Effects of manually disabled Distributor?

Scoob

Scoob
Hey all,

Discussing running cold to avoid detection, we disable various modules once at our destination. So, AFMU off (big saving), FSD off and some other systems too. My friend turns off his DISTRIBUTOR as it draws a lot of power. The only effect of this appears to be the inability to re-allocate Pips, that's it. Are there any other consequences of this? As an aside, when I tried this, it had ZERO impact on my ship's heat output...

With my current build I never have the need to juggle Pips, like I do in other ships, so turning off the Distributor sorta makes sense if that's all I lose...
 

Scoob

Scoob
Well, he wasn't sure either, hence my question lol.

So, there are really no other penalties to shutting of the thing that feeds power to EVERY other module on the ship...who knew? This is a very oddly implemented module.
 

Kira Goto

Kira Goto
I mean, it won’t (shouldn’t) recharge any power used during that time for weapons, boost or what have you. So that’s another downside… assuming it does in fact work that way, of course.

But the heat load will only be reduced noticeably if you shut off enough modules for the power draw to go down enough. I don’t think the distributor is usually among those hungry ones which make it go up more.
 

Scoob

Scoob
Kira Goto said:
I mean, it won’t (shouldn’t) recharge any power used during that time for weapons, boost or what have you. So that’s another downside… assuming it does in fact work that way, of course.

But the heat load will only be reduced noticeably if you shut off enough modules for the power draw to go down enough. I don’t think the distributor is usually among those hungry ones which make it go up more.
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Are you sure? He claims to be able to boost repeatedly (we did that a lot) and fire his weapons, yet all capacitors fill up again as they should. I'd have guessed perhaps the Capacitors wouldn't fill up, it'd make sense, but that's not what he reported. Thought: If the Distributor is OFF, no Pips show, could perhaps the Capacitors not update either? I turned my distributor off purely to see if it impacted heat output - it did not - I didn't actually boost and shoot with it off.
 

aRJay

aRJay
I have the distributor turned off on my exploration build Hauler as a fuel saving measure rather than to reduce heat.
The visual effect is of course the pips disappear from the display but the columns deplete and recover as normal it’s just that until you switch the PD back on you can’t tell if that old bug has reset them even if you couldn’t and the answer is yes it could.
 

Frankymole

Frankymole
Scoob said:
Well, he wasn't sure either, hence my question lol.

So, there are really no other penalties to shutting of the thing that feeds power to EVERY other module on the ship...who knew? This is a very oddly implemented module.
Click to expand...
The powerplant feeds. The distributor is just a control box that moves the connections to tell the power plant how much to feed to engines, systems or weapons.
 

sidereal6

S
Scoob said:
So, there are really no other penalties to shutting of the thing that feeds power to EVERY other module on the ship
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If you’re interested in a made-up explanation, here you go: the distributor is a mechanical device, like a high voltage contactor https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contactor

Cutting the power to it doesn’t sever its connections, it just prevents you from adjusting them.
 

Scoob

Scoob
I'm guessing FDev "balanced" it this way as there was already a "critical" system in the Power Plant, so they wanted to reduce the vulnerabilities. Just guessing. So, it's not the Distributor we turn off, rather just the that balances the power. Still think it's an odd balance choice, but at least we know.
 

aRJay

aRJay
When I bother I think of the PD as a set of heavy duty switches and capacitors that you control via the pips so that the capacitors are switched to the systems you want switching the PD off just removes the ability to move those connections about but the connections themselves remain fixed where they were. If this happens in combat it can be very bad depending on just where you had the capacitors when it failed.
 

Scoob

Scoob
Ozric said:
It literally just determines where the power is Distributed. That's it's one job :D
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I've got a distributor panel in the house... if I turn it off, the whole house goes dark, I don't just lose the ability to direct power to certain circuits lol.

Still, it's a game with a "gamey" implementation of a device, it's all good. I'd just have personally expected it to have a larger impact if disabled, either manually, or via damage. Has anyone every had their Distributor damaged or destroyed? Is the effect then the same? Oh, seems the forum doesn't like the name of a rotating switch that begins with Kn and ends in ob. Is that really considered rude in English or something?
 

Ozric

Volunteer Moderator
Ozric
Scoob said:
I've got a distributor panel in the house... if I turn it off, the whole house goes dark, I don't just lose the ability to direct power to certain circuits lol.

Still, it's a game with a "gamey" implementation of a device, it's all good. I'd just have personally expected it to have a larger impact if disabled, either manually, or via damage. Has anyone every had their Distributor damaged or destroyed? Is the effect then the same? Oh, seems the forum doesn't like the name of a rotating switch that begins with Kn and ends in ob. Is that really considered rude in English or something?
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Yes it is.
 

Felix DiCestria

Felix DiCestria
Scoob said:
Hey all,

Discussing running cold to avoid detection, we disable various modules once at our destination. So, AFMU off (big saving), FSD off and some other systems too. My friend turns off his DISTRIBUTOR as it draws a lot of power. The only effect of this appears to be the inability to re-allocate Pips, that's it. Are there any other consequences of this? As an aside, when I tried this, it had ZERO impact on my ship's heat output...

With my current build I never have the need to juggle Pips, like I do in other ships, so turning off the Distributor sorta makes sense if that's all I lose...
Click to expand...
I used to turn it off along with other modules when smuggling. It seemed to behave as though I had 2 pips to all systems at the time, though this was rather a long time ago and things may have changed since then.
 

Jmanis

Jmanis
Short version; yes, offline power distributor just prevents redistribution.. things recharge at the last known settings. Refer video below where I clear a CZ with an offline PD and PP.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g79QgL7_AUc


That might seem like not a big deal in the context of offlining the PD... but typically it'll offline in a firefight or due to some other damage... just prior to that occurring you'll usually get a PD malfunction which randomly distributes your pips... so once it's offline, your pips will function in a completely unknown configuration, and that configuration might be really, really bad (e.g zero to WEP or SYS), and you can't change that without repairing your PD.
 

DjVortex

DjVortex
Scoob said:
So, there are really no other penalties to shutting of the thing that feeds power to EVERY other module on the ship...who knew? This is a very oddly implemented module.
Click to expand...
Conversely, don't try turning off your thrusters while you are in supercruise. (Well, I suppose you can try it, for fun. :p )

Why the FSD needs the thrusters to work, who knows, but it does.
 
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