Fuel Cells on Bases
Fuel Cells on Bases
Most (all?) bases (like starports, research stations, etc) require that fuel cells are added. On a ship, fuel cells extend range, but what does a fuel cell do on a base? And how do I decide how many to add? On the right side of the design screen I see energy storage increasing as I add fuel cells and below that is a maximum storage capacity value. Do I need to exceed that?
RE: Fuel Cells on Bases
Fuel cells are completely useless on stations built over planets with caslon/hydrogen. However, if not above such planets, stations tend to have a limited fuel store and if you are suffering from a fuel shortage, those extra fuel stores could ensure that your station keeps its weapons and shields online longer... however, since most stations will have plenty of energy collectors, you rarely need more than a handful of fuel cells. In those cases my rule of thumb is to have 1 fuel cell for every reactor.
I ate the batter of the bulge at Hans' Haus of Luftwaffles
RE: Fuel Cells on Bases
Thanks for the help, Nanaki.
RE: Fuel Cells on Bases
Please be aware that the 'maximum storage capacity' entry in the energy statistics section of the design overview is not related to fuel capacity. Rather, it's the total amount of energy your ship can store for future use, which more or less only matters when determining how many of the design's weapons can be fired simultaneously.
Let's say you want to make a design using a weapon with the following statistics:
10 damage
50 energy
5 seconds firing interval (listed as the 'rate of fire' in the in-game weapon statistics)
and you have a base design that you want to add these weapons to that has 50 excess reactor output and 100 maximum storage capacity, then you could add 5 such weapons to the design (assuming you don't need to add additional habitation and life support modules) because ((50 energy)/(5 seconds))*(5 weapons) is 50 energy per second, equal to your excess reactor output, but only two of the weapons can fire at any given time because each weapon requires 50 energy per shot, so you'll see something like two shots, followed by one shot one second later, followed by another lone shot one second after that, followed by a third single shot one second after that, and then the pattern starts again two seconds later.
Be aware that the above design leaves no spare power to cover engine requirements or shield regeneration, which is not particularly well-advised, especially for warships.
Let's say you want to make a design using a weapon with the following statistics:
10 damage
50 energy
5 seconds firing interval (listed as the 'rate of fire' in the in-game weapon statistics)
and you have a base design that you want to add these weapons to that has 50 excess reactor output and 100 maximum storage capacity, then you could add 5 such weapons to the design (assuming you don't need to add additional habitation and life support modules) because ((50 energy)/(5 seconds))*(5 weapons) is 50 energy per second, equal to your excess reactor output, but only two of the weapons can fire at any given time because each weapon requires 50 energy per shot, so you'll see something like two shots, followed by one shot one second later, followed by another lone shot one second after that, followed by a third single shot one second after that, and then the pattern starts again two seconds later.
Be aware that the above design leaves no spare power to cover engine requirements or shield regeneration, which is not particularly well-advised, especially for warships.
RE: Fuel Cells on Bases
You've probably figured out by now that I'm new to this game. Aeson, I think I understand your explanation. So, in your example, I would need 250 excess reactor capacity in order to continuously fire 5 weapons simultaneously? Though this wouldn't cover shield regen (though I think I read that energy requirements for shields are low -- but where do I find the actual figure), nor thrusters (in the case of ships). I've spent a lot of time reading many of the posts on this forum to gain a better understanding of the game. Thanks to you and many others for sharing your insight!
RE: Fuel Cells on Bases
If you wanted to fire all five weapons simultaneously, then you'd need to have 250 maximum storage capacity, because each weapon requires 50 energy per shot. You would however only need 50 excess reactor output, because each weapon only requires 10 energy per second. I would also advise against referring to storage capacity as 'reactor capacity,' as the first thing that I think of when someone refers to reactor capacity is the reactor output.
Shield power requirements are simple: you need 1 point of reactor output per point of shield regeneration. A ship whose shields regenerate at 0.5 shield points per second requires 0.5 energy per second to recharge its shields at full rate, while a ship whose shields regenerate at 50 shield points per second requires 50 energy per second to recharge its shields at full rate. This is true for all types of shield generators.
I will further add that it's not really worth balancing the design's reactor load to make full use of both the reactor output and the reactor storage capacity. Full use of the available reactor output gets you to the maximum continuous rate of fire for whatever weapon you're using; fully utilizing reactor storage just gets you a bigger alpha strike. Beyond that, most weapon loadouts are limited by the reactor output rather than the reactor storage capacity, so most of the time you're already firing everything you've got in one big burst and then waiting out the refire interval rather than having the sort of staggered firing pattern I described previously. Missiles and Phasers are the only real exceptions to this. Unless it's something like a Death Ray, you just don't need the alpha strike that badly because very few of the weapons in the game will give you a big enough advantage on the alpha strike to make up whatever you've sacrificed in continuous DPS. That being said, there are theoretically interesting applications, such as in creating phaser/blaster setups that open with a big alpha strike and have fairly high sustained DPS to back it up.
One further argument against considering reactor storage requirements is quite simply that the ship design screen makes it difficult. The design screen gives you maximum weapon energy use per second, but if you want to know the requisite amount of stored energy to fire all the ship's guns at once, you need to calculate that yourself. The majority of weapon systems have per-shot energy requirements within the limits of what the reactors can supply over a firing interval or store up prior to an engagement; the non-superweapons which don't will still typically see the majority of the weapons firing at once, with the rest firing a few seconds later.
Shield power requirements are simple: you need 1 point of reactor output per point of shield regeneration. A ship whose shields regenerate at 0.5 shield points per second requires 0.5 energy per second to recharge its shields at full rate, while a ship whose shields regenerate at 50 shield points per second requires 50 energy per second to recharge its shields at full rate. This is true for all types of shield generators.
I will further add that it's not really worth balancing the design's reactor load to make full use of both the reactor output and the reactor storage capacity. Full use of the available reactor output gets you to the maximum continuous rate of fire for whatever weapon you're using; fully utilizing reactor storage just gets you a bigger alpha strike. Beyond that, most weapon loadouts are limited by the reactor output rather than the reactor storage capacity, so most of the time you're already firing everything you've got in one big burst and then waiting out the refire interval rather than having the sort of staggered firing pattern I described previously. Missiles and Phasers are the only real exceptions to this. Unless it's something like a Death Ray, you just don't need the alpha strike that badly because very few of the weapons in the game will give you a big enough advantage on the alpha strike to make up whatever you've sacrificed in continuous DPS. That being said, there are theoretically interesting applications, such as in creating phaser/blaster setups that open with a big alpha strike and have fairly high sustained DPS to back it up.
One further argument against considering reactor storage requirements is quite simply that the ship design screen makes it difficult. The design screen gives you maximum weapon energy use per second, but if you want to know the requisite amount of stored energy to fire all the ship's guns at once, you need to calculate that yourself. The majority of weapon systems have per-shot energy requirements within the limits of what the reactors can supply over a firing interval or store up prior to an engagement; the non-superweapons which don't will still typically see the majority of the weapons firing at once, with the rest firing a few seconds later.
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johanwanderer
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RE: Fuel Cells on Bases
It's actually very simple. At the upper left of the design menu, you will see something like: "Excess Energy Available: XXX". At the bottom middle, "Maximum Weapon Usage: YYY". Bottom right, "Shield Recharge Rate: ZZZ". If the design is a ship, there will be various power usage as well.
For a base, you want to aim to have XXX >= YYY + ZZZ. For a ship, add in the (usually cruise speed) requirement's worth of energy.
The types of reactors dictate how much fuel is used to generate that amount of power. It's in the description of the reactor.
For a base, you want to aim to have XXX >= YYY + ZZZ. For a ship, add in the (usually cruise speed) requirement's worth of energy.
The types of reactors dictate how much fuel is used to generate that amount of power. It's in the description of the reactor.
RE: Fuel Cells on Bases
johanwanderer, we're talking about slightly different aspects of the energy system. Having excess energy output equal to weapons energy use + shield recharge + cruise/sprint energy requirements is sufficient to fire all weapons continuously at maximum rate. It is not necessarily sufficient to fire all weapons simultaneously, which is where reactor energy storage comes into play. Weapons where you might commonly see this come into play in the unmodded game are missiles and phasers; with the majority of other weapon systems, if you have enough reactor output to fire the weapons continuously at maximum rate, you also have enough energy storage to fire all the weapons simultaneously.
For example, if I have a design which uses Phaser Lance IIIs and a single HyperFusion Reactor III, and I have, say, 152 excess reactor output for my Phaser Lances, then I can mount 11 Phaser Lance IIIs on the ship, going by the reactor output required. However, my alpha strike is limited to 9 of my 11 Phaser Lances because my reactor can only store up 540 energy, but to fire all 11 Phaser Lance IIIs at once requires 638 energy. As a result, I'll get a firing pattern where 9 of my Phaser Lances fire at the same time, then ~0.4 seconds later my tenth Phaser Lance will fire, then ~0.4 seconds after that my eleventh Phaser Lance will fire, then ~3.4 seconds later the 9 Phaser Lances that fired off as one big group can fire again, starting the pattern over. This is why with phaser- and missile-armed ships you often see a big burst of weapons fire followed by a few shots shortly afterwards, and then another big burst once the firing interval has passed once again followed by a few more late shots.
This happens because standard, base-game reactors are capable of supporting more phaser lances and missiles by reactor output than by energy storage; with torpedoes, the energy requirements are such that a given reactor can typically support roughly as many torpedoes by output as by storage, which translates to an output limit in practice since static requirements and drive thrusters drain output but don't place any demands on energy storage (unless you run out of fuel while unable to use energy collectors). The energy requirements of blasters are such that reactors support fewer blasters by output than by storage, so there's little need to even consider the storage limit when creating a blaster design.
The answer I gave was perhaps not particularly helpful as advice for how to design a ship, but it is an accurate description of the mechanics as they apply to powering weapons, and I interpreted the question as more of a mechanics question than a design advice question, particularly since the first reply I made described the mechanic rather than the normal design guidelines and the second post is a response to a question based on the my first response. Given the power balance and the weapon statistics that I made up for the example I gave above, you would in fact require 250 total energy storage capacity to fire five of the weapons described above simultaneously; if you had 50 excess reactor output to dedicate to those weapons along with the 250 energy storage, you could also fire those weapons continuously, while if you had 50 excess reactor output and less than 250 total energy storage you could fire the five weapons continuously but not simultaneously.
For example, if I have a design which uses Phaser Lance IIIs and a single HyperFusion Reactor III, and I have, say, 152 excess reactor output for my Phaser Lances, then I can mount 11 Phaser Lance IIIs on the ship, going by the reactor output required. However, my alpha strike is limited to 9 of my 11 Phaser Lances because my reactor can only store up 540 energy, but to fire all 11 Phaser Lance IIIs at once requires 638 energy. As a result, I'll get a firing pattern where 9 of my Phaser Lances fire at the same time, then ~0.4 seconds later my tenth Phaser Lance will fire, then ~0.4 seconds after that my eleventh Phaser Lance will fire, then ~3.4 seconds later the 9 Phaser Lances that fired off as one big group can fire again, starting the pattern over. This is why with phaser- and missile-armed ships you often see a big burst of weapons fire followed by a few shots shortly afterwards, and then another big burst once the firing interval has passed once again followed by a few more late shots.
This happens because standard, base-game reactors are capable of supporting more phaser lances and missiles by reactor output than by energy storage; with torpedoes, the energy requirements are such that a given reactor can typically support roughly as many torpedoes by output as by storage, which translates to an output limit in practice since static requirements and drive thrusters drain output but don't place any demands on energy storage (unless you run out of fuel while unable to use energy collectors). The energy requirements of blasters are such that reactors support fewer blasters by output than by storage, so there's little need to even consider the storage limit when creating a blaster design.
The answer I gave was perhaps not particularly helpful as advice for how to design a ship, but it is an accurate description of the mechanics as they apply to powering weapons, and I interpreted the question as more of a mechanics question than a design advice question, particularly since the first reply I made described the mechanic rather than the normal design guidelines and the second post is a response to a question based on the my first response. Given the power balance and the weapon statistics that I made up for the example I gave above, you would in fact require 250 total energy storage capacity to fire five of the weapons described above simultaneously; if you had 50 excess reactor output to dedicate to those weapons along with the 250 energy storage, you could also fire those weapons continuously, while if you had 50 excess reactor output and less than 250 total energy storage you could fire the five weapons continuously but not simultaneously.
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johanwanderer
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RE: Fuel Cells on Bases
Ah. I stand corrected. My appologies for confusing the issue.
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FarAway Sooner
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RE: Fuel Cells on Bases
Yeah, sbcfromnc, you generally want to set Energy Collector output equal to the base's "Static Energy Usage" (that's when the base isn't firing weapons, isn't recharging shields and when (if it was a ship) it's not moving (or maybe not moving above Cruise speed)). The base will burn fuel in very small increments, when it needs to exceed those, but getting one or two fuel storage tanks are a lot cheaper than getting all the Energy Collectors you'd need to power your weapons all the time.
In short, reactor power determines "maximum energy stored" and "reactor energy generated" (which requires burning fuel), whereas Energy Collectors (think solar panels) provide relief so your rectors don't have to generate as much energy (and thereby burn as much fuel). Please note that, as the Energy Collector description notes, if an Energy Collector is too far away from the nearest energy source, it might not generate as much power as indicated in the design specs.
For a ship to have maximum flexibility, it's typically good to give it enough reactor power to constantly recharge all weapons, recharge shields, and (if Speed is a tactical limitation you're worried about) operate at "Sprint Speed" when it needs to. You can view all those things on the Ship Design screen, although it takes some getting used to.
Hope the level of detail isn't overwhelming. The AI can do it all for you and does a decent job, but this game lets you micromanage anything you want to and delegate the rest. That's part of what makes it such an interesting, playable yet deep experience.
In short, reactor power determines "maximum energy stored" and "reactor energy generated" (which requires burning fuel), whereas Energy Collectors (think solar panels) provide relief so your rectors don't have to generate as much energy (and thereby burn as much fuel). Please note that, as the Energy Collector description notes, if an Energy Collector is too far away from the nearest energy source, it might not generate as much power as indicated in the design specs.
For a ship to have maximum flexibility, it's typically good to give it enough reactor power to constantly recharge all weapons, recharge shields, and (if Speed is a tactical limitation you're worried about) operate at "Sprint Speed" when it needs to. You can view all those things on the Ship Design screen, although it takes some getting used to.
Hope the level of detail isn't overwhelming. The AI can do it all for you and does a decent job, but this game lets you micromanage anything you want to and delegate the rest. That's part of what makes it such an interesting, playable yet deep experience.
RE: Fuel Cells on Bases
Thanks to all for your help. The level of detail makes this game really interesting! I love the micromanagement aspects. What's frustrating is the lack of information about how the game works -- but I've found this forum extremely helpful.