Battery with a conveyor port

Deon Beauchamp shared this feedback 20 days ago
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This would be an additional battery type of a higher tier.

This battery would allow for hot swapping of battery modules from cargo inventory when connected.

When docking at a station, there would be no need to wait for recharging when the depleted battery modules could be swapped out quickly for a fee.

Swapping a low battery out for a good one could be an event in the event controller.

Replies (4)

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This could be very useful for automated mining drones.

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You proposed something similar—a charging station—recently.

I agree that something like that “could be useful.”

But one thing is missing—fleshing out this idea. What would be its purpose and point?

But okay—I’ll try to describe my vision.

Power tools (grinder, drill, welder...) each have their own battery. Their operating time is limited—let’s say 15–20 minutes for a basic tool. Similarly, the operating time of a spacesuit is limited. Let’s say one hour at the basic level. Admittedly, this is an absurdly short time, considering that American lunar spacesuits lasted eight hours more than half a century ago, but never mind—we’re in an irrationally created game world.

How can this be incorporated into the game?

Using batteries. There is a “battery” item in the inventory—for simplicity’s sake, a single universal type, perhaps with several quality/performance tiers that need to be researched and crafted. For example: NiCd, AgZn, LiPoly... They differ in capacity.

A battery works on the same principle as pressurized oxygen and hydrogen cylinders. In other words, electrical energy in the game world is a medium of the same nature as gases like oxygen, air, and hydrogen, and it follows similar rules. The only real difference is that electrical energy “has no mass.”

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There have been times when I've tried to carry full charged battery module to keep my battery powered vehicles going. Recharging them was/is painful because out the auto insert of the most fully charged module. After a couple of iterations I concluded that it was less frustrating to grind down and rebuild the battery block(s) in the vehicle.

A battery charger or charging station that preferentially took the least charged modules from ones inventory would be consistent with how we do things in the real world. I'm not sure that it would be worth Keen's time to implement right away.

What I would like better is a way to recharge vehicles at outposts and contract sites (at least the ones with ample power). I often want to leach power or hydrogen from the places I visit. Most lack a connector and all are protected so that I can't add a connector to use for leaching power (which lead my to thinking about paint guns and graffiti when multi player happens).

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Electric vehicles are a slightly different issue. The difference lies in the power output and size of the batteries. For tools and a spacesuit, we need rechargeable batteries with a capacity of about 0.5–1 kilowatt-hours, which in the game could be an item weighing 1–3 kg (in the real world, it’s considerably more, 5–10 kg).

To power a ground vehicle, we need batteries with a capacity of at least 40–50 kWh (for a small “ATV” weighing ~1 metric ton), which, however, amounts to a battery weighing ~100–200 kg (in the real world, this is again considerably more—5–8 kg/kWh, or 200–400 kg).

The problem with large batteries lies in the power availability at the charging station and in the charging speed. Charging efficiency can be disregarded in this context, as it reaches 95–98% for modern rechargeable battery types. However, there should be limits on charging speed so that charging isn’t instantaneous and so that “battery replacement” makes logical sense in the game.

Similarly, there should be restrictions on tricks involving dismantling and manufacturing new batteries—for example, that a new battery is “empty” or nearly empty

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Example to Clarify:

Ship flies in to dock

Ship connects

Event controllers detect low power on battery modules in battery on ship.

Event controllers remove low power battery modules from battery on ship through the conveyor network.


Event controllers store removed low power battery modules in a station container.

Event controllers move fully charged battery modules from the station battery charger to the battery of the ship.

Ship disconnects from the station and flies away.

Event controllers move low power battery modules from the station container to the station battery charger for charging.


The process could be extended if there were excess battery modules.

If fully charged battery modules are available at the station when the ship docks the exchange process would take a matter of seconds.


A small automated drone based mining operation could theoretically run using a single drone that would not have to stop in order to recharge. The only stops would be for drilling or docking to unload.

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