Make Reactor Boosters not suck

[NotAYakk]

Reactor Boosters suck.

A reactor booster should both provide additional power and provide better power management, giving all-around bonuses like:

+5% kinetic weapon fire rate
+3.3% energy weapon damage
+3.3% energy weapon fire rate
+3.3% energy weapon range
+10% shield regeneration
+1.66% sublight speed
(per tier).

So Tier III boosters are:
15% kinetic weapon fire rate
10% energy weapon damage
10% energy weapon fire rate
10% energy weapon range
30% shield regeneration
5% sublight speed

which is on par with other aux slots, instead of sucking.

 

[EulersApprentice]

I don't think the issue is the Reactor Boosters themselves, honestly. The issue is that when designing ships, you very rarely find yourself thinking "man, if only I had a couple more units of power." The only real power sink is Shields, and with the armor buffs it's questionable whether you're actually improving things by replacing more armor with shields.

 

[The5lacker]

The whole point of Reactor Boosters is to provide extra Power if you're building above your budget. They don't need to be good at things other than providing extra power when you're building above your budget.

They just need to be jettisoned out the airlock, along with the entire Power system, because it's bad, opaque, uninteresting, tedious, and bad.

 

[Metallichydra]

Excess power gives a small boost to all stats.
I think it's like, 0.1 evasion for each 100 excess power on a cruiser or something.

 

[HFY]

Yeah, the Reactor Boosters feel like a waste of a slot.

A thought: fold two mediocre components into one, combining the also-mediocre Shield Capacitor into this one. Reasoning: shields are power-hungry, having optimized power delivery systems could mean improved shield efficiency.

Reactor Booster I: +50 power, +10% shield capacity
Reactor Booster II: +125 power, +15% shield capacity
Reactor Booster III: +300 power, +20% shield capacity

Then this component would give both an incentive, and more capacity, for shields on your ship.

Add a few power-hungry components which pair well with shields and it would have a reasonable role in ship design.

 

[SirBlackAxe]

I don't think the issue is the Reactor Boosters themselves, honestly. The issue is that when designing ships, you very rarely find yourself thinking "man, if only I had a couple more units of power." The only real power sink is Shields, and with the armor buffs it's questionable whether you're actually improving things by replacing more armor with shields.

I think there is actually an issue with Reactor Boosters: they don't scale with ship size. Total power consumption from non-core components more than doubles with each increase in ship size, but a booster gives a Juggernaut exactly the same amount of power as they give a Corvette. And while they provide a relevant enough amount of power to a corvette that sometimes I do use them depending on what tiers of reactor and weapon components I'm on, they aren't balanced to be relevant at larger sizes as their value per aux slot decreases relative to all the other options that do scale (including their direct competition, the Shield Capacitor). This problem is masked by larger reactors outscaling power usage, though, and by the power usage of other aux components not scaling either.

Oh, and the other design issue with boosters is that AI doesn't understand them. It will create ship designs with lower tier components rather than sticking a reactor booster in an empty aux slot.

 

[NotAYakk]

I know what it is supposed to do. It doesn't do its job very well.

Unless it is very good, justifying 3 tiers of Physics tech is difficult. Hence this - it is obviously and clearly good.

+% shield regen isn't all that good, but at least makes you feel good about putting more shields on the ship.

+% kinetic weapon fire rate represents faster recharging of the capacitors (or whatever) used for the mass launchers.

+% energy fire rate, damage and range is more obvious. The energy boosts are slightly better than the kinetic ones, as I figure energy is more important to energy weapons, but not hugely; 21% more DPS vs 15% more DPS at tier 3.

A clear benefit from using an Aux slot and from researching this technology for a clear kind of ship build (shield and energy weapon heavy, or shield and kinetic).

 

[Cosmic Fishering Fleet]

I think it just needs to give you a relative amount of energy depending on your main reactor. +5/10/15% of reactor energy output both gives you that needed couple of energy points on corvette and allows you to install a couple more shield components on your Juggernaut.