Are capacitors useless?

[Maniac]

I kinda feel like they are.
They are just empty way too fast, they would need to have at least 10x the current capacity to have any use so the crew can stock them up while you dont fight and in fight they can use them to fill shields, weapons and thrusters if you cant afford a reactor close to them

[lalelunatic]

then again actually... "remote" users of energy... i just tried to test how far a large reactor can feed a bunch of capacitors.... turns out... to keep them stocked... i could as well build the reactor directly behind the capacitors... so yeah...

i think that when you have the luxury of having "remote" enough modules to cheaply underfeed with caps... you also are far enough to have enough resources to just build a small reactor anyway... =P

to sum it up... beside the "burst" function for super small ships, or as absolutely cheapshot solution for your cruisers last hair on its backside you absolutely refuse to increase its costs from 3.000.000 to 3.025.000... caps are okish... otherwise i´d rather farm 5 min more for a small reactor...

and for the chain reaction thing... build 2 blocks of armor between your reactors... that and some distance between them works wonders...

you know for what caps would be phenomenal? to counter the heightend energy usage of boost engines... that is, if crew wouldnt for the love of god refuse on their grannys life to feed the engines at all while the boost is running.... but yeah...

[⇧⇨⇩⇩⇩]

İlk olarak lalelunatic tarafından gönderildi:

otherwise i´d rather farm 5 min more for a small reactor...

Those right there are the key words of your statement. You would rather.
Whatever works for you is fine, but you having a personal prefered playstyle to not use capacitors doesnt make them bad just like any other component isnt invalidated by someone not using it for their prefered playstyle.

[Underprivileged White Male]

Long story short. Not very.

People just get hilariously defensive if you criticize anything about this game. It's like a weird cult.

[Morkonan]

I've been running energy efficiency/delivery tests over the past several days... I have no life.

Anyway, that includes testing Capacitors in a variety of situations. All the testing is to get a good handle on what range actually means and how to influence energy deliver to get the most "up-time." The tests were run on Point Defenses, because they eat batteries and are difficult to keep going. They're also typically scattered around a ship and are hull-vulnerable, making some features of Capacitors very desirable. I ran them on single and double-spaced halls, open setting, with and without walkways, etc..


Some note stuffs:

TLDR: The color of the lines leading from a component and it's power supply are "really meaningful." If it's not "Green" and you don't have any Walways to speed up travel, it will not have a good supply of power. EVEN if it is "green" though, that doesn't mean it's going to have 100% up-time, like a working PD needs. Which... is why I started the tests. :)

First: If you're not using a round-about Walkway to speed up Crew, using Capacitors past 4 meters is useless for 100% up-time You can feed the PD of course, but it's not 100% up, so past 4m you wont get that. Whenever a Walkway can be used, it should be used, no matter what the moving Crew is involved with.

There is no difference in any performance quality at all between a Capacitor and a Small Reactor. There is one "possible" though - I do not know the number of charging stations inside the Capacitor. The graphic doesn't tell me much, there, and I don't think I saw any Crew using anything but the four corners of it. So, four? Maybe... Either way, it doesn't make much of a practical difference between Small Reactors and Capacitors.

Money/credits is not an issue past one's first ship-build. Resources might be, but that's not going to be for very long, either, until one gets to large ships.

Capacitors are absolutely useful in dangerous areas. There is no exception to that rule. If you have a way to avoid a catastrophic explosion, it's best to take it...

So, if you've got a Missile Launcher with a PD beside it, you have to feed that PD if you want it to actually perform its function during combat. And, since it's likely against missile spam.... either it works for several rounds or unfriendly explosions happen. ... right on top of your missile battery, which may blow up. IF it blows it's stored ammo, which is usually right beside it, a Small Reactor right beside it is going to blow up as well, 'cause that's what they do.

A Capacitor is very easy to feed from a Medium or Large Reactor. One Crew or maybe Two can keep a moderately used Capacitor running for long enough to last through the typical combat pulse where it's constantly being drained. There is a limit, though. (I'll post my notes when I finish all the tests... :))

A small Reactor can keep a Capacitor up too, depending on the rate of extracting batteries from it. That may seem redundant, but Capacitors are not used like Small Reactors.

"Stored Power" - You can put a Capacitor a long way from your regular power supply and count on them to do some light service if needed, as long as you can afford the Crew to babysit them. Again - Past four meters, they will not keep a constant draw powered 100% of the time. The crew can't walk fast enough.

Using walkways, they can go to around 8m IIRC (My notes are not in front of me).

At 12m, no power source can keep anything powered at 100% draw without downtime without extensive use of Walkway roundabouts, just fyi.

Crew don't start heading to supply a battery until the PD/part goes through some of its charge. It takes a circuit or two in longer supply chains for that to even out and a rythm gets established - If you need Point Defenses working the first time, all the time, don't put an energy supply without walkways at over 4m distance.

Single-width hallways slow down crew as they pass each other on the same tile. (25%?) Keep that in mind if you have a flood of Crew all suing the same 1 tile passageway.

Crew will DROP BATTERIES and WASTE their efforts when the part being supplied is "over-full" and they are on the way to put a battery in it. The battery disappears and they just walk back... That's a WASTED TRIP and it may not seem like much, but that contributes regularly to supply chains not being able to supply a part constant power at 12m+ distance, walkway or no walkway. It makes a difference as the Crew's trip is wasted and kept another useful Crew from starting their own trip to feed the part... :/

Everything starts to get "iffy" at 8m distance from a power source without walkways and crew. However, if it's only one thing being powered, I never saw more than ten Crew servicing it by running back and forth with batteries, no matter the situation. Never. I have to run more tests on that. I think what happens is that Crew "reserve" their service and there is no way for more than that to do any job in that chain. With Two Parts, twelve crew will all participate in running batteries. :)

Verdict? It's a niche use item, but its value is in providing relatively "risk free" power in areas vulnerable to breaches. Only. That's it. (Have two Crew babysit it up to 4m from what's being supplied power, two others walking batteries to it from 6m or so, depending on walkways and Med/Long power. Absolutely always use Walkways at 8m+ distance or your supply chain will falter.

[rojogames371]

i mean... capacitors store energy closer to systems that need it,
and don't cost enriched uranium.
so... yes?

[rojogames371]

wait no, not yes.

[Morkonan]

İlk olarak rojogames371 tarafından gönderildi:

i mean... capacitors store energy closer to systems that need it,
and don't cost enriched uranium.
so... yes?

At first in the Early Game? Sure.

But, very soon after that, such a small material/resource cost is meaningless. The only thing that matters later is either if the player hasn't been stockpiling or gathering it or if one is having issues amassing the thousands of Steel their new upgrade may cost.

[Techsuport]

best use i found for capacitors are as power distribution points next to a group of PD, so that a large reactor feeds the capacitor a single 3 power battery cell, ten the capacitor gives 3 single power things to the PD so you don't wast energy. This is in addition to the capacitor charge you have before the battle.
if you have the power supply to run all your stuff but things keep going offline then its your crew management, but using a capacitor gets some of the power moved before you need it.
If only there were versions of capacitor that gave larger sized batteries, then they would be more useful for mitigating crew walking distance during battle

[Morkonan]

İlk olarak Techsuport tarafından gönderildi:

best use i found for capacitors are as power distribution points next to a group of PD, so that a large reactor feeds the capacitor a single 3 power battery cell, ten the capacitor gives 3 single power things to the PD so you don't wast energy. This is in addition to the capacitor charge you have before the battle.
if you have the power supply to run all your stuff but things keep going offline then its your crew management, but using a capacitor gets some of the power moved before you need it.

All Batteries the Crew take from a Capacitor are only single-charge batteries, just like batteries from a Small Reactor.

If only there were versions of capacitor that gave larger sized batteries, then they would be more useful for mitigating crew walking distance during battle

They would be over-powered if they did that, literally. :)

Note: Ship components can only store so many charges. For a PD, it's two. A Large Battery will charge them in one trip, but a strange feature of the mechanic means that the next Crew carrying a battery that will cause the part to be overcharged past "some point" will have their battery disappear and their job to supply it cancelled. The effect of that can be just slight, for short distance supplying. But, it can be pretty serious for long-distance supplying meaning that the Crew who dumps their battery and walks back to the reactor has wasted an entire trip and taken up a job slot that could have been filled by a useful trip... It's not so critical for non-critical parts, but for things that need 100% up-time and are supplied by long distances, it could be very meaningful. (Shields going down, sensors, engine rooms, etc, on long-distance supply, etc.)

[ttavoc]

I use them mainly as Energysource for fights. Between fights the Capacitors are stocked. During fights the demand for energy is much higher. The capacitors help to keep energy weapons firing and keep Shields up when the Reactors are depleted.

Later in the game I found that you have enough fissure material to simply build reactors yes. But thats already quite late in the game and if you build large Ion Arrays and dont want to make your ship unnecessary large they still be handy.

[Sedrido]

well they dont explode so you can be much more dangerous with them they are nice to pair with things that become power hungry under stress ie shields and the like essentially giving them extra power capacity and thus extra shielding and if your playing career mode they are way cheaper. also sometimes your power is only lacking under high stress with all systems running placing a bunch of capacitors can give you more uptime in said scenarios without bringing on the costs and risks a reactor entails

[Kerensky]

They were a lot more useful when only the 'Small' type reactor existed.

But yea, with Medium and Large reactors existing have mostly made Capacitors useless. The 'not exploding' aspect really isn't all that important.

A safely buried Large Reactor that connects to vital systems via moving walkways completely overshadows Capacitors.

[ostlandr]

I've been having good luck with them. Whenever power demand is less than 100% of the reactor(s)' output, the crew fills the capacitor(s) with plasma batteries. When power demand spikes over 100% they withdraw the batteries. Good for keeping that power-hog Mining Laser online. When I use my mining ships in combat, I set the default attack distance at the max range of the twin laser mounts. Power levels stay high. But if an enemy gets close, the mining laser starts salvaging it to death, and power starts going down. Same thing when you get swarmed by missiles and all the point defense lasers are firing at once. And when you have to jump in a hurry (execute the "getting the h*** out of here maneuver") best have one capacitor per jump drive right next to them.

Tip: when operating a ship shorthanded, or in non-combat situations, shut off any systems not needed at the moment. That way you don't have crew sitting on their idle posteriors in the gun mounts when there's nothing to shoot at. Likewise for the sensor array when not needed.

Cmdr. Susan Ivanova: "Get us the h*** out of here!"
XO Lennier: "Executing the 'getting the h*** out of here' maneuver."

[Sokaku]

capacitors are inexpensive power options for things that you can trickle charge in areas of rhe ship where you don't want something as explosive or expensive as a generator.

As a "booster" for generators I'd say they aren't really worth it given crew can only carry single cells from a capacitor. They dont supply that much, that fast. They might give a modest boost to a small generator for a short time given enough crew to out-pace the generator. Bumping to a Med Generator would make a lot more sense.

So powering PDs, light energy weapons, cockpits, manoevring thrusters, rail segments or layered light shields away from the gens where they reduce walking significantly or might be prone to a moderate risk of damage.

When using caps I'll often dedicate them to supply a few nearby equip then have gens supply the caps and not also the equip. That way crew running power for a gen won't pick to supply a PD or similar from the gen when they ahould be powering more critical systems. (saving the walk) Other crew will be assigned to the capacitor to keep systems supplied.

[Cantus]

it would be nice if they worked like batteries putting temporary power to the surrounding units