Antenna Ranges

Now that we have planets the antenna ranges seem a little short. For small ships neither antenna can reach orbit (edge of gravity) and for large ships they don’t reach much beyond orbit.
My suggestion would be to increase the antenna ranges.
For small ships I would at least double the standard antenna to 10 km and increase the laser antenna to at least 50 km so it can comfortably reach the orbit of a planet.
For large ships the standard antenna seems fine but the laser antenna should have its range increased to at least 250 km.
And for interplanetary communication I think it is time to turn another Darth Biomech mod stock: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=405233525

Thoughts on this?

 

I definitely agree that Laser Antennae should have superior range, if only for the reason that they're more difficult to set up. Having 50km range on regular Antennae is okay with me if we can have vastly increased ranges on Laser Antennae.

 

i rememeber this was suggested before (Even when LA first come out), suggestion varied, but imo having 10x max range on directional antena, compared to broadcasting antena, seems sensible.

 

Knowing how hard it is to keep a satellite on orbit around planet, I agree.
It's either this, or more realistic gravity so that my sattelites won't launch into space just because gravity has been truncated at 0.05G

Making a sattelite antenna network would be fun, but unfortunately, 100 m/s and 0.05G and non-square disproportional gravity decrease together prevent it...

 

I have a great idea !!! Make this configurable in the modding API !!!

Everyone gets the range they want

laser antennas can already be given pseudo infinite ranges so why not normal antennas

 

Giving laser antennas a longer range would still be very well balanced. They require an uninterrupted, direct line-of-sight to function. To work efficiently, the location of the target must be known. The further away, the higher the chance for interference. Power consumption can always be scaled with range. Creating an exponential curve as to the amount of power needed to the distance reached would bring balance. Small grid laser antennas should be even less efficient than their large block counterparts.

 

I've never considered using laser antennas before, their stealth ability is no use at all for me in singleplayer. However, if they had enough range so I could get a signal to the moon and drive a rover around on it they would suddenly become extremely useful. I would be fine with having a relay station too to boost the signal halfway, just not quite so many as are needed now.

 

Especially given planets, laser antennas have comically low range and high power requirements. As others have posted, they are far too short range and even Darth Biomech's shorter range antenna has 50x the range of a standard laser antenna.

Also, a simple antenna relay on a large ship requires 10(!?!?) continually lit solar panels just to keep 2 antennas running?? That's a thoroughly absurd-looking communication satellite, even compared to real-life. (Presumably much-less advanced tech.)

12 solar panels for 2 antennas on a small ship, but that range is so ridiculously short that it's hard to imagine bothering to build one.

 

Large grid Antenna is far better then Laser...more range, 360 reach and less power draw.

How ever, Laser on small grid at least has more range then antenna. Laser has 20k to Antenna's 5k range.

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Laser's on both grids need a buff. Large needs more range...small already has 4 times the range.

 

It's not just a matter of relative ranges. When ground-to-space distance is more than 40 kilometers, any antenna range shorter than that means you have to build silly hovering-in-gravity relays.

If small grid laser antennas at least reached 50-60 km, they'd at least be usable. (For example, a small grid surface rover could be driven around by a satellite relay link very low above the planet.)

 

Honestly i think that the reason antenna ranges are so short is because their new net-code breaks long range communication. If they keep antenna ranges they get to keep ignoring this major bug here.

https://forums.keenswh.com/threads/0...not-list-or-load-distant-grids-in-mp.7392268/

because the only people who would notice it are those using modded antennas or chains of relay satellites.

The sad thing is fixing it is as easy as maintaining a list of unloaded grids in the terminal and temporarily loading the remote grid when the user selects it in the control panel and than unloading it when the panel is closed

 

Just my opinion but I think they should leave the current antennas alone and just create a new, expensive to build, third tier of antennas. It doesn't actually take that much to have a remote connection from planet to a moon, one on each surface and possibly two or three in space in between. In that situation it's exactly how it should be, because this is an engineering game. It's all about finding solutions to problems, eliminate the problems and there is no game. It would be very nice to have longer range Large Block antennas for inter-planet communication as that would currently take about 40 antenna substations...

 

Laser antennas are already one of the most expensive blocks, requiring superconducting components. (Putting them in the same class as jump drives, in terms of requiring exclusive, expensive parts.)

What you say does not hold true for small grid laser antennas. (Like the one featured in the in-game video.) Since they only reach 5km, to have a surface rover, you'd need a large grid relay floating at most 5 km overhead! Why would you ever build a small grid rover or satellite using a laser antenna if operating it requires a large grid ship essentially RIGHT THERE, floating overhead, in full gravity. You have an entire large grid ship basically adjacent, rendering the small ship superfluous in most cases, and certainly adding enough (silly) overhead to make building the small ship/rover largely pointless.

For exploration/mining/etc, expensive small grid laser antennas won't have any reasonable use until their range reaches at least around ~50km.

Add the fact that laser antennas are inherently more limited than omnidirectional, because you have to maintain orientation and reacquire if you lose it, small grid laser antennas are MUCH larger than regular small grid antennas, and the fact that they should be more power efficient due to their directionality, and small grid antennas desperately need an increase to a reasonably useful range.

The only use I can think of for small-grid laser antennas is semi-sneaky PVP situations where you want to try to control an attack drone, etc, while not revealing your location via a broadcast point. I'm not at all interest in PVP, so that's purely academic for me.

Large grid laser antennas should have a range in the hundreds of thousands of kilometers, but they're not as comically under-ranged as small grid ones.

 

I would agree the antenna on small ships is only good for super short ranges. Even in space where asteroids are generally about 10-12 km distance apart, having something only able to go about half way before losing connection is a little annoying. While laser antenna would surely reach the small remote controlled ship, but it's still a pretty short range. You won't be going far before losing connection, or if you happen to forget that the ore you need to mine is behind the asteroid meaning you now have to drag a large ship over there, or fly over with your own mining craft and mine it yourself. Then when you start looking at the large grid antennas and laser antennas. With somehow the large grid antenna has a slightly larger range than the laser antenna. Which makes little sense, seeing how the large grid laser antenna costs much more than the regular large grid antenna. The only benefit you gain is that you don't broadcast your signal for everyone to hear. However there is still the drawback of already not having something that can broadcast anywhere, but only where it can see. So I feel like it is balances itself out. Except the fact you are still paying more for less.

If you want to have communication from say the moon to the planet it is impossible to use laser antennas for at least the distance from space through the planet's atmosphere. Because laser antennas have too low of a range to cross through the entire gravity well from space to the surface of the planet. Unless you decide to have a ship just chilling in the gravity well using tons of energy or hydrogen to stay afloat. All the antennas should be buffed. Small grid should be up to where we have large grid currently, while large grid should be boosted significantly. I feel like you shouldn't have to use a grid to boost the signal between a planet and it's moon, or if so then have 1-3. It is too easy for something to go wrong and lose connection. Every time I think about antenna range I'm always reminded of one of the videos that plays at the main menu where there's the red ship that points it's laser antenna to a satellite in orbit, which then points to a small rover on the moon's surface. One relay satellite. Wouldn't that be fantastic?

 

Laser antenna should have 1000x the range as a bradcasting antenna. Just the shear fact that its directional compared to a 360 degree x 360 degree 3D radius. And a laser antenna has a single beam direction.

 

Yes, fully agree. This is a good idea. Make the Laser Antenna at least 5x to 10x the range of a normal antenna.

 

Also the power consumption.
Antennas and especially laser antennas use rediculess amaunts of power to function.
Waaay to much

 

I haven't looked since the latest update but I was really surprised at how much power my antenna was using so I built a laser one to reduce power consumption and it was using even more. It makes no sense and the power requirement is insane to say the least.

https://technology.nasa.gov/patent/NPO-TOPS-22