Power blocks

[Dark Pip]

Do you need both power reactors and power capacitors for a succesful ship? I had tons of power reactors but no capacitors and I could perma jam, but I couldn't fire both missiles at once on my ship. After I added on some power capacitors I could fire both missiles at once, but I couldn't perma jam. How do I fix this?

 

[kurosawa]

yes

reactors produce power up to a soft cap, after that you need aux power

capasitors store power beyond your initial 50K power. even simple weapons can require a lot of stored power to fire especially missiles.

 

[Dark Pip]

So reactors produce power, capacitors store it, and auxiliary power is backup?

 

[Scypio]

You should take some time to read this, Everything is explained in details.

 

[Batavium]

How do I fix this?

The Radarjammer draws power to function. The bigger your ship the stronger the power drain when the Radarjammer is active. A ship that can Perma Jam. Has more power generation then the Radarjammer consumes while it is turned on.

This means that the weight/mass of your ship is a factor to. Because these days after the Cargo Update a ship weight also draws power.

Construct your ship from light weight materials like Hull instead of Standard Hull or Advanced Armor.

 

[jayman38]

Another way to look at power is to compare it to (real-life) water:
Power Capacity (capacitors) is like a pool and Power generation (reactors and aux) are like a hose feeding the pool.

So everything that requires power pulls water out of the metaphorical pool. If you have something steady, like a radar jammer, that's pulling 30 gallons out of the pool every minute, you'll need to be sending enough water through the hose to refill the pool at least 30 gallons a minute for perma-jamming. (replacing what is used)

For a missile example, a missile dumps 3/4 of the entire pool contents at once, but only fires once a minute or so, so you'll need to double the size of the pool with more capacitors, in order to fire two at once. To maintain sustained fire, you'll want enough water coming through the hose to refill the entire pool every minute or so. Replacing what you use is the same thing here. It's just that with big, one-shot, long-recharge weapons, you have some "downtime" between when the pool is emptied, to fill it again.

 

[Dark Pip]

Thanks! This was most helpful.