How do you use a storage cavity?

[An Ning]

I tried using a few and they buff up my laser damage, true, but they also drastically increase power consumption without having the ability to charge back up very quickly.
I tried adding cavities and pumps behind it to speed it up, but that drains even MORE power.

So how do you use these things so that they are economical (increase damage greatly but also recharge well)?

...or are they just massive temporary buffs to laser power?

[Salty Slothy]

Yeah it's going to drain more power because it's storing more power mate. The point of storage cavities is so you don't need incredibly high recharge rates. The idea is like swapping out your normal 30 magazine for a 120 round box.

[Mortazel]

Not an expert at lasers, but for each storage cavity, I try to also have 3 normal cavities with 4 pumps each. I also avoid using destabs with them.

[FourGreenFields]

I haven't messed much with lasers, but I'd guess the storage cavities are for burst-fire. If you only expect to fire for a short time, you can cut down on required engine power by using the stored energy, then recharging when not fireing. Probably usefull for planes and such.

[An Ning]

Originally posted by TheOSB:

Yeah it's going to drain more power because it's storing more power mate. The point of storage cavities is so you don't need incredibly high recharge rates

I kinda did when I used them.
They fired at full power 4 times and after that were incredibly weak.

Originally posted by Mortazel:

Not an expert at lasers, but for each storage cavity, I try to also have 3 normal cavities with 4 pumps each. I also avoid using destabs with them.

I thought I tried that as well. How many Q-switches did you use?

[Mortazel]

4 always....unless its a cheapo LAMS, then maybe 0. But whatever you pick, make sure they all have the same number of Qs.

[pug]

Why use 0 q switches for lams?

[pug]

I have 7 storage cavities and 3 chains of cavities with pumps for my lams.

[An Ning]

0 Q-switches gives you a constant fire beam that is really good at intercepting anything -at the catch that it requires tons of power to use.

[An Ning]

I tried using 10 cavities to 1 storage cavity with 4 pumps each.
I still lose up to 80% of the laser's damage power over 10 seconds -regardless of Q-switch count.

Increasing cavities and pumps seems to be slowing the decay (barely), but compared to the energy cost of having them they don't have enough of an impact.


with 15 pumps and 2 Q-switches, I lose 50% damage in 2 shots.
It seems to stabilize at about 30% power after 10 shots (admittedly, this is still double the damage I would have without it, but still... and the more pumps I have, the lower that boost is. at 30 pumps it is an increase of about 50% instead of 100%).. and multiple storage cavities doesn't seem to have an effect. I get a bigger starting charge, but the stabilization number is the same. So they only seem beneficial for smaller individual lasers

[Mortazel]

Sounds about right. You can also decrease the shots per second on its LWC to give it a little more time to recharge between shots...

[An Ning]

The LWC shots per second never made a difference to lasers when I used them -though I admit it may be because my lasers are usually on a turret and thus the LWCs are not by the combiners

[An Ning]

I just tried it again now, placed a LWC directly on the combiner and set it to 0.1 shots per second on a 1, 2, and 4 Q-switch laser.

No effect.
So if there is a way to get that to work, let me know

[ColdSpark]

Well it won't work with a 0.1 timer as even a 4 q-switch is something like 4 ticks per second (correct me if I'm wrong??), Even if this is wrong you are not firing every 0.1 seconds and need to set the limit even higher, try that first.

I however have never played with storage cavities as I prefer consistent power drain to make better use of engine power and... Well it simply lasts forever. I have only ever used 4 Q-SWITCH and Contionus Lasers and find that 3 destabilizers on Contionus and 6 on 4 q-switch is the optimal number no matter how many cavities you add (This is the ones with 4 pumps clumped on them).

[TUBono]

In the long run, laser's damage is up to recharge ratio as laser consumes specific % of charged laser power.
But in most case, storage size won't matter.

If you have many storages, fire power will peak for a first few sec, and it will return to normal -up to rechage ratio-.

[An Ning]

A month later and I make an interesting discovery:
Keeping the ratio of 12 cavities with 3-4 pumps per storage cavity... on a system that had a 11,000 power tri-Qswitch laser and a 200 power 0-Q-switch laser... I got the same power output (keeping in mind this means I needed 60k power because the power drops to around 20% of full charge).... I used roughly 700 fewer blocks (about 25% fewer blocks).

...we need cavities that come with 1, 2, 3, and 4 pumps attached (or just a 3x3 cavity/pump/destabilizer block)