Fusion Power feels a bit too simple

[pipai]

I recently got Fusion working on Aquilo. Dealing with normal Nuclear Reactors on Aquilo was a really cool experience, where I needed to add alarms to monitor my ice production/water levels to ensure that power stayed on. I know that the payoff of finishing Aquilo is making power generation easier - but the complexity in the Fusion Reactor practically doesn't exist at all. Fusion fuel cells are dirt cheap, and a single reactor can generate 100 MW with barely any thinking required. This is all compared to regular nuclear, which requires that you actively think about uranium recycling, pipe and turbine placement, water sources, heat... Fusion is literally bootstrap a bit of fluid, put it in a loop, and you're done.

I know it's basically too late to make major recipe changes by now, but I wish there was still some complexity in late game power generation... Perhaps make the bootstrapping process harder? IRL you would need a lot of power to just start the process. Maybe add a requirement that you have 40 MW of power connected to even start the reactor?

[mako00]

Did the fusion reactor require power to start up?

It does have a power consumption stat, but it does seem to need that much power?

One requirement could be that it eg requires 100MW for 10s to ignite, and then 1MW to keep running.

[CyberCider]

Oh, completely agreed. Personally, I always considered nuclear power to be at a perfect level of logistical complexity. The acid required for uranium mining, the chance-based ore processing, the kovarex loop, the logistics and reprocessing of spent cells, the option to wire up smart fuel conservation... All little things, but they add up to make something that feels really satisfying.

Meanwhile, the logistics of fusion power are as follows: Fuel goes in, power goes out. If you think about it, it's literally a burner turbine. Oh, and its fuel is 5x lighter than uranium fuel for no reason in particular. Like, it's already more energy-dense, did they really have to double-dip?

Fusion provides opportunities for some great designs, I will give it that. It's a very cool puzzle, I like it a lot. But after that design phase is complete, it does feel somewhat barebones. It would also help if beacons didn't get their ridiculous double quality effect, so that extreme power output had somewhere to go. Seriously, a 6x power decrease at legendary??? Who thought that was at all necessary?

[Khazul]

Maybe add a requirement that you have 40 MW of power connected to even start the reactor?

Build a small fusion powered ship and see how you feel about that. You are basically saying that fusion power should need an associated 40MW nuclear plant (heater not usable) on a platform or *alot* of solar panels which would just plain kill off several people's late game smaller ships.

Maybe if there is also a portable/transportable means of supplying jump start power - for eg charged batteries or super capacitors perhaps. For eg, feed 100 of them in to ramp up the starting power along with some coolant and fuel after which it becomes self sufficient.

There are suggestions for having space platforms dock with space platforms - if such were ever implemented than that becomes another option for jump start power. Not saying no, just saying I don't think it is as simple and that there would be consequences that need to be considered for such changes, in particular, not breaking people's existing stuff needlessly

[Orum]

If you find fusion too simple, I suggest trying to make it hard for yourself by trying to milk every bit of energy out of the fuel cells. This becomes a real challenge with fusion, as it takes a lot more area than, for instance, fission, which lets you store power as heat/steam (which you obviously can't for fusion).

[Khazul]

I you really want to make fusion require some puzzling, make it a bit periodically unstable so the plasma output varies a lot, but say with the additional of a circuit feedback control loop (for eg), you could stabilize it and how good you circuit ends up being ends up determining the average efficiency of it. This is pretty much the problem with real world fusion - controlling it to keep it stable to sustain it and make if efficient.

[petrathekat]

I do at least wish that fusion generators produced heat, not electricity, so there was an additional routing layer at play and so that you could use it as an alternate heat source on Aquilo. (Actually when I first saw the fusion system, I assumed it produced heat; it makes so much sense for the landmark technology on the freezing planet to be a hilariously overkill method of heating.) But this is probably modding territory.

Alternatively you could make the fusion cells spoil. (Again modding territory.)

[Tinyboss]

I don't think the extra power density would have been a satisfying reward for a level of complexity beyond fission. Fission is already pretty dense as it is, and by the time you need multiple fission plants worth of power, plopping more of them down side by side is trivial.

IMO, an endgame tech that *removes* some complexity was a great choice on Wube's part.

[Khazul]

I do at least wish that fusion generators produced heat, not electricity, so there was an additional routing layer at play and so that you could use it as an alternate heat source on Aquilo. (Actually when I first saw the fusion system, I assumed it produced heat; it makes so much sense for the landmark technology on the freezing planet to be a hilariously overkill method of heating.) But this is probably modding territory.

Alternatively you could make the fusion cells spoil. (Again modding territory.)

Then it would basically be a copy of nuclear and then I would argue what is the point?

Fusion may be simple just needing cooling and fuel, but its simplicity and high density enables use cases that otherwise would not be possible.