New Building: Power Stations

Hi,

While reading the Base Simplification thread, I had this idea for a building that would increase radar range by boosting the power available (which makes sense from a real world perspective), and it evolved into the Power Station.

Power Stations would create power for boosting certain buildings performance. It would increase radar range, damage dealt by laser/plasma turrets (if they're in the game), and other things that would benefit from having much more power available. Even higher tier radar stations (I'm sure there will be some) could benefit from it, increasing range again.

These power stations would require researching an alien power source, probably another research to learn how to make the building, and an amount of alenium per week to power it (I like the idea of it having a cost, it limits the use somewhat, and makes it more of a luxury, limited-deployment, specialty building, in a way).

Since it would require spending alenium, it would have an option to turn it off if you wanted to conserve resources. It'd then sit there, useless, until you turned it back on, at which point your defenses and sensors would be boosted again.

I'd say that it should have week cycles, that cost, say, two alenium per week (balancing would happen in beta) paid in full at the beginning of the week. So, if you wanted to turn it off, it would finish whatever cycle it was on (to avoid wasting alenium already spent) before it shut down. If you wanted to turn it on, it could take a few days to spool up before it starts eating alenium and producing power, so you'd have to plan ahead.

The building would be 1x1 squares, and one power plant would provide the bonus to every applicable building on the base. (Having multiple power plants would, in theory, increase the boost even more, but that could get overpowered really quickly. Best play it safe.) I'd think that it would be more of a limited use building near the beginning of the game, but by end game you'd have so much alenium that you could have each base boosted by one of these all the time. (I don't know how much alenium one usually gets, as I've not played much, but based off of what I did UFO:EU it could work out that way.)

Having this building would increase the choices the player can make early game. "Is it worth researching and building a power source, and then paying for it in alenium, to boost radar range, when you could build a base to cover that area instead (which can do so many more things than simply detect UFOs)? Do I want to spend alenium this month on powering it, or should I save it for a rainy day?"

It would also reward players more for taking down UFOs and collecting alenium, and give them another way to spend it if they wanted.

Thoughts?

It's interesting - I was expecting to just think power stations are busy work but I like your spin on it. I'm undecided if it'd be a good thing gameplay wise or not... there would be a fine line between having it be worthwhile but not necessary. Maybe make it an extremely expensive mid game building if possible, that you'd probably toggle on/off until endgame?

That's kind of what I was going for. It wouldn't be needed, per se, but really make things easier, albeit at a cost.

Interesting. But would a power station need Alenium?

Good old-fashioned power plants/generators could do the trick.

Regarding other ways to increase rarar range - radar arrays. In other words, instead of building a huge-ass radar in the base, you link to the smaller radars around the area.

If the Alenium power cost was tricky to work out then another balancing alternative could be increased detection chance by enemies.

Ramping up your radar strength would make you easier to spot in return, not to mention the power plant itself may be detectable.

That is true, I mentioned increased detectability in the base simplification thread. My thinking was that the more radars you had, the harder it would be to stay unnoticed. Like, no radars would be impossible to detect (or just about impossible), one radar would be difficult to find, two not too hard, three they'd probably notice it, four you posted the address on google maps and sent the aliens a link.

We were also talking about how making more radar buildings wouldn't be making more of the same dishes in the same place, but more centers that interpret data from other sources of information, like telescopes, other EM wave detectors, etc.

I was thinking it'd be more of a converted alien power source reactor thingy, and not a traditional power plant, as we can assume that we already have those. Otherwise, how would we get power to the base? It'd be more of a major upgrade that we couldn't make without using alien tech, otherwise it'd be prohibitively difficult and costly to generate a similar amount of power ourselves with terrestrial technology.

Its a cool idea. But doesn't adding a new building mean that the room needs to be drawn up and pre-rendered for base attacks?

Not to say, you need to design an interface for simple management of this build as it sounds like it would act diffrent from what is already in game.

I know having more radars means more scanning makes little sences, but wouldn't it be far easyier to say something like

"radars have a computer system built into them, and the alien ufos are hard to detect and our radars have to deal with a ton of junk data, so more radars means this data can be sorted faster so we have some extra time to scan more radar data we did have but never had time to process before"

I know thats a bad exsample, but I just think coming up with a reason for more radars is a far simpler solution.

much like erutan, I wasn't sure what to make of the topic title. It's certainly interesting. It also possibly takes Xenonauts into EU2012 territory a little. But a Power Station tier would add in options such as:-

- Reducing costs by mothballing facilities.

- Boosting effectiveness of existing tiers (within reason).

- Providing increased power for advanced facility tiers.

- Enabling research into mobile power sources for advanced HWPs

- Increase base defences.

- provide emergency lighting if taken out during a base mission, or shut off for some reason.

- Be primed to blow if a base defence mission is about to be lost. Denying the victory to the aliens.

Since this sort of came from the proposed change to radar in the other thread though, I can't see it getting in at this stage. But it would have been an interesting approach. I like the ideas around tactical resource management in the game.

There are several reasons against.

1. Enough with ripping off the new EU game. Why not, for a change, rip off a different game once?

2. Why would it help - is your PC going to work faster if you plug it into a 240V outlet instead of 120V?

3. If more power is good, why didn't you have more power in the first place, like lay down a thicker cable when building the base?

Enough with ripping off the new EU game.

At least rip off the useful ideas! Power is nothing you manage in this game. It requires no decision.

You could just as well increase the build / maintenance costs of every individual building and end up with the exact same effect.

I can only imagine that someone thought "Hey, let's have some more clicking just for the hell of it!" and no one dared to question it. =)

There are several reasons against.

1. Enough with ripping off the new EU game. Why not, for a change, rip off a different game once?

First off, I know practically nothing about the new EU game. I've never played it, I doubt I ever will. I came up this idea after realizing that the easiest way to increase radar range (when dealing with real world physics) is by boosting the power available to the dish. Don't just assume that I'm ripping off of someone else's work because it's similar to something that already exists. I'm not a thief, don't call me one.

2. Why would it help - is your PC going to work faster if you plug it into a 240V outlet instead of 120V?

Secondly, voltage is not the same as power. Power is measured in watts.

And computing does take power, a lot of power, and having more available will allow you do do faster computations by supporting more power-hungry, but faster, hardware.

That being said, I don't know why you even brought up computing. I was talking about having more power to generate more powerful radio waves, which would stay coherent longer, and would be able to reflect off more distant objects, increasing the range at which you could detect things. The increased power output would also benefit laser and plasma based defenses, as they (obviously) require power to work, and having a higher power available would allow them to have a higher output. Laser output is even measured in watts for goodness sakes.

3. If more power is good, why didn't you have more power in the first place, like lay down a thicker cable when building the base?

Third, your last "reason" doesn't make any sense. How would we have some form of foreknowledge as to how much power we need? That's like asking why computers didn't start off with terabyte drives, since more storage is better. Technology progresses as time goes on, and requires upgrading or replacing the previous infrastructures to handle the higher level of technology. Are you suggesting that the infrastructure supporting the bases is the same when you reach endgame as it was at the beginning?

If you are going to start bashing someone's integrity (yes, I am offended that you accused me of stealing ideas), how about you at least do your research and try to understand what it is you are talking about?

EDIT:

Sorry, I shouldn't have been rude. You have my apologies.

Edited February 24, 2013 by GizmoGomez

At least rip off the useful ideas! Power is nothing you manage in this game. It requires no decision.

You could just as well increase the build / maintenance costs of every individual building and end up with the exact same effect.

I'm also not saying that we should have to manage power; I never said that.

I was suggesting a building that would boost the abilities of other buildings in the base.

And how would increasing building costs give the same effect? My only thought is that you believe that I want buildings to require a power source to operate, which is not my intent. I simply thought that an optional structure that improves your buildings, but at a cost, would add another option to the players.

Edited February 24, 2013 by GizmoGomez

What gizmo is suggesting is basically a building that "buffs" your base by using alien technology, but eats alenium while doing so. I'm not entirely sold, but it is interesting and could open up some new doors.

It has nothing to do with how power plants worked in EU12, and the name could easily be changed to something else. Harmonic resonance efficiency cascader or whatever.

The reason why I wouldn't bother with this is that it means Radars and Power Stations aren't interchangeable. If you need to demolish one of your radars to replace it with something as you don't need the range, you can demolish any of them if they are interchangeable. If they are not, you HAVE to demolish the power station as they are useless without the radar.

Plus it's more work and art costs, and less intuitive for a newbie.

It wouldn't be useless without the Radar (it would buff other things too, thothkins came up with some good ones above), but I know what you mean. I wasn't really expecting to get it into the game, I just thought it was a cool idea and thought I'd share.

GizmoGomez - I would be in favor of this MAYBE if the game weren't so far along. I think the best compromise is allow more range with more detection stations and forget about the power station. Chris has a valid point about adding a brand new component to the game and the additional art work it would require.

HWP - I think that was pretty mean. I've never played EU and had the same thought as he did. Obviously, the EU developers were either logical or unoriginal, take your choice, but I don't think that was called for. As far as laying down a thicker cable - that doesn't make any sense. I can't imagine that the Xenonaut base doesn't have an independent power supply from day one, so you would need more generators at the base if the power requirements were increased. There are commercial radars with over 1 million watts of input power required. It would be stupid to have a base that could be totally shutdown by someone cutting the public power lines 50 miles away.

Edited February 25, 2013 by StellarRat

I didn't think of it as linked to a single facility. As Chris said, why bother? You could just combine the two as having them separate is fiddly and awkward.

Although the list above gives a few reasons, I was thinking of it primarily to power the labs, defences and workshops as they progress.

But hey, it's an extra cost (leaving beginner awareness v dumbing down for another thread ) so understandable. It would be quite a change at this stage. Always fun to read and think around these things though, so thanks GizmoGomez.

I was thinking just how hard it would be to keep a Xenonaut base secret with it's ever growing demand for power*.

Sergei: I have done it! Built the entire base in complete secrecy.

Dmitri: Fantastic. No one would ever suspect we were in Berlin, and they suspect everyone of everything round here.

Sergei: We can just get on with our Xeno-research in peace.

Dmitri: At least until the plasma research. That's going to take a lot of power.

Sergei: What?

Dmitri: you did build the base next to the power station like we agreed?

Sergei: um, I got a nice place near the Pergamon. I thought we could just feed the meter...

Dmitri: you idiot. the commander isn't going to like this...

*leaving aside the Interceptors going out of the roof like Thunderbirds. the more I think about it, the more UFO:AI has a point about off site facilities.

*leaving aside the Interceptors going out of the roof like Thunderbirds. the more I think about it, the more UFO:AI has a point about off site facilities.

I know, you could attach the interceptors to the front of a submarine operating secretly in the ocean! I'm brillant! Maybe call them Skydivers!

that's an awesome idea StellarRat! For such an awesome idea, you'd need some sort of equally awesome enemy!

what about....no...I know! what about aliens form another galaxy travelling at incredible speeds to invade the Earth?!

pretty futuristic stuff! hey! why don't we set it in the future! say.... 1980! When we'll have moonbases and the like. Awesome!

who knows what kind of spin off merchandising it will result in...

When we'll have moonbases and the like. Awesome

Lt. Ellis was yummy...

Ah, the Thunderbirds... Classic. Loved those marionettes.

HWP - I think that was pretty mean.

Wasn't meant as personal. Just against the idea that's too similar to EU.

As far as laying down a thicker cable - that doesn't make any sense. I can't imagine that the Xenonaut base doesn't have an independent power supply from day one, so you would need more generators at the base if the power requirements were increased.

I imagine it would have backup generators. But independent supply? That means a line of trucks coming to dump diesel into your base and back to fill up. And massive air shafts and large smokestacks pumping out black diesel smoke.

I can't imagine it being less conspicuous than a few shallow cables.

It would be stupid to have a base that could be totally shutdown by someone cutting the public power lines 50 miles away.

Cutting an underground cable is a far harder job than firing one shot at a smokestack identified in CAVOK from 40 miles by IR signature and from 10 by a dark cloud rising from it. Upon which you either cut the generators or die from smoke inhalation.

Or even cutting an aerial line. These lines are everywhere, it's never obvious that a few of them supply an extra kiloamp into a secret base. Smokestacks with industrial output and lines of tanker trucks? Not quite so pastoral.

No worries HWP.

And I would imagine that it wouldn't be diesel generators, but perhaps a nuclear reactor powering bases. They're pretty safe, and can be pretty hard to detect if done correctly. Plus, since it's kind of a futuristic setting in the past, I'd imagine that nuclear reactors would fit right into the Xenonauts culture. I'm kind of thinking of Fallout, a bit.

I imagine it would have backup generators. But independent supply? That means a line of trucks coming to dump diesel into your base and back to fill up. And massive air shafts and large smokestacks pumping out black diesel smoke.

You realize that small nuclear reactors were available even back then. Like the kind used to power nuclear subs and ships. Also, diesel engines don't belch black smoke when properly tuned. You can also use small oil fired steam boilers and that spin turbine generators. Even hydro could work if they're close to steam with good flow.

You realize that small nuclear reactors were available even back then.

I counted on someone suggesting that.

Of course they were.

There is, however, one key aspect: using a nuclear reactor makes the idea of power modules inapplicable.

You build one, and it's not easy or cheap, but then you're done with it, they scale up too well not to provide headroom right away.

So no addons, no alenium power sources, no module tetris - you can say it takes up a level below your access lift and be done with it. Nothing to build.

You can also use small oil fired steam boilers and that spin turbine generators. Even hydro could work if they're close to steam with good flow.

Still produce smoke and hot exhaust and still more vulnerable than a cable, just blow up a smokestack.