Modular reactors still viable?

[Malacodor]

It seems modular reactors now need way more powersupply beam modules to work properly. I don't know when exactly this was changed, I developed mine a few months ago and just checked what was changed by the recent beam mechanics changes. Are they still viable?

 

[MrFURB]

Here's the current stats on the vanilla power supply beams:
2.5 second burst time and 2.5 second cooldown time, with 5 ticks per burst.
Each tick uses 50 power to give your target 40 power.
That makes each burst give 200 energy and cost 250 energy. That's 40 energy transfered per second. Per module.

 

[Snk]

I use ships designed off of it. It works, but the mothership needs a lot of capacitors. The power drain on the support vessels is so great you need to activate them manually.

 

[Malacodor]

That's 40 energy transfered per second. Per module.

Hm, still better than the 25 energy per second from power reactors.

 

[Mered4]

My engineer managed to coax 400 e/sec out of his modules last night

 

[WarmasterRaptor]

Is it better to use power supply beam from the modular reactor to main ship or power drain beam from main to modular reactor ?

Or even, is the combination of both beams give something interesting?

Anyway, it's something I want to test soon, just want to know if somebody already knows about

 

[Mered4]

Is it better to use power supply beam from the modular reactor to main ship or power drain beam from main to modular reactor ?

Or even, is the combination of both beams give something interesting?

Anyway, it's something I want to test soon, just want to know if somebody already knows about

You cannot hit docked entities with any weapon from the main ship. Power supply on tte module is all that works. I suggest spending a few hours in singleplayer testing out the best designs - it's the only thing that will give you enough understanding of the system that you can refit it after a patch.

 

[WarmasterRaptor]

You cannot hit docked entities with any weapon from the main ship. Power supply on tte module is all that works. I suggest spending a few hours in singleplayer testing out the best designs - it's the only thing that will give you enough understanding of the system that you can refit it after a patch.

Thanks!

Sad thing that we can't hit docked stuff though... :\

Altough I understand why when you think of turrets...

 

[der_scheme]

Hm, still better than the 25 energy per second from power reactors.

Less space efficient, however. The spare space on a static generator can be filled with arbitrary other systems, that of modular ones cannot.
Also, adding shield supply will then again reduce power yield.

 

[Mered4]

Less space efficient, however. The spare space on a static generator can be filled with arbitrary other systems, that of modular ones cannot.
Also, adding shield supply will then again reduce power yield.

Actually, if you were to compare the power regen of a reactor *cube* to a module of the same volume, the module wins every time after the ship reaches soft cap.

For example, the primary modules I use generate 746000 e/s, whereas a power cube of the same volume generates around 560k.

 

[Malacodor]

Actually, if you were to compare the power regen of a reactor *cube* to a module of the same volume, the module wins every time after the ship reaches soft cap.

For example, the primary modules I use generate 746000 e/s, whereas a power cube of the same volume generates around 560k.

But you need a large amount of supply beam blocks.

 

[Lancake]

They are only really viable depending on your ship shape and its size.

Big ships profit the most out of it, I was able to use space that could host 6 times more power regen/s using reactors than I would get by filling it completely.
Like der_scheme said, there will always be some waste of space if you use reactors. My ship was big enough to host at least 3 x 14 reactors that each can deliver 1 mil / s (they are 7x7x250).

Smaller ships often don't have this room or freedom in terms of dimensions. If you hit the softcap and your ship is big enough then they are viable.

 

[Mered4]

They are only really viable depending on your ship shape and its size.

Big ships profit the most out of it, I was able to use space that could host 6 times more power regen/s using reactors than I would get by filling it completely.
Like der_scheme said, there will always be some waste of space if you use reactors. My ship was big enough to host at least 3 x 14 reactors that each can deliver 1 mil / s (they are 7x7x250).

Smaller ships often don't have this room or freedom in terms of dimensions. If you hit the softcap and your ship is big enough then they are viable.

That's horribly inefficient. If you build the reactors correctly, the only downside is possible server lag.

 

[Mered4]

But you need a large amount of supply beam blocks.

AGAIN, the ENTIRE MODULE, with supply beam blocks, power reactors, power caps, thrusters, shields, and shield rechargers is MORE EFFICIENT than a cube of power of the same volume. Got me?

 

[Malacodor]

AGAIN, the ENTIRE MODULE, with supply beam blocks, power reactors, power caps, thrusters, shields, and shield rechargers is MORE EFFICIENT than a cube of power of the same volume. Got me?

Of course it is, but the difference is way smaller than it used to be, and power reactors are much cheaper than powersupply beams, so I somewhat doubt modular reactors are still worth the hassle.

 

[Mered4]

Of course it is, but the difference is way smaller than it used to be, and power reactors are much cheaper than powersupply beams, so I somewhat doubt modular reactors are still worth the hassle.

I haven't done this personally, but our engineer, 4plains, has achieved x4 efficiency with his slightly smaller modules. Mine is closer to 1.25x

 

[Malacodor]

I haven't done this personally, but our engineer, 4plains, has achieved x4 efficiency with his slightly smaller modules.

Before or after the nerf?

 

[Lancake]

That's horribly inefficient. If you build the reactors correctly, the only downside is possible server lag.

Define horribly inefficient please:

Assuming the space I have for my reactors (that fit perfectly in it) I have an empty room of 108000 blocks, which is 2.7 million/s after hitting the softcap. Now I can fit exactly 14 reactors in that space, can't even put a space hamster between them... Each reactor gives 1 million/s in theory, 950K is more close to it.

• 0.95*14/2.7 = 4.9

That's a nice ratio but that's even less than I mentioned, please give me an example of one of your very efficient ships.

and my reactors are 6000 blocks for 1 million regen + supply, no shields.

 

[Mered4]

Define horribly inefficient please:

Assuming the space I have for my reactors (that fit perfectly in it) I have an empty room of 108000 blocks, which is 2.7 million/s after hitting the softcap. Now I can fit exactly 14 reactors in that space, can't even put a space hamster between them... Each reactor gives 1 million/s in theory, 950K is more close to it.

• 0.95*14/2.7 = 4.9

That's a nice ratio but that's even less than I mentioned, please give me an example of one of your very efficient ships.

and my reactors are 6000 blocks for 1 million regen + supply, no shields.

Power supply blocks are not perfectly efficient. It's about 3/4 of each power point supplied.

When you build the modules to the appropriate dimensions and generation power, it can reach up to 4x the power generation of a power cube on the latest build. You use a damage pulse slave in an alternating pulse.

 

[Crashmaster]

For comparison I had a go at fixing my reactors after reading some of Mered4's info (thanks). Being no longer designed from the ground up they are not optimized and also they never had the most optimized dimensions.
20700 blocks total of which 4600 are power gen producing 1.05 mil e/sec (8200 are shield capacitors) the output is 830k e/sec continuous.
Back in business! Now though the task of actually switching them out is a different story.

edit;

Nope. I have not got it to work right yet

Using power supply beam with damage pulse slave; the reactor uses 1 mil e/sec constantly during the 15 seconds the beam is active but only supplies 800k e/sec to the target once every three seconds during it's 15 second on-time. In addition during the second while it is supplying the 800k e/sec it is using 1.8mil e/sec. These numbers agree with the drain, tick, and consumption figures in the weapons tab.
So in actuality it's averaging 267k e/sec supplied at a averaged cost of 1267k e/sec while the beam is on. The same volume of brute-forced power gen block as this reactor module would produce 610k e/sec. Unless I'm doing something grossly wrong but I don't know anymore tonight...