Power Requirements

[State (OP)]

Hi there guys, im new here and im designing my first real military vessel (planets want protection. . .  useless civilians, there is no hostiles around).  So seeing as i'm making a frigate, based on lasers i figure they need power. . .  lotsa lotsa power (in my estimate).  So i picked up a few Stellarator Fusion reactors, and plugged those in. . .  however, i cannot figure out how many i need to power my shiny new toy to suppress civilian anxiety (you know, i'm just such a benevolent guy). 

In short: Where do i see how much power my new ships need to be able to fire my lovely new lasers at rocks. . .  yes rocks. . .

[Havear]

Should be on the lower left side of the ship design window, specifically "Power Required" and another something like "Power Supplied".

[clement]

Also, you can look at the weapons you have placed on the ship and calculate what you will need from them.

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15cm Laser (4)    Range 180,000km     TS: 6000 km/s     Power 6-3     RM 3    ROF 10        6 6 6 4 3 3

In the above snippet, there are 4 lasers on the ship. You can see in the Power information section that they require 6 power to fire and recharge at a rate of 3 power every 5 seconds. So in any single 5 second increment, the entire bank of 4 Lasers will draw 3 x 4 = 12 Power.  The ROF (Rate of Fire) is 10 seconds because it requires two 5 second pulses for the lasers to recharge since the capacitors are only able to support 3 units of Power per increment.

If your reactors create 5 Power, you would need to have 3 of them on the ship to create the 12 Power required every 5 seconds. (In that case I would also suggest just adding a 5th laser to maximize efficiency)
If your reactors create 6 Power, then you would need to have 2 of them on the ship in order to create the 12 Power required every 5 seconds.

[State (OP)]

Thanks, that made alot of sense.  Moving on to the test range!