DUST Search - The Cloak, a Precursor to Capacitor?

knight of 6 wrote:

Sole Fenychs wrote:

How exactly do caps work?
Am I right in thinking that it's an energy bar that you substract energy from in pre-defined chunks to trigger modules? e.g. an armor hardener uses 10 units of energy on activation, with a capacitor that has 100 or so, but then doesn't add drain while it's active?
This sounds like a good system for vehicles, but infantry should get the dynamic system - You trigger a device and it drains energy while it's in effect.
Uneven activation costs and the resulting thresholds would complicate the infantry combat too much. That one second of cloak that you can squeeze out of half of a percent of your energy bar can save your life on the ground, while it's rather pointless for vehicles and just leads to abuse (e.g. cycling damage mods to never deplete your energy).

think of a capacitor(cap) as a giant battery that is constantly being recharged.

activating a module takes energy from the battery. so the battery will lose a little of it's charge. if you want to keep the module running it will require more power so it takes a little energy at regular intervals the length of time between the module drawing power from the battery is known as a cycle. power is drawn at the beginning of a cycle. deactivating a module means that the module will continue to run until the end of it's cycle(when it would next draw power) then it shuts off rather than drawing power again.

remember that the cap is recharging all the time so it is possible that a module uses less energy per cycle than the cap gains in that time this is known as being "cap-stable". however in almost every case being cap-stable is a bad thing because it limits what you can run. so most combat fits aren't cap-stable and last somewhere between 5-10 minutes before they drain their cap and need to recharge it. recharging the cap either requires shutting off enough modules that the fit is cap-stable or shutting off everything and disengaging from combat. if the cap drains completely mid-fight then all of the mods that were running shut down at the end of their cycles (as there is no power for them to draw to continue running).

losing a mod mid fight to save your cap is basically the equivalent of losing a armor rep or the ability to recharge your shields it is a huge deal. cap management is critical to winning any fight.


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Vell0cet SVER True Blood General Tso's Alliance 1114	Posted - 2014.03.18 21:48:00 - [1] - Quote I hope so, for both suits and vehicles. It's a much more elegant system for limiting modules than managing multiple cooldowns. Suits would use cap for things like remote reppers, scanners, uplink/nanohive deployment, needles, cloaks, and possibly future additions like jetpacks, grappling pin + magnetic boots (for scaling walls or hiding on ceilings, or dealing with 0G environments), ewar, scan inhibitors, range/tracking damps, etc. Vehicles would use it for hardeners, reppers/boosters, remote energy transfers, remote reps, afterburners, ewar, etc. This would push combat in DUST to a whole different level above other FPS games. Best PvE idea ever!
Vell0cet SVER True Blood General Tso's Alliance 1114	Posted - 2014.03.18 23:05:00 - [2] - Quote knight of 6 wrote: Sole Fenychs wrote: How exactly do caps work? Am I right in thinking that it's an energy bar that you substract energy from in pre-defined chunks to trigger modules? e.g. an armor hardener uses 10 units of energy on activation, with a capacitor that has 100 or so, but then doesn't add drain while it's active? This sounds like a good system for vehicles, but infantry should get the dynamic system - You trigger a device and it drains energy while it's in effect. Uneven activation costs and the resulting thresholds would complicate the infantry combat too much. That one second of cloak that you can squeeze out of half of a percent of your energy bar can save your life on the ground, while it's rather pointless for vehicles and just leads to abuse (e.g. cycling damage mods to never deplete your energy). think of a capacitor(cap) as a giant battery that is constantly being recharged. activating a module takes energy from the battery. so the battery will lose a little of it's charge. if you want to keep the module running it will require more power so it takes a little energy at regular intervals the length of time between the module drawing power from the battery is known as a cycle. power is drawn at the beginning of a cycle. deactivating a module means that the module will continue to run until the end of it's cycle(when it would next draw power) then it shuts off rather than drawing power again. remember that the cap is recharging all the time so it is possible that a module uses less energy per cycle than the cap gains in that time this is known as being "cap-stable". however in almost every case being cap-stable is a bad thing because it limits what you can run. so most combat fits aren't cap-stable and last somewhere between 5-10 minutes before they drain their cap and need to recharge it. recharging the cap either requires shutting off enough modules that the fit is cap-stable or shutting off everything and disengaging from combat. if the cap drains completely mid-fight then all of the mods that were running shut down at the end of their cycles (as there is no power for them to draw to continue running). losing a mod mid fight to save your cap is basically the equivalent of losing a armor rep or the ability to recharge your shields it is a huge deal. cap management is critical to winning any fight. This is a good description. It works a lot like stamina. Some modules would have very fast cycle times (e.g. the cloak) so it would auto-cycle rapidly until you decloak, or it depletes your cap completely. Other modules might have longer cycle times with a cooldown (like an active scanner). This would open up interesting new avenues for tactical combat. Let's say there is are 2 heavies being repped by a logi that are defending an objective. Your squad can't seem to break through the reps, and the logi is protected behind cover. If we had a neut grenade, as an example, your squad could throw out a couple, drain the logi's capacitor and then push hard on the heavies who won't have reps until the logi recharges enough cap to start repping. Best PvE idea ever!