I don't understand how weapon distributor draw works?!

[n4p0l3on]

Short story, I experimented with lasers for my chieftain (that has superconductors g5 charge enhanced PD), first I tried a g2 long range large gimballed beam laser on it.

Long range mod doesn't change anything related to the distributor draw and thermal load, you can look at the numbers on the new edshipyard site.

So a g2 long range thermal beam has :

5.58 mw distributor load and 7.61 thermal load.

I used a stopwatch to know how long I could fire that beam onto empty space with standard 2 weapon pips on my chieftain.

It was roughly 22-23 seconds before the distributor was empty.

Then I thought I could add a 2nd laser there, because a single large beam wasn't dealing enough anti shield damage, after looking at the stats from edshipyard, I decided to add a gimballed large pulse laser on it (with g4 focused mod on mind).

Now, such laser only has 0.92 mw draw and 0.92 thermal load, since focused mod doesn't change them...

You would think that such addition would still let me to fire those lasers for like what at least 15 seconds of time, considering the added numbers proportion compared to a single beam, right?

How wrong I was, the distributor didn't even last 8 seconds (approximately).

Okay, how does that make sense?

0.92 mw distributor load on the pulse laser only add like 16% from the beam distributor load, while 0.92 thermal load add even less from the beam thermal load.

So why and how does my weapons firing time reduced by more than 60%???

Eventually I settled with 2 large pulse lasers, with the same mods I intended to do above, and guess what?even those 2 pulses can only fire their lasers for around 19 seconds, below the firing time of a single beam laser.

The stats premise doesn't make sense to me.

Can anyone here explain?

 

[Bortas]

Can anyone here explain?

Power draw for pulse is per shot, for beam it's per second.

 

[dfgqsb]

The distributor draw displayed for beam laser is xmw per second, but for other weapons it's xmw per shot.
Large pulse laser fires about 3.2 shots per second, so it consumes about 3mw per second.

All lasers have very poor dpe and require huge amount of time on target, that's why I prefer projectile weapons.

 

[CMDR The Riz]

Short story, I experimented with lasers for my chieftain (that has superconductors g5 charge enhanced PD), first I tried a g2 long range large gimballed beam laser on it.

Long range mod doesn't change anything related to the distributor draw and thermal load, you can look at the numbers on the new edshipyard site.

So a g2 long range thermal beam has :

5.58 mw distributor load and 7.61 thermal load.

I used a stopwatch to know how long I could fire that beam onto empty space with standard 2 weapon pips on my chieftain.

It was roughly 22-23 seconds before the distributor was empty.

Then I thought I could add a 2nd laser there, because a single large beam wasn't dealing enough anti shield damage, after looking at the stats from edshipyard, I decided to add a gimballed large pulse laser on it (with g4 focused mod on mind).

Now, such laser only has 0.92 mw draw and 0.92 thermal load, since focused mod doesn't change them...

You would think that such addition would still let me to fire those lasers for like what at least 15 seconds of time, considering the added numbers proportion compared to a single beam, right?

How wrong I was, the distributor didn't even last 8 seconds (approximately).

Okay, how does that make sense?

0.92 mw distributor load on the pulse laser only add like 16% from the beam distributor load, while 0.92 thermal load add even less from the beam thermal load.

So why and how does my weapons firing time reduced by more than 60%???

Eventually I settled with 2 large pulse lasers, with the same mods I intended to do above, and guess what?even those 2 pulses can only fire their lasers for around 19 seconds, below the firing time of a single beam laser.

The stats premise doesn't make sense to me.

Can anyone here explain?

The calculation for determining the how long you can fire your weapons is

Power Distributor Weapons Capacitor Capacity / (Weapon Distributor Draw Per Second - Power Distributor Recharge Rate)

​

The Power Distributor Weapons Capacitor Capacity is read straight from the Outfitting screen for your Power Distributor; the Recharge Rate listed in Outfitting is the 4-Pip recharge speed (I think the recharge speed decreases linearly with Pips - someone fact check me on this!).

The Weapon Distributor Draw Per Second varies per weapon: for Beam Lasers the Distributor Draw is exactly that so no need for further math. Other weapons list the Distributor Draw on a per shot basis - so you need to multiply the listed Distributor Draw by the weapon's Fire Rate to obtain the Distributor Draw Per Second. Note that this value is additive - each weapon's Draw Per Second can be added together to obtain the Total Draw Per Second.

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Alternatively, you could use Coriolis or EDShipyard and plug in the numbers there. The Chieftain isn't currently up on Coriolis but it runs a 6A Distributor so you can approximate it using a ship that can fit one.

 

[n4p0l3on]

Power draw for pulse is per shot, for beam it's per second.

Ah, that makes sense then

 

[Yosharian]

Short story, I experimented with lasers for my chieftain (that has superconductors g5 charge enhanced PD), first I tried a g2 long range large gimballed beam laser on it.

Long range mod doesn't change anything related to the distributor draw and thermal load, you can look at the numbers on the new edshipyard site.

So a g2 long range thermal beam has :

5.58 mw distributor load and 7.61 thermal load.

I used a stopwatch to know how long I could fire that beam onto empty space with standard 2 weapon pips on my chieftain.

It was roughly 22-23 seconds before the distributor was empty.

Then I thought I could add a 2nd laser there, because a single large beam wasn't dealing enough anti shield damage, after looking at the stats from edshipyard, I decided to add a gimballed large pulse laser on it (with g4 focused mod on mind).

Now, such laser only has 0.92 mw draw and 0.92 thermal load, since focused mod doesn't change them...

You would think that such addition would still let me to fire those lasers for like what at least 15 seconds of time, considering the added numbers proportion compared to a single beam, right?

How wrong I was, the distributor didn't even last 8 seconds (approximately).

Okay, how does that make sense?

0.92 mw distributor load on the pulse laser only add like 16% from the beam distributor load, while 0.92 thermal load add even less from the beam thermal load.

So why and how does my weapons firing time reduced by more than 60%???

Eventually I settled with 2 large pulse lasers, with the same mods I intended to do above, and guess what?even those 2 pulses can only fire their lasers for around 19 seconds, below the firing time of a single beam laser.

The stats premise doesn't make sense to me.

Can anyone here explain?

I highly recommend you input your entire build into this website:

http://www.edshipyard.com/new/

Select your ship (Alliance Chieftain) and choose the equipment you have on your ship. Then adjust each module to show what mods you have on it.

You can then start theorycrafting about what weapons you can equip, what mods you can use, etc, through the site itself, without having to try it out in-game.

You'll be able to see exactly what your Power Distributor can handle, how long you will be able to fire for, how many pips to WEP you will need, etc.

Input your build precisely then we'll be able to help you further with recommendations.