Nuclear Reactor: Rework

Hello,

I would like to suggest a rework regarding the nuclear reactor, as it is quite bad balanced at the moment. I think there is much potencial with all the existing components available to make it more dynamic and useful (and mostly more fun!).

- In comparison to high voltage solar arrays (or solar arrays in general) the reactor is not really more effective. Once you have multiple or even just one high voltage solar arrays, you might consider not to build a nuclear reactor as it's quite not worth it any more. A nuclear reactor affords much work and efford (with correct redstone engineering, heat controlling und monitoring, understanding, building, etc), but is not that expensive however.
-> Increase the overall EU output by ~25-50%, make solar arrays less effective or(/and) rather more costly at higher tiers (but make higher tiers also more effective than only the sum of 8 of the lower tier versions, but this part is not much relevant now).

- Reactor planners: Those should not even exist! I mean, yes you should be able to simulate setups, but it should not give you 100% safe answers. There should be random things happening while a reactor is active, which should make maintance necessary (redstone engineering, monitoring, alerting and/or auto-deactivating)! The site should only give you wide ranging possible results regarding functionality.
-> More later

- Monitoring, alerting, auto-deactivation: I would suggest to make it as a tech-step. At the early stage you should only be able to build or afford monitors and alerts, which call you if the reactor is getting too hot (over the cap). Later, after having a higher tech-level, you should be able to build auto-deactivation switches or mechanics (maybe with a shut-down forcing signal as attached to the reactor itself, like a thermal monitor).
-> Remove the redstone signal from the actual heat monitor to prevent auto-switching this way.
-> Advanced heat monitor with high costs (you should consider not to take it for its cost). Call it a high-tech computer or so. That should convince!

- How a reactor should work
At the moment a nuclear reactor can work absolutly safely with correct builds which you can simulate easily on several sites. A reactor should have more of a kind of instable nature, where you can have great energy output but requiring maintance or just taking risks. The higher the energy output, the higher should the danger and instability be. The hull heat should increase way much slower, so you can have much more time to react. There should be no kind of "boolean switch" checking if it should get overheat and explode in 1-2 minutes or never. That should be a process of like 10-20 minutes. A reactor should always briefly cool down if shut down like it did in previous versions of IC² (it should be possible to speed this up).

- Add a radiation effect to the reactor if it gets removed. If it gets overheated or if it is above ~1000-2000 degrees, it should radiate the
area upon removal. Maybe even reducing the chance in that case to drop itself and only 1-3 reactor chambers instead (part of its recipe). This should prevent players to replace it without consequences to set its heat to zero. Also the hazmat suit should be necessary to survive near the reactor if it gets to that dangerous heat. If a reactor gets to the critical state, it should drop most or all of its non-uran components and be unclickable and indestructible (maybe a raging white block, but not with gravitation like tnt has if charged). After 45-75 seconds it should explode leaving a crater depending on the uran which was in there. This could cause a wide ranged sound effect. This would allow to make even a fail more epic and less painfull. A simple instant-explosion is just boring. Besides: Make only 10% of all exploded blocks drop its stuff, or maybe even 0%, as it can cause huge lags and fps-decrease.

- Let's get to the main part: Components
There are many components, but sadly most of them are neither expensive nor even viable or desired within a reactor. Within the heat exchangers only the golden ones are actually useful (used 99% the time). Within the cooling elements only the golden heat vent and the component heat vent are useful. The rest is simply not useful or do not make sense. I would suggest to make 2 quality tiers of all of those components.

(Heat values are counted per tick)
(I use fictive numbers, only the relations inbetween are relevant)

Cooling:
- Heat vent: Cools adjacent components (meaning all items including uran) by 10.
- Advanced heat vent (tier 2): Cools adjacent components by 10 and decreases heating generation of those by 10% (stacks commulatively, see below).
- Reactor heat vent: Decreases heat generation of all components by 5% (0.95^n; n = number of reactor heat vents (stacks commulatively)). Cools the most critical component in the reactor by 5.
- Overclocked heat vent (tier 2): Decreases heat generation of all components by 6% (0.94^n; n = number of overclocked reactor heat vents (stacks commulatively together with tier 1 "Reactor heat vent")). Cools the most critical component in the reactor by 8.
- Overclocked heat vent: Cools an adjacent component by 30, prefering uran (or other fuels), else it cools other components needing cooling. If having more than one component to cool, it will split up 20 cooling on each one (each getting 20/n cooling; n = number of components). Has heat capacity and generates 15 heat on itself while working which needs external cooling.
- Super heat vent (tier 2): Cools an adjacent component by 45, prefering uran (or other fuels), else it cools other components needing cooling. If having more than one component to cool, it will split up 30 cooling on each one (each getting 30/n cooling; n = number of components). Has heat capacity and generates 25 heat on itself while working which needs external cooling.

Heat transfer:
- Heat exchanger: Transfers 40 heat (overall) from adjacent components prefering uran to other components (prefering heat storage components) (allows linking to other heat exchangers). Cooling the "Heat exchanger" will cool adjacent components prefering uran.
- Advanced heat exchanger (tier 2): Transfers 60 heat (overall) from adjacent components prefering uran to other components (prefering heat storage components) (allows linking to other heat exchangers). Cooling the "Advanced heat exchanger" will cool adjacent components prefering uran.
- Reactor heat exchanger: Transfers 40 reactor hull heat to adjacent heat storage components (split up equally) (if existing). The exchanger itself can be cooled to cool the reactor hull directly.
- Advanced reactor heat exchanger (tier 2): Transfers 60 reactor hull heat to adjacent heat storage components (split up equally). The exchanger itself can be cooled to cool the reactor hull directly (with 10% more efficiency).

Heat storage:
- Reactor plating: Stores 20000 heat and cools itself by 5. External cooling on it is 20% more efficient. Also increases the hull heat capacity by 500.
- Dense reactor plating (tier 2): Stores 50000 heat and cools itself by 7. External cooling on it is 30% more efficient. Also increases the hull heat capacity by 1000. Decreases blast radius and strength slightly.
- Containment reactor plating: Stores 25000 heat and cools itself by 5. Also increases the hull heat capacity by 2000. Decreases blast radius and strength moderately. Increases the radiation cap by 2000.

Coolant cells:
10k-Coolant-Cell: Cools reactor hull by 15, cools adjacent components by 20 (split up) (absorbs all heat this way, used up after 10000 heat).
30k-Coolant-Cell: Cools reactor hull by 30, cools all components in the reactor by 1, cools adjacent components by 30 (split up) (absorbs 30000 heat)
60k-Coolant-Cell: Cools reactor hull by 45, cools all components in the reactor by 3, cools adjacent components by 40 (split up) (absorbs 60000 heat)

Uran (stays as it is):
Every cell generates 6 base heat and 4 additionally per 1 adjacent uran cell.
-> But: All remaining, non-transfered and non-cooled heat (per tick) will go on the hull. Maybe even 10-20% more.
-> Right below the radiation cap components try to overclock to compensate, damaging themselves to increase their efficiency.

Other:
Neutron reflectors: Same effect.
Condensator red: Consumes redstone or lapis (more effective) to reduce the instability level instanly if it gets too high.
Condensator blue: Reduces instability slowly if over average level and reduces the chance of instabilities to occour.

- Random Factor
Example: A bar ("Instability) with 50% start, goes randomly up or down basing on heat/EU generation and/or number of components. If above 50% the reactor generates up to ~50% (by 100% bar) more power and heat if having too much instability (but no less power if bar goes down). Sometimes it will stuck for a longer time (5-30 minutes) on a higher bar. Deactivating the reactor will let it stabilize very slowly. You will need tools for countermeasure (use water/ice/snow/coolant stuff on reactor to cool it and redstone or lapis to fix instability).
-> [New idea: Activating the reactor might generate no EU for few minutes, but use up uran and generate heat regulary]

-> [Edit]: Heat exchangers should transfer more heat, edited the numbers.

Also:
- Add "reactor" (maybe "Reactor Component") into the description of all components, so you can find all of them with one word in the NEI.
- Alter the recipe from cooling cells. Instead of making them craftable with water cells and tin, make them be craftable with canning machine (snow/ice into cells) or compressor (water cells -> cooling cells). Upgrade to 30k and 60k could work with crafting though.
- Make all components stackable to 64, but non-stackable (except coolant cells) within the reactor. If this is not possible, maybe just let items pop out after leaving the reactor menu, just like with workbenches.

Additional idea regarding EU and balancing itself:
- Add a material with low-medium amount, and medium tier costs (like ~1-2 diamonds, crafted stuff with copper and tin, a bunch of iron), which need to be converted into its final form, which is then needed for high tier recipes. The conversion within that specific machine should cost a huge bunch of EU (like ~1-2 million or maybe even more) (which should be the main part of its costs, making an alternative EU usage when having too much EU). Under the line you will want to look for your EU state instead of your materials, if you want to craft one of those materials. There should be no stage of "well, I got endless EU now, I am done with energy generation forever now."

Greetings!

Well the effect at the end should be, that nuclear reactors become the more instable / uncontrollable the more energy they produce (out of less "fuel" ressources).

The factors which should be important are:
- Ressources
- Maintance time/efford
- EU/time
- Safety/Instability (Instability: Reactor getting additional EU-output and heat at random chances, depending on fuel amount or amount of >connected< fuel)

Options should be for example:

Low producing reactor, low-medium ressource costs (invested into cooling
and safety cooling), very safe (no chance of instability), no maintance
needed.
Low producing reactor, low ressource costs, safe (slight chance of instability), almost no maintance needed.

Medium producing reactor, high ressource costs, safe (slighty chance of instability).
Medium producing reactor, medium ressource costs, not safe (has a chance to get instable, needs some maintance over time).
Medium producing reactor, low ressource costs, low safety (expect instability).

High producing reactor, high costs, less safe (will probably get instable).
High producing reactor, medium costs, low safety.
High producing reactor, low costs, no safety (will need constant maintance).

Extreme producing reactor, very high costs, low safety.

So: As the output level increases, the safety will drop. As the costs (on cooling) increases, safety will increase. At the point where auto-deactivation is setup (which should cost precious ressources), the "unsafe" and "instable" situations are limited only to deactivation.

Idea: Add a external cooling tool like a "Coolant spray" - This could spray coolant to reduce the temparature of reactors to a certain minimum where its effect is too low to be useful (with an exponential formula). Also it could remove fire in a larger cone in front of the player, cool engines down (which tend to overheat) and transform water into ice (with larger effect). It could be refilled with a canning machine only with ice. Recipe "level" should be similar to drills/chainsaws/elec. wrenches/elec. hoes etc, however the recipe should contain 2 empty cells.

Idea: Heating up of the reactor should increase exponentially. Meaning: Given a constant time of x, the heat should change from following starting temperatures to those temperatures within x time:
0000 to 1000
1000 to 2000 (capped below this)
2000 to 2900
3000 to 3800
4000 to 4700
5000 to 5650
6000 to 6600
7000 to 7550
8000 to 8500
9000 to 9450
10000 to 10425
11000 to 11400
12000 to 12375
13000 to 13350
14000 to 14325
15000 to 15300 (capped from here on)

-> Calculate the netto heat-on-hull output with a constant value (like something heating up a component for 10 OR the hull for 10 * 300% [constant value] * variable [50%] [30% to 100%] = 15) -- This would enforce the priority of cooling the components itself more instead of cooling just the hull.

- This would make hull-cap-increasing components more useful.
- This would allow the reactor heat up to a certain amount but not going over that without the effect of instability (as at some point the cooling will be sufficient at some point).
- This would heat up the reactor fast enough to get dangerous because of the radiation. Also radiation protection would be a (tech-) thing. Stone being the first "tier" of walls to protect from radiation, enforced walls and glass some next tiers.

-> Radiation intensity: The more intensity, the faster or more the damage over time (and/or whatever another effects). More radiation if reactors contain more fuel cells and if hull getting hotter (make both count multiplicatively). At some point make radiation safe walls necessary. Common stable blocks could have a value "density" to determine the radiation absorbtion effect...