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Aeson -> RE: Fuel and resources (8/20/2016 9:01:48 PM)
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quote:
Energy collectors only work when the ship is not moving, so they are not much help with Scouts that should be moving most of the time.
If you have more than two or maybe three scouts for any significant period of time prior to getting Warp Bubble Generators or better, you're doing something strange, and if you're not just about ready to upgrade to something warp-capable by the time the scouts are done exploring the system, you may well be better off decommissioning the scouts than keeping them around wasting your fuel.
quote:
Do other people put energy collectors on their military ships? Just asking.
I tried it then decided the extra space required for the collectors could be better used for extra weapons/shields/fuel tanks etc. so I stopped doing it. Perhaps you feel differently.
An energy collector takes 8 size and has an energy collection rating of 24+. It is a very rare standard-type ship that needs more than one energy collector, and having the energy collector means that it's not wasting fuel while idle. For anything but very small or very, very active ships, 0.44-2 guns or 0.8 shield generators or 1.33 fuel cells probably isn't worth going from "I can stay here forever or until combat depletes my fuel reserves" to "I can stay here for perhaps an hour or two or until combat depletes my fuel reserves."
The cost to offensive/defensive capability for installing energy collectors is marginal, and for it you get a significant improvement in fleet readiness - a fleet equipped with energy collectors which last refueled an hour ago and has been idle ever since is still more or less fully fueled and ready to go; a fleet which is not equipped with energy collectors which last refueled an hour ago has likely burned through a considerable amount of fuel (size-300 ships in the earlyish portion of the game tend to have static power requirements of about 12 energy per second; even with NovaCore Reactors that's still ~86 fuel, or somewhere around a quarter to a third of an earlyish game size-300 ship's probable fuel capacity). A minor defensive fleet such as might be provided to a colony to ward off minor pirate raiding will likely not see significant combat; giving each ship in it an energy collector takes the fleet's maximum time on station from "an hour or two, lessened significantly by any combat seen" to "indefinite and only limited by combat." Any fleet constantly burning fuel puts a strain on the local fuel supply and defending areas with such fleets while the local fuel situation is poor or worse can be a royal pain because you need to send the fleet elsewhere to get refueled and as a result you only have perhaps one to two thirds of your fleet's designed fuel capacity available for use on station and you're wasting that fuel on idling while waiting for targets when you could have more or less all of it available for combat or travel.
Energy collectors are well worth the costs on most warships. Decent player-designed ships are usually going to beat the stuffing out of anything the computer fields, and by the time you're looking at size-300 or larger vessels, the sacrifice to add an energy collector is very marginal compared to what you already have on the ship - oh, no, instead of 13 Maxos Blasters and 8 Standard Armor, you have 12 Maxos Blasters and 5 Standard Armor, or instead of 9 Corvidian Shield Generators and 5 Standard Armor you have 8 Corvidian Shield Generators and 7 Standard Armor. Big deal. As long as it's at least competitive with the computer's designs, that's all you need, and if you know what you're doing when you design a ship, it'll be more than merely competitive whether or not you include the energy collector.
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