Turret power

[Vengeance42]

I have been putting power in all my turrets, but I just realized they will shoot even if not powered.

So how does this work? Do they always draw ship power, even if they have power reactors?

I was trying to build a maxed ship, with power usage at the edge (Firing all 9 cannon banks slightly pulls down power, draining you to zero after less than a minute of continual firing). But I was also planning to add turrets, and now I am not sure if the turrets will drain the ship.

I noticed that even my powered turrets energy reads zero if they are docked.

 

[WaffulMann]

The turret draws power from the mothership.

 

[Vengeance42]

So are power units a waste in turrets, or does it use its own power before drawing on mothership power?

 

[WaffulMann]

So are power units a waste in turrets, or does it use its own power before drawing on mothership power?

It uses its own power before using the ones on the mothership :D

 

[Voldrath]

Turrets, and other docked ships, will use their own power reserves first, then draw from the host ship. The reason they appear to show less than full capacity is a display issue. The percentage is calculated using their own current power reserve. but the maximum has the mother-ship's capacity added to it. If the mother-ship can store millions of power units the default 50,000 looks very small. You can observe this by docking 2 small ships, without power tanks, together the docked ship should show at 50%

 

[MineCatFTW]

Not sure if this is still true, but turrets won't use mothership power for shields, thus requiring extra power modules for turrets.

 

[psteiner]

Drat, I've been making stand alone turrets all along. I've always wondered how you guys manage to pack so much firepower into that little thing and keep it powered and shielded at the same time...

 

[Malacodor]

Not sure if this is still true, but turrets won't use mothership power for shields, thus requiring extra power modules for turrets.

Are turrets clever enough to use their own power for shields and their mothership's power for weapons, or do they use their own power for weapons and then realize that there's no power left for shields?

 

[starhaiden]

I always add a few power module on my turrets to make so they don't completely drain the hosts ships power

 

[Voldrath]

Not sure if this is still true, but turrets won't use mothership power for shields, thus requiring extra power modules for turrets.

That was the case at one time. I'm not sure at what point it was fixed. I just did a test and a ship that's nothing but shield blocks and chargers will draw power and charge it's shields.

 

[starhaiden]

you can make a turret without shield rechargers and power modules.

 

[0ldSkull]

That was the case at one time. I'm not sure at what point it was fixed. I just did a test and a ship that's nothing but shield blocks and chargers will draw power and charge it's shields.

Not sure what the secret is or would be, but I just removed all power generator modules from my turret and am now watching its power drain as it maintains its shields (which are already fully charged). The host ship has plenty of power and is not being drained.

 

[EternallySlaying]

Not sure what the secret is or would be, but I just removed all power generator modules from my turret and am now watching its power drain as it maintains its shields (which are already fully charged). The host ship has plenty of power and is not being drained.

What's probably happening is your ship has more generation per second in energy, than the turret can possibly drain in a second. It is still draining power. This can become apparent if you have a ship that can barely fire, move, and recharge shields at the same time; but if an added turret that drains mothership power is tacked on and begins firing, you end up running out of power. To actually check this, look at the weapon/shield stats and compare their combined energy drain to your energy regen.

 

[0ldSkull]

I think you may have missed my point. With no power reactors, and while not firing or moving, the turret's power regen is 1 e/s and consumption is 11 e/s. I observed the turret's power reserves depleting at a rate of 10 e/s; specifically I could see its power reserves decrease by 11 and increase by 1 once per second.

I haven't tried to test what happens if the turret's power reserves are fully drained, which I guess means either waiting or not giving it any reactors to begin with. If at that point it starts pulling ship's power to charge/maintain shields, then I think it may be a bug since that implies it will not pull ship's power to charge its power reserves...?

 

[0ldSkull]

Just to follow up... I've had occasion to experiment further and indeed found that a turret will power its systems, including shields, from the host ship. however it will not charge the turret's own power reserves from host power. The turret will use its own reserves first if available, then seamlessly draw from the host as necessary. So one can opt to omit any power generation from the turret itself, or add minimal generation to give the turret a bit of reserve and save initial load on the ship.