Question about power distributors

[Mini_Watto]

Okay, so after a bit of research and some maths, I've figured out I have absolutely no clue how the power distributor system works.

The wiki says, quote:

"The recharge rate directly correlates to the number of pips the player has assigned to each system. For example, if the 1E Power Distributor (which has a Weapons Recharge rate of 1.200) has all four pips enabled for WEP, it will recharge at a rate of 1.2 power units per second. If it is set for two pips, WEP will recharge at 0.6 power units per second. This means you could fire a single Fixed Beam Laser for approximately six seconds before it overheats."

Having looked at the page for the 1E power distributor and the fixed beam laser (does not specify size, so that's very unhelpful of them) I'm not sure how they calculated this value. I can not get a value of 6 seconds. Even if this is the most power hungry fixed beam laser (the class 3) we find that if we take it's power draw minus the recharge rate with 2 pips (1.8-0.6) we get power usage of 1.2. Using the overal distributor capacity of 10, this means you can fire the laser for 10/1.2 = 8.3 seconds.

So what gives? I want to be able to calculate how long I'll be able to fire my weapons on my new ship when 1.5 comes, and I can not for the life of me figure out how. Any help?

[Zero]

Assume the power Distributor and laser are roughly of the same size.
with the vulture power distributor you should get a good 6-10 seconds of firing time at most (not sure what size the distrib is off hte top of my head.) but it is using Fixed 3C beam lasers (two of them).

[Mini_Watto]

If you assume its the class 1 laser you get an even more wrong result. 10/(0.69-0.6)=111 seconds. As for the vulture, I would need much more specific numbers to make a calculation.

[Asi]

Richard did you figure it out at the end?

[Mini_Watto]

Originally posted by Snufkin:

Richard did you figure it out at the end?

I'm afraid not. The only value I've noticed which is even SLIGHTLY right is the thermal load, but the game only quotes those approximately, not to exact values, making calculations extremely difficult.

[Asi]

I figured it out recently. Go to https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=140240 and check out power drains(eps) for different systems. you can calculate from there.