What is the formula for powersupply/drain beam transfer?

[Xavori]

I'm trying to work out the best way to transfer power from a million e/sec docked generator to the ship it's docked on. However, I cannot find the formula for powersupply or powerdrain beams which would let me do the math to answer the following questions:

Is it more efficient to build powersupply beams into the docked generator, or to build powerdrain beams into the main ship?

How many powersupply/drain beams are required to move 1 million e/sec (acknowledging that I lose 1/3 based on the info that I've already found)?

Is there a way to see on the main ship how much the total e/sec actually is? I've built a test generator that is 1 million e/sec using 1500 powersupply/cannon beams on the generator, but when I look at the power on the station it's docked to, it still shows the base e/sec, nothing from the docked generator.

Thanks in advance for any help.

 

[CyberTao]

Power drain on the mainship no longer works, as a mothership can't hit things docked to it, so would have to use power supply.

I'm pretty certain power supply comes out to about ~90 power per second total per block, 40 supplied and 50 consumed for weapon costs. Adding slaves to it will change the rate of supply (Cannons for constant supply, or Pulse for battery styled Power injections), but it will always cost 50 to fire per block and 40 will be supplied to the mothership.

Also, it is better to go with many smaller reactors than 1 large one, since as you get closer to the softcap, the bonus decreases on a curve, lowering the overall power per block. AndyP estimated the ideal reactor size to be around 250-400k power regeneration (Actual post is buried in suggestions). That said, more reactors docked to a ship increases lag, so gonna have to find a balance.

 

[Crashmaster]

You have to use powersupply beams in the docked generators as the ship-mounted weapons cannot hit docked entities.

Due to the way logic works as far as I've heard powersupply/pulse is the way to go with two alternating beams of approx. 1350/1350 each depending on your specifics. Also have close to 1mil in power storage on the generator to mitigate power fluctuations.

Best way I find is to build a large test weapon on the main ship making it bigger and bigger until you start to drain power then read the power consumption for the approximate total e/sec.

It can be tricky making a logic system that will alternate two beams while preventing them from ever firing at once. If they both fire at once they will deplete the generator and pull power from the main ship wasting 1/3 of the power pulled out of the ship causing power drain instead of supply.

 

[Xavori]

Thanks for the replies so far. Will test some more to see if I can come up with new numbers now.

Crashmaster: keeping the guns firing separately is easy. Just use a single logic clock to run the whole thing with one gun being activated at the start, and then the delay, then the second gun, then a second delay before it cycles back.

 

[Crashmaster]

That's what I did at first too. Lag can upset logic. You also need a way to prevent each beam from firing when the other is firing as well or the lags will mess with it sooner or later.

 

[Xavori]

That's what I did at first too. Lag can upset logic. You also need a way to prevent each beam from firing when the other is firing as well or the lags will mess with it sooner or later.

So...cram a memory cell in to toggle between them?

 

[Marduk_Zoekoff]

You have to use powersupply beams in the docked generators as the ship-mounted weapons cannot hit docked entities.

Due to the way logic works as far as I've heard powersupply/pulse is the way to go with two alternating beams of approx. 1350/1350 each depending on your specifics. Also have close to 1mil in power storage on the generator to mitigate power fluctuations.

Best way I find is to build a large test weapon on the main ship making it bigger and bigger until you start to drain power then read the power consumption for the approximate total e/sec.

It can be tricky making a logic system that will alternate two beams while preventing them from ever firing at once. If they both fire at once they will deplete the generator and pull power from the main ship wasting 1/3 of the power pulled out of the ship causing power drain instead of supply.

That was what I did to test the 1m power generator. But I ran into a problem when it came to transfers, the generator (23x23x23) ended up being twice the size( 23x56x23) in order to transfer 705k power per shot. the cannon was also on auto fire but only ran at ~500k e/s however it seemed it was more efficient to run the beams with a Bc beam and add the power supply beams to it. both methods where able to keep up with the power drain. but the Bc setup worked as a shell.

 

[Proxima_Centauri]

It's not worth it to use docked generators anymore. They only supply .6 more e/sec/block than just power blocks alone (when you include all the other blocks like power and shields, it's more like .3 or .4 at best)

INB4 one of the "testers" (who never try their ships in server combat) tries to explain how this is somehow more balanced than the older method

 

[Xavori]

It's not worth it to use docked generators anymore. They only supply .6 more e/sec/block than just power blocks alone (when you include all the other blocks like power and shields, it's more like .3 or .4 at best)

INB4 one of the "testers" (who never try their ships in server combat) tries to explain how this is somehow more balanced than the older method

Ya, testing seems to be leading to this.

It gets worse if you want to be able to install new generators by leaving a door out of the ship to the docking points.

Pity as I really liked the concept of docked generators being better than brute force as it led to more finesse in ship design.

 

[Marduk_Zoekoff]

It's not worth it to use docked generators anymore. They only supply .6 more e/sec/block than just power blocks alone (when you include all the other blocks like power and shields, it's more like .3 or .4 at best)

INB4 one of the "testers" (who never try their ships in server combat) tries to explain how this is somehow more balanced than the older method

after trying to get enough power out of them and not being able to unlock an efficient enough way, I would tend to agree. I still have them on my ship but they are as a kind of emergency system, for power outage situations they are nice to have as I keep friction off so without power the ship would just keep drifting till main power is restored. But with the emergency system I can still stop or move away from a battle until main power comes back online.