The missing 10 watts

It may not sound like much but when you're trying to squeeze every last drop of power out of your reactor, that last 0.01MW can be frustratingly elusive.

I can't help but feel that if something is rated to provide X it ought to do so rather than X-1, or in this case, X-0.01

If someone has better data then please share it but for now the problem may best be shown by the example below

(Please note that the following build is only for testing the available power from the reactor. I am not proposing it as a flight-ready build)


Vulture Loadout
------------------

(MW) Module
===================================
00.92 Pulse Laser (G/E3)
00.92 Pulse Laser (G/E3)
01.00 Shield Booster (B0)
---------------------------------------------
00.60 Cargo Hatch
15.60 Power Plant (A4)
06.12 Thrusters (A5)
00.45 Frame Shift Drive (A4)
00.53 Life Support (C3)
00.74 Power Distributor (A5)
00.56 Sensors (B4)
03.64 Shield Generator (A5)
01.72 Shield Cell Bank (A4)
00.84 Shield Cell Bank (C2)
00.83 Shield Cell Bank (B1)
00.14 Fuel Scoop (E1)
===================================


Power Management
-------------------
NoteMode AMode B(MW)Module
1106.12Thrusters (A5)
1103.64Shield Generator (A5)
1101.72Shield Cell Bank (A4)
1101.00Shield Booster (B0)
5500.92Pulse Laser (G/E3)
5500.92Pulse Laser (G/E3)
#00.84Shield Cell Bank (C2)
#1100.83Shield Cell Bank (B1)
*A100.74Power Distributor (A5)
*B100.60Cargo Hatch
1100.56Sensors (B4)
1100.53Life Support (C3)
1100.45Frame Shift Drive (A4)
*B100.14Fuel Scoop (E1)
15.60Power Plant (A4)


* Relative Power values confirmed by comparing Power Distributor (A5) in Mode A and Cargo Hatch and Fuel Scoop (E1) in Mode B

# Power levels toggled between 15.59 and 15.60 using Shield Cell Banks (C2) & (B1)

Pulse Lasers were simply left in, they are offline in both cases.



Yes, its relatively minor and Yes it's possible to build around this fact but since these are all arbitrary numbers I think it would be better if they matched up.
 
Usually when you switch on an electrical device there is a momentary power surge, you could consider that unusable 10kW reserved for such power surges, like when your weapons are activated.
Or you could consider it a rounding error in the power usage calculator.
Either way I think it's something we'll just have to live with.
 
Perhaps it's too early in the morning for me but I can't see where the OP stated what their problem actually is.
 
It is probably just the code doing a < instead of <= comparison of power plant available power and combined usage of active modules.

I created a bug report for this a while back to get a response if this is how it was supposed to be or actually an oversight in the code, no response so far.

I tried similar with the FDL and I guess I was able to use the full 100% in the end, after the last patch. Have to check again, maybe I just had the priorities wrong and turned off more. ☺
 
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Perhaps it's too early in the morning for me but I can't see where the OP stated what their problem actually is.

Sorry JGM, it was clearly the wrong time of day for me to post as well but to clarify ..

The issue is that, in the build above, the Power Plant (A4) is rated at 15.60 MW but you can only draw 15.59 MW from it before things shut down. You can never use the full 15.60 MW.

It will likely be the same with other configs but posting the loadout was my attempt at making it easy for others to check.

It prolly gets lost when rounding the numbers...

Equipment Power Drain figures are listed in-game to three decimal places so I don't believe it's a rounding error.

It is probably just the code doing a < instead of <= comparison of power plant available power and combined usage of active modules.

Yes, that does seem to be the issue.
 
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