#Power Derelict through a towing brace

15 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

real jungle
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As an additional feature of a tow brace, allow power to flow from your ship to the derelict's airlock and any connecting conduits. with a reactor running you could also charge any batteries onboard just as you would your own ship.

I think this would make it easier to quickly check out the condition of derelicts quickly, and spot any particular parts you are looking for. In addition, when you are fixing up a purchased derelict you can more easily balance power needs and just hop on the ship to go sell it once you have the juice to move.

verbal drum
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Nice idea but it should definitely toggle-able so you can avoid wasting power on the other ship if you don't need to.

radiant folio
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Personally I wish the game engine would just allow us to connect our ship grid with derelicts / stations. Let OKLG punish us for tampering with their grid, but no one should care if I do it with derelicts or the flotilla

hexed berry
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this really shouldn't be that hard to implement, I'd imagine

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the brace costs -X flat power, and the far side gets +X flat power

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this will waste power constantly, but that's fine; I'll turn it on and off manually as needed (or point at my reactor and laugh)

mystic ruin
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oh i do like this! It would kinda trivialise the experience of exploring a big dark derelict to try find and reconnect the power system though.
I dont think it's necessarily worth it right now or higher priority than a lot of the other things we have planned for 0.15 though

One thing you can do right now is keep a small battery ready to go and quickly install on the other ship

hexed berry
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I like the idea that you can judge the state of the ship you docked to by whether it lights up when the (expensive) brace gets turned on.

proud birch
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Note that the experience of restoring the power on a derelict is earlier game,by the time you get a tow brace you should have had that experience many times already, so the tow power would encourage you to fix the derelict grid instead.

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Might not be that hard to implement, automagically install a small invisible magic battery on behalf of the player right by the airlock. I doubt anyone would notice it didn't drain any ship batteries.

hot sequoia
# mystic ruin oh i do like this! It would kinda trivialise the experience of exploring a big d...

Considering the usual state of the power grid on derelicts? Probably not as much as you’d think.
Especially for larger ones.
Broken conduits would most likely only give you power near the airlock. Based on my experience hooking said small battery to the grid inside an airlock, most of the rest of the ship would be in darkness unless you patch in new lines to cover the gaps… so it’s rarely every worth it.
In fact, hooking up a small battery takes so long, that for smaller ships it’s not worth it either.
Maybe with fully trained EVA/Electricial skills it might be quick enough?

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Lighting a derelict is also such a non-issue?
AA batteries are common, power a worklight for days on end, and I can’t think of a single other thing they’re used for so it’s not like you won’t have heaps left over.
Maybe if we had more stuff to use them on and had to ration them for worklights? Maybe if the work light wasn’t as good as it is?
Also, if you dump power into a derelict, you’d probably drain every O2 tank still hooked up to a working pump, so you’d just be throwing money into vacuum anyway…

real jungle
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I've been thinking about my suggestion more lately. Trying to get a better way to describe what I was looking for.

The goal of this is to deal with a large ship rebuild that doesn't have a reactor on-line.

Jump in, patch the obvious holes on a ship, run the power across the ship with the toggle that @verbal drum mentioned. Now the missing conduits will be easier to spot. With the pumps on, leaks can be more easily found. Much like if you brought on a battery yourself. The difference would be that you would not need to be carrying batteries back and forth from your ship to the derelict as they run dry (or bother carrying these extra batteries on your ship) I can be on an off a Refuel ship in minutes, but when it comes to fixing up a Halberg, or a Lai Bai Gen II, sheeeeesh, I have too many other things to do than watching a battery charge.

My play style goal when I am refurbishing a derelict is to get out of the EVA suit as soon as possible (mostly for roleplay, a bit for pockets)

I completely understand this would be excess fluff for sure, but if the option to ever role-play as your own refueler comes up for this game. Be it a ship requesting O2, N2, power, or anything else that I've personally run out of while flying around and not planning well.... It may be a good addition if simple to add.

hot sequoia
# real jungle I've been thinking about my suggestion more lately. Trying to get a better way t...

Thing is though, generally, you’re probably not going to be fully refitting massive derelicts until you either have a reactor, or at least a decent ship.
At which point you’re probably going to have multiple full ship batteries installed, if only for redundancy.
Pulling one out and plugging it into the derelict that you’re going in to rip a few bits off isn’t worth it, but the derelict that you’re going to be spending potentially days on is.
You pull one battery out, plug it in. While that one discharges, the rest remain charged (if you have a reactor). And it should last many, many hours when hooked up to only a partial ship.
And if you’re doing a full large-ship refit, you’re going to include a reactor, and a ship battery will last long enough to install and kickstart one to power the ship while you repair it.

And if you’re just popping in to strip a fueling ship, for example, “patching the obvious holes” is probably a way bigger, or just as big a task than swapping in/out a battery, especially compared to yoinking a few canisters and a thruster or two.