Author Topic: Quick Ship Design Help - A Basic Cruiser  (Read 2382 times)

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Offline jscott991 (OP)

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Re: Quick Ship Design Help - A Basic Cruiser
« Reply #30 on: October 21, 2023, 02:56:41 PM »
I don't quite understand you, but what I do understand makes me think I'm putting WAY too many power plants on my beam ships.
 

Offline Snoman314

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Re: Quick Ship Design Help - A Basic Cruiser
« Reply #31 on: October 21, 2023, 03:34:33 PM »
I don't quite understand you, but what I do understand makes me think I'm putting WAY too many power plants on my beam ships.

When in doubt, remove all the power plants, and look at the message in the bottom right of the build screen, then add power plants back one at a time, and see the numbers change.

But also yeah, you have a lot of wasted capacitor capacity on those lasers.
 

Offline nuclearslurpee

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Re: Quick Ship Design Help - A Basic Cruiser
« Reply #32 on: October 21, 2023, 05:09:17 PM »
I don't quite understand you, but what I do understand makes me think I'm putting WAY too many power plants on my beam ships.

Feel free to specify what is confusing for you, I'm sure we can clear it up!  :)
 

Offline Andrew

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Re: Quick Ship Design Help - A Basic Cruiser
« Reply #33 on: October 21, 2023, 05:25:34 PM »
31.250cm C5 Soft X-ray Laser (1)    Range 384,000km     TS: 6,667 km/s     Power 26-5     RM 60,000 km    ROF 30       
This laser needs 26 power to fire.  Your capacitors feed it 5 power per 5 seconds so it takes 30 seconds to fire, a 4.5 capacitor would also take 30 seconds to charge it and your reactor could generate .5 power less per turn

Twin 15.0cm C5 Soft X-ray Laser Turret (2x2)    Range 360,000km     TS: 20000 km/s     Power 12-10     RM 60,000 km    ROF 10
Each of the lasers in this turret needs 6 power to charge, each of them has a capacitor feeding 5 power per 5 second turn, you would get the same rate of fire with a rating 3 capacitor meaning you could have 3 less power generated from your reactor for each laser if you gave them a capacitor of 3 and still have the same rate of fire.

Essentially if your capacitors use more power than the laser needs that power is wasted. So for the spinal laser it is nor important but you are using 167% of the power needed for each 15 cm laser. While reactors are not that big using an oversized capacitor also increases the cost of the laser , so ideally you should have a capacitor rating either equal to the power demand of the laser for a ROF of 5 , or half for rof 10 or a third for rof 15 etc. 
 
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Offline jscott991 (OP)

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Re: Quick Ship Design Help - A Basic Cruiser
« Reply #34 on: October 21, 2023, 07:47:26 PM »
I don't quite understand you, but what I do understand makes me think I'm putting WAY too many power plants on my beam ships.

Feel free to specify what is confusing for you, I'm sure we can clear it up!  :)

I now know how to calculate power needs accurately (it's the second number on the lasers, not the first), but I'm still trying to figure out when it makes sense to go down to a worse capacitor.

At least I was.  Andrew has explained it above in a way I get now.
 
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Offline Rince Wind

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Re: Quick Ship Design Help - A Basic Cruiser
« Reply #35 on: October 24, 2023, 04:29:07 AM »
Easiest way to see it is to design the laser, then lower the capacitator to see if it changes the ROF. If it doesn't stick with the lower capacitor rating.