Current Behavior
Ships with ports will not consume their own energy to help build nearby, friendly ships, IF those friendly ships are inside energy source energy fields, even if the ship with the port reaches max energy. This extra energy is simply wasted.
However, when the ship being built lives outside of an energy field, it can be built by a ship with a port (which is an incredible feature, BTW! Forward deployed ships are tight).
Obviously, during missions, I can exploit this peculiarity, but it means I have to build ships in odd, usually dangerous places, just to make sure they're outside of the energy source fields radius. As someone who uses reactor + port heavy ship builds often, this can get a little frustrating.
Desired Behavior
Suggestion 1: Ships with ports - when inside energy fields - will consume their own energy to recharge other, low-energy, friendly ships, until all friendly ships in range have >= energy as the port ship. I don't consider this suggestion to be OP given the build-location exploit. It feels more like a bug fix TBH.
Alternatively, Suggestion 2: Ships with ports can return excess energy back into nearby energy sources, making it available for all. This is obviously a significant change with far-reaching ramifications, so if implemented, I imagine it would work best as a new tech option, disabled by default for all maps already built.
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It's pretty quiet here, so not expecting anything. Really, I just wanted an opportunity to say that I love playing Particle Fleet. Building and testing ships is a nice way to relax after a stressful day. Thank you for creating such a great game (and series of games, in Creeper World).
