Could you please make that laser antennas supply the grid they're connected to with power?

Could u make like relay transmitters that takes and sends power in the same time. and in away makes the radio transmitter lose less power to send cuz the distance is shorter.
So the power drop off to relay is allot less and then from relay to receiver same as now.

Like transxxxxxxxxxxxxreciever
To. Transxxxxxrelayxxxxreciever

The reason why I'm wanting the Radial Transmitters as a short range option right now is because their performance cost does not scale with N(number of Radial Transmitters) Transmitters, but N². The Optical Transmitters scale with N (when they have a target set) which is much more performance friendly. Building your own cell phone mega network with such relays for wireless power sound awesome, but I think it will kill your tick rates. ;) That's why for now, I will just implement basic range extenders for the transmitters that reduce the falloff variable. Maybe I can get something done on that end after that (some weird reachability algorithms with a good performance, if they exist at all).

How about "Near-Field RF" power transfer parts? The idea is blatantly ripped from those wireless charging pads for cellphones and other small electronic devices.
It would cost the least to construct of any power transmitter, but it would have the lowest performance in terms of power transmission, range, and efficiency. IRL this technology is limited to extremely short ranges, so the power transmission would fall off by 1/R^4 or worse, instead of 1/R^2.

The intended niche of this type of power transmitter is charging of small ships from the hangar bay or decks of a large ship, with the transmitter embedded in a floor, wall, or ceiling of the hangar.

Proposed Specifications;
It would be able to send its rated power out to ~50m from the transmitter block (20 large-ship blocks), because 20 large-ship blocks should be more than enough to cover a hangar bay that can fit one small- to normal-sized small ship.

Hopefully the very short range also helps with performance because the transmitter can't transmit power very far at all, which would make avoiding the calculations related to overlapping networks much easier.

Originally posted by SciMan314:

How about "Near-Field RF" power transfer parts? The idea is blatantly ripped from those wireless charging pads for cellphones and other small electronic devices.
It would cost the least to construct of any power transmitter, but it would have the lowest performance in terms of power transmission, range, and efficiency. IRL this technology is limited to extremely short ranges, so the power transmission would fall off by 1/R^4 or worse, instead of 1/R^2.

The intended niche of this type of power transmitter is charging of small ships from the hangar bay or decks of a large ship, with the transmitter embedded in a floor, wall, or ceiling of the hangar.

Proposed Specifications;
It would be able to send its rated power out to ~50m from the transmitter block (20 large-ship blocks), because 20 large-ship blocks should be more than enough to cover a hangar bay that can fit one small- to normal-sized small ship.

Hopefully the very short range also helps with performance because the transmitter can't transmit power very far at all, which would make avoiding the calculations related to overlapping networks much easier.

^what he said but make them have 0 drop off but at the cost of a maximum 0.25m range. more like a conector-less charge pad that you could park your car or plane on.

Maybe create a Energy Waster ... If connected to a Grid of a Ship via landing gear it wastes energy of only that ship up to Overload? (But make it expensive as that is "Technicaly" a super weapon of "Potential" "Mass" "Destruction"

Oh yeah that sounds more like a weapons for sure. :D

Originally posted by Santa Sheep:

Maybe create a Energy Waster ... If connected to a Grid of a Ship via landing gear it wastes energy of only that ship up to Overload? (But make it expensive as that is "Technicaly" a super weapon of "Potential" "Mass" "Destruction"

So, some sort of power vampire? Sounds interesting, but how would that work?
Power doesn't currently transfer across landing gear connections, altho I very dimly remember something like that being talked about in the past.
According to tests I've done recently it doesn't work.

Can you extend the range of the optical system by about 20km? 40km doesnt quite make it out of orbit on the earth and alien worlds.

Hownbout large transmitters? the tiny ones we have right now are a bit underpowered, but i know they are to prove the concept. It's just that im running a ship just using this as a test platform and it ran out of POWAHH after about 20km.

While I will implement large ones in the future, I also envision that you have to build relay stations to extend the range. That adds a new element and neccessity for remote space stations and such.

How about a version with effects? Something like flashes and lightnings between connected parts.
Why? possibility to add fitting sounds, see if it's turned on, reactor-tubes

Effects are the most restricted thing in the ModApi right now, the only thing you can do pretty much is instantiating new grids with one block that looks like some model you already did. Sounds are also just a loop that plays when the block has power. :( I would like to do that, but the game just doesn't allow much more then that right now.

Another idea, similar to Sheepling's:
Power Stealer
Automatically, but slowly, hacks into a nearby (within 1/4 of the range to) Transmitter/Reciever to get the channel, and disguises itself as one (digitally) to feed off the power and eventually shut down the transmitter/reciever. However, this is counteractable. If a transmitter/reciever's pilot notices the hitchiker, they can cause it to overload by putting a single string into the name of the T/R, causing the Stealer to rupture, and cause mass damage to all electronic components in the grid it is on, such as, solar panels, turrets/weapons (causes them to self destruct (missile or other low-velocity projectile launcher) or bug out and not function (gatling/bullet/lasers)), cockpits, and programming blocks. None of these are destroyed (except missile launchers/low-velocity projectile launchers), but their data is wiped, similarly to how a magnet wipes a Solid-State Hard Drive.

Iintercepting power SHOULD be a totally passive process because after energy has left the transmitter it's just "dumb" radio waves, and therefore physically has no owner. That doesn't stop a server from setting up "laws" about who owns what frequencies (kind of like the FCC does IRL).

Intercepting power should be as simple as tuning a reciever to the right channel (aka frequency), and there's nothing the transmitting station can do about it except turn itself off or changing the frequency it's transmitting on. And it's impossible to detect that as well, due to how radio waves work.
Even intercepting a directional transmitter only changes things to "get inside the beam, then tune to the right frequency". In this case, you can detect the interception because the beam doesn't get to its destination (line-of-sight blocked).
No action the transmitter takes can "burn out" systems on a "intercepting" reciever, unless it would ALSO damage the "intended" reciever.

Magnetic fields are physically NOT ABLE to wipe solid state hard drives. Solid state hard drives use the same kind of chips that USB thumb-drives use, and the data is stored as an electric charge trapped on the gate of a special kind of field-effect transistor.
"Standard" hard drives on the other hand (the kind with spinning disks inside), can be wiped by a relatively strong magnetic field in very close proximity to the disks, because they store the data by changing the orientation of magnetic fields in the disks.

Conrary to the song by ICP, engineers know EXACTLY how magnets work (and how they DON'T work, too).