Potential Problems

Solar Panels and the effects of suns on them don't seem to be counted in the /charging display.

Weapon energy is added to EnergyPerSecond rather than taken away.

/charging command seems to lag behind what you do for a little. I.e. once i stop firing for a few seconds if i type /charging it will still show me as if i was firing my weapons.

Good Points

Overloaders Subtract properly from the EPS Display

Looks nice visually

Misc

Charger shield bonuses and elec are only counted when not at max shields (useful if semi confusing at first)

Tractor elec isn't added atm (I think jeff said this wasnt to be added atm)

Solar panels only update every 2 seconds, but they are definitely counted in the charging display. Just sit in one place for 2 seconds to make sure the panels have a chance to recalculate.

Weapons are not included in the energy per second or shown in the charging numbers in any way. When you fire your weapons, it just takes a chunk of energy out if you have it.

I programmed the shield chargers and the shields so that they only take elec if they are actually increasing your shields. The shield chargers only add to your shields per second also if your shields are charging. This is a side effect to them turning themselves off if they're not needed, while shields always show your shields per second, since they are always "on", just toggle whether or not they draw energy.

Idk how to unzip things, anyone care to tell me how?

Move the program out of the file

Diffusers should only take elec for one per stack as I believe was suggested before.

OK, I'll make that change to diffusers.

I retested panels today 8 solar IV whilst sitting almost on top of an M class sun (only sun in the galaxy). It appears that when you equip the panels the EPS display doesn't change, until your energy bank goes below maximum (like chargers with shields), i think it would be better to change Panels to be shown all the time, for convenience and to lessen confusion.

This is why i thought it was my weapon that was adding to EPS^ it was in fact, the elec per second value changing to include panels.

Not sure if you pointed this out, but the EPS added by panels is the elec they give every 2 seconds.

so without panels i get 534 EPS. with panels added i have 790.
790-534 is 256. 8*32 = 256 every 2 seconds. So really it's showing me with 128 more EPS than it should show.

Could make panels every tick 1 second and half their regen stat to compensate.

Elec taken shield chargers isn't shown

487 EPS when regenerating shield without Charger. 434 SPS
487 EPS when regenerating shield with charger 825 SPS
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Another thing i noticed, i seem to get more EPS when i've just finished regenning, that i don't get at any other point (that i've noticed so far)

EPS whilst regenerating shields without firing weapon (i.e. showing panel elec) 487

EPS whilst regenerating shields while firing weapon 743

EPS after regenerating shields while firing weapon 1040.

I have no idea where the 1040 comes from since any other time if i'm just firing my weapon normally it only shows a max of 790.

*edit* it usually drops back down to 790 from 1040 shortly.
any ideas?

any ideas?

where can i see eps? O_o

on test type /charging look in event and it'll tell you how much elec per second and shields per second your generating depending on what your doing/regenning etc.

Thx

The issue with solar panels is that recalculating how much energy they give you is actually really expensive. It has to look through every object in the galaxy, see if it's a sun, how much that type of sun affects solar panels, how far you are away from it, etc. So if your energy is at 100%, it can skip all that. I think it's probably not worth slowing down the server just so people can see a number more accurately when at full.

But I get exactly the same elec shown in a galaxy with 1 (m class) sun, as with a dark sun and 2 other suns (calypso on test), there isn't any variation shown at all.

And will this be a limitation of the current client? Because surely you can streamline the process to make little-no difference on server load, since to display the suns the server has to check through every object in the galaxy, couldn't you make panels check with that, rather than doing the same operation twice?

But i certainly think it's worth it for clarity of purpose in my opinion, if there is the opportunity to implement it without a noticeable difference.

It would only have to do that whenever you checked, though, right? It doesn't seem like a problem to me, people won't be stopping to check constantly during combat.

It's possible, but it's awkward because of the way the object hierarchy works. The code that handles "/charging" doesn't have a clue whether or not your ship has solar panels or where they might be. I can work something out if it's a big deal, but I'm really wondering if it's necessary.

If you put up a post describing exactly what is and what is shown and when it is shown, i don't see any problems with the current way things are displayed. But without prior information, you can see that most people are going to be confused.

Also did you see the bit in my post about solar panels showing double the EPS that they should, and chargers not showing elec cost?

Overall i think the change is very well done and also looks very nice.