Reactor Supercharge

[idle merlin]

I think the Reactor mechanic under-delivers it's underlying fantasy: Most people, in a spaceship game, would like to properly deliver a ALL POWER TO SHIELDS! moment.

Basic mechanical goals:

• More levers to pull for boss fights, which currently feel a bit underwhelming.
• Delivering inherent expectations of fantasy-focused players.

Basic mechanic setup:

• Click a button, one reactor boost is massively amplified. Boost lasts a very limited time, and shuts down the reactor after.

Detailed mechanical setup:

• No VM can be burned while supercharged. You gotta use whatever power is stored up.
• All power boosts run as normal, but you can pick one to run at 'Super' mode - That is a flat additional multiplier, that is different by type. (To be worth using on non-combat, something around 10x: About 2-3x shields, and definitely no more than 1.5x for damage)
• Reactor drains of the current, normal, power drain - plus a flat amount per second, dependant on how many boosts are active. Realistically, having your 'good' shields\damage up should make this last around 10 seconds.
  (Remember, the fantasy also relies on 'powering down non-combat-essential systems')
• After the reactor inevitably does to 0 power, it shuts down entirely for a specified time.
• A minor buff to bosses may be needed.
• No adjustment needed for normal enemies, as the mechanic basically means taking a forced warp-back, and doesn't provide excessive boost to damage anyway.
• Would probably be a nice unlock around when reactor starts to feel a bit too 'passive', maybe a few sectors after the "+3 all boosts" Warp upgrade is generally gotten

[onyx egret]

Seems like a neat idea. I might do something like this as part of the combat changes for next content chunk. But it might be good to add it in earlier too.
I wonder if there should be some form of optional interface for it in the combat area as that's where the other temporary combat boosts are. Probably don't need to do that though

I am wary of the frequency you could be doing this for the noncombat stuff though. Really don't want a system where you need to come hit a button to boost it every X minutes or something

[idle merlin]

I don't think a cooldown is needed beyond "fill up the reactor", because the idea is that using this will long-term be a net loss - it's just a momentary power spike

It'd be cool to use for 'I wanna finish this synth\research\core upgrade now and go afk later', or to boost engine to cut through a sector or three, but ultimately 15 seconds of 3x synth are never going to be worth 30 seconds of reactor off, which implies no synth, no compute, no research, no salvage, and regressing a few waves due to no combat capabilities

[onyx egret]

oh ok I wasn't thinking of the non combat ones as a net loss, that makes sense

[idle merlin]

it doesn't strictly need to be a net loss for the single system i guess, although that could entice some weirdly determined player who's trying to push one system to use it on cd

(i think there's a way to tie in non-combat usage to max VP and get a bit of efficiency here and there... but system is already pretty complex)