Kill Warrant Scanner; Why Such a Power Hog?
- Thread starter Schmack
- Start date
Nothing forces you to keep them powered along all your other weapons/systems.
.
Configure them on a different weapon group, or as a low priority module, so when you deploy weapons, it gets shutdown automatically.
.
Configure them on a different weapon group, or as a low priority module, so when you deploy weapons, it gets shutdown automatically.
In an RP kind of explanation connecting up with all of those factions to review for bounties had to take some power. From a non story angle I'd say because of all the credits it helps you earn. I favor all of the power management features the game has. It is good you can't just jam everything on a ship and off you go. Making decisions engages the player, I believe.
Try using a D-rated one. The range is 2.5km, and it uses very little power. The higher rated ones just give you more range. +.5km per rating.
Your hardpoints need to be deployed to use the kws, so seeing the power priorities in such a way that the kws per down when you draw your weapons would make it useless.
Yes I am familiar with setting priorities. That wasn't the point. Why do they need to take so much power to begin with? It's basically a radio.
What you guys are doing is suggesting work arounds. I am well familiar with them. My question is where is the logic behind their enormous power draw.
It takes four hours for data to travel from Rosetta (the craft that is pacing a comet in our solar system right now) back to earth with a high powered radio. How long would it take to get a message from the distant factions involved with being wanted? Consider it the price you pay, for it's relative speed.
Last edited:
There's a lot of area between sensible power draw for these kinds of devices and "jamming everything on a ship and off you go".
No, your RP explanation doesn't jive either. You have to scan a ship you already have data for. You know it's wanted locally, but you have to scan it again. Don't you have its identity already?
So by saying "magic radio" it makes more sense?
This is another non-explanation. You're rationalizing it as a good deal. I asked why does a module that doesn't affect game balance need to have such a punitive power draw and so far all I've seen are rationalizations and compromises. I haven't seen anyone explain how they imbalance a game.
You can take a large ship like the Python with it's 30MW plant and run the KWS no problem with everything else you want. But try to run a decent one on a smaller ship with the 15.6MW, you're eating up a large chunk of the power just having the KWS deployed. I would think shield boosters and SCBs would be more of a game balance threat. You get someone down to that purple hue in their shields and BAM, they have full shields again because they keep popping SCBs. Ah but don't try to KWS.. too much of a power hog. Don't want you getting that extra 20K from that cobra kill.
There is no good reason other than game mechanics of course. FD want to make it costly (both CR and MW) to increase the range. Why even range to the ship being scanned is a parameter is also ridicoulus. As long as we can identify the target (and that we can do for ranges of hundreds of Ls in SC) the KWS should work. Basically the KWS is a remotely updated database of bounties that the "scanned" ship is checked against, there is no scanning taking place other than what the regular targeting system does. It does not scan the ship like for example the Cargo Scanner, who actually by some means x-ray the ship and indicate what cargo it holds.
Very annoying design. I would prefer a limitation on the classes to be more how many ships it can hold bounties for in the database, how many fractions it will auto-update for and so on. No range what so ever.
Very annoying design. I would prefer a limitation on the classes to be more how many ships it can hold bounties for in the database, how many fractions it will auto-update for and so on. No range what so ever.
Which I disagree with, since I receive the "scan" warning when my friend runs the scan on me. When the ship you're not scanning exits your view, your scanning stops. I would think the S in KWS indicates you are indeed scanning.
You're scanning police databases for warant's in other jurisdictions, how I understand it anyway. Keeping on the target is just a little minigame to make you put effort in it.
Don't you just love it when a scanner takes up more power than all your weapons?
Fed bounty databases and beauraucracy don't mix.
Also that the higher-ranked scanners don't get any improved scan time is kinda stupid, although that might be so the larger ships that can afford to run them don't have a huge advantage over smaller ships-- but in all honesty they need the range anyway due to generally being slower and less agile. Clippers should be running a cargo scanner anyway. >.>
Fed bounty databases and beauraucracy don't mix.
Also that the higher-ranked scanners don't get any improved scan time is kinda stupid, although that might be so the larger ships that can afford to run them don't have a huge advantage over smaller ships-- but in all honesty they need the range anyway due to generally being slower and less agile. Clippers should be running a cargo scanner anyway. >.>
I'm not attempting to provide a work around. If you're using a smaller, less mw-producing ship, use a lower-rated scanner. The higher rated ones are just not for you. Would it feel better to you if there were different class utility mounts, and the high-rated scanners required a larger mount? I mean, it's reasonable for bigger ships to tend to have bigger / longer range weapons, why not longer range scanners, too?
Yeah, that is how it is implemented. But ask yourself what on your ship my KWS actually scans to find your bounties around the galaxy? Do you think it is printed on the ship somewhere? Is the KWS hacking your ship computer that maybe keeps a record of your crimes? It is clearly just a fun implementation to make it interesting in-game. If they would change it to a realistic implementation the range should not exist, as well as the 10s delay (it should take 1ms to lookup the ship id in the KWS database).
I think it's actively hacking the computer on board the target ship, and querying the bounties from there. The cargo scanner does something similar when it gets the inventory of the ship.
In that case, you would need to expend power in order to overcome the ship's security systems, and greater range would require more power.
There is no logic. Nothing about detection range, sensor range, targeting range, sensor scan, KWS and cargo scans, power consumption of those modules makes sense if you think about it. The only explanation is "for gameplay reasons".
'A' rated sensors are a massive power drain, and are able to detect and target a ship up to 7km. Weapons, even the big ballistic ones, have a maximum range of 4km. In both cases, we have better equipment on earth today : we have robotic sniper rifles and artillery pieces able to do better than that (I'm not even talking about long range missiles) and these equipments don't require several MW of power.
Does the very limited sensor range / very limited targeting range / very limited weapon range / huge power consumption make sense, from a realistic point of view ? No it doesn't, but its a game.
Devs probably decided at some point that being able to detect, target, scan and fire at ships at ranges of several thousand kilometers wouldn't add anything to the gameplay.
edit :
Very nice RP explanation. Repped
Last edited: