Viability of Power Cores (Docked Reactors)

[deathsoul097]

I am currently working on a large carrier style ship, to function as almost a mobile homebase for a faction, carrying many different ships, but also heavily armed and shielded. The power requirements are going to be IMMENSE. So i started thinking, what about docked reactors, multiple power cores projecting power into the main ship, to get around the inefficiency of exceeding the benefits of boxdim reactors?

Basically, what im asking is, can people work out the power output of such a design, and what the threshold would be for either method of power supply to be more effective/efficient for both blocks used and actual power requirements?

(I have a bunch of other reasons for wanting to do this, ease of repair, etc, but i really want to know how viable this could actually be, and if this could actually be a preferable method to just spamming blocks once we exceed 1 mill power gen.)

 

[Winterhome]

People use docked reactors plenty.

Softcap of 1mil e/s, with efficiency dropping off somewhere around 600-800k (I forget where exactly). A 1/1 Powersupply-Cannon should take 1k e/s to fire, and I'm not entirely clear on how much of that actually goes to the ship being hit.

 

[MrFURB]

Power supply beams have odd mechanics, but docked reactors have been tried and true for awhile now.

The power supply beams will use 300 energy a tick in order to give another ship 250 energy per tick. The beam will be on for 2.5 seconds with a 2.5 second rearm speed afterwards, so it's on half the time. It's tick rate and thus it's energy transfer rate depend on how many power supply modules are in the group. Having 1 module means 1 tick per second. Having 100 means 100 ticks per second, and so on and so forth.
It just takes some experimentation in order to get the best design for the space you have available.

 

[Tunk]

I get around 180e/s/b from my rail modules (too lazy to fully math it), each one supplying around 600k/s.

 

[Winterhome]

Power supply beams have odd mechanics, but docked reactors have been tried and true for awhile now.

The power supply beams will use 300 energy a tick in order to give another ship 250 energy per tick. The beam will be on for 2.5 seconds with a 2.5 second rearm speed afterwards, so it's on half the time. It's tick rate and thus it's energy transfer rate depend on how many power supply modules are in the group. Having 1 module means 1 tick per second. Having 100 means 100 ticks per second, and so on and so forth.
It just takes some experimentation in order to get the best design for the space you have available.

I was under the impression that they were effected by the changes to the salvage beams too, making them more like normal weapons.

 

[Knack]

It is better to use two power supply systems than one power supply - cannon slave.
Triggering the two systems one after the other gives you the full 240 e/s per module.
Power supply - cannon slave gives only about 190 to 200 per module.

 

[Reilly Reese]

Keptick has several drone and several reactor racks going into his Charon.

 

[Zackey_TNT]

Its very viable.

As you can see this generates 30 million e/s and only uses one beam. Its like having the blocks on the main ship just docked.
Now that docked stuff only takes damage after 50% of the shields are gone this has become even more powerful

 

[Winterhome]

Only problem I have with docked reactors is getting hit with a single missile when your shields are under 50%.

 

[Zackey_TNT]

Only problem I have with docked reactors is getting hit with a single missile when your shields are under 50%.

To fix this i have added several docked armored plates around the area of the reactors.

 

[Winterhome]

To fix this i have added several docked armored plates around the area of the reactors.

Not really sure how docked armor helps. I know that spaced armor works wonders, but docked armor wouldn't prevent the missile's blast radius from mangling the reactor. I've done some pretty extensive testing and we still have missile blasts penetrating walls and hitting docked objects.

 

[Zackey_TNT]

Not really sure how docked armor helps. I know that spaced armor works wonders, but docked armor wouldn't prevent the missile's blast radius from mangling the reactor. I've done some pretty extensive testing and we still have missile blasts penetrating walls and hitting docked objects.

You have the docked armor docked further away then the top end missle raidis. Add some shielding and they will take more damage then just your avg armor blocks. Plus set them up right and the mothership won't take the damage the plate does.

 

[Reilly Reese]

Sounds like your ship is a massive blob of nav markers Zackey.

 

[Zackey_TNT]

Sounds like your ship is a massive blob of nav markers Zackey.

Radar jammer. They work wonders. Without it i'd be pretty screwed

 

[Reilly Reese]

I bet you also have a bucket load of rail doors >_>

 

[Zackey_TNT]

I bet you also have a bucket load of rail doors >_>

No. i don't. Just normal plex doors

 

[deathsoul097]

Keptick is the reason i considered this, actually. I wondered if the same principal was able to be applied down to a 400m long carrier ship. With the HP update now, this means that the ship could survive more damage than normal, but also that it might be more likely to survive an engagement. Also, i figured that because Boxdim loses eficiency with size, whether or not that docked smaller reactors would be more efficient than placing more power on the ship itself after the boxdim limit is reached.

 

[Nuclear Doughnut]

What I've found is that the logic for docked reactors can freeze unless you have an easy way to restart it... I haven't tried this new Update to the fullest out yet... so we'll find out

 

[Mork2]

Place the power cores deeply buried in the ship with a access way so you can replace them if needed. Takes a little planning. It should help keep them out of the missile blast radius.

Missiles do damage to the first 1/4 radius if all blocks are destroyed it then goes out to 2/4 radius and if all those are destroyed goes to 3/4 radius etc out to full radius. So to reduce the blast radius damage have high HP armour. This is the incentive to use advanced armour. As each block of advanced armour will absorb 1000EHP. No matter what though the missile will damage its 1/4 radius once the shields aren't protecting it.

The new HP system should increase the damage absorption by advanced armour blocks which should hopefully cut down on the radius of damage you take from missiles.

Also missile point defence is suppose to be more effective now. At a guess they got an accuracy bonus in missile mode but that's just a guess.

The wireless link bug which caused them to de link seems to be fixed. So now you can link them together to start/stop the logic from the hot bar this will allow you to restart power cores that have frozen up.

 

[Nuclear Doughnut]

Its not the delinking that is the issue. In order to transfer power you have to use a clock on the power transfer computer. That Clock freezes.