Apply magazine system to batteries and add different battery types

[BFG1992]

Hello, devs and users A few days ago I’ve came up with a nice idea I wanted to share.

What is a battery? It’s a small cylinder or box which has elecrolyte inside and capable of holding some amount of charge. There are different kinds of batteries - from simple non-rechargeable zinc-carbon and alkaline to comparably advanced Li-Ion and Li-Pol elements, and they also differ in sizes and voltage. Every type of devices requires you to buy batteries which will fit into it - you cannot put AA-cells in your smartphone, for example. That’s what it is in real life.

And what do we have now in Cataclysm? Batteries here are like stacks of hundred tiny bits, each holding 1 charge, fit in just any electric or electronic thing you can imagine, except those running of UPS or plutonium. I think that this is totally unrealistic.

What I thought of lately, is that newly made magazine system allowed guns and gunfire to became more of what they are in real life - now you need magazines, which can be different sizes and loaded with different ammo, and which you can swap instead of reloading every single bullet if you have more than one. That is totally cool.
And than an idea struck me - what if we could do something like this to a batteries, so a single battery will became a magazine holding 100 energy, and needed to be loaded into devices in order of it to work? We could also have rechargeable batteries now (and get rid of such mod), have batteries with different capacities (alcaline ones will hold more than zinc-carbon, etc.), and have different battery types for different devices (AA or C for common flashlights, and D or 9-volt for heavy duty ones)! There are many types of batteries that could be created, some interchangeable, some not, just like magazines now (see list of compatible magazines for some .233 guns, for example). I think it would be awesome if a survivor needed to manage his batteries for different uses, for example, to spend one small alkaline battery for something not that important like lighting occasional basements, and another, high capacity Li-Pol battery for long time lab or mine scavenging, or maybe yet another, plutonium battery for devices which drain much power (like welders). Also, this system will fit well for energy weapons, which could require different types of energy cells instead of UPS (think Fallout series). Aside from increased realism, whis would contribute to gameplay and atmosphere.

There are things I don’t imagine (yet) how to deal with though. It is largened capacity of some devices (like cameras/soldering irons/polishers/welders/etc which contain more than 100 batteries now) or extra battery mods. And what to do with UPSs. Also I don’t know how hard woult this be to implement. But I think that this idea is worth to be in the game.

So, what do you think?

UPD: See my post about suggested battery types: http://smf.cataclysmdda.com/index.php?topic=12372.msg271934#msg271934

[MrQwerty]

Most people will probably think that it’s too much pain to have so many different battery types, but there might be a select few that would want this feature as a kind of a challenge. So i think it’s more fitting for a mod than the main game.

[Coolthulhu]

Multiple battery types would be rather annoying, but batteries as magazines would allow rechargable batteries.

[RADIALTHRONE1]

Multiple battery types would be rather annoying, but batteries as magazines would allow rechargable batteries.

Since this is a more “futuristic” setting, could it be assumed that technology has advanced to the point of a universal battery type (as it currently is)? That would make magazine batteries much more sensical.

[Miloch]

I’d say two types of batteries. Rechargeable and non-rechargeable. Rechargeable should be much rarer.

[system]

I rather like the idea. One exploit that I have used is to insert (2) batteries into a flash light so that I can craft in the dark. I think maybe that a single battery “magazine” might contain a charge of (50) or (100). A consequence would probably be certain items can hold several “magazines” of batteries, though I do think that might be a bit odd. And draining the batteries equally might be challenging to code. I don’t know, I’m just offering ideas on how the mechanics might work in a situation like this for anyone who is interested in developing it.

[BFG1992]

Oh, I’ve been thinking to set up mail notifications correctly >_<

About increased difficulty and annoyance factor - well, maybe, but not more than that of magazine-ed weaponry. Also there are mod to disable magazines alltogether, I don’t see why such mod cannot be made to disable magazine-batteries.

As of universal battery type - well, I think that’s ok too, but I personally would be more for at least five types:

[ul][li]micro (small powered items, like wrist radiation meter (forgot how it is called in the game));[/li]
[li]small (flashlights, handheld consoles, cameras and such);[/li]
[li]medium (soldering irons, pro cameras, cellphones, heavy-duty flashlights and other stuff at size more than 2 and less-or-equal than 6-7);[/li]
[li]large (welders, hotplates and other big and power-hungry stuff, also found in robot wrecks);[/li]
[li]a unique type - for all this future-tech alien-like stuff like teleporters.[/li][/ul]
That’s form-factors. All of the types (except unique last type) may have different properties, such as:

[ul][li]non-rechargeable - the most common and the least valuable type. Could be normal (base charges count) and alkaline (double charges count);[/li]
[li]chargeable - much less common, could be divided in several groups with different charge too;[/li]
[li][glow=green,2,300]plutonium[/glow] - lots of charge, very rare, found mostly in labs and such places.[/li][/ul]
I don’t know, maybe this looks somewhat too complex, but I’m just suggesting

[EditorRUS]

I am against multiple form factors. This is just pointless and adds complexity for nothing.
It doesn’t really matter what size of a battery you have, all that matters is voltage. Even a novice survivor can easily solder some wires from any battery to any device that requires them. Higher voltage is a problem until you open any basic physics book and find how to craft voltage divider which can be done literally using wires only (two resistors and some wires). For higher voltage you can just connect some batteries in series.
But the problem is that those are completely basic level things. With a little of fabrication skill and a variable resistor any crafty survivor can make all batteries universal and fitting everywhere. Should the system be added and players will just try to learn how to do that [searching for electronics books which are being searched anyway] sooner. No point in that. Unless you enforce this system one way or another.

[Miloch]

Also, Fuel Cells.

Fuel Cell - A fuel cell is a device that converts the chemical energy from a fuel into electricity through a chemical reaction of positively charged hydrogen ions with oxygen or another oxidizing agent.

[BFG1992]

Ok, I’ve rethought form factor concept.

Some experimental thoughts, meant probably for the mod:

I guess if a survivor does some soldering or makes a voltage divider - all this setup will be usable, but will also take more space and probably won’t fit into attached device, increasing size and encumbrance (for wearable items). It would not be the case for small-battery large-device cases, of course. So I imagine a mod item called “battery converter” (description would be like: “This is a makeshift battery case with voltage divider attached, for connecting your batteries of one size to devices meant for differently sized batteries.” or something like that - I’m not really fluent in English, sorry) which could be applied to any battery type, with prompt asking “Convert this battery to form factor:
[ul]”, and making that battery modded with according size and encumbrance mods for large-to-small sizes modifications. I think this would be hard to code and maybe a bit too complex for an average player, that’s why I think this idea is for mod only.[/l][/l]

As for normal game stuff - I think that we can narrow battery types to only normal - usable everywhere, and exotic - for teleporters and other sci-fi stuff. Aaand maybe I have another hard-to-do idea:

Using small storage batteries or UPSs for welders and hotplates (and similar stuff) - because in real life those things are powered by big rechargeable batteries with high current and I think that common batteries, even unified and futuristic, are looking somewhat weird in use with such tool as welder.
Of course, small storage batteries/UPSs need to be spawned in more places and more frequently, as they are used not only for bikes now.

Oh, and fuel cells - that’s actually a nice idea, but only if those will be rechargeable with hydrogen (or other stuff), and even than it will be a bit harder to implement a “magazine” that is charged with hydrogen and outputting electricity (maybe I wrong though).[/ul]

[jcd]

I don’t like this very much.
Better leave it simple WRT battery shape & size. It would only make the game more tedious IMO.

About voltage:
Unless you feel comfortable with power electronics and make some kind of DC-DC converter like a chopper, any variable-resistor voltage regulator will be very inefficient. This is not problem if power use is minimal, but its a great deal with most non-electronic-only appliances.

So, again, i’d advise leaving the differing voltages out of it, or just setting an arbitrary three voltage levels (low ~5-12V, mid ~180-220-380V and high ~1000 V and upwards) and setting all items compatible with only one of those three voltages.
On this, crafting a DC-DC coverter to convert between levels should be quite problematic with the higher voltage levels, but scavenging parts from switching power supplies should be enough for a 1-2 KW of power converted between mid & low voltage.

Also, many of the devices around cata worlds are not DC, but AC. Realism wont work here too, and the current system’s fine imo.

Actually, the only thing that i’d hope to see changed on the basic electricity model of cata, is corrected and correctly scaled power usage and max charges for all items.
It is just implausible for a flashlight to be using power comparative to that an electric oven uses. Also to be able to take as many batteries as said oven.

[BFG1992]

Better leave it simple WRT battery shape & size. It would only make the game more tedious IMO.

I kinda agree on that, actually. Made that thoughts because of EditorRUS’ post.

So, again, i’d advise leaving the differing voltages out of it, or just setting an arbitrary three voltage levels (low ~5-12V, mid ~180-220-380V and high ~1000 V and upwards) and setting all items compatible with only one of those three voltages.

I think high-1000V level could be dropped, we have UPSs for that. So, considering that in Cata batteries are unified, let it be three forms of batteries with different voltage:

[ul][li]small - 5-12 V, for common devices: mp3 players, flashlights, soldering irons, cameras and such;[/li]
[li][glow=yellow,2,300]large [/glow]- 110-380 V, for power-hungry large devices, such as welders, hotplates, concrete mixers, etc.;[/li]
[li][glow=violet,2,300]hi-tech [/glow]- for exotic things like teleporters.[/li][/ul]
By type:

[ul][li]common - disposable non-rechargeable battery, can be normal and heavy duty (double capacity);[/li]
[li][glow=cyan,2,300]rechargeable[/glow] - same as above, with one obvious difference, also not as common;[/li]
[li][glow=green,2,300]plutonium[/glow] - rare to find and thus precious, very high capacity, non-rechargeable;[/li]
[li]possibly [glow=red,2,300]fuel cells[/glow] - if someone manages to code an item that outputs elecricity and draws hydrogen or some othe fuel. Also I think that this idea is better for making a hydrogen UPS, not the battery.[/li][/ul]
I think this is my final thought. Everything extra will probably add too much unneeded complexity IMHO.

P.S. Sadly, I’m not a coder, so I can’t put this in the game I just want to share my idea.

[John_Candlebury]

[quote=“jcd, post:11, topic:11642”]Better leave it simple WRT battery shape & size. It would only make the game more tedious IMO.

I kinda agree on that, actually. Made that thoughts because of EditorRUS’ post.

So, again, i’d advise leaving the differing voltages out of it, or just setting an arbitrary three voltage levels (low ~5-12V, mid ~180-220-380V and high ~1000 V and upwards) and setting all items compatible with only one of those three voltages.

I think high-1000V level could be dropped, we have UPSs for that. So, considering that in Cata batteries are unified, let it be three forms of batteries with different voltage:

[ul][li]small - 5-12 V, for common devices: mp3 players, flashlights, soldering irons, cameras and such;[/li]
[li][glow=yellow,2,300]large [/glow]- 110-380 V, for power-hungry large devices, such as welders, hotplates, concrete mixers, etc.;[/li]
[li][glow=violet,2,300]hi-tech [/glow]- for exotic things like teleporters.[/li][/ul]
By type:

[ul][li]common - disposable non-rechargeable battery, can be normal and heavy duty (double capacity);[/li]
[li][glow=cyan,2,300]rechargeable[/glow] - same as above, with one obvious difference, also not as common;[/li]
[li][glow=green,2,300]plutonium[/glow] - rare to find and thus precious, very high capacity, non-rechargeable;[/li]
[li]possibly [glow=red,2,300]fuel cells[/glow] - if someone manages to code an item that outputs elecricity and draws hydrogen or some othe fuel. Also I think that this idea is better for making a hydrogen UPS, not the battery.[/li][/ul]
I think this is my final thought. Everything extra will probably add too much unneeded complexity IMHO.

P.S. Sadly, I’m not a coder, so I can’t put this in the game I just want to share my idea.[/quote]

I personally think that this is good compromise between gameplay and realism.

[EditorRUS]

I think high-1000V level could be dropped, we have UPSs for that. So, considering that in Cata batteries are unified, let it be three forms of batteries with different voltage:

Yeah, go and find [b]a battery[/b] that can output 110 V. In this case output power is the best measurement rather than pure voltage. A car battery is quite capable of welding [props to ElectroBOOM] and definitely heating shit up, but those are bulky and huge.

[Nernums]

bumping this as my own idea is basically identical as the post by BFG1992
swappable battery packs that are ‘magazines’ that hold charge (the current battery items renamed) instead of bullets, rechargeable ones that can be ghetto charged at the cost of durability (this is also how ‘speed chargers’ work) if you have wires or jumper cables in a similar matter to using the ‘fill’ menu when siphoning from a container, or charged properly in a recharge station on a vehicle (recharge stations should also only dump energy out when there are things actually recharging in it my goodness.), and non-rechargeable chemical based ones that are commonly found, default in most found devices, and craft-able using the current battery recipes.
by simply switching the name on the previous battery item to charge it allows for redundancy support, for older mods, and possibly items that would have their own internal batteries.

any sort of voltage handling could still work the same as it does now (faster drain rates for items that use more energy) if it was incorporated in this way as well

[Coolthulhu]

It is already possible to do most of this with jsons alone.
The only exception should be the dual ammo type guns, such as railguns. Those still can’t be done and have to use UPS.