Power Cells - Bottles of Energy

In modern vehicles that contain multiple batteries, the vehicle or the batteries themselves typically spread the charge between the individual cells. That way they are all at the same level and power is pulled evenly across them. From a programming perspective this makes things super easy since after installing them in the battery block, every cell will just contain the average. Any calculation will only be needed on construction or deconstruction.

I actually know it(from electric potential in physics). The things can get more complicated when cells came from different sources, though I don't know how much complicated it can get(I didn't think about it so much when I told the idea).

Maybe cells can share charges when put in the same container.

From a gameplay perspective we should be able to pull a few cells from places and give another player a full power cell. I'd only consider balancing them in places like batteries or reactors. And I'd think that keeping it a simple average should be good for most everyone.

From an electrical perspective, if similar cells (like 2 AA batteries) are connected in parallel (positives connected together, and negatives connected) they will balance themselves. If placed in series (one positive to negative), then they require a separate balancing module. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battery_balancing

The thing I'm trying to say, if you take some partially filled cells from a battery, from a charging station, from a player etc. they will all have different charges. I wonder if there can be so many power cells in a world that may affect performance. Balancing them when put in the same container may reduce differently charged cells. Actually, I'm not sure if they can be more performance heavy than batteries.

Oh I get it. I feel like that shouldn't be an issue because that's already how hydrogen and oxygen bottles work.

Well, you could make it so that a small ship battery holds only one power cell (right now 360 KWh in the game), while large ship batteries hold max 3 of them (right now 1MWh, which is around 3 times the small ones). This would reduce the eventual performance hit. I don't think battery charge calculations right now have a huge impact on performance as batteries just cost 15 PCU... dunno if they'll have to increase that to 45 for big batteries with this idea though...

Just to link the original suggestion, given how many votes it got.

https://feedback.keenswh.com/idea/batteries-and-removable-power-cells5980a73245842

I don't think this problem is that complex. Batteries don't need to start with energy in the first place, it doesn't make any sense. If the driving force is to be more realistic, batteries shouldn't start with a random amount of power that didn't exist in the first place.

Problem solved - you can now get your power cells back without being to exploit welding/grinding to get infinite power.

if each cell has an individual charge then it would have to be treated like current gas bottles and stored in an idividual slot. While this isn't an issue for liters used or inventory capacity, this presents a new problem:

Most people will have 2-3 bottles on them

batteries take 120 powercells.

imagine 120 individual items in your inventory and you need to know if you have enough steel plate to place the block to begin with.

scroll down...keep scrolling...

granted that is a huge exaggeration as the inventory cannot fit that many powercells but still though.

I like this idea.

This idea is better than having each cell holding a value as when you are wanting to build a battery from inventory and you have (at x10) about 88 batteries each with a charge they will take up 2 inventory spaces if there are 2 types of charge. If it were used like the bottle scenario, it would be an absolute scrollfest. imagine having each cell with a value attributed to it. the only issue is the recipe system which is XML simply states what it takes to make it, there would have to be logic involved at another step to detect what you have and then make a choice based on that.

Personally i just made a quick mod that allows the cells to be regained but batteries start out with nothing.

The most complicated (and interesting) of ways to do this would to be to add an avatar menu in the inventory screen to add it to a single slot that won't affect your inventory size and could even be expanded to building different suits or other components, but you've most likely heard about this suit customization idea so I'll leave the rest too what's already been said.

But if we start to go this route we would eventually turn the game into "survival engineers" although...

the current small grid battery is 2x3x3, this is 18 times bigger than a single 1x1x1 block, if i undertand you correctly are you saying that should hold for example 20 times the power to show the efficiency of the larger block?

the more i think about it the more i think of the bottles idea as a hinderence but i also cant think of a better, alternative idea.

I, too, have noticed that the suit’s energy level burns much more quickly now so, like you, I find that carrying extra oxygen and/or hydrogen bottles (unless on a planet) is useless; suit energy is the time-limiting variable now. This new mechanic forces the player to rethink everything.

So it's not just me. They did lower the energy capacity of the suit/increase energy usage.

I'm pretty sure the only reason it burns more quickly is because of the new temperature system implemented into your suit.

I think as part of the new temperature mechanic they increased power usage when not "warm",it stimulates you to build pressurized stuff to lower energy consumption. They have lots of systems to balance, so they have to be careful.

For example to balance the need for power when exploring without rendering pressurization not worth it (again) they could make power cells occupy a big volume so that when you have a bottle and a power cell you're full. This however would make building batteries by hand (with 120 power cells if I'm not wrong) a pain in the ass. To counter this they could make a battery require less power cells (3-4),but then they'd increase the capacity of each power cell to 1/3-1/4 of a battery, meaning you would have days of power for your suit with just a single power cell. Then oxygen will be again the limiting factor and someone will come here to ask for bigger bottles, etc.

As I said, these are very delicately balanced systems. So if they plan to implement anything like this I'd hope they thoroughly design something that doesn't alter this equilibrium in unplanned or unwanted ways.. 😅

I think you've missed the point. With this change that would also change, as the cells you pulled wouldn't get new charge. They would retain the actual charge. So you could build a new battery, alright, but it would have the same charge as the old battery. That's the entire point. Or - at least it was in the original suggestion ;)

couldn't they just act similar to hydrogen and oxygen bottles? and then have the battery deplete or charge them depending on use.

Doesn't fulfil the OP's request - they need to be auto-used to refill suit energy when energy gets too low just like how bottles work for o2/h2

I meant to recharge batteries. I agree, med kits too

Presumably, that system would be replaced with power cells starting with 25% power and going from there.

I'd actually be fine if new batteries started out empty.

If they started empty to compensate for power cells being recoverable, I'd support that too.

Except that's how they started out. They were replaced with this because of the need to have a way to jumpstart builds that run completely out of power, out in nowhere.

While I don't agree with this way of doing it, I do recognize it being a problem. Having rechargeable power cells would solve both these problems.

Don’t solar and wind now solve that thou? Build a little charging rig to get going again

yeh but you can't connect an unpowered grid to anything (unless you attach it via rotors or hinges and that just clangs too much :/ )

Yeah, I get it Malware. It just feels a little too "Yo I heard you like batteries, so I got you batteries for your batteries" to me. A possible solution could be to provide a full "starter" battery, which grinds entirely to scrap, in the initial spawn vehicle (or two or three or whatever you feel should be provided). And then normal batteries could be adjusted to start empty and power cells would be recoverable. That would work for me. But we all have different tastes I suppose.

So rename the batteries to "Power Substation", and insert "Batteries" into that. Then it won't be "batteries for your batteries".

Rename batteries to "power substation." Wat? A "power substation" is a facility. That's something an engineer would build. And inside, would be batteries, which already exist. I'm not sure I follow your analogy.

An Engineer? In Space Engineers? No, really? I've never heard of such a thing!

The idea, is that the batteries in the game now would be renamed to something that tells people, hey, this is a storage compartment to put power cells inside. Then, you would put your batteries into it, to give the ship power. Like a structure that holds a car battery style battery, except on the large grid it'd probably fit 30 or so of these. And if you design it right, maybe even 80. Depending on the type of cells.

This power substation would be a facility in which you manage your ship's powergrid, you go in, place down battery housing units, maybe "Battery Banks", and then you put your cells in, "Batteries", each of which has their own charge and discharge rate. The power substation was a quick idea I had while packing. I can't do a whole lot of detail right now, as I'm preparing for a flight. Lots to do.

That's literally the same function that a wall of batteries provides.

Except these power cells are an inventory item, and can be taken out and transported. Like a shipping container of double A batteries to sell at SpaceWalmart.

I think this is a very elegant solution to the problem that Keen tried to solve by making the power cells ungrindable. Not to fault Keen in this particular area; I probably would have done it the same way they did. But making the power cells something you can just take out and move to another battery would let you retain the charge from a battery you want to move without allowing you to create power from spare parts (as you would still need to charge the cells)

That would mean that when you initially build a battery it would need to start empty. Which, from what I have read on the Keen Discord, is exactly how it used to be: batteries start empty, and you could recover power cells. In order to make the early game more forgiving, batteries were change to start with 20% power at the cost of being unable to recover power cells. Personally, I'd rather they start empty and power cells be recoverable. All the solutions above just sound like "yo I heard you like batteries, so I got you some batteries for yo batteries."

Funny thing is why is "batteries for your batteries" such a strange concept? You can buy power Banks for your devices at the gas station checkout they're everywhere 😆! Why is a common normal concept in real life so strange for a game?

Right LOL... I've been thinking on this for a while. I think the best non resource intensive would be.

Here is the scenario. you have a battery or multiple battery's that are dead. you have a ship with good battery's or a power source.

Battery's still build with battery component's but start dead. and there is a inventory slot for 1 consumable. they should be grindable as battery components are now used to make Jump packs.

The survival kit should be able to make Jump packs and also charge them, but the catch is you have to have battery components that can not be made with the survival kit. (but early game should be grindable form salvage of drop pods if batteries are grindable)

The survival kit when making the Jump Pack it consumes the Battery components and starts charging(aka Building) and the power consumption of the survival kit goes up to consume the power required to charge the Jump pack.

The Jump pack is then placed in to the Battery that is dead and consumed by the battery to add the power. This works like small ship single fire rockets. have to add one every time its used.

Battery's have no conveyer ports and only enough room for one jump pack at a time. you have to rinse and repeat the process for every jump pack and every battery till desired charge level.

I really like this concept so it takes lil resources from the server as it has to be triggered from the player and adds complexity to the process to make it the backup plan if you had to. but not liked and abused for unlimited power.

Don't even need to argue about grindable, just give batteries inventory slots make the existing powercells be able to be placed in there. If you grind the battery they fall out just like a bottle would fall out of an o2 generator. The batteries capacity could be dependant on how many powercells are in its inventory.

I think giving battery components a related power would be complex and adding more strain to the already strained Dedicated server to compute.

Leave building materials as building materials (what would prevent someone for just making unlimited battery by adding more components over and over again) one person flying the other shoveling battery components lol.... sounds like a steam engine!!! man the the boiler shovel the coal!

make it consumable like ammo rockets med kits and what not as they require the player to say yes consume this for desired effect very low on the compute process.

[Just noticed similar suggestions further down in the thread]

One option to solve the problem with easier early game would be to add a second type of disposable one of battery item that wou can manufacture and that can be used to "fuel up" a battery.

Similar to existing real world batteries, you have high capacity rechargable batteries and you have single use batteries that has a one way chemical reaction. They have full charge once created but once drained they are just junk where you might get the shell recycled.

It should be quite easy to make, not provide to much charge to avoid it being to good for later game, like taking up very much space, OR not provide a way to automate the usage, forcing you to manually transfer them to the batteries or only allow them to recharge small grid batteries, not large grids.

Just a few ideas.

Yea totally, cause when my car dies, I just jump start it with a 9v clock battery I had laying around! :O

Well idk what you do bro, but I use a jump box like a normal person. It fits nicely in my glove box.

Which are specifically designed to be plugged into something that has that voltage and amperage to jump a car. You can't just plug a battery into a battery and make it go. A space suit wouldn't have nearly enough voltage to jumpstart a SPACE SHIP. I know we're talking about an engine here with jump starting, but seriously, think about it. The voltage of a space suit couldn't possibly kick start an ion thruster, or power the ignition of a hydrogen thruster or turn over a hydrogen engine. You might be able to power a light bulb with it though or open a door.