nuclear power#1155
add a uranium nuclear power plant that uses uranium and generates a lot of power but if destroyed it will explode and deal massive damage to everything near it. uranium will deal dmg to the player’s hp if its in their inventory so some sort of lead container can be added to prevent this
(and maybe a thorium power plant too which is more efficent and powerful but is much more expensive and requires both thorium and uranium)
I’m surprised it took this long for this to pop up.
I kinda thought this was already reccomended lol, you dislike the idea?
I do. It’s quite hard to make nuclear power in a steampunk setting, and I see no point to have it anyways. Power is already rarely a problem, at least core slots are one before power ; and we’re getting more power generation methods in the future. Nuclear is usually OP in games, understandably - but here, that would probably mean you just need one single module for power and that’s it.
Although, now that I think about it, it could be interesting as well, because if it costs a lot to maintain, and people decide to only have one, it could become an easy target for attackers, and if destroyed, the ship would essentially become defenseless since there is no more power. But people would most likely still have other power modules just in case, so idk.
It would also allow for more energy intensive tech expansions like emp turrets or just for more space in the endgame stage
The thing is, space really isn’t the issue.
I have to much space i need more things to put up top after running my micro manager and green achievements
Nuclear Power is probably the most steampunk technology in modern society. You aren’t getting electricity from radiation… typically you’re using radiation to heat up water, which turns a turbine to generate electricity. The neat thing about Nuclear Power is that it’s incredibly simple… the only problem you have to engineer around is the fact that radiation can poison organic life. Lead lined walls makes it so a year on a nuclear sub gives you less radiation than spending your summer on the beach.
You’d need to give the players fun options of absurd upgrades that just suck up power like crazy. Tesla Coils might be a fun toy for drillship defense. Perhaps the Nuclear Reactor could charge Tank Batterys, like the Batmobile from the 1960’s Batman. High Powered Scanners might need more power. High Powered Radios, for getting in contact with mainland and updating them on the expedition… perhaps?
Of course, there are reactors that use liquid Sulphur as a coolant instead of Heavy Water/Deuterium… those are Breeder Reactors. They can be quite dangerous because Sulphur explodes when in contact with water… and water is how you put out most fires. Sulphur exists in this game already, so if you wanted to make the Nuclear Reactors exceedingly dangerous that would be interesting. The benefit of a Breeder Reactor is that you can slowly accumulate enriched nuclear materials, rather than using them up. However, this is going down the path of building Nuclear Bombs… which are decidedly NOT very steampunk. They can Fry electronics from the EMP they generate, but Cogs are Clockwork and might be totally unaffected by Nuclear technology…. which might be a reason for Cogs to use it, at higher levels. You could have a dichotomy of players using safer reactors that use up Enriched materials… and Cogs using Breeder Reactors to create more Enriched Materials for Doomsday weapons.
The Soviets also had plans for an air-cooled Nuclear Reactor that would have been on an airship, but the plans for this were ultimately scrapped because the threat of a terrorist downing a nuclear-powered aircraft were too great of an international concern. Still… pretty steampunk, if you think about it.
I don’t think the use if uranium would be a good idea. With uranium it would need plutonium too, but with thorium it wouldnt need anything else.
It’s actually the opposite, uranium is a naturally radioactive element while thorium needs a radioactive element like uranium or plutonium to jumpstart it