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1, it will have an effect on survival play sessions which is where I think balance matters most, and I'm of the opinion that creative stuff should be allowed to be as broken/ridiculous as possible.

I think one should also look at cables themselves.

Often I fall back on 1x2 substations because cables seem to attenuate or lose power over distance. Meanwhile, 1x2 substations have virtually no power loss over distance unless something that wants power is in their pathway.


Cables would be great because they have 4x the bandwidth of 1x2 substations - but a cable over 10 blocks simply is less efficient or in better-case scenarios not worth the space they require. I don't fully understand why, but I'm guessing it's because the cables each have a small reserve of power, and in numbers they seem to detract from overall power throughput. Cables also mildly punish crew movement; I would rather expose them to micro-radiation power beams than let them walk at slightly reduced speed.

So in at least a slight majority of use cases, a cable's advantage over any substation (throughput/bandwidth) is nullified. It's a lot of space to build a second reactor in proximity to the load, often unfeasible. And although they're highly efficient over distance, it does take 4 long substations to match bandwidth of one cable line - so that's a 4x2 space occupied every 11 blocks of travel. If you're just trying to blanket a ship in long substation coverage (which I've done) you'll often end up segmenting a ship so that crew cannot pass as freely, if at all. That or the long substations will get overwhelmed.


What I think I would like to see is a cable that has virtually no attenuation/power loss over distance, and either the same bandwidth as now or an increase in bandwidth to match the transformers coming out of a reactor. In exchange, it could be impassable, induce greater speed loss, and/or cannot connect to substations directly but must be routed through either another transformer or a capacitor. Those devices can convert the high-voltage power intended for transiting a ship to a power that is more suitable for delivery and direct use.
This could bear a resemblance to power lines in the real world: power is generated, then transmitted through high-voltage lines until they are in proximity to their destination, then run through a transformer to be more suitable for use.

Another solution could be to increase the bandwidth of transformers coming out of a reactor. Two cables can carry 32 power, whereas a transformer only outputs 24, so those two cables. It forces reactor designs to have three cables to two transformers, which isn't inherently bad, but it does discourage relying on cables as they are because you only have 3/4 power at the source, making a big deal when carrying over distance.

I would support possibly increasing the cost of 1x2 substations, maybe in the form of requiring more advanced materials to construct them such as a diamond or enriched uranium [edited, originally cited tri-steel]. Although if it costs a diamond I'd like to see an increase in bandwidth, maybe 6-8 power instead of 4.


If I had a more robust method of carrying power from source to load area, I don't think I would abuse 1x2 substations nearly as much. My take is, press a disadvantage that long substations have, and that's relatively poor bandwidth.

Okay so, I've done some thinking, High Voltage lines have been a thought somewhat on the back burner for a while now, and I think the step up/down transformer idea is probably the best way to go about those.

As for long substations, I think I'll go forwards with somewhat of a rebranding, making them a Wireless Power Projector and banking more heavily on their ability to send power across a gap. To do this, the cost might change to something like 12 Hypercoil and 12 Tri-Steel or 1 to 2 Diamonds (which would represent the wireless aspect.)

To account for the massively higher cost, they'd have their bandwidth increased, probably to 8.

This cost increase will make cables a more obvious choice for basic power transmission, and if high voltage lines are added then it's less justifiable to use power projectors, especially if they're really cheap (which they will be, I want to incentivize these).

As for balancing what is effectively a "better cable", they'll EMP on death in a rather large destructive radius and might be set up to only send power in a line, unless I can get modular graphics to work.

keep it the same