Ships Understanding power management

SkadiTango · Monday at 9:43 AM

The 2nd tab (Modules) on the right panel has a bar displaying the groups that get created when assigning priorities to modules.
Now, I understand the 'Output' and the 'Usage' lines, but, how do I know what percentage each group is hitting?
I mean: let's assume I'm in combat, the powerplant gets damaged, the output is now reduced to 45% (or BY 45%?? or was it even 40 actually?) HOW do I know where 40% is? How do I know which groups are covered? Am I forced to use external tools?

Thanks in advance

Helmut Grokenberger · Monday at 10:12 AM

You can assign priorities from 1 (highest) to 5 (lowest) to modules up on that panel. When your available power drops below the power the plant can deliver, in case of a failure for example, the ship will shut down modules from lowest to highest priority until power demands are balanced again.

In the module list, every module has a percentage reading, that is the percentage of the plant it is drawing.

Ashnak · Monday at 10:31 AM

SkadiTango said:
HOW do I know where 40% is? How do I know which groups are covered? Am I forced to use external tools?

If you consider a pocket calculator for adding up two or three 2-digit numbers an external tool... you have the absolute percentage of the power consumption listed after each module, so you just need to add up whatever is in your group 1. For practical reasons, once the enemy got past your shields, armour and module protection in order to deal sufficient damage to your PP, you should be running anyways, so all you really need to power in group 1 are the thrusters and the FSD.
And for even more practical reasons, you don't even need to bother about the percentages. Seriously. Since you should be running once your PP is damaged (if you want to survive, that is), just assign prio 1 to thrusters and FSD. If the PP can supply these two even when damaged, then run. If it can't, you're dead in any case.
And if your opponent is human, you're dead, full stop. They (I at least - and from what I read, a lot of the others, too) tend to shoot out thrusters and/or FSD first before sniping at the PP. Unless they're running Pacifiers, the most democratic weapon in the game.

Helmut Grokenberger · Monday at 10:35 AM

If you don't want to do the maths manually, you can use external tools. EDSY, which is essential for ship building anyway in my opinion, has a nice visualisation for power usage.

SkadiTango · Monday at 10:47 AM

I understand that, my question is probably unclear: what is even the point of those lines? How do I know what percentages is each group hitting?
Sure I can sum up all the percentages of each module, of course, but that is not very practical, is it?
Would it be so hard to show the numbers for each group?

SkadiTango · Monday at 10:49 AM

Ashnak said:
If the PP can supply these two even when damaged, then run. If it can't, you're dead in any case.

I disagree with this, it is not the case in pvp, people keep fighting and often coming up on top aswell.

Ashnak · Monday at 10:55 AM

SkadiTango said:
Would it be so hard to show the numbers for each group?

From a technical POV - no, that calculation has been done already.
From an UI/Useability POV - probably yes, at least I can't see how. There simply is no space in this UI to show the numbers permanently, and the UI doesn't support/use tooltips. Plus, the UI also needs to work on a 720p screen, so you can't just use an arbitrarily small font.

If you want practical, use Coriolis (or EDSY, but I prefer Coriolis). The game was designed to use external tools and exports all the necessary information, so you don't even need to put in your configuratin manually (if you have your ship already built). There are various ways of going about that - I usually use EDDiscovery -> Coriolis.

Helmut Grokenberger · Monday at 10:58 AM

SkadiTango said:
How do I know what percentages is each group hitting?

You don't apart from eyeballing. This bar is just a quick graphical representation of your power status - you can see at a glance how much power each priority group roughly consumes. It is what it is.

Helmut Grokenberger · Monday at 11:04 AM

Ashnak said:
If you want practical, use Coriolis (or EDSY, but I prefer Coriolis). The game was designed to use external tools and exports all the necessary information, so you don't even need to put in your configuratin manually (if you have your ship already built). There are various ways of going about that - I usually use EDDiscovery -> Coriolis.

I am in camp EDSY; getting your ship into EDSY can easily done in two more ways. If you use ED Market Connector, the UI has a link with your ship name that calls up the ship in your favorite ship editor. If you are an Inara user, Inara can export your ship loadout to EDSY or Coriolis.

I agree that the ship of not using external tools has sailed. Third party tools offer so much more functionality than Fronter ever can provide, and they will never ever be able to catch up to that.

AlSki · Monday at 2:17 PM

SkadiTango said:
I mean: let's assume I'm in combat, the powerplant gets damaged, the output is now reduced to 45% (or BY 45%?? or was it even 40 actually?) HOW do I know where 40% is? How do I know which groups are covered? Am I forced to use external tools?

Go through your list and turn off Group 5 (turn off the checkbox to the left of the modules), is it 45% yet...?
Go through your list and turn off Group 4, is it 45% yet...?
Go through your list and turn off Group 3, is it 45% yet...?
Go through your list and turn off Group 2, is it 45% yet...?
At this point you've probably only got Thrusters and Sensors left. If you cannot get it down to 45% (e.g. Grade 3 Enhanced Thrusters with Dirty Drag drives alone can be 42%) then its really simple, if your PP goes, you are done.

I've been flying fast Imperial Couriers for a while and they really benefit from undersized power plants. My config would be
1. Thrusters & Sensors (occasionally a heatsink) limited to fit in 45%
2. Defence (shields, boosters, chaff, heatsinks) (some builds under 45%)
3. Attack (weapons, life support - when this shuts down its a great warning to run away, and once you are safe you can reconfig as needed)
4. Ancilliary (under 100% with weapons)
5. Ancilliary (over 100%, so they become active when hardpoints stored)

or if really tight

4. Ancilliary (over 100% normal flight)
5. Super cruise and landed only (Planetary Vehicles hangars can here and only power up when touched down)

EDSY and Coriolis take away MOST of the headache here, but nothing beats lifting off from the pad and deploying hardpoints before you get into combat. You only need that "deploy hardpoints to leave me defenceless and drifting" sensation once ;-)

Also, you did remember to turn on each of your modules, back on...?

SkadiTango · Monday at 5:07 PM

I thank you all for your replies.
My question was really just about that 'graph', those lines marked with the number of each group.
I thought I was missing something, turns out it really is useless.

AlSki · Monday at 6:04 PM

It's not useless, it just might be useless for you for what you want it to do.

If you just want an approximation of how much is in each group, it works. Your ships looks like its 30-35% group 1, 25% group 2 and 5% groups 4 & 5. For a newer pilot that will help to guide them towards understanding what their power profile changes do.

It is however, not precise/detailed enough for anything more than that, and that's where the external tools have sprung up to fill in the gap. Both of them have this same gauge with expanded information (and they are actually in a better environment to do that, with possible hover/touch interaction that is lacking in the 3D viewspace e.g. tooltips).

You might suggest it's another example of an MVP (Minimum Viable Product) that has never been updated to add more depth, or you could say it's following good HCI guidelines and not overloading the cognitive load of users less familiar with this.