Engineer

[usdelta2]

Anyone have any tips for a new engineer to the game I feel like I'm letting my group Down in ship combat

[rancher3000]

always keep full power to the shields, remove power from engineering and science. science doesn't need but just enough to run the em sensors. always have your captain purchase a reactor based on output, not based on core temp. the percentage of reactor output used will determine the core temp rate. remember, even if you have a reactor that produces 11,000 kw, your ship's thrusters, weapons, shields, processors, and warpdrive added together may reach in excess of 20,000kw requirement. with that said, everything underpowered will act sluggish, and you will be spending a lot of coolant on your reactor. when a fight is over, reduce the total power bar until the reactor starts to cool. otherwise, cut power to science and engineering for temp. control. use the manual program charger in engineering to boost the science computer when you're in a battle and your science officer has spent programs and viruses from his/her computer. i hope this advise helps you and your crew.

[SapphireSage]

Note: Some of my advice may run contrary to the one above.

First things first, as engineer you'll want to head to the engineering room to do your work. Down in engineering you have some extra controls and levers that you don't get on the bridge including the much important fuel burn lever for recharging your scientists' programs midcombat. Engineering also includes the startup switches which are important for certain bosses/enemies and the Reactor core safety switch(which I'll cover later).

On the primary screen you'll see blue bars and triangles. You control the max amount of power distributable via the triangles and the blue bars determine that actual power draw.

The way reactor heat works is based on total usage. If total usage is at half than temperature is stable, below half cools the reactor and over half heats the reactor. Typically, I will control reactor heat with total usage and then control power distribution with the other bars. In a fight I will usually always keep total usage at max.

For the other settings, Usually, I will always keep weapons at max and lower shields and engineering instead to help compensate. Engineering is usually the biggest power draw on the ship and shields seem to be given a major priority in the game and will choke out other systems for power. Weapons allows your guns to charge faster and do more DPS and shields will usually recover via the scientists' Shield booster program well enough as long as there's a bit of power for it. Science can be reduced unless you plan on trying to charge warp in which case it should be maxed to charge as fast as possible.

The thing to keep in mind is that charging warp drives demands a lot of power, so ask your captain if they want to charge it in battle normally or not.

Aux reactor screen gives more total usage possible for everything that's turned off, I'll just cover some usual misconceptions:
- Atrium healing does not affect respawns. You still respawn whether its on or off.
- Climate control is not yet implemented, so you can just turn it off for now unless you're RP'ing.

Coolant screen is your best friend. Low coolant stabilizes reactor temp at ~75% total usage. High coolant will cool the reactor even at 100% total usage. The lower left has the load fuel button which is the first of the two-step process for powering the scientists' programs. The other step is to flip the lever containing the now loaded fuel usually located close to the coolant screen in Engineering. The distress beacon is only useful to summon civilian ships to sell fuel at outrageous prices if you've run out.

Learn the ship startup sequence, its useful against certain fights such as shock drones or Ancient sentry.

Reactor Safety Switch: Typically when your temp hits the end of the bar the reactor will shutdown for a length of time denoted by its Emer. Cooldown stat. The RSS disables that feature and allows it to exceed its max temp cap; however, if that temp is exceeded for, I believe, ~30 secs. than the reactor will need to be ejected within 30 additional seconds via the emer. core eject switch or the ship will be destroyed. It can be useful to prevent the ship from shutting down at a bad time, but it requires more attentiveness as it can cause much more trouble than a simple shutdown. Also, engineering will become radiated while the reactor is above its max temp.