Basic question about how to upgrade power to lasers/cannons

I've got 2 x basic gimballed burst lasers and 2 x slightly upgraded gimballed multi-cannons on my Cobra (nothing hugely fancy, but feels better than the start-up lasers). If I fire all four weapons the 'Wep' capacitor shrinks at a fairly rapid rate and both the lasers and cannons start pausing.

I don't know the difference between the POWER PLANT and the POWER DISTRIBUTOR, or how to read the power/jump status page that appears when you're in outfitting. At the moment my undocked power draw is less than my available power, so is that all that counts?

Question:

How do I choose the ideal combination of upgraded POWER PLANT and or POWER DISTRIBUTOR ?
 
I am no expert, but is not power plant affecting how many and how big modules you can have running. How much energy there is for the systems.
Power distributor should be how much power engine, weapons and shields get distributed. It affects wep capacitor, if I am not wrong.

Jump status show how far you can jump with the drive in the left panel selected. You need to remember the actual jump of the ship, it is not shown I think.
 
I am no expert, but is not power plant affecting how many and how big modules you can have running. How much energy there is for the systems.
Power distributor should be how much power engine, weapons and shields get distributed. It affects wep capacitor, if I am not wrong.

Jump status show how far you can jump with the drive in the left panel selected. You need to remember the actual jump of the ship, it is not shown I think.

yes that's my basic question - given that my power plant shows on the status panel as having more power than required by the undocked weapons, is there a *weapons* advantage in upgrading it (I know it would give me longer jumps). E.g. does the Wep capacitor charge up more rapidly? Or what does the power distributor actually do? Is that the thing that charges up my Wep capacitor faster, or has it discharge slower, or what?
 
Deployed weapons need more power than undeployed. If your power isnt enough when you try to deploy weapons it will shut down your modules.
 
The power plant gives you a bigger pool of power to use, and the power distributor manages the recharge rates and such. If you want to get a bit more out of your weapons, hit your right arrow key and put a pip into weapons. (Leaving one and one half pips to both sys and eng respectively). I personally use two small pulse lasers and two medium multi-cannons on my maxed out viper. Short of heat, I can fire pretty much continuously without ever running out of power with four pips to wep... But, that can pose it's own issues.
 
The power plant is what powers everything in your ship. If it generates more power than your modules need to function that is good. I've heard that running a power plant that is being used almost to its limit will make your ship run hotter, but don't quote me on that.
The power distributor is what recharges your shields, stores power to push into a boost, and runs the weapons cooling system. Installing a better one will allow you to boost more often, keep shooting for longer and have more resistant shields. Have a look at the specs for power distributors in outfitting, you'll see that better ones store more energy and also recharge more quickly.
 
The power distributor is what recharges your shields, stores power to push into a boost, and runs the weapons cooling system. Installing a better one will allow you to boost more often, keep shooting for longer and have more resistant shields. Have a look at the specs for power distributors in outfitting, you'll see that better ones store more energy and also recharge more quickly.

I have figured that a power distributor is what I have long needed to make some of my weapons usable with fewer pauses, since my power plant is more than large enough for all deployed weapons, and you seem to have confirmed that suspicion, so I thank you for that info. Unfortunately I have yet to find even a single power distributor available in any of the dozens of systems I have checked (none of which have actually had a high-tech economy ... I must be way out in the backwaters). So I am currently on a cross-galaxy trek towards the core worlds in the hopes of finding power distributors to be more plentiful there.
 
Thanks for the useful advice on this thread, it's given me enough of a clue that I was able to understand what the menus were actually telling me. Crucially (and obviously, now I know) as you scroll through the Power Distributor outfitting options (when you've found a source) an info panel appears next to the outfitting list showing exactly what the current option does to your power capacity and recharge times for weapons, engines and systems. In the same view, the stats menu in the bottom right updates in a minor way according to the additional mass or reduced power usage, but for the power distributor the most important data is in the info panel as mentioned.

So I've upgraded from the stock Cobra E/3 Power Distributor to a B/3 for ~65K Cr, and there's an obvious significant improvement in weapon continuous fire duration and also boosting into FSD is significantly faster also. I'm guessing the shields recharge quicker too but haven't checked.

In Sol, I found a selection of maybe 8 Power Distributors (up to A/3 for 250K?) in the Chinese station at Earth.
 
I got my power distributor in some service economy which doesn't export much but biowaste :D Going to the class C that weighs as much as what you have in the stock ships (can't remember the number) is extremely useful since it gives a huge boost in everything at a really low price. Above that, things IMO become more specialised to your playstyle, but that one is an absolute must-have.
 
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