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View Full Version : How does phaser power work, right now


Drexxus3d
10-02-2009, 10:19 PM
Alright so I know you can control what % of your power goes to each system: Navigation, Weapons, Shielding.

So when you fire a phaser, does it draw energy DIRECTLY from that pool of power allocated to weapons, OR does it drain power from it's own little reservoir (for lack of a better term) of power that phaser possesses and that reservoir's recharge speed is based on how much energy is allocated to weapons.

In the first example, lets say i'm generating 100 gigawatts of energy per second (just throwing out random numbers, science nerds don't come bashing my power quantities). Now I allocate 33% of that energy towards weapons so i'm putting about 33 gigawatts per second towards weapons. Now the total power pool has a reservoir of about 10,000 gigawatts so it now has a 3,333 gigawatt power capacity in reserve to use up.

Alright so in the first example, lets say a type X phaser uses 100GW/s of power. It drains from that general resevoir as the phaser is used until the pool has less power remaining than required to sustain the phaser then can't fire again till the general power pool is high enough again.

Or is it the second example, where you have no general power reservoir like a generic mana bar and instead each individual weapon has it's own small power capacitor essentially that contains a charge and firing phasers drain each one's specific capacitor and then these capacitors are recharged at a rate that depends on how much power output is diverted to weapons and divided by the number of weapon systems recharging their capacitors at once.

Shields seem to work kind of like the second example, you have 4 shields each with their own unique shield capacities and the amount of power you have directed to shielding increases the rate they recharge. One would assume if only one shield was damaged, it would recharge twice as fast as it would if you had say two shields damaged and both were splitting that energy. Right?

Depending on which design is used, it makes huge tactical differences.

Also will there be any energy "spillover". For example if all your weapons are fully charged, will that energy diverted to weapons automatically spillover to your other systems like shields to make them recharge faster? Reason being, you couldn't just keep pumping that much power into weapons if they were already charged and not being used, that energy has to go somewhere, so logically wouldn't it spill over into other subsystems and only split it up when multiple systems need it at once and go based on the "priority" that you choose?

Also curious is diverting more power to shields increases their "hitpoints" or just their recharge rate?

Probably not gonna get an answer for these kind of game mechanics questions but it never hurts to ask. :D

dan6526
10-02-2009, 10:38 PM
Yeah, your right, you likely wont get a detailed response.

I think, from the demo videos, that you can only move energy into Engines, Shields, and Weapons. I don't think there is a Phaser sub-system to dump energy into. And I conjecture that phaser DPS is going to be based on your skills the tier of the ship plus any upgrades you have (consoles, system modification from the crafting aspect, and loadouts).

There may be a fourth option: Auxiliary, to put power into. But it was only briefly mentioned once and I haven't heard any more of it and it was referred to as adding turnability to the ship, which makes no sense with Engines. Now that I think of it, I'm pretty certain there is no Auxiliary; but I had to mention it here for you.

Versac
10-02-2009, 11:21 PM
I believe this is the most detailed response we've seen yet:


Dominick-Kane: Phasors, Pulse Phasor Cannons, Disruptor beams, disruptor Cannons. - What can we see in terms of it's cooldowns. Can we fire the Cannon style weapons as single pulses (on low or NO cooldown) as well as volleys (with cooldowns?).
There’s effectively no cooldowns on phaser beams or cannons. Torpedoes have cooldown times. But the way it really works is with power levels. You start off with 100 units of power, which you can transfer between four different systems: Weapons, Shields, Engines and Auxiliary. Let’s say you put all your power into Weapons, so your energy weapons will do a lot of damage. You can fire two energy weapons at a time without losing some power on each phaser array, which lowers each individual phaser’s damage. So you can broadside an enemy with your fore and aft phasers and do a lot of damage. But a bigger ship, a Sovereign, for instance, can have up to eight weapons. Let’s just say you were nuts and put eight phaser arrays on the Sovereign. You can technically bring eight phaser beams to bear on a target if you broadside it, but as soon as you fire over two, it starts draining your weapon power. So you can get one big alpha strike, but it’ll drain all the power out of your energy weapons.


So it looks like firing more than 2 energy weapons at a time will start draining power from a 'weapons energy pool', which recharges depending on how much power you divert to weapons, but the lower it gets the weaker each successive shot will be.