MRT power consumption slows down depending on stack size(?)

[grand beacon]

Side by side here are two MRT ships - one is a thrust/command module and a pure thrust extender module. The other is the exact same thing, but with seven pure thrust modules instead of one.

Both ships are segmented via crew priorities and logistics assignments for crew.

For some reason, the ship with one extender module performs terribly - it flickers a lot and the crew can't keep up.

However, the ship with seven extender modules works perfectly - crew can sometimes be seen on standby in the bunks, and the power consumption is much, much lower.

Each extender increases the power consumption by a flat 100%. So I'm curious as to why this phenomenon happens.

Here are the ships side to side

and here are the ships used in this test (ship.png)

[rocky idol]

#1244701560769089637 message
includes my own findings related to this potential bug.

That post was not specific to only this bug, but that feedback thread references where we observed what we believe to be a bug and its distinction from the other issues that were being tested

[grand beacon]

oh yeah, and here's the testing star system, it isn't needed but here it is

[rocky idol]

usable test ship. starting from outside to in there are 3 sets of each setup in various lengths. Left side has my engines in various extended lengths(this side is missing crew assignments but its performance is consistent enough to display the bug), right side has Sup3r87's extended lengths and have double the output thrusters.
Remaining components are all set to infinite fire to attempt realistic crew task limit simulation similar to normal completed ship. This is still well below number of crew tasks my ship normally has from optimization compression, hard to replicate with these longer thrusters.

Ignore the extra MRTs near the middle as their logistics are not complete. only outside 3 sets matter.

All engines set to infinite on.
Sup3r87's shortest engine fails first more than 90% of the time. followed by any of the 3 short lengths

My previous version of this test showed left side superlong setup was failing at the same rate as all other left side lengths. This is no longer happening and it roughly matches the fail rate of the superlong right side. It is possible I made an error in that previous test's design.

Mirror swapping the ship side did not have any significant difference.

Apologies for the ship spin. my world is spinning after staring at this for several minutes.

[finite walrus]

From my experience, the larger/longer setups take longer to ramp up, and because they ramp up slower, the power demand increases slower and the crew can respond better to it,

and because some MRT setups are simply more reliable than others, some will have this issue and some will not, depending on the efficiency of the module

[rocky idol]

from my tests, ramp up has zero impact on power drain. its always draining full power even in the first second of ramp

[finite walrus]

Huh

[rocky idol]

baffled me too

[finite walrus]

Oh, and good weapon placement on your mrt ship, the chainguns are deadly

[grand beacon]

yeah, but once the thrusters hit top speed, the power demand per module is still much lower when larger

[finite walrus]

hmmhmp

Mrt's are a pain

[grand beacon]

it's a conundrum - I haven't tested but I'd bet that a reactor can actually sustain FOUR engine rooms at the 8 module length. The reactors are never strained at that size

they are, but I also want to get to the bottom of why this is happening lol

[cunning orbit]

@muted patio Would appreciate you checking this and seeing if you can figure out what's going on.

[muted patio]

Ok I'm not 100% sure I know what's going on, but I can at least confirm the issue and have a strong hypothesis. Will put more info on the tracker.

(If I'm correct, the small module is draining the correct amount of power, and the large is draining too little, so you might need to adjust the module size/reactor)

[cunning orbit]

Fixed for the next patch.

Redstone's hypothesis was spot-on.

[grand beacon]

great to hear, looking forward to the patch release :)

[meager rivet]

Is this gonna make mrt logistics even harder? :(

[muted patio]

Unfortunately yes, though we're talking about tweaking some stuff to make it easier

[meager rivet]

i hope you guys release the balance changes alongside this otherwise a lot of mrt ships are gonna be broken