Energy Tap

[BP]

I haven't used this yet but assume power stored in my drives are being used for weapons (because most of my ships don't have enough generators to power their weapons continuously). Does it depend on the game options or am I wrong about power being taken from the engines unless I manually tap energy? Is overcharging weapons a separate option?

[madmax88]

Every turn, you get a chance to fire your weapons. If not enough power is available from your generator and weapon storage, IT IS taken from the engine.

Additionally, i you want to fire more during the same turn, you can do so by overcharging your weapons. For that you can reroute power from any system (generator, propulsion, shields) for a cost (20% damage to weapons).

[BP]

Okay, I think that's the assumption I was operating under. So you ONLY need to use the tap energy button for an overcharge (20% weapon damage)? I can't see a lot of situations where you'd want to do that.

[madmax88]

On the contrary, and especially against ships with shields.

Shields regenerate every turn, so if your weapons are not powerful enough to blast through the shields in one turn, then you might want to consider overloading them so that you can do just that an do damage to the ship. Otherwise you just keep hiting the shields every single turn, not doing any real damage.

To counter the damage done to your weapons, have a few more engineer than usual on your ship(i keep around 25-30%) so that they can repair the damage faster.

Also, the overload without damage artifact is VERY handy.