I copied the following a long time ago from a post somewhere. I didn’t write it but it’s the best description of PP failure modes I have come across. And I believe that it’s still accurate on how the PP operates as it takes damage. I apologize that I didn’t copy the original author’s name. If anyone knows the original author, please give him credit.
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“Power plant integrity:
As with most things, malfunctions start at around 70% integrity when taking further damage. The effects are as follows:
- malfunction, integrity above 0%: output briefly reduced to 40% normal
- malfunction, integrity at 0%: output briefly reduced to 20% normal, risk of catastrophic failure resulting in ship destruction
- no malfunction, integrity at 0%: output permanently reduced to 50% normal
- a PP at 0% can be restored to 1% by rebooting. Not tested. Reportedly other modules need to be at 100% prior, although this doesn’t make sense.
A power plant malfunction causes output to drop to 40% for 5 secs and then return to 100%.
A power plant at 0% integrity will result in power output dropping to 20% for 5 secs and then return to a backup mode running at 50%.
My advice is to turn everything off while docked, then start turning things on in order of priority, keeping in mind the <20% (destroyed PP malfunction), <40% (standard PP malfunction), and <50% (destroyed PP stabilized output) thresholds, adjusting as necessary to keep critical modules functional when the going gets rough.
Pri 1: vitals
Pri 2: defense
Pri 3: offensive
Pri 4: lesser stuff for combat or normal flight
Pri 5: SC stuff and least important
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And this is why there are 5 power priorities and a good recommendation on how they should be implemented.
). Five levels sounds like a nice flexible number, so they went with that. That's how I imagine it went.
