Unfortunately that's my fault. I only did a quick check for these and only checked it for the default weapons (no slave/support).
If a beam computer has more than 1 group and it's linked to a slave/support. You'll experience a huge increase in power consumption. This will be fixed asap.
I spent the last several hours testing the Damage Beam, Missiles, and Cannons (the weapons I use on a normal basis) to find out how to minimize the now enormous power drain on my fighters. While testing, I came across several interesting items that I'd like to share.
While looking at the damage beam, I found that each block deals 50 DPS and power consumption is calculated by multiplying the DPS x 10. (We probably already knew that part). If more than one array is present, a four percent power consumption penalty is applied per additional array (4 arrays = 12% penalty). A larger penalty comes into play while slaving another computer to the damage beam. A cannon computer, for example, is slaved to the damage beam computer to increase recharge. Every guide I've read has said that the two damages will stack, but this is not the case. It actually takes the damage beam DPS and subtracts the cannon DPS per array. The more cannons, the lower the DPS. With only one damage beam array, and one slaved cannon array of equal size, the power consumption is calculated by multiplying the DPS x 10. Using two arrays, both of equal size, and equal size slaves, the Cannon DPS is subtracted from the beam DPS, and then that value is cut in half. The DPS is then multiplied by more than
1000 to come up with a power consumption. That is 1000 per additional array. For three arrays, that would be 2000, and so on. It appears as though that number scales with the ratio of cannons slaved to damage beams.
Cannons are quite different from the damage beams. Each cannon block deals 10 DPS, and power consumption is calculated by multiplying the DPS x 10. For each additional array, a ten percent per array penalty is applied to the power consumption. It gets really strange when the damage beam computer is slaved to the cannon computer. For one array, I have no earthly idea how the DPS is calculated, but the DPS is multiplied by 12 to get the power consumption. Adding a second beam slave array and a second cannon array doubles the DPS and doubles the power consumption. So far so good. Adding a third array to both computers only raised the DPS another 2/3 rather than doubling. A fourth array to both computers does nothing to the DPS, but does raise the power consumption 8% more, indicating the cannon-beam relationship approaches a point of diminishing returns.
Now comes our friend the missile. The missile deals 300 DPS per block and power consumption is calculated by multiplying the DPS x 5 (the other two are x 10?). For each additional array, a ten percent penalty is applied to the power consumption. If a damage beam of equal size is slaved to the missile, the DPS increases by
600 percent. This number also appears to roughly scale with the ratio of slave beams to missiles. Power consumption also scales roughly. When a cannon computer is slaved to the missile computer, the DPS seems to drop exponentially as the ratio of cannons to missiles increases. Power consumption is calculated by multiplying DPS x 6 (was 5 for beams) and there does not appear to be a power consumption penalty for multiple arrays.
Those are rather large penalties. I haven't checked any of the other weapons, I don't use any others, but it would seem that using the beam as master or slave has some pretty interesting effects. I appreciate the time it took to read all this babble. I hope it helps someone.
