In another thread recently, I went to the effort of creating some videos and demonstrations of what happens when a ship has a destroyed (i.e 0% integrity) Power Plant or Power Distributor. Every now and then a thread comes up about "cheating NPCs" and how "module damage doesn't affect them" so I thought I'd just whip this together to address the effects of damage to these two modules in particular, their effects on NPCs and PCs, and clear up some of the common misconceptions.
Myth: NPCs don't shut down like players do when you destroy their Power Plant.
Fact: A destroyed Power Plant reduces power output to 50% (40%?). At this point, use of power priorities is important to keep essential systems running. Most NPCs (except low rank ones) use power prioritisation. Most players don't though, so their systems completely shut down when their PP hits 0%. A player using power priorities effectively can easily stay in the fight.
Myth: I destroyed the NPC Power Distributor but it continued to fire, boost and recharge shields without issue, because destroying the PD does nothing to NPCs.
Fact: A destroyed Power Distributor does not prevent systems from recharging; it just prevents reallocation & visibility of pips. If all subsystems had at least some pips, all systems dependent on those subsystems charging would continue to function. It's only if you had no pips in a subsystem at the time your PD was destroyed that that subsystem will not recharge. [1]
So how does all that work?
Power Plant Mechanics
Damage mechanics to the powerplant are straightforward enough.
Undamaged(100%): 100% power output.
Non-Zero Damage (1-99%): 100% power output, damage inflicted beyond 70% has a chance to trigger a temporary drop to 50% (40%? 20%?) power output.
Destroyed (0%): Permanent 50%(40%?) power output. Subsequent hits against it have a small % chance of causing an instant kill (not relevant to this topic)
Most fittings use more than 50%(40%?) of generated power, so what happens? Welcome to Power Priorities.
In the module tab, you can assign different power priorities to systems (Highest 1,2,3,4,5 Lowest).
How do these work? When your ship doesn't have enough power for all systems, it begins shutting down systems in priority order.
First, it'll shut down all Priority 5 systems.
If you don't have enough power, it will then shut down all Priority 4 systems.
... etc... til eventually
If you don't have enough power, it will then shut down all Priority 1 systems (at this point, everything)
Hopefully, the problem is already apparent. Most players, critically, do not set power priorities, and so if the Power Plant hits 0%, everything is in the one power group, so there's no choice but to shut everything down.
As a personal preference, I assign my power priorities as follows:
NPCs do something along these lines, but most notably all NPC shields systems will go offline when you reduce an NPC PP to 0%, and while it might feel strange to omit shields from critical systems, there's two reasons for this.
There's some very niche scenarios where depowering your shields might be a bad idea, but end of the day, you need to decide whether 0% PP is a fight or flight scenario (or something in between) and prepare priorities respectively.
There is one caveat here... a common question is "Jmanis, I know all this, but I cannot prioritise the systems like you've listed above... I simply don't have enough power! NPCs must cheat with power levels."
One of the most common things players do is squeeze as much power use as possible out of their ship. Basically general player attitude is "If I have spare PP, I have room for more weapons/defences", and we'll engineer up without care for power use, except for making sure everything squeezes in. Conversely, players usually don't fit and engineer for power efficiency, since all that does is "gimp your damage or tank". And critically, engineering generally ups power proportionally more than engineering your powerplant will.
NPCs, however, are generally vanilla fits. Their fitting requirements are far less power-strenuous, and so setting priorities to deal with 50%(40%?) power are far easier. As a comparison, my combat Anaconda which uses mostly Multicannons, rather than more common, high-power fits such as rails/beams, could almost run shields with a bust PP, with some minor tweaks. In short, most players simply don't plan for these scenarios.
Power Distributor Mechanics
Damage mechanics to Power Distributors are a little different
Undamaged(100%): Full control over pip allocations to WEP, ENG, SYS
Non-Zero Damage (1-99%): Full control over pip allocations, damage inflicted beyond 70% has a chance to trigger a system failure which randomly changes your pip allocations.
Destroyed (0%): No control over pip allocation, pip allocation no longer visible, but systems will charge according to last known pip allocation.
That last bit is the critical part here. Explicitly, a 0% Power Distributor does not prevent systems from recharging. Caveat being, if your last pip allocation before hitting 0% integrity had a system with no pips allocated, that system will not recharge, and the allocation of pips cannot be changed.
Considering these two together... it's very likely that a system malfunction will occur just before your PD hits 0%... randomly reallocating your pips and potentially leaving one starved. But you wouldn't be able to tell, because pip allocation disappears at 0% too.
Now here's where an NPC does have an advantage. Just like how NPCs are as accurate as they are coded to be (never hitting the most basic shots, right up to deadeye strikes at 6km with an LR weapon) NPC pip allocation can be nothing, right up to perfect and instantaneous. So if they suffer a malfunction to their PD just before losing it completely, it's very likely the NPC will still be able to reallocate power to all systems immediately in response to the system malfunctioning. A human can do the same... but they won't be very good at it.
So debatably, NPCs don't cheat when it comes to PD knockouts, but they do have better reflexes than a human would... but inherent human flaws and mistakes are hard to do with AI.
tl;dr
Yes, an NPC can continue to fight, boost and FSD away with a 0% PD and PP, because 0% PD doesn't prevent system recharge, and 0% PP only drops power to 50% output. But it's not cheating; players are also capable of doing this.
Demonstrations
Here's a collection of things which evidence the effects of 0% PP and PD on NPCs, and how players can do the same thing.
NPC shields disabling when knocking out their PP
You can see the recharge cycle terminate when the PP hits 0%, because power priorities kick in and disable shields.
NPC subsystems offline when PP knocked out (Image Only)
You can observe Shield Generator, Boosters, SCB and FSDI are all offline on the target in this shot
Controlled test of weapons/boost/FSD while equipped with destroyed PP and PD
I use the same ship in the subsequent CZ video below. This is just to provide a more controlled, observable demonstration without any external impact.
Clearing a Medium Intensity CZ while running a destroyed PP and PD.
For reference, after repairing my systems I found my pip configuration to be 1.5 SYS, 1.0 ENG, 3.5 WEP. You can observe my slow boost recharge, but comparatively quick weapons recharge.
[1] The challenge of this state is purely a human one.... you don't know the exact configuration of your systems, and so you can't be sure how the ship will perform. This isn't an issue for an AI as they can't not know that information.
Myth: NPCs don't shut down like players do when you destroy their Power Plant.
Fact: A destroyed Power Plant reduces power output to 50% (40%?). At this point, use of power priorities is important to keep essential systems running. Most NPCs (except low rank ones) use power prioritisation. Most players don't though, so their systems completely shut down when their PP hits 0%. A player using power priorities effectively can easily stay in the fight.
Myth: I destroyed the NPC Power Distributor but it continued to fire, boost and recharge shields without issue, because destroying the PD does nothing to NPCs.
Fact: A destroyed Power Distributor does not prevent systems from recharging; it just prevents reallocation & visibility of pips. If all subsystems had at least some pips, all systems dependent on those subsystems charging would continue to function. It's only if you had no pips in a subsystem at the time your PD was destroyed that that subsystem will not recharge. [1]
So how does all that work?
Power Plant Mechanics
Damage mechanics to the powerplant are straightforward enough.
Undamaged(100%): 100% power output.
Non-Zero Damage (1-99%): 100% power output, damage inflicted beyond 70% has a chance to trigger a temporary drop to 50% (40%? 20%?) power output.
Destroyed (0%): Permanent 50%(40%?) power output. Subsequent hits against it have a small % chance of causing an instant kill (not relevant to this topic)
Most fittings use more than 50%(40%?) of generated power, so what happens? Welcome to Power Priorities.
In the module tab, you can assign different power priorities to systems (Highest 1,2,3,4,5 Lowest).
How do these work? When your ship doesn't have enough power for all systems, it begins shutting down systems in priority order.
First, it'll shut down all Priority 5 systems.
If you don't have enough power, it will then shut down all Priority 4 systems.
... etc... til eventually
If you don't have enough power, it will then shut down all Priority 1 systems (at this point, everything)
Hopefully, the problem is already apparent. Most players, critically, do not set power priorities, and so if the Power Plant hits 0%, everything is in the one power group, so there's no choice but to shut everything down.
As a personal preference, I assign my power priorities as follows:
Priority 1: Critical Systems (FSD, Thrusters, Weapons, Sensors)
Priority 2: Semi-critical Systems (Shields, Shield Boosters, Situational Weapons)
Priority 3: Support Systems (Shield Cell Banks, Heatsinks, Chaff)
Priority 4: Non-essential systems (Scanners, Limpet Controllers, Refineries)
Priority 5: Supercruise-only systems (Fuel Scoop, FSDI)
Priority 2: Semi-critical Systems (Shields, Shield Boosters, Situational Weapons)
Priority 3: Support Systems (Shield Cell Banks, Heatsinks, Chaff)
Priority 4: Non-essential systems (Scanners, Limpet Controllers, Refineries)
Priority 5: Supercruise-only systems (Fuel Scoop, FSDI)
NPCs do something along these lines, but most notably all NPC shields systems will go offline when you reduce an NPC PP to 0%, and while it might feel strange to omit shields from critical systems, there's two reasons for this.
- Shields, especially if you run Boosters and SCBs, take a huge portion of your power... there's an argument to put these at lowest priority as you can sometimes run everything once shields are offline; because
- If you're taking hull damage against your powerplant, notwithstanding engineering effects, your shields are already down. If your PP is at 0%, the fight isn't going well, so you either need to get out of dodge straight away, or finish the fight right now.
There's some very niche scenarios where depowering your shields might be a bad idea, but end of the day, you need to decide whether 0% PP is a fight or flight scenario (or something in between) and prepare priorities respectively.
There is one caveat here... a common question is "Jmanis, I know all this, but I cannot prioritise the systems like you've listed above... I simply don't have enough power! NPCs must cheat with power levels."
One of the most common things players do is squeeze as much power use as possible out of their ship. Basically general player attitude is "If I have spare PP, I have room for more weapons/defences", and we'll engineer up without care for power use, except for making sure everything squeezes in. Conversely, players usually don't fit and engineer for power efficiency, since all that does is "gimp your damage or tank". And critically, engineering generally ups power proportionally more than engineering your powerplant will.
NPCs, however, are generally vanilla fits. Their fitting requirements are far less power-strenuous, and so setting priorities to deal with 50%(40%?) power are far easier. As a comparison, my combat Anaconda which uses mostly Multicannons, rather than more common, high-power fits such as rails/beams, could almost run shields with a bust PP, with some minor tweaks. In short, most players simply don't plan for these scenarios.
Power Distributor Mechanics
Damage mechanics to Power Distributors are a little different
Undamaged(100%): Full control over pip allocations to WEP, ENG, SYS
Non-Zero Damage (1-99%): Full control over pip allocations, damage inflicted beyond 70% has a chance to trigger a system failure which randomly changes your pip allocations.
Destroyed (0%): No control over pip allocation, pip allocation no longer visible, but systems will charge according to last known pip allocation.
That last bit is the critical part here. Explicitly, a 0% Power Distributor does not prevent systems from recharging. Caveat being, if your last pip allocation before hitting 0% integrity had a system with no pips allocated, that system will not recharge, and the allocation of pips cannot be changed.
Considering these two together... it's very likely that a system malfunction will occur just before your PD hits 0%... randomly reallocating your pips and potentially leaving one starved. But you wouldn't be able to tell, because pip allocation disappears at 0% too.
Now here's where an NPC does have an advantage. Just like how NPCs are as accurate as they are coded to be (never hitting the most basic shots, right up to deadeye strikes at 6km with an LR weapon) NPC pip allocation can be nothing, right up to perfect and instantaneous. So if they suffer a malfunction to their PD just before losing it completely, it's very likely the NPC will still be able to reallocate power to all systems immediately in response to the system malfunctioning. A human can do the same... but they won't be very good at it.
So debatably, NPCs don't cheat when it comes to PD knockouts, but they do have better reflexes than a human would... but inherent human flaws and mistakes are hard to do with AI.
tl;dr
Yes, an NPC can continue to fight, boost and FSD away with a 0% PD and PP, because 0% PD doesn't prevent system recharge, and 0% PP only drops power to 50% output. But it's not cheating; players are also capable of doing this.
Demonstrations
Here's a collection of things which evidence the effects of 0% PP and PD on NPCs, and how players can do the same thing.
NPC shields disabling when knocking out their PP
You can see the recharge cycle terminate when the PP hits 0%, because power priorities kick in and disable shields.
NPC subsystems offline when PP knocked out (Image Only)
You can observe Shield Generator, Boosters, SCB and FSDI are all offline on the target in this shot
Controlled test of weapons/boost/FSD while equipped with destroyed PP and PD
I use the same ship in the subsequent CZ video below. This is just to provide a more controlled, observable demonstration without any external impact.
Clearing a Medium Intensity CZ while running a destroyed PP and PD.
For reference, after repairing my systems I found my pip configuration to be 1.5 SYS, 1.0 ENG, 3.5 WEP. You can observe my slow boost recharge, but comparatively quick weapons recharge.
[1] The challenge of this state is purely a human one.... you don't know the exact configuration of your systems, and so you can't be sure how the ship will perform. This isn't an issue for an AI as they can't not know that information.
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