What do reactors actually do?

[GooGroker]

I noticed a "reactor" component in the ship editor. It isn't in any of the ships in the vanilla game, and it doesn't seem to create energy or even do anything when i attach it to a custom ship. Am i missing something?

[destrustor]

It's not immediately noticeable, but it does indeed generate energy for the ship it's built on.
It's a very small amount (the HQ ship has two, and they're barely enough to keep the two cannons, three lasers and the lathe active at once, and not for very long).
If your ship is currently in a mine's energy range, the game prioritizes *that* for energy over the reactors, and otherwise there's no way to tell the reactors are working except by seeing the ship never really run out of energy.
Try this out: make two custom ships; one with reactors and whatever weaponry you want on it, and another that's an exact copy of the first but without reactors. Putting both out of a mine's range and in a place with particles to shoot at, and the ship with reactors will keep running long after the other one deactivates.
Generally, the energy output of a reactor is such that for most ship designs, you need to have roughly the same area covered in reactors as the weaponry they power for it to have any sort of long-term autonomy.
Most annoyingly, nowhere in the game is it stated how much energy a reactor produces.
I personally built a custom ship that's mostly reactors, with a single port to beam its energy to nearby ships, and it serves as an excellent portable energy source.

[GooGroker]

Originally posted by destrustor:

It's not immediately noticeable, but it does indeed generate energy for the ship it's built on.
It's a very small amount (the HQ ship has two, and they're barely enough to keep the two cannons, three lasers and the lathe active at once, and not for very long).
If your ship is currently in a mine's energy range, the game prioritizes *that* for energy over the reactors, and otherwise there's no way to tell the reactors are working except by seeing the ship never really run out of energy.
Try this out: make two custom ships; one with reactors and whatever weaponry you want on it, and another that's an exact copy of the first but without reactors. Putting both out of a mine's range and in a place with particles to shoot at, and the ship with reactors will keep running long after the other one deactivates.
Generally, the energy output of a reactor is such that for most ship designs, you need to have roughly the same area covered in reactors as the weaponry they power for it to have any sort of long-term autonomy.
Most annoyingly, nowhere in the game is it stated how much energy a reactor produces.
I personally built a custom ship that's mostly reactors, with a single port to beam its energy to nearby ships, and it serves as an excellent portable energy source.

Thanks.