The biggest current obstacle to good code-driven management of railgun power cycling is the fact that railgun capacitors cannot be stopped from consuming power when discharged. This means firing railguns in a low-battery condition cannot be fully "caught" by an automatic system to shut the gun down: the barrel can be stopped from charging, but the capacitors will consume power and starve other ship systems. I would like the MaxLocalPower field to be writable (that is, writing to it sets the capacitor's maximum power) so I can have better control of railgun power state.
#Allow manual power-down of utility/RC capacitors
fading canopy
prisma minnow
and if not a MaximumLocalPower, maybe a ChargeState or ChargeRate
dawn garden
just prevent shooting
fading canopy
thanks for necroing this thread with a suggestion that does not understand the problem
dawn garden
thanks for necroing this thread with a suggestion that does not understand the p...
dude i had 3-pos fire selector that switches automatically depending on overall battery capacity so i understand what you talking about
fading canopy
so, here's my thing: yes, i could just put a safety on the fire button for the power cycler, but as the game is right now that is sub-optimal because it removes the decision from my hands weather or not I want to starve my ship in service of getting a shot off. your choice and my choice about how to behave around the reality of capacitors and power stored on a body don't actually have anything to do with what i'm asking for
fading canopy
do you have a solution for that that is solid state? The unreliability of moving parts under acceleration is not super acceptable to me
dawn garden
no moving parts. i am out of pc for 3 days, but if you search in "devices" there is network switch
fading canopy
you mean relays? those don't cut power, last i checked
yeah, just checked, relays don't cut power
dawn garden
this is kinda bug
wiki says Electricity: all objects within the data network share power
fading canopy
the wiki is community maintained, and generally fails to address the really nitty gritty stuff
relays have pretty limited use-cases, so it makes sense that the wiki editors might make statements you can nitpick like that
in any case, the asymmetry of my ability to control barrel charge but not capacitor charge is something that means that users are regularly being surprised by there being situations where turning off the railgun does not stop the railgun from consuming power