What can docked entities do?

[philthy mcnasty]

I am looking at cutting corners and making a massive modular titian. It is the BFGA shell that an awesome user of awesomeness was kind enough to port over to us.

With the size and beauty of it, i have been trying to find a means to make it both efficient, elegant, and deadly.

to that end i have been looking at docked entities for assistance. I have already started work on making the external engines self powered, self shielded pods, to both free up power, space, and to look good. It also makes repairs and upgrades much easier to do, just eject the broken engine, tow it to the ship yard, and BLAM quicker repair in a smaller ship yard. I am hoping the "inherent thrust from docked entities" option is good for this, and that i am not making a mistake here.

But what else can i use? can i have a self powered 60k block sized logic operated jump inhibitor? Can i have a massive logic operated jump drive that is also self powered as a docked entity?

I was gone for a bit, so i am not sure what the community has discovered since i last played.

the goal is to have defensive support systems use ships power, as well as a few nasty weapons. I however also want planet killing, self powered, massive docked guns.

 

[Scypio]

What you can :
- use weapons, however it need to be AI controlled otherwise it will be strictly forward if you use logic (AI got a small angle of fire)
- use the 25% shield cap to your own advantage (docked armor plates)
- share power to upper docked things, not lower
- use docked jump drives
- use docked thrusters

What you can't :
- use defensive supports if you're not here to activate them
- inject power to lower docked entities
- use self power docked thrusters, they take power from the mother entity

I probably forgot a few things but there will be someone to correct me. Note that self powered docked entities need to be fully powered otherwise they'll take their power from the entity before them without touching the one on their.

 

[foodoman]

I was thinking about doing something similar.

What you can :
- use weapons, however it need to be AI controlled otherwise it will be strictly forward if you use logic (AI got a small angle of fire)
- use the 25% shield cap to your own advantage (docked armor plates)
- share power to upper docked things, not lower
- use docked jump drives
- use docked thrusters

What you can't :
- use defensive supports if you're not here to activate them
- inject power to lower docked entities
- use self power docked thrusters, they take power from the mother entity

I probably forgot a few things but there will be someone to correct me. Note that self powered docked entities need to be fully powered otherwise they'll take their power from the entity before them without touching the one on their.

By lower docked entiies, you mean those attached to the main frame, or the ones furthest away from the main frame?

 

[Scypio]

By lower docked entiies, you mean those attached to the main frame, or the ones furthest away from the main frame?

The ones closer from the main entity. You could look at it like a family tree, going from the mother entity and then to the others.

EDIT: wait a minute. I 'm confusing myself here between terms. In this sentence it was designating the ones between the entity and the main frame. A docked entity cannot share it's power to it's mother entity but the children entity can use the power from the mother entity.

 

[Edymnion]

Might be clearer if we use a visual example.

Dock B
|
Dock A
|
Ship

Dock A can draw power from the Ship. Dock B can draw power from Dock A (which can then in turn draw from Ship). Dock A cannot draw power from Dock B, nor can Ship draw from A or B.

Basically, power flows "up" the chain of docked entities, not down.

Same applies to shields, B can draw from A and/or Ship, but Ship and A cannot draw from B.

 

[Raisinbat]

Seem to be missing docked armor. There's two types to consider:

• Regular docked armor connected on top of shield entity:

Armor
|
Shield
|
Ship

This setup makes the armor kick in once you're down to 25% shield. Keeps your regen active and protects very effectively against ion weapons. It does not protect turrets though.

• Shieldless docked armor connected belo9w shield entity:

Armor Shield

\ /
Ship​

This armor needs to be destroyed in order to reach the shields, providing perfect defense against ion weapons that also protects turrets. Doesn't help regen much, unless it's allready been penetrated and means your titan will start taking damage immediately, but if you dont mind repairing the armor it should have a huge impact in battles against things strong enough to take your shields down, like titan vs titan.

Can also be used as a very light exoskeleton without covering the entire ship; adding plates from this entity to the sides will mitigate a lot of missile damage.

Biggest advantage to docked armor though is moving it off other entities since it's typically a huge part of ship mass, so it won't impact passive effect cost.

 

[AtraUnam]

Everything, they are the key to the most powerful forces in the game, you can not begin to imagine the potential power.

 

[Panpiper]

This setup makes the armor kick in once you're down to 25% shield. Keeps your regen active and protects very effectively against ion weapons. It does not protect turrets though.

I believe you are incorrect about this. As far as I know, shields protect everything above them in the docking chain, until they get to 25% strength, whereupon they stop protecting anything above. If this was not the case, a normally shielded and hulled ship, without such extra dockings such as docked hull, would shield only the base of turrets but not the barrels of turrets. This is clearly not the case and if it were, would be immediately recognized as a huge bug and promptly fixed.

 

[Raisinbat]

I believe you are incorrect about this. As far as I know, shields protect everything above them in the docking chain

Shields yes, but the armor doesn't help there. The shieldless armor keeps shields from dropping below 25% = keeps turrets alive longer.

 

[StarWars1981]

Shields yes, but the armor doesn't help there. The shieldless armor keeps shields from dropping below 25% = keeps turrets alive longer.

Only if your turrets are not designed on the same level as the rest of the ship.

If you consider building one, you're going to mount such an armor defense around that docker that nothing short of a penetrating cannon round from a Titan will one-shot it. So defending it with the armor plate is nearly pointless, because you should worry more about the main ship than the turret. Let the shields tank the damage - they regenerate, hull does not, and turrets can be defended by themselves until they have absorbed enough damage to impact the battle. A Titan's main turrets, heck even it's secondary turrets, are going to be monster weapons fully capable of duelling most anybody's destroyers one-on-one, provided it's mounted to something powered. Their bases will contain enough shields to defend themselves for a long time - don't waste your main ship's backup defenses to shield them just a little bit more, it's not worth it. Dock the shield plate above the armor plate, use the armor to defend the main Titan's shields until they regen enough to defend it. During this time, however, the pilot is working on an exit strategy. S/he clearly cannot continue taking those hits, so they must neutralize either the most dangerous opponent (or set of opponents) quickly or evacuate their vessel. Taking massive damage is acceptable - however, it is expensive, and a good pilot is not going to just take it, they're going to end it. Because the less Titan you have, the harder it is to win the next battles.

My point is, don't bother about the turrets, they will either defend themselves or get destroyed once the main vessel is in trouble, and placing the armor plate beneath the shield plate seems to be the best method of defending the main Titan from further damage in its weakened state.

 

[AtraUnam]

Might be clearer if we use a visual example.

Dock B
|
Dock A
|
Ship

Dock A can draw power from the Ship. Dock B can draw power from Dock A (which can then in turn draw from Ship). Dock A cannot draw power from Dock B, nor can Ship draw from A or B.

Basically, power flows "up" the chain of docked entities, not down.

Same applies to shields, B can draw from A and/or Ship, but Ship and A cannot draw from B.

1 caveeat to this, an entity cannot draw power from more than 1 other entity at a time, this means if you have 2 mil regen on both dock A and Ship, dock B will still only be able to draw 2mil.

 

[kulbolen]

all of the above. also lag the shit out of you if built irresponsibly and you start losing a fight.

 

[Panpiper]

1 caveeat to this, an entity cannot draw power from more than 1 other entity at a time, this means if you have 2 mil regen on both dock A and Ship, dock B will still only be able to draw 2mil.

Does this mean that there is a theoretical limit to the power of a turreted weapon if using the base for power, short of putting auxiliary reactors inside the barrel section? If the barrel of a weapon generates two million and the base generates two million, the barrel can only ever pull from one entity, in this case the base? Of course if the base generated 'no' power and was docked to a hull with a much larger power supply, then the barrel could draw whatever it needed, as long as the base was power inert?

My brain hurts.

Related; surmise a docked hull that itself generates two million power and is docked to a series of other entities (each generating power and shields) which are themselves daisy chain docked to one another before arriving at the inner core ship. Is the power generated by those interim entities essentially wasted, if turrets and such on the hull can only draw from one entity? The two million power of the docked hull is very likely to be insufficient to provide the needs of all the turrets that might seek to draw power. Will in such a case, all power drawing turrets find themselves starved?

 

[Scypio]

You can turn around that by using a massive storage after all of your cells. Well, theoretically. Your turret using more than 2M e/s will draw it's power from that storage and this storage will take power from cell A, then B, then C and so on until the first cell is ready to give power again (i do not know how the game check this and i would like to). Do not think about power regeneration but power capacity.
However generating power on the entity itself is a waste if you plan on using power from docked power cells before them.
You can also design like this with a good power capacity, the entity will drain from cell A, then when the cell A will be empty because you drain more than it can regenerate it will go to the cell B and then when the cell B will be empty it's up to the next cell than can give power to that thing.

 

[kulbolen]

pan, theyre not "wasted" as long
as youre taking advantage of that power on the entity generating it, or the entity docked to it. there are a few other scenarios you could make use of the power regen in, but stacking 5 docks then using 10m e/s on the barrel will not work right.

 

[Raisinbat]

Does this mean that there is a theoretical limit to the power of a turreted weapon if using the base for power, short of putting auxiliary reactors inside the barrel section? If the barrel of a weapon generates two million and the base generates two million, the barrel can only ever pull from one entity, in this case the base? Of course if the base generated 'no' power and was docked to a hull with a much larger power supply, then the barrel could draw whatever it needed, as long as the base was power inert?

All entities draw their own power first. If they don't have enough they move to the next. When that entity is out of power they move to the next and so on, outtaging each entity as they're depleted. You can't fuel a turret with itself + base, that just outtages the turret. Slow firing weapons can utilize infinite docked reactor chains as long as each entity in the chain has enough capacitor to completely refill between shots.

 

[DrTarDIS]

AFAIK whn you inherit thrust from docks, the MAIN SHIP has to power all that thrust, not the power from the docks. Build main ship accordingly.

 

[AtraUnam]

What Raisinbat said, when I say an entity can only draw power from 1 entity, that includes itself. This makes it impossible to build partially self powering turrets despite the fact that many want to.

 

[Edymnion]

1 caveeat to this, an entity cannot draw power from more than 1 other entity at a time, this means if you have 2 mil regen on both dock A and Ship, dock B will still only be able to draw 2mil.

But only if its in one lump sum.

A docked entity that cannot power itself will try to draw that power from what it is docked to. If what it is docked to cannot supply that power entirely, it will move down the chain until it either runs out of places to check, or it finds one lump sum big enough to do the job.

So lets say the docked turret barrel requires 10 energy to fire, but only produces 5. The turret base generates 1 power, its docked to something that generates 1 power, which is docked to something that generates 1 power, which is finally docked to the main ship that generates 100. When the energy request gets to the ship, it will be for the full 10 energy, not for 2 power (because the dock chain generates 8 total).

Top of the chain will go down the chain until it finds a power source that can fully power whatever it is doing, ignoring everything it sees until it finds that 100% covering source.

 

[Panpiper]

I am pretty sure that the exception to this rule that says that a turret barrel must draw all it's power from a single source, is when the turret has multiple weapon systems firing. So if said turret has for instance 10 separate missiles being controlled by 10 separate computers, and generates and stores only 40% of the energy it needs to fire all 10, when it comes time to fire, the barrel will fire 4 missiles, and look to the base for the power to fire the rest. If for instance the base itself generates 40%, the same as the barrel, it will draw that power to fire 4 more missiles, and then finally look to the hull it is docked to for the remaining 20%.

I 'believe' this is how it works, simply because it 'must' work that way. I have built a great many large turrets with multiple weapon systems, that between the barrel and the base power all of it's weapons. If all the power necessarily had to come from a single source, those turrets would have been pulling ungodly amounts of power from the ship itself. Never however did any of those turrets drain any power from the main ship, yet they did in fact regularly blow the living crap out of pirate stations and fleets.

The question to me is just how fast all this energy transfer happens? In the above example, would all 10 missiles fire simultaneously, or would there be a lag time as energy was drawn?