No More Free Energy!

Rebalances the O2/H2 generator and the hydrogen engine so that the laws of thermodynamics are not violated.

This assumes the hydrogen engine produces power by means of internal combustion; if you've always thought of it as a fusion reactor, this mod is likely not for you.

ANNOUNCEMENT

No more "No More Free Energy!"..

@Snowflame is working on an updated version, future-proofing, and mod compatibility!

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3623458504

I'm retired. So go check it out!..

What's wrong?

In vanilla, a primed hydrogen engine can power an O2/H2 generator to produce fuel in excess of the amount consumed by the engine. The excess is so great that a battery can be recharged using the surplus, given enough ice is available.

This would have been fine if it was not ice being used as crude. The game asks me to suspend disbelief of a thousand things in the name of fun, but this just breaks immersion, and it feels like a cheat.

Solar panels produce energy when in sunlight, items don't just teleport between disconnected containers, weapons require ammunition to operate, planets are round - there are things most of us expect from a game. For me, this is one of them.

How was it addressed?

[b]In short:

- O2/H2 generator production speed is reduced 30 times; - O2/H2 generator power consumption is increased 2 times; - hydrogen engine fuel efficiency is increased 5 times.[/b]

First, to get rid of the physics violation, the O2/H2 generator produces gas 6 times slower in a given time frame while also using 2 times the energy. In effect, its energy-to-gas efficiency is reduced twelve times. (The lowest this can go is somewhere around 10.)

However, this makes the hydrogen engine near-useless compared to the battery (6 times slower than vanilla to get the same amount of fuel). For this reason, the hydrogen engine's gas-to-energy efficiency is increased 5 times while the generator's ice-to-gas speed is further reduced by the same factor, to a total of 6*5 = 30 times.

That makes the generator really slow, and only viable on grids with extra power for the ice-to-gas conversion. Essentially, this requires building dedicated refuelling stations.

This approach has the advantage of allowing existing NPC ship designs to remain operational, provided they use proper hydrogen tanks instead of the hackish O2/H2 gen + ice approach.

Any extras?

The mod started as a way to scratch an itch, but uncovered a few other disbalances once that was done. Mainly, the hydrogen engine remaining an inferior choice compared to the battery, especially in early-game. There should be both pros and cons to either one!

The following multipliers are provided to address that, but are left at 1 by default, to cause less surprises.

- Battery recharge rate can be decreased. This makes the choice of battery-only vs. engine-only more pronounced: batteries are simple but slow to recharge, whereas engines are complex to design with and require stationary infrastructure to produce fuel, but very fast to re-fuel. - Hydrogen engine max power output can be increased. This makes it a viable choice of powering atmospheric/ion thrusters. - Hydrogen gas energy density can be increased. This is only if you feel that H2 has become too precious to be used as thruster fuel.

How does the gameplay change?

Substantially.

- Sloppy designs that rely on the player carrying ice by hand to feed an internal O2/H2 generator to fuel an engine so that a battery can be recharged - that's no longer viable. - Hydrogen-powered long-distance rovers become viable. - Hydrogen-powered atmospheric thrusters become an option; so do hydrogen-powered ion thrusters. (Only if the hydrogen engine's power output multiplier is used, though.) - In the absence of uranium, solar panels or wind turbines are now a necessity. - Long-term storage of surplus energy as hydrogen becomes desirable.

To clarify, the intent of this mod is not to make the game a reflection of the world: "If you want perfect realism, go play outside."

The intent is to "change the sign", not "make the numbers right."

Configuration

... is done per-save.

Go to save directory (%AppData%\SpaceEngineers\Saves on Windows 10), then to a particular save's Storage\2189531971.sbm_NoMoreFreeEnergy directory. Edit config.xml.

To understand what each setting does, read the source code:

https://github.com/keyspace/NoMoreFreeEnergy/blob/master/Data/Scripts/NoMoreFreeEnergy/Config.cs

To revert to mod defaults, delete config.xml.

General constraints

To achieve the desired balance, the mod has been enforcing the following constraint since release v0.0:

OxygenGeneratorSpeedMultiplier = 1.0f / (OxygenGeneratorExtraSpeedDivisor * HydrogenEngineEfficiencyMultiplier)

In Space Engineers v1.197 ("Wasteland" update), Keen Software House made balance adjustments that necessitated OxygenGeneratorPowerConsumptionMultiplier becoming configurable. For this reason, the following recommendation has been introduced in mod release v0.3:

OxygenGeneratorPowerConsumptionMultiplier * OxygenGeneratorExtraSpeedDivisor >= 10

However, it is not enforced, so it's become possible to "break" the desired balance by way of misconfiguration.

Take care to observe this if you wish to peruse the mod as intended!

(This will be addressed in a later mod update.)

Configuration: mod defaults

<BatteryMaxPowerInputMultiplier>1</BatteryMaxPowerInputMultiplier> <HydrogenEngineEfficiencyMultiplier>5</HydrogenEngineEfficiencyMultiplier> <HydrogenEngineMaxPowerOutputMultiplier>1</HydrogenEngineMaxPowerOutputMultiplier> <HydrogenGasEnergyDensityMultiplier>1</HydrogenGasEnergyDensityMultiplier>