Beams and Power Plants

[Five (OP)]

After looking at some ship designs I now think i may have been putting to much power into my beam ships. I was wondering how you guys figure the power required, here is how i do it...although i think now i may be doing it wrong. If I had this

20cm C4 Ultraviolet Laser (4)    Range 320,000km     TS: 4000 km/s     Power 10-4     RM 4    ROF 15        10 10 10 10 8 6 5 5 4 4

I would take the total number of lasers and times it by the first number in the power area...so 10, giving me a needed power of 40. Am I doing this right? Or is there another way i should be doing it?

Thanks for the help.

-Five

[metalax]

The first number in the power area is the total power needed to fire, the second is the amount of power drawn by the capacitor of the weapon each 5 seconds(which is also the number after the C in the default weapon name). As powerplants are rated by their production in power per 5 seconds you need to match your powerplants to the total capacitors of your weapons so in this case with capacitor 4 on 4 weapons you need 16 power.

As an extra point, when designing your weapons make sure to compare the capacitors available to the power needed to fire. Particularly with larger weapons, as you can often get away with using a smaller capacitor while maintaining the same rate of fire, which also results in a cheaper weapon as well as not needing to provide as much power from power plants. For example if you have researched your capacitor up to 6 it wouldn't make your 20cm lasers fire any faster than just using a capacitor 5 while just making the weapon more expensive.

[Five (OP)]

Awesome, thanks for the reply as that makes alot of sense and clears the muddy waters. Now to shot my ship designer for fraud, waste, and abuse. I should have alot more room in my beam ships now as with the way i was doing it was requiring 100's of power on some of them. 

-Five

[metalax]

Just remember for a beam fighting ship that it may be a good idea to include some extra power plants as backups for when one is damaged, as if your power produced drops below the power required by the capacitors, every weapon will recharge slower.

[Din182]

Yes, for example, I design my powerplants with slightly more power production than the weapons, and do a 1:1 ratio of powerplants to weapons.

[Hawkeye]

And you don´t have to actually calclulate anything when designing a ship (when designing a weapon, yes, but not when designing a ship), as the design screen tells you exactely, how much power all installed weapons need and how much is generated at the moment. There are two entries on the left border: "Reactor Power" and below that "Power Required" Have at least as much Reactor Power as there is Power Required and you are good to go.