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By a quite large coefficient?1st snip: Uhm...ya they were/are; take your ship up to 2.4 million e/sec, after that add roughly 1.1 million e/sec per docked reactor for much less space than the equivalent 1.1 million on the main entity. Stacking optimized external reactors multiplies the linear growth mechanic you see arise after softcap on main entity by quite a large coefficient at the cost of design time, vulnerability, and mildly expensive secondary additions.
The aim is to produce as much power as possible using as little space as possible:
Docked reactor:
Following numbers are from a spreadsheat i used for my current design:
Its far from perfect.
The aim was to produce a 149 long reactor.
(The 149 block length is just an artifical number made up related to the ship design and is only used as an example.)
23 stripes (only 147 blocks each long) provide the maximum average e/sec per block (474,64).
The 3335 reactor blocks produce 1582928,88 e/sec in total.
To relay the energy using power supply beams you need 4122,21 blocks or 29x147 blocks long stripes.
The supply beams can now provide up to 989330,5 e/sec.
If we ignore the logic/core/computer the whole thing uses 7540 blocks space therefore we end up with 131,21 e/sec per block.
Adding hull for visiuals and power storage i decided to go for 149x9x9. Ergo 12069 blocks per reactor providing 81,97 e/sec per block.
Lets say our ship has 23 power groups: 147 blocks long each, 3335 blocks total. Providing 1582928,88 e/sec therefore 474,64 e/sec per block.
Now we add docked reactors. (The hypothetical ones from before with 131,21 e/sec per block)
If we add 2 we end up with:
3335+(7540*2)=18 415 blocks
1582928,88+(989330,5*2)=3 561 589 e/sec
on avg: 193,407 e/sec per block
If we add 10 we end up with:
3335+(7540*10)=78 735 blocks
1582928,88+(989330,5*10)=11 476 233 e/sec
on avg: 145,7 e/sec per block
If we add 50 we end up with:
3335+(7540*50)=380 335 blocks
1582928,88+(989330,5*50)=51 049 453 e/sec
on avg: 134,2 e/sec per block
If we add an infinite amout we approach 131,21 e/sec per block
No Docked reactor:
If we just add raw power reactors once we hit the 2 000 000 e/sec cap we quickly approach an average of 25 e/sec per block.
To put it into perspective if we do a rough estimation how many blocks we need to reach the same amout of power generation as in the example above. (We assume that at that size the layout doesn't matter anymore so we can subtract the 2000000 e/sec provided by that. So we only need to look at the 25 e/sec per power block added)
To reach 3 561 589 e/sec we need about (1561589/25)= 62 463 blocks
To reach 11 476 233 e/sec we need about (9476233/25)= 379 049 blocks
To reach 51 049 453 e/sec we need about (49049453/25)= 1 961 978 blocks
Multiple ships:
For comparability each of our ships has 23 stripes of power blocks. Each is 147 blocks long.
The 3335 reactor blocks produce 1582928,88 e/sec in total. On average e/sec per block (474,64).
To put it into perspective:
For our fleet to reach a combined amout of 3 561 589 e/sec
we need (3561589/1592028,88)= 2,237 ships
or (3561589/474,6)= 7 503 blocks combined
For our fleet to reach a combined amout of 11 476 233 e/sec
we need (11476233/1592028,88)= 7,208 ships
or (11476233/474,64)= 24 178 blocks combined
For our fleet to reach a combined amount of 51 049 453 e/sec
we need (51049453/1592028,88)= 32,065 ships
or (51049453/474,64)= 107 554 blocks combined
Conclusion:
But how are these numbers combarable? You can directly convert e/sec in dps which is basically firepower and can very well be used as a index of strength.
In reality power reactors are cheap. Docked reactors are much more expensive. But lets forget that and just assume all the blocks above are power reactor blocks.
Long rambling for a simple point to make:
Now if i have about 25 000 power reactor blocks avaible and controllability is not an issue.
Why would i ever build a ship with docked reactors that provides about 4 500 000 e/sec instead of building 7 ships that provide more than 11 000 000 e/sec combined.
If we use the avg. e/sec per blocks that the different methods approach at high numbers we can say that in this example using multiple ships is more than 3,6 times more efficient.
Using multiple ships you can reduce the total mass and size of the power generation by factor of 3,6 ! Basically more thrust/easier achievable defensive effects/smaller.
And then you have to consider that power generation using power supply beams is also much much more expansive.
And keep in mind that this docked reactor design is vastly overstated so in reality its even worse.
This is also one of the reasons why drones are that powerful.