Why to ever use big power plants

[Detros (OP)]

Power plants appear to have all stats (power output, build cost, research cost) linked with the size in a linear fashion.
The only difference I see between small and big power plants is thus the rounding of hits-to-kill (HTK) which is linked to hull size (HS = 50t).

• with HS of 0.1-0.9 you get 0 HTK
• with HS of 1 you get 1 HTK
• with bigger HS you get at best (0.5*HS) HTK (2 HTK at HS of 2, 3 HTK at HS of 4...)

With all other stats linear, why to ever use power plants bigger with which you get 1 HTK per 1 HS?
You can get the same output from 1x HS4 power plant as from 4x HS1 ones but with multiple smaller ones you get more HTK, with lower research cost and lower repair cost.

[Sleepymoon]

Every time one of your small power plants is destroyed it has a chance to explode and destroy other components or even your whole ship.
Also if a small power plant is destroyed then whatever weapon it was powering will be disabled while a big power plant will keep all weapons firing for a little longer.
Probably not really worth the extra cost but there are some considerations.

[Detros (OP)]

OK, explosions may be a problem. One could then go for 0 HTK but also 0 explosion with really small power plants.

Explosions aside, with multiple HS1 power plants I can lose some, one with each hit to power plants area, and am at partial power generation. If I have one big power plant instead it can get only damaged for few hits but with more of them it will be destroyed completely. With smaller power plants I will have still some power generation after the same amount of damage. And as they are smaller and cheaper to repair, I could get power generation for my beam weapons more gradually and thus faster up.

The basic explosion chance is just 5% and forth low energy tech the size of explosion could be just 1-3. With basic Pebble Reactor tech you get double HTK for using HS1 power plants and 5% chance to lose one HTK when destroyed so on that level you always get +1 HTK and have low chance to back lose -1 HTK, so HS1 power plants should be always better than bigger ones. For higher energy tech levels, with explosions counted in, it should be statistically better to use HS1 power plants up to 19 explosion size rather than bigger ones, shouldn't it?

[TheDeadlyShoe]

IMO, there's really no reason; and the reactor boost tech generally isn't worth the RP or the explosion risk.

[MarcAFK]

I agree reactors need an overhaul. I'm hoping it'll be considered along with requiring shield and sensors to use reactors for power.