Power - Turret power issues and ship recharge issues

[VendettaDFA]

A couple of questions based on my experience as to whether some things are working as intended. I have a large ship with over 150 mill power and have power reactor recharge at over 2.1 mill/sec thru brute force. (not a fan of the current softcap) This ship is equipped with self powered and tested to be self sufficient turrets.

My first issue concerns the turrets. As stated these have been tested to be power self sufficient. My point defense will fire all day undocked from the mother ship. My larger turret will do the same and I have the power recharge in a way that a full charge is established before the firing cool down completes. My understanding is turrets will draw their own power first and then draw from the ship as needed. Either I am not understanding this correctly or possibly this is not working as intended. In testing my ship drains down on power and one tactic I have been forced into to regain power is turning off the turret AI. This tells me that the supposedly self sufficient turrets are draining ship power when they have no need to touch it at all.

My second issue is power recovery of the ship itself. I have a hard time believing the 2.1 mill/sec recharge on power is working as intended either. 60 secs at 2.1 mill per sec is above 120 million power. If I were to fire everything I have , Turrets aside as they should be powering themselves, I might be tickling 60 mill usage. On my ship that leaves 90 million power. The minimum on my big guns recharge is 45 secs as they are miss/beam homers. In 45 secs of recharge I should expect 90 million power. Its not there. (UPDATE - second issue mostly resolved although I still question the math in general. A weapon system change helped - Didn't take into account how ridiculous overdrive effect is)

I will keep reviewing and tweaking my ship, but I am hoping to get some answers here as well because this math is not adding up.

 

[SkaireKrough]

I could be way off, this is based on my own experience and observations.

I have found that when a turret weapon requires more power than it can generate per second it will pull power from the main ship to keep its power capacitors topped off. Keep in mind that the turret's ship core has 50,000 power capacity. To completely prevent a turret from taking power away from the main ship, its power regen needs to equal or exceed the max power demand. To test to see if your turrets can do this simply undock the turret in question and fire is weapons, if the power meter drops you need to add more power reactors.

 

[VendettaDFA]

As mentioned, the turrets need no help from the ships power supply: "My point defense will fire all day undocked from the mother ship. My larger turret will do the same and I have the power recharge in a way that a full charge is established before the firing cool down completes. " That is why I think either turrets are not working as intended or the thought that they draw their own power first is not correct.

 

[shadowulf]

As mentioned, the turrets need no help from the ships power supply: "My point defense will fire all day undocked from the mother ship. My larger turret will do the same and I have the power recharge in a way that a full charge is established before the firing cool down completes. " That is why I think either turrets are not working as intended or the thought that they draw their own power first is not correct.

*disclaimer* now I may be wrong but let me explain my take on this.
One, or more of your turrets' regeneration does not equal its power draw. You did say your main turret does recharge before its next shot, but in my experience, whenever turrets have room for power in their tanks, they take it from their docked host (your ship). Basically if when your turrets fire, the power bar goes down at all, the turrets will take x amount of power from your ship to refill their capacitors, no matter the recharge.

 

[NeonSturm]

You did say your main turret does recharge before its next shot, but in my experience, whenever turrets have room for power in their tanks, they take it from their docked host (your ship). Basically if when your turrets fire, the power bar goes down at all, the turrets will take x amount of power from your ship to refill their capacitors, no matter the recharge.

After all they are turrets.
Is it the weapons AI, the gun or the turret-dock which does that?

Perhaps try to dock turrets with ship-docks. If the fire-angle is wide enough you can cover most parts with this too (I partially have done that with at least rear and front)

 

[shadowulf]

After all they are turrets.
Is it the weapons AI, the gun or the turret-dock which does that?

Perhaps try to dock turrets with ship-docks. If the fire-angle is wide enough you can cover most parts with this too (I partially have done that with at least rear and front)

If I had to guess I would say the ai. Its the only explanation for the power draw on my modified ship. (Completely power safe except firing the nukes.) Then I add two turrets and am almost always running out of power when my turrets are firing.

 

[Honytawk]

It is better to replace all the power with shields.
If it has power itself, it won't use the power of the ship while still giving its own power to the main ship like docked ships do.

Excerpt from the wiki:
"If it is without on-board power, a turret will take the energy it needs from the ship it is attached to."
Source: http://starmadepedia.net/wiki/Turret

Meaning that it only takes power if does not have it on its own.

 

[VendettaDFA]

*disclaimer* now I may be wrong but let me explain my take on this.
One, or more of your turrets' regeneration does not equal its power draw. You did say your main turret does recharge before its next shot, but in my experience, whenever turrets have room for power in their tanks, they take it from their docked host (your ship). Basically if when your turrets fire, the power bar goes down at all, the turrets will take x amount of power from your ship to refill their capacitors, no matter the recharge.

You may be right and if you are then that is what is wrong. The point defense turrets aren't an issue as the power reactor's per sec charge exceeds their usage. The large turret however does. My point is the turret should remain self sufficient due to the fact that it can fire and recharge fully before the cool down is finished. IMO there should be no draw on the ship if the turret is fully able to support its own power draw each and every time. If this isn't the case , then I implore our engineers (devs) to make it so

 

[NeonSturm]

Perhaps you can circumvent this feature by docking the turret on a ship which is docked on your ship?

If it then draws power from this ship instead of your main ship, problem solved (ugly, but it may get it done) - I am too lazy to test it right now as I prefer smaller turrets and separate reactors for the sake of energy sharing between turrets.


I would like a feature to make energy supply+drain (not just the beams, but all features dependent on it) dependent on the ratio between entities in efficiency.
You should be able to equalize shields between turrets if you build the stuff to do it.
Between station and a nearby ship if you want.
But right now supply supplies until there is nothing left in your ship and drain drains until there is nothing left - no way to fine-tune this.

 

[shadowulf]

You may be right and if you are then that is what is wrong. The point defense turrets aren't an issue as the power reactor's per sec charge exceeds their usage. The large turret however does. My point is the turret should remain self sufficient due to the fact that it can fire and recharge fully before the cool down is finished. IMO there should be no draw on the ship if the turret is fully able to support its own power draw each and every time. If this isn't the case , then I implore our engineers (devs) to make it so

How are your reactors set up? Do you know the trick of not laying them in blocks, but axis? For example
RRRRRR
RRRRRR
RRRRRR
Is worse than
RRRRRR
OOOOORRRRRR
OOOOOOOOOORRRRRR
Where O is a random blobk, just not a power reactor.
It has to do with extending the axis of the array they're in. If not, try setting them up in three dimensional lines, that might boost your turrets recharge enough.

 

[VendettaDFA]

How are your reactors set up? Do you know the trick of not laying them in blocks, but axis? For example
RRRRRR
RRRRRR
RRRRRR
Is worse than
RRRRRR
OOOOORRRRRR
OOOOOOOOOORRRRRR
Where O is a random blobk, just not a power reactor.
It has to do with extending the axis of the array they're in. If not, try setting them up in three dimensional lines, that might boost your turrets recharge enough.

I don't have a recharge issue within the turret itself. That is what I am saying. When a cool down on a missile/beam homer is 45 seconds and my turret is at 100% power in 35 seconds, there is no reactor issue to me. The other suggestion you might be making is impossible on a turret that requires 12 million to fire thanks to the recharge soft cap. The fact that my turret regains its full charge should remove any need to draw from the main ship.

 

[shadowulf]

I don't have a recharge issue within the turret itself. That is what I am saying. When a cool down on a missile/beam homer is 45 seconds and my turret is at 100% power in 35 seconds, there is no reactor issue to me. The other suggestion you might be making is impossible on a turret that requires 12 million to fire thanks to the recharge soft cap. The fact that my turret regains its full charge should remove any need to draw from the main ship.

i agree, have you tried bringing this up as a bug?

 

[Tobyz28]

I think its working as intended. Example using a 45 second recharge turret:
Assumptions

1. 1 Shot = 1 Million Energy
2. Turret E Cap = 1 Million
3. Turret E Regen = 100k/sec (So after 10 seconds it should be "full" if it were firing on its own)

What Actually Happens (Per 1 second tick):

• Tick 0 - Turret Fires, Cap is 0, E Regen Starts on Next Tick
• Tick 1 - 100k Energy Regenerated, Turret See's 900 Cap available - Pull's it from Mother Ship
• Tick 2 - Cap is Full, Ship waits 44 more seconds before firing again.

This is a rough cut of what I think is happening. I'm not sure if this is a bug or working as intended, but i would recommend a turret seeks to pull from Energy the mother-ship for remaining power if it's caps are not yet full.

What Should Probably Happen:

• Tick 0 - Turret Fires, Cap is 0, E Regen Starts on Next Tick
• Tick 1 - 100k Energy Regenerated.
• Tick 2 -Same as above
• Tick 45 - Turret about to fire, checks if CAP needs mothership power and pulls if needed (not applicable in this case). Repeat with Tick 0

 

[Menos]

The power regen seems a bit strange right now. Yesterday I did some tests with turrets on a station with 2m power reserve and a turret requiring 72k power for shooting, and it kept spamming me with not enough power error messages and ceased firing in between shots despite the more than enough power available on the main ship.

I am doing a blind guess here, but together with what you report it feels like the power algorithm is partially "drain power from ship first" and "drain power from turret first" mixed up somewhere in between.

I agree with what Toby said, and would imagine the turrets to work as follows:
- On shooting: drain power from turret capacitors, when depleted from attached (main ship) capacitors.
- On recharging: take power from turret generators first. If capacitors are not full yet, take energy from attached generators with low priority (so basically what the main ship doesn't need). In no case transfer power from the main ship's capacitors to refill the internals.