Reactors

In StarMade, most systems on ships, stations, and other structures require power to function. To generate power on your vessels, a reactor is required. These reactors can range from absolutely tiny at a few blocks large, to infinitely large, and reactor setups have an equally large range of complexity.

Reactor Overview

Reactor Conduit
Hit Points	25
Armor	0.0%
Mass	0.10
Luminosity	none
Data Value (ID)	1010

Reactor Power Chamber
Hit Points	50
Armor	?
Mass	0.20
Luminosity	none
Data Value (ID)	?

Reactor Stabilizer
Hit Points	100
Armor	0.5%
Volume	0.1
Mass	0.15
Luminosity	none
Data Value (ID)	1009

Reactor Power
Hit Points	100
Armor	0.5%
Mass	0.40
Luminosity	none
Data Value (ID)	1008

There are four components to reactors: Reactor Power blocks, Reactor Stabilizer blocks, and reactor Chambers and their connecting conduits.

A reactor that consists of 10 or fewer reactor blocks is the simplest reactor possible in the game. As long as your reactor is 10 blocks or fewer, it will function normally on its own, and does not require any Stabilizers to operate at full capacity.

Reactors above 10 blocks in size require Stabilizers. Stabilizer groups need to be placed at a certain distance away from the active reactor to bring the reactors efficiency, or max power generation, up to 100%. The number of stabilizers required for a reactor, and the distance at which they must be placed to be effective, are determined by the size (block count) of the reactor. Stabilizer distance in relation to the active reactor is shown on the screen in build mode when stabilizer blocks are selected in the toolbar.

Reactor Chambers provide ship-wide buffs and special abilities, however add complexity to the reactor. Reactor chambers are linked to your reactor with reactor conduits. The minimum size of the reactor chambers is also tied to reactor size. This minimum size can be seen in the reactor menu. The abilities of the reactor chambers require that your reactor capacity usage be less than 100%. Every chamber, active or passive, has a constant, fixed Chamber Capacity cost.

Building Your Reactor

Developer Chart From Jan 20, 2018 News Update.

Reactor Stabilizer Stream Node
Hit Points	50
Armor	0.0%
Mass	0.10
Luminosity	none
Data Value (ID)	66

To build a relatively basic reactor that is larger than 10 blocks you are going to need reactor blocks, stabilizer blocks, and power node blocks.

First, choose the placement and guesstimate the size of reactor that you are going to need.

Once you have built the core of your reactor using reactor blocks, switch your hotbar to the stabilizer blocks. In advanced buildmode (spacebar from the ship's core or a build block) you should see a set of numbers as well as a line connecting to the current active reactor. The most important numbers are those pertaining to stabilizer distance, and stabilizer efficiency. Stabilizer distance consists of two numbers. The first number is the distance from the reactor at which you are about to place the stabilizer block, while the second number is the distance at which the stabilizer block would be at 100% efficiency. Stabilizer efficiency is the efficiency of the block that you are about to place.

Stabilizer efficiency is slightly different, but related to, reactor efficiency. If all your stabilizers are placed at 100% efficiency it means that you will be using the minimum number of stabilizers required to boost your reactor to 100% power generation. Stabilizers can be placed at distances with less efficiency, however more stabilizers may be required.

Once you have placed several stabilizers directly adjacent to one another you will have created a stabilizer group. The stabilizer group will then have a power stream connecting it to the reactor. The reactor stream is a non-solid line that connects from the center of the active reactor to the center of any stabilizer groups. Currently reactor streams have very little purpose in terms of mechanics. To redirect the reactor stream reactor nodes must be placed. The reactor will link to the closest node to itself. To further link nodes to one another, select the first node with 'C' then link it to the next node in the chain with 'V'.

It is important to note that each node block can only re-route the stream to one stabilizer group

The chart to the right is a developer-published visualization of the reactor, reactor stabilizers, reactor streams, and reactor nodes.

Advanced Stabilizer Placement

Stabilizer groups do not need to be placed along one axis to achieve the maximum stabilizer efficiency. While it might suffice to have stabilizers placed along one axis for a reactor this can become an issue with larger reactors.

To decrease the distance that each stabilizer group needs to be placed on either side of the main reactor group, stabilizers can be placed in zones which correspond to each of the 6 cardinal directions (up, down, left, right, forward, behind) of the reactor. When stabilizer groups are placed in multiple directions from the reactor, two new pieces of information will show up on the reticule. The first is 'Stabilizer Bonus Slot' and the second is 'bonus efficiency compared to biggest stabilizer'.

When multiple stabilizer groups are in different zones of a reactor the total distance is split between them, provided that for each stabilizer group on one face, there is an equidistant and equally sized group on the opposite face. So, if a reactor calls for 17 stabilizers to be 37 meters away from the reactor the, player can place 4 groups of 4 stabilizers at 14 meters each or two groups of 8 at 19 meters each. However it is not possible to split the distance between two equidistant stabilizer groups and expect maximum efficiency per group. All zone-centered stabilizer groups must be equidistant.

Using this mechanic the total distance away from the reactor required for the stabilizers can be decreased to 20% distance across all 6 sides while still maintaining mass efficiency.

Legacy Reactors

Information on legacy power systems can be found here. However, it is strongly recommended that you no longer use legacy power. It currently remains in-game for compatibility reasons, however it is largely unsupported, and will be fully deprecated in the future.