0 energy repercussions#389
The game has an energy system, but I find it under-used compared to what it could bring. When your balance is negative, you’ll eventually go to 0 energy, and… nothing special will happen. Modules will function on and off, very quickly, and it’s not that punishing.
I feel like getting to 0 energy should be something you want to avoid at all costs.
This is what my suggestion is about ! How to make running out of energy a real danger…
First off, let’s be clear : it’s getting to 0 energy that’s dangerous, not having a negative balance. Having a negative balance means that you’re going towards 0 energy, but you still have time to change things to avoid it.
Running out of energy would cause what I call a “Core timeout”. This means that core slots are set to 0 temporarly, effectively closing all your modules.
After a short amount of time, core slots will start to regenerate, and this will take a minute. This stays true for all tiers of cores, meaning that higher tiers of cores will regenerate points faster, but will recover completely in the same amount of time than previous tiers. I imagine that the actual timeout duration before core points start regenerating can change between cores, something like :
T1 : 15 seconds
T2 : 10 seconds
T3 : 5 seconds
This means that there is a short time where you can’t do anything, and after that, you can start to reopen your modules slowly, one by one.
During the timeout, and until your core has fully regenerated, you acn’t go underground either. Meaning that if you’re under attack and try deploying more turrets that you can handle… It’ll do more harm than potential good.
If you somehow manage to get to 0 energy again while the core slots are regenerating, the Core timeout will start all over again.
This would make energy management much more important than it currently is, and also adding more incentive to get other power generators and batteries, once these will be implemented.
i can imagine it being horrifying if you’re on the surface doing some crafting or something and your power runs out right before an eruption :’)