can you add weapons to reasearch stations?

[FailedNormiee]

can you add weapons to reasearch stations? Do you need a weapons plant or can you just stick them on?

[Tooslow]

You can just stick them on. I don't even think there's a limit the way there is with some civilian craft.

[Bingeling]

The plants (weapons plant) is used to manufacture weapons. It is needed by construction yards, not by weapon users.

Apart from sticking them on, consider the energy used and if the station will be able to fire them.

[FailedNormiee]

I'm trying to understand your context; so you mean that if i was to do things like weapons on research/civilian stations they just wouldnt be used? What happens if i put too much stuff for energy supply btw?

[Bingeling]

Civilians use weapons just fine, but the "plant" pieces are the friends of construction yards that make stuff, not something you want outside of spaceports and construction ships (and maybe the odd star base).

If we move from a base to a ship (to illustrate better). There is one important energy number top right. Excess energy (the number after static cost has been withdrawn).

This should be higher than the ship's hyperdrive energy (seen in the blue area below), or the hyperspace speed of the ship is reduced compared to the maximum value.

It should allow for a ship to cruise or sprint (cost seen in the same way as hyperdrive power use), and shoot its weapons at the same time. The weapon energy usage is above the table of weapons.

A small amount should be spared for shield recharge, but this is a low number. The relevant number is the shield recharge rate seen in the lower right.

If there is not enough energy, the ship will move slower than maximum, it will not fire all weapons or fire them less often than they are able to, and the shields may recharge slower. For a base ignore the thing about speed, they don't move but the rest is the same.

If you want to make a station powerful, you need to add enough reactors to supply them (enough excess energy). If you lack energy some weapons will just be money wasted in construction and maintenance.

[Swadius]

The "type" designator like cruiser, medium space port, resort base, star base, etc. mostly only affects how the AI will deal with it in relation to the world. IE. What sort of private side crafts go to this entity and for what purpose.

There are restrictions on certain designs, like private side ships only being able to sport one weapon. Restrictions like these will be notified to you at the middle top of the ship design screen. Otherwise, if the game lets you save a design, it will generally let you (or the private sector) build it, pending size restrictions if you go over (although the notifications area will tell you this as well).

As for weapons plants, no these are not required for weapons to function. They're part of the construction system. Think of the plants as the part that turns the raw resources into the parts required to build a ship and the construction arm thing the glue stick that puts these parts together.

Weapons will require power however, make sure the amount your reactors generate is enough to sustain the amount of energy used to fire all weapons. Keep in mind though, the power requirement for weapons doesn't take into account the firing rate of the weapons, so you can usually get away with fewer reactors than prescribed after calculating that in.

Originally posted by D'Hubert:

I'm trying to understand your context; so you mean that if i was to do things like weapons on research/civilian stations they just wouldnt be used? What happens if i put too much stuff for energy supply btw?

All craft as far as I know, ships and stations all, will shoot their weapons given the opportunity at targets that your empire has designated as enemies. It doesn't matter if they are told to flee at first instance, or to win or die trying, or whether its technically a Disney Land Resort, it'll fire when possible.

Putting too many reactors will have no detrimental effect, other than the fact that it will eat your resources building them since they're not the cheapest components to build, and it affects the craft's size (although for stations this is less of an issue). I don't think it'll use up more fuel than normal. The energy to fuel conversion seems to be the only thing at play here, with more reactors just meaning a faster conversion of fuel to energy.

[FailedNormiee]

thank you for all your input