[Spaceships] Where are the Capacitors?

Anaraxes · 06-12-2009, 04:37 PM

The thread to which Ulzgoroth linked mentions that there's not much difference between a closed-system regenerative fuel cell and a rechargable battery. Electrical input to either reverses the chemical reaction that gave you electricity in the first place. Run the chemical reaction again, and you get electricity while the battery discharges / the fuel cell consumes fuel.

Capacitors don't store energy as chemicals, though, so they have a fundamentally different mechanism. They might well have different efficiency per unit volume.

That gets into questions speculating about future super-tech, the relative improvements in each technology, and the metagame questions of what happens to balance if one technology is clearly dominant. So perhaps it's best simply to file off the names and use about the same stats for all three. You might build in a preference at different sizes -- say, capacitors have the least overhead, so they're best in small applications (like current electronics) while batteries have better power density at medium sizes (like current batteries) and fuel cells are best at large sizes that can make up for all the extra stuff to produce the power (like current fuel cells). The piecewise curve along the "best" line for each size is the tech you're actually going to see in the optimally designed ships, and so that curve should be the one you balance.

06-12-2009, 04:37 PM	#13
Anaraxes Join Date: Sep 2007	Re: [Spaceships] Where are the Capacitors? The thread to which Ulzgoroth linked mentions that there's not much difference between a closed-system regenerative fuel cell and a rechargable battery. Electrical input to either reverses the chemical reaction that gave you electricity in the first place. Run the chemical reaction again, and you get electricity while the battery discharges / the fuel cell consumes fuel. Capacitors don't store energy as chemicals, though, so they have a fundamentally different mechanism. They might well have different efficiency per unit volume. That gets into questions speculating about future super-tech, the relative improvements in each technology, and the metagame questions of what happens to balance if one technology is clearly dominant. So perhaps it's best simply to file off the names and use about the same stats for all three. You might build in a preference at different sizes -- say, capacitors have the least overhead, so they're best in small applications (like current electronics) while batteries have better power density at medium sizes (like current batteries) and fuel cells are best at large sizes that can make up for all the extra stuff to produce the power (like current fuel cells). The piecewise curve along the "best" line for each size is the tech you're actually going to see in the optimally designed ships, and so that curve should be the one you balance.