing you are spreading misinformation.

I don't know if there is a right answer. I'm actually curious what other people think of the dinosaur case that I mentioned.

I hope you don't mind me not defending my ideas en detail - I would prefer their implementations to be as straightforward as possible although they may appear too simplified at first glance. I would like to reveal a bit of the rationale and inspiration behind those ideas.

• Solar - I would like the combination of solar plants and enough energy storages to bring you through the night to be superior to simple, non-conditional T1 power: In my opinion that would create nice raiding incentives and opportunities at night with the added benefit of night battles looking just great.
• Geothermal - giving up mass spots was intentional - of course the building would need to be not only more efficient than a T1 power plant but also provide much more raw power to make it worthwhile; teleporter-heavy gameplay might be an application here.
• Pumped-storage - get either a huge storage when energy income is positive already or a steady trickle of energy when income is negative and storage is exhausted; provides more of both on higher gravity; would compliment solar quite nicely.
• Tidal - might give an additional reason to colonize planets with (more) moons to make up for the additional threats those pose or even stack up on moons.
• Wind - basically run out of ideas here, see below for another approach.

Lastly, a little addendum to tidal and wind turbines: While I do like the notion of them being subject to varying energy output I would rather have them provide constant amounts of energy. I do have a mechanic in mind, though, that would encourage spreading them out, which is basing their efficiency off of their distance to one another. That is hardly original (Battle for Middle-earth did that, if I recall correctly) but I think it would fit them quite well: Think of those turbines creating slipstreams which decrease the performance of others nearby.

While I was aiming for eye-candy and shock with the explosions you are right, of course, with your assessment. And thumbs up for not perpetuating faulty public perception, mea culpa. Meltdowns don't (or rarely?) cause overly dramatic explosions. Extended radiation - in terms of both time and area - might prove even more devious and interesting, though, so I think that should be tried at one point as a mod at least.

Nope, no explosions! I think having an antimatter generator fits the bill for big explosions though, if that's what you're after.

I'm definitely liking the anti-matter generators! It's novel for games and based on current science. Kinda perfect, really. Plus, its destruction will also yield quite plausible EXPLOSIONS! mu-ha ha. And those explosions, being of different origin than nuclear, won't need to be matched, compared, or mirrored with nukes - giving all kinds of poetic license to the devs to come up with some awesome effects.

Speaking of which, I don't like exploding nuclear power plants yielding harmful radiation when nukes don't. I'm not hung up on realism, but I do like consistency! (and besides, are our bots affected by radiation?)

And lastly; I like solar arrays - don't take up ground space, need orbital to attack them, etc. They're different enough. I think needing direct line of sight to the sun (and them turning off at night) is too complex. (I almost said "unintuitive", but we all understand night and day - we just don't expect a game to.)

Just wanted to commend the OP for these amazing ideas, I wish upon you a shower of 'Likes'.

Really hope the devs can implement specialized power(and fix T2 mexes). T2 being an obvious upgrade is boring, and once I get T2 Mexes, metal just doesn't feel like a limiting factor anymore even with me frantically building about trying to spend it all.

"We have to eject the warp core!"/"We have a warp core breach!" - 1/5 of Voyager episodes.

"We have to eject the warp core!"/"We have a warp core breach!" - 1/5 of Voyager episodes.[/quote]

Haha soo true!

Liking this thread and all of the ideas!

Whatever floats, uh, sinks your boat, I guess.

I can definitely see the problems here. I thought it a quite accessible concept, though, and it was even done before in the Earth 2150 games so I thought it a no-brainer to include here. Especially regarding all the gameplay options it opens up. Might try modding it in at some point to verify the premise I guess.

I feel these robots are "super" enough the only radiation that should affect them is directed energy weapons, etc. They seem to be able to move just fine on asteroids, fly extremely close to the sun, etc. I don't think there's good flavor justification for radiation dealing damage over time.

You could flavor it otherwise, but I think radiation doesn't really work.

The tricky part is that in Earth 2150, the sunlight is the same for everyone. In PA, someone is going to be on the wrong side of the planet, which might be a little too much strategy for some people. Imagine building an expensive solar plant just before the planet's winter solstice.

A sub-set of the nuclear power plant philosophy would be smaller volatile power plants that could explode in a chain reaction (like SupCom). Not so dangerous that you can't build them near your base, but cheap and numerous enough that you'll be tempted to make large farms of them anyway...

I'm sure Uber can just add geysers to certain planets, especially lava planets, and none to moons/asteriods. Would give some different meanings to planet types.

Good point that you raised there, totally missed that one. But I do dare say that PA is probably not suited for people that struggle with strategy, anyway. Most of the power plants in this thread would require some serious UI effort to properly communicate their intricacies, though, irrespective of the ability of the player that is to use them.

The incineration plant seems a little silly.

Rest assured, it is.

artificial micro singularity generator:

• T1, cheap and produces 2x the amount of power a t1 gen does
• extremely volatile when explodes sucking in all buildings and units in vicinity

and if you really want to be evil build them away from your base allong the routes your enemy will take to your base