Not understanding energy core

[onomastikon]

So my Energy Core provides 21/s energy to weapons, and 11/s to shield and boost respectively.
I have a weapon equipped that consumes 12.7/second energy. Firing this weapon depletes my weapon energy faster than it can recharge. Therefore I conclude that this "21/s" energy provided to weapons really must mean something else. Again I seem to be missing the obvious. Any tips appreciated. Thanks much in advance

[Pappy]

Publicado originalmente por Vardis:

While I appreciate your enthusiasm, you're completely wrong on this.

Fair enough, but then either this changed since Early Access or the Dev told me wrong or just didn't explain it well or maybe I just misunderstood his response. He clearly states that all the hard points are connected to 1 centralized energy pool. Therefore 4 hardpoints should drain 4 times as much energy as is listed on the weapon. Perhaps the energy usage on the weapon already takes into account the fact that most ships have 2 hard points so that energy drain is assuming 2 hard points already. If that's the case that would explain it, but that's far from clear from his response.

I guess then for the Stinger you multiply the energy usage listed on the weapon by 1.5 to get it's true energy useage while the 3rd hardpoint is firing? Very confusing, not just the way he explained it but very confusing for someone to try to figure out how much actual energy usage a weapon really has.

[Duneman]

I mean, it's easy enough to test. Each weapon has a listed energy pool and an energy drain per second to use. Dividing the pool by the drain should tell you how many seconds you can fire the weapon with the trigger held.

[Pappy]

Publicado originalmente por Duneman:

I mean, it's easy enough to test. Each weapon has a listed energy pool and an energy drain per second to use. Dividing the pool by the drain should tell you how many seconds you can fire the weapon with the trigger held.

That's true but that should be per weapon. Since you have 2 hardpoints you would expect to have twice as much pool and twice as much energy usage, but you don't you have exactly the same pool and energy usage so it's like it's already factoring in 2 hardpoints to the stats. But then if that were the case then 4 hardpoints as opposed to 2 shouldn't change anything as far as energy usage as you would just have twice the energy storage and twice the energy usage with 4 hardpoints as opposed to 2, but that's not true either. It's twice the energy usage, but not twice the storage. None of this makes a whole lot of sense.

[Vardis]

Publicado originalmente por Pappy:

Publicado originalmente por Vardis:

While I appreciate your enthusiasm, you're completely wrong on this.

Fair enough, but then either this changed since Early Access or the Dev told me wrong or just didn't explain it well or maybe I just misunderstood his response. He clearly states that all the hard points are connected to 1 centralized energy pool. Therefore 4 hardpoints should drain 4 times as much energy as is listed on the weapon. Perhaps the energy usage on the weapon already takes into account the fact that most ships have 2 hard points so that energy drain is assuming 2 hard points already. If that's the case that would explain it, but that's far from clear from his response.

I guess then for the Stinger you multiply the energy usage listed on the weapon by 1.5 to get it's true energy useage while the 3rd hardpoint is firing? Very confusing, not just the way he explained it but very confusing for someone to try to figure out how much actual energy usage a weapon really has.

Yeah. I get why they are displaying it based on the two hardpoint default, but I'd prefer to see the energy per second value updated based on the current hardpoint value.

Maybe they could add an option for a weapon's to include current effects, such as increases to weapon damage and range. Or show the bonus values in green, idk.

[Vardis]

Publicado originalmente por Pappy:

Publicado originalmente por Duneman:

I mean, it's easy enough to test. Each weapon has a listed energy pool and an energy drain per second to use. Dividing the pool by the drain should tell you how many seconds you can fire the weapon with the trigger held.

That's true but that should be per weapon. Since you have 2 hardpoints you would expect to have twice as much pool and twice as much energy usage, but you don't you have exactly the same pool and energy usage so it's like it's already factoring in the hardpoints to the stats. But then if that were the case then 4 hardpoints as opposed to 2 shouldn't change anything, you would have twice the energy storage and twice the energy usage, but that's not true either. It's twice the energy usage, but not twice the storage. None of this makes a whole lot of sense.

Hardpoint increase doesn't affect the "battery" they're pulling from. That's what the dev meant by the hardpoints all using the same battery (the individual weapon pool), which is recharged by the energy core.

That combined with energy drain being based on the standard 2 hardpoints, and everything checks out, as far as I can tell.

[Pappy]

Publicado originalmente por Vardis:

Looking at the dev post, I believe you simply drew the wrong conclusion about hardpoints. The energy per second a weapon uses is based on the default 2 hardpoints.

But the energy storage is not because it doesn't take any longer for your energy core to recharge your weapons for the gunship then it does for other ships. 4 Hardpoints should take twice as long to charge as 2 hardpoints since you only have 1 energy core but it doesn't, it takes the same amount of time which is the reason for my initial question and the dev explained that by saying all the hardpoints are connected to the same energy source which implies that the energy draw is not based on 2 hardpoints (because it can vary from ship to ship) but rather on 1 hardpoint and then you would multiply it by the number of hardpoints. You can easily see why this is confusing.

[Rithrin]

Publicado originalmente por Pappy:

Publicado originalmente por Alt0153:

thats fine i wont believe you because you are plain wrong

It's possible, but if I am either the dev didn't understand my question or didn't explain it well or it changed from Early Access which is a distinct possibility as well.

I've seen the devs mention before that they (or at least someone on the team responsible for wording things in-game) are not native English speakers in responses to other threads, like the one about wording in one of the Daredevil challenges. Nothing wrong with that, of course, but it's possible that there is an issue with the way this was explained. I sort of doubt that the devs made a system calculating energy use of specific hardpoints rather than just slapping a 100% energy use increase modifier on when using a Gunship. But, I don't actually own a Gunship currently so I can't test that aspect.

The Stinger was mentioned previously - I played that ship for over half the main story and have done a few 500+ Rifts with it, so I have some experience. I have never seen the third hardpoint to actually drain additional power. It appears to be pure bonus DPS. Now, due to the wording of the Stinger's ability, there could be some explanation for that. It essentially says that the power from the ship's Device usage "powers an additional hardpoint", so the argument could be made that the Stinger's third hardpoint, thematically, is drawing power from elsewhere, so no increase to power consumption would be expected.

OK, so I got curious with this thread and opened up the game. Thermo gun with 17.5K energy pool, 1750e/s usage. Should last 10.17 seconds. Using a stopwatch it came out to be ~12.19 seconds. That would translate to 1435.60 e/s "real" usage, about a 20% reduction from what's printed. Now, interestingly, I then switched to a Maverick Prime Zapper with base stats of 13K energy pool, 1324 e/s usage, with an expected duration of 9.81 seconds. With a stopwatch, that came out to almost exactly 9.8 seconds.

My energy core outputs 2188 e/s to weapons. With a 17.5k pool, it should take 7.99 to refill from empty. It took 7.95 per my stopwatch. Close enough.

I looked back at the Thermo Gun to see what might be affecting it. Well, it was actually a Rapid Thermo Gun. I went and found a regular Prime Zapper and added Rapid to it. The base stats were 11.9k pool, 1224 e/s and with Rapid increased to 11.9k / 1468 e/s. So we went from an expected firing duration of 9.7 seconds to 8.10, this sounds about right with the increased firing rate. Using a stopwatch, it was just about spot on with both 9.7 before adding rapid, which then lasted 8.05 seconds. I'm sure the 0.05 second difference was just natural human response time variance.

Well, so Thermo Gun seems to overestimate energy usage. Let's look at a similar gun: Gauss Cannon. Regular Gauss Cannon: 17.5K pool, 802.7 e/s. Should last 21.8 seconds. Lasted 22.25 seconds. ~10% difference from what's reported? The Gauss Cannon has to spin up, so maybe that accounts from the discrepancy? I tested the gauss cannon again by rapidly pressing the firing button, never allowing it to spin up. 22.3 seconds duration, nearly identical to just letting it rip. So it seems the energy usage is not really linked to individual shots a weapon takes, which seems reasonable enough from a programming standpoint. After trying a Salvor Jaegar Pulse Laser with the same energy stats as the Gauss Cannon, it actually fired for precisely 21.8 seconds, which is what we'd expect.

I also went on to check the "Downtime Warrior" perk which decreases energy use by 15% per Device on cooldown. It functioned exactly as expected across all the above weapons.

Anyway, I don't know what's wrong or right with regards to power usage, but I have to concur with how you put it, quite succinctly, above, "There's still a variable here that I don't know how it fits into the equation exactly".

Personally, based on what I have observed, I think there is no "charging" of a weapon's pool while it is firing. I think the ~1 second delay after firing before the bars moves is quite clear with that. That some weapons fire for the exact duration the math would indicate based on their tooltips also I think shows this clearly. Some of the weapons, mostly the rapidly firing weapons, seems to fire for a bit longer than the tooltips would say. I think this indicates there is a problem with the tooltips for certain weapons, or that there is something buggy in the engine when it comes to draining energy once a weapon's fire rate goes over a certain threshold.

[Vardis]

Publicado originalmente por Pappy:

Publicado originalmente por Vardis:

Looking at the dev post, I believe you simply drew the wrong conclusion about hardpoints. The energy per second a weapon uses is based on the default 2 hardpoints.

But the energy storage is not because it doesn't take any longer for your energy core to recharge your weapons for the gunship then it does for other ships. 4 Hardpoints should take twice as long to charge as 2 hardpoints since you only have 1 energy core but it doesn't, it takes the same amount of time which is the reason for my initial question and the dev explained that by saying all the hardpoints are connected to the same energy source which implies that the energy draw is not based on 2 hardpoints (because it can vary from ship to ship) but rather on 1 hardpoint and then you would multiply it by the number of hardpoints. You can easily see why this is confusing.

I suspect they display the energy draw based on two hardpoints because that's the standard, and they felt it would be more confusing to show a draw of 15 per second per hardpoint than it would to show 30 per second. Especially with Rithrin's finding that the Stinger don't draw from the weapon pool for the 3rd hardpoint.

[Rithrin]

Publicado originalmente por Vardis:

I suspect they display the energy draw based on two hardpoints because that's the standard, and they felt it would be more confusing to show a draw of 15 per second per hardpoint than it would to show 30 per second. Especially with Rithrin's finding that the Stinger don't draw from the weapon pool for the 3rd hardpoint.

I knew someone would quote me on the Stinger comment so I went back and tested some more, this time with Stinger.

It's a little tough to test due to the low duration of the third hardpoint, as there's some hand juggling one must do between firing, hitting the stopwatch, and firing off Devices lol.

This time I used an Umbra Blaster - 13K, 794.2 e/s. Expected: 16.3 seconds; lasted 16.1, about right. Using the third hardpoint, it should be ((794.2/2)*3) = 1191.3 e/s draw for 10.9 seconds duration. It actually was 11.86 seconds. This is without "Downtime Warrior" perks.

Alright, one more time with a slower rate of fire, a Penumbra Flak - 17.5K, 1835 e/s usage. Expected: 9.5 seconds; lasted 9.7, seems correct. With third hardpoint, it should use 2752.5 e/s for 6.3 seconds fire time. My watch read 6.4 seconds.

So clearly the additional hardpoint does drain additional power, and I probably never noticed due to stacking Downtime Warrior perks, and you're spamming devices with a Stinger so you get a lot of energy reduction. But here we again have ~10% less energy usage when achieving a very high rate of fire.

I'll probably go pick up a Gunship at some point to test further, but since the Gunship will have yet another hardpoint, and an even faster rate of fire, will it get "bonus" energy from even more weapons?

[onomastikon]

Thank you all for the detailed and maths-reinforced explanation.
Sadly, from my naive little perspective as the original poster, I'm still confused. Can I conclude:
- while there is still some confusion regarding "hardpoints" and energy consumption, most things seem to suggest that energy drain from items such as weapons pulls from a pool belonging to that item (weapon) alone, and that the energy core replaces this energy drained only when the weapon is not firing?
- if that is the case, then there should be absolutely no difference between the time required to drain the energy from a weapon's pool when firing it continually (1) with an energy core that replaces 1000 energy per second and (2) one which replaced 1 e/s -- right?

[Rithrin]

Publicado originalmente por onomastikon:

Thank you all for the detailed and maths-reinforced explanation.
Sadly, from my naive little perspective as the original poster, I'm still confused. Can I conclude:
- while there is still some confusion regarding "hardpoints" and energy consumption, most things seem to suggest that energy drain from items such as weapons pulls from a pool belonging to that item (weapon) alone, and that the energy core replaces this energy drained only when the weapon is not firing?
- if that is the case, then there should be absolutely no difference between the time required to drain the energy from a weapon's pool when firing it continually (1) with an energy core that replaces 1000 energy per second and (2) one which replaced 1 e/s -- right?

We may have gotten a little carried away - yes, you have it right. The only real effect on the weapons you see with a weak energy core is that it will take a long time to fill up the weapon's energy after you have stopped firing.

[onomastikon]

thanks much

[rasabt]

then again
you can just test a low weapon energy core
and a high one
i've never recognized much of a difference mid-combat
perhaps if you run a stop-clock while ooc, bit ic...dunno.

[Pappy]

Publicado originalmente por onomastikon:

Thank you all for the detailed and maths-reinforced explanation.

Sorry I derailed this thread. It was not my intention.

[onomastikon]

Publicado originalmente por Pappy:

Publicado originalmente por onomastikon:

Thank you all for the detailed and maths-reinforced explanation.

Sorry I derailed this thread. It was not my intention.

No no that was not meant ironically. Thanks for all this detailed input it's helpful and interesting (even if tangential to my original question). Perhaps the devs will read the open questions still posed here implicitly.