Guys, I had this idea a good long time ago, except it wasnt reliability (well it sorta was), it was about load. Not-so-heavy load things, like nav control and comms would be unafected, and would cause no problems, but things like burners, energy weapons, shields, etc. The reactor could have a reserve, and all items would drain from the reserve as necessary. Therefor, you could have max shield, max weapons, and max engines at the same time, although it wouldnt be a good idea when under stress. When the burners are used, they drain the reserve normally. When the burners stop being used, they fill up normally, except they fill up from the reactor's reserve. Same thing with weapons and shields. When the reactor reserve has run out, then the chargings demand the reactor itself. Once that happens, the reactor loses it's integrity, and all kinds of crazy stuff happens. Example being, you're piloting your 8 gunned fighter (whats it called?) and you're using max weapons recharge, max shield recharge, and max engine recharge. At a point, you enter engagement. You hit the burners, fire the kaysers, and get shield hits all at the same time. Your reserve drains quickly until finally you rely on the generator. at this point, some of your gunmounts (random) dont work for that shot, the burners start fluctuating speed, and one of your shield quadrants will rise and fall sporaticly. Once the generator integrity drops below maybe 65% your HUD will start to flicker, kinda like EMP effects, and some of your systems will fail entirely. At around 35% you start getting serious subsystem damage and the HUD/comms/flight control would fail (very bad). At around 10% you die due to reactor core failure. Anyway, whatever your integrity is at, is that much power it gives to the reserve, like if it's 50% it will fill up about half the speed as it would if it were at 100%. Also, the reactor would take pretty long to repair, maybe 10 seconds for each 3 percent or something, and sometimes you have to play dead for the reserve to recharge, because it's draining faster than filling because of reactor integrity. I think that'd be awesome.
Another thing I was thinking of would be localized subsystem integrity. Say you have a weapon that produces a HUGE amount of heat, and it fires quickly. It puts plenty of stress on the subsystem. If you keep firing that weapon a prolonged amount of time, your weapons subsystem will be damaged a little. Keep firing it then, and it damages it faster. Keep firing it even then, it'll lose integrity faster than you can spell "Antidisestablishmentarianism". Same thing happens when you keep hitting the burners, or keep charging your shields too fast.
So, what do you think of those ideas, guys?
