In an attempt to make a more interesting ship to interact with I want a power core that can power at least a major portion of a ships power. This was capable before rails because power doesn't feed back to the docked elements. Now however when attaching a core, the power is sent to the main ship via supply beam. The power sent is less then produced so there is loss already. Then while its charging the main ship it gets feed back into the core to recharge it and is then sent back to the ship yet again reducing the total power.
This problem persists and prevents any power from actually being generated.
Ideas of fixing this I have had have been adding an intermediary bit but the power just flows up the chain and still gets lost.
Reversing the direction of docking, but then the main ship is docked to the core and is immobile and now the thing rotating instead of the core.
Adding a reversed docking to an intermediary bit that then connects to the core. This fixes the rotational problem but still doesn't prevent the feedback.
If anyone has a suggestion on how to build something that can create and transfer power with the new rails system with out causing infinite power bleed that would be great.
Then while its charging the main ship it gets feed back into the core to recharge it and is then sent back to the ship yet again reducing the total power.
I've usually build modular power cores to provide power for the titans I usually build but never finish.
It actually happens that way. It works like this if you have a 500k transfer beam and you only have 50k energy on the docked module it will grab the 50k on the module and another 450k off the mothership then transfer roughly 400k back due to the power supply beam wastes power resulting in the docked module with no power and 50k less power on the mother ship than what it started with. And it will do that every tick that the power supply beam activates.
Due to the power wasted when the power supply beam is transferring power you have to design the core to not use power from the mothership. Which it does when it doesn't have enough power itself, so the power core needs to generate and store all the power its transferring on itself so that it might only draw on the mothership when it gets really laggy. As if it draws power from the mothership it will only give some back and in which case its just draining the motherships power. Worse since the power supply beam isn't a continuous output it pulses.
I can never find solid information about exact timing of the tick rate, cool down, cycle time of power supply beams, Id love to know if someone can locate this information and how cannon slaves effect them exactly.
The rules of thumb here are for power supply beams with no slaves. I had issues with cannon slaves either more wasted power or lag. So these rules are just for power supply beams with no slave system.
Anyway essentially use these appoximate ratios:
energy storage 2.2 to 2.5 times energy regen
power supply beam uses 0.5 times energy regen
It appears to have a 2.5 second total cycle time before it refires but the ticks are a lot less than half a second so it rapidly discharges while the supply beam is working.
To fine tune it you need to test the module and adjust the numbers. Note that the power readouts on the docked entity vary wildly. I typically watch it over a number of cycles due to how uneven the power supply is. You can test the modular power core by not docking them but aim the power supply beam at another entity. If not actually aimed at another entity it won't actually consume a lot of power so you can't see how it preforms under load.
Ideally you want the power level to almost run out when the beam is running and it should recharge to full before the beam activates again.
After its tested you can blueprint or record the numbers of blocks and dock it up.
Power sharing mechanics have not changed in the update. Just make sure that you have enough power storage on those reactors so that the power buffer and regen is greater than the drain, and that it never hits 0. If it does hit 0 than the power deficit will be compensated by the main ship. My docked reactors work just fine.
There's also a bug that causes power transfer beams to consume more power without transfering more, so be warry of that. That might be why your reactors don't work, because of a bug caused power deficit. It's not much, but it's enough to break finely tuned docked reactors.
Note: I use alternating power transfer beams with no slave to make them cheaper.
Hmmm.... I think I'm going to have to go back and see if I can do that redesign them to cycle between two beams to reduce the size of the reactors down again, More constant output will reduce the energy storage required. Maybe I hit that bug with the cannon slave setup.
From the little experience i gathered with power supply beams and docked reactors, each power supply module will supply exactly 240 energy each 0.5s during 2.5s (effectively transmitting five times this amount for one activation) or at least when it doesn't lag, i don't know if that affects the supply. The base cooldown is 5s.
The actual in game energy consumption seem to be roughly 780~790/s per module energy instead of the 600/s you would expect when reading blockbehaviourconfig.xml (see http://bugs.star-made.org/issues/1938 ).
The formula for energy supply per block/(theoretical) energy consumption per block/cooldown/burst time/range (actually who cares about range for docked reactors), when slaving damage pulse or damage beam weapons seems to be (didn't test with missiles, and cannons seem to have a different formula as the supply decreases instead of increasing, that must be caused by the "nerf" attribute):
Stat = (Buff*Ratio+1)*BaseStat
where Ratio is the ratio of the number of slaved modules to the number of power supply modules, BaseStat is defined in blockbehaviourconfig.xml and same with Buff (if it isn't defined, or defined with style="skip" assume it's 0).
For instance, for 42 power supply beam and 24 damage beam:
Ratio = 24/42 = 4/7 ~= 0.57
hence:
SupplyPerHit (per block) = (1+2*4/7)*240 ~= 514.3 (the relevant line seems to be <PowerPerHit style="buff" linear="true" value="2" /> for the buff, the number of blocks is the sum of master and slaved modules, assuming you don't exceed a 1:1 ratio)
Consumption (per block) = (1+2*4/7)*300 ~= 642.9 (theoretical, per hit, currently it's bugged so testing ingame seems more reliable, if you want an approximation add 30% to that value)
Cooldown = (1+2*4/7)*5 = 10.7s
BurstTime = (1+0*4/7)*2.5 = 2.5s
Code:
<PowerSupply>
<BasicValues>
<TickRate>0.5</TickRate> <!-- tick time in seconds, beam must remain on target entity or this timer resets -->
<SupplyPerHit>240</SupplyPerHit>
<PowerConsumption>300</PowerConsumption>
<Distance>0.24</Distance> <!-- 1 is equal to 100% sector radius --> <!-- timeBetweenHits = 1 / (unitSize^pow)*mult -->
<CoolDown>5</CoolDown> <!-- Time it takes to fire beam again from the start-time it first activated -->
<BurstTime>2.5</BurstTime> <!-- Time the beam will fire -->
<InitialTicks>0</InitialTicks> <!-- Ticks to do at the initial contact of beam with a block -->
</BasicValues>
<Combination>
<Cannon>
<HitSpeed style="buff" inverse="true" value="10" />
<Distance style="skip" />
<PowerConsumption style="buff" inverse="true" value="20" linear="true" />
<PowerPerHit style="nerf" value="20" linear="true" />
<Split style="skip" />
<CoolDown style="buff" inverse="true" value="2"/> <!-- Time it takes to fire beam again from the start-time it first activated -->
<BurstTime style="skip"/> <!-- Time the beam will fire -->
<InitialTicks style="skip"/> <!-- Ticks to do at the initial contact of beam with a block -->
</Cannon>
<Missile>
<HitSpeed style="skip" />
<Distance style="skip" />
<PowerConsumption style="skip" linear="true"/>
<PowerPerHit style="skip" linear="true"/>
<Split style="buff" value="9"/>
<CoolDown style="skip"/> <!-- Time it takes to fire beam again from the start-time it first activated -->
<BurstTime style="skip"/> <!-- Time the beam will fire -->
<InitialTicks style="skip"/> <!-- Ticks to do at the initial contact of beam with a block -->
</Missile>
<Beam>
<HitSpeed style="skip" /> <!-- Affects TickRate -->
<Distance style="buff" value="2" />
<PowerConsumption style="nerf" inverse="true" linear="true" value="2" />
<PowerPerHit style="buff" linear="true" value="2" />
<Split style="skip" />
<CoolDown style="nerf" inverse="true" value="2"/> <!-- Time it takes to fire beam again from the start-time it first activated -->
<BurstTime style="skip"/> <!-- Time the beam will fire -->
<InitialTicks style="skip"/> <!-- Ticks to do at the initial contact of beam with a block -->
</Beam>
<Pulse>
<HitSpeed style="nerf" inverse="true" value="5" />
<Distance style="skip" />
<PowerConsumption style="nerf" inverse="true" value="5" linear="true" />
<PowerPerHit style="buff" value="5" linear="true" />
<Split style="skip" />
<CoolDown style="nerf" inverse="true" value="5"/> <!-- Time it takes to fire beam again from the start-time it first activated -->
<BurstTime style="buff" value="5"/> <!-- Time the beam will fire -->
<InitialTicks style="skip"/> <!-- Ticks to do at the initial contact of beam with a block -->
</Pulse>
</Combination>
</PowerSupply>
Personnally, i tend to think that either power supply beams/damage beams or simple power supply beams are the best alternatives, cannon-slaved should also work fine, but i feel like it's a bit harder to time them without missing any/too many supply ticks as they have a way smaller cooldown and a greater hit rate (i might be wrong though, i haven't used those much).
Theoretically, in term of average supply per block and consumption per block all alternatives seem to be equivalent (except for the pulse-slaved, avoid that one, it consumes 6 times as much energy as both the duration and the energy are multiplied by 6 whereas the supply per hit is multiplied by 6 and the hit rate is divided by 6, so compared to a simple supply module, you supply 6 times as much energy for 36 times the normal consumption).
You can also choose to either have several alternating groups, or a bigger group with bigger energy storage (i tend to prefer the former, although the latter might be interesting if you plan to have high energy consumption spikes - for instance if you want to cloak for a couple seconds - in that case use beam-slaved supply modules as they have a greater supply per block while active).
Something interesting would be to have several chain docked reactors (say A, B, C, D ... where A is docked to your main ship, B to A, C to B, and so on), with the power supply beams down the chain (let's say D) so that you have a bit less logic blocks and there are less "rounding loss". Even more interesting, you could make A's energy storage bigger than all the other docked reactor ones (which should still at least be able to store 1 second worth of energy, more if you're not using alternating beams) so that A's energy slowly replenishes over time if your energy consumption is less than the energy generation of A+B+C+D+... (but ideally still greater than to the energy generation of B+C+D+...).
That way, your ship would be your "main big energy tank", but with a slightly reduced energy generation (due to the loss of energy caused by supply beams) and A's tank would be a "secondary small energy tank" with reduced capacity but "optimal energy generation". The next step would be to dock all your turrets down the chain (on D) so that they can use the energy of all available generators (A and your main ship included) and to set up a logic system to reduce the use of supply beams when your turrets/fixed weapons are active (so that you only pump energy from your docked reactors and not from your main ship, thus, optimizing the energy generation/consumption balance)
Edit:
Oh also, before i forget, i've thought of multiples design to fit reactors inside a bounding box, i think the most interesting one is the following:
The blue cells represent power reactor block bars parallel to the Z axis, the red ones to the Y axis and the green ones to the X axis. Each docked part (core/rails/dockers not included) has a single group of reactor blocks composed of a blue, green, and red bar with an optimal sum of dimensions. The empty cells (in light grey) can be filled with bars of capacitors and you can easily extend each reactor group outside of the bounding box along each axis if you want.
Of course, that thing alone doesn't make a docked generator, but it can help you place as much as reactors as possible in a limited space.
Using that I've remade my titan power cores. Two alternating power supply beams to constant output sequenced 2.5seconds apart. Power consumed is holding steady at 900k e/sec and its consuming a steady amount of power 450k e per 0.5 second tick so I've managed to reduce the battery size to around 500k...Vast improvement on steady output. Now I just have to replace all 84 of them......
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