Spidey
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Joined: 12/8/2013
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Tanaka
Ah so fuel cells do not refuel ships cargo bays do? Then I still ask the question why do you need fuel cells other than to increase ship distance? What do they do on a base?
Putting enough energy collectors onto a base to power all its weapons is a bit of a pain in the ass in terms of upkeep. The more efficient thing, in my opinion, is to have enough energy collectors to power the static needs and then rely on reactor capacity if weapons are needed.
If you look at the included screenshot, you'll see that it's an early LSP design. The upper right corner reveals that it collects 96 energy, its reactors can put out 240 energy, the static energy drain is 74, and that leaves 166 reactor energy to be spent on other purposes. You'll also notice that it has a fuel capacity of 390, an energy storage of 480, and that it uses a mere 2 fuel units per 1000 energy thanks to the very nice Quameno NovaCore reactors. Finally, if you look at the weapons section, you'll see that its weapons, a bunch of velocity shard torpedo launchers, have a maximum drain of 133 energy per second.
The way to make sense of these numbers goes like this. The reactor is feeding up to 240 energy per second into a battery with a capacity of 480. This costs 2 units of fuel per 1000 energy produced. The energy collectors can potentially feed 96 energy to the battery. The battery has a static charge loss of 74. When the weapons are firing, the charge loss can increase to (74+133 = ) 207 energy, which would drain the battery fairly quickly, even with the collectors. The reactors, however, can easily produce this much energy, at the cost of burning through fuel.
And that's where the fuel tanks come in. This design has 390 units of fuel stored away and at the cost of 2 units of fuel per 1000 energy, this translates into a reactor output of 195,000 energy, which is enough to cover a weapon-based power drain of 133 for (195k/133 = ) 1466 seconds, or close to 25 minutes.
In practice, I have an untested gut feeling that the fuel is drained a bit faster than this. I might be sensing ghosts or it might indicate that the reactors are being charged with the full 207 energy drain regardless of the collectors, which would bring down the running time to a mere 975 seconds or about 16 minutes.
You might ask why I'm not just covering the weapon drain by collectors. The answer is that collectors are sort of expensive and I'd honestly rather pay for the upkeep of some fuel cells and some fuel consumption than for having the energy collection potential necessary to keep my weapons powered up.
Final thing, keep in mind that fuel cells are relatively cheap and that pirates some times really don't know when to give it a rest and call it a day. And it would suck if a disruption in fuel deliveries caused your base to stop shooting and get shot to pieces, wouldn't it?
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