A smaller battery for small grids

Copycat80 shared this feedback 6 years ago
Completed

A smaller battery is needed in SE for the smallest of crafts. The ingame battery is just too large and bulky to be used in most builds. Perhaps a 1x1x1 or a 2x2x2 battery would be a better option. It can be made less efficent for ballance's sake.

Replies (21)

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It always bugged me how It's possbile we have that small nuclear reactor but not battery... (I always wished for small reactor removal but I know it won't happen ;p)

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I agree and think it should be vanilla and that is why I use a mod to get my 1x1x1 battery for now.

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Add to that a smaller Merge Block, there is no need for the small grid version to be almost as large as the large grid version, yet is obviously not 'compatible' as such.

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2

I use mods for this. It is a pain in the butt because I would love to have more micro builds. You may want to look at these:

RB Compact Battery by Ravenbolt https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=532433982&searchtext=compact

And for those who want a smaller than 5x5 hydrogen you can use OCD Compact Storage V2 by Xero for 1x1, 1x2, 1x3 storage. He also has a balanced version which equates to vanilla storage levels.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=810328054&searchtext=ocd

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You guys realize that the small grid battery is more than twice the energy density by volume of large grid batteries right? My concern is if they reduce the size of the battery, they'll reduce the energy output as well, which would just increase the pcu cost for the same power output....

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Obviously a small battery would output less power and/or have lower capacity, that much is a given and is accepted as a trade-off for the more convenient size. We ain't that daft- higher pcu cost by using several smaller batteries instead of one large one is also understandable- it's another trade-off but one worth making since smaller batteries are easier to slot into a design compared to one large battery.

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5

And who says they have to remove the original battery? They could just add another, smaller, one.

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Definitely agreed. For an engineering game, Space Engineers fares very poorly at the moment when it comes to building small crafts, like drones. I'm regularly struggling with this, and I don't want to use mods in my build, since that limits their viability on e.g. servers.

For a small, 1x1x1 battery, they could simply reuse the large grid battery's model and textures. Sounds pretty trivial to add it.

I believe we'd really need a small solar panel block as well. Obviously, the power output / capacity of these blocks should be scaled down too.

One of the reasons for the need of this small solar panel block is the "dead grid" problem - when e.g. all reactors are empty, and since the grid is not powered, you can't access the conveyor system to fill them. Players end up having to place an additional reactor with an outward-facing inventory door.

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I would love to see several blocks miniaturized. The batter, a small merge block, solar panel, and hydrogen tank. Sometimes you want to design a really small, and compact ship/drone. Something that doesn't take up as many resources.

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2

These would work great for powering small grid printed projectiles like missiles or proxy bombs. It would also be nice for landmines, or even powering a grid just long enough to get uranium to the 1x1x1 reactors.

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A 2x2x1 with 30% the capacity of the 3x3x2 would be nicely balanced.

1x1x1 would be too easy to spam into every nook and cranny on a small grid and massively reduce the value of Small Reactors.

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The volume of 2x2x1 is 4 blocks, the volume of 3x3x2 is 18. So 4 and 1/2 small battery have the same volume like the large but the capacity of the 4 and 1/2 is 135% of the large.

For balance the capacity should be less than 100%.

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"1x1x1 would be too easy to spam into every nook and cranny on a small grid"

Actually that's pretty true. On the other hand, look at the possibilities it would open with respect to small drone builds... Would be really cool. Maybe if the 1x1x1 would be very low capacity that would help to prevent people spamming them.


If power wouldn't just "conduct" magically, that would help a lot as well by introducing constraints like e.g. wires, but I seriously doubt we'll see any overhaul of the power system. :)

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I wouldn't fear ...


Even if if energy density would be kept, a 1x1x1 small grid battery would have 240kW output and 60kWh capacity.

You would need 3 to power just one small atmospheric thruster for about 15 minutes.


What would I do is to make large grid battery to have similar energy density (per space, per weight and per components - most important Energy Cells) to small grid battery.

Now, if you are building more than two LG batteries, it is more useful to use rotor trick to build 3x more small grid batteries. You would have slightly larger energy capacity for half the price taking less space and weighting less.

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My PVP server currently uses a small battery mod and a small merge block mod both of which contain 1x1x1 versions. With these smaller blocks there are so many new possibilities for torpedoes and custom made missiles. Small fighters can now mount small missiles which before was not practical.

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To be honest I’d probably mostly use it to power small work lamps.

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1

hell yes!!!

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2

I offer a completely different approach to this problem, using the functionality already in the game:

We already have batteries in our inventory!

Let's use them!

We create the small container, we push accumulators. We connect batteries to the network through the menu. Battery is ready!

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Micle, geez, no

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Hi guys, thank you for the feedback.

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Can you set this to Completed since you just released them, please?

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Change the flag for completion.And thank you. For more small blocks ..

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Yes, yes, yes!

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Nice!!!

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Planned, oh yeah!!!! :)

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This is coming now guys... :D


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q5pUUNHa7EM

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Voting up after playing the test beta because I definitely want to see this feature get kept!

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5

This block has already been added to the game. Why is still planned and not completed?

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2

Bump. Keen, move it to completed, please.

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