First I must say I find the flight/ship/modules/engineering model of Elite Dangerous quite fascinating. Having a degree in Electrical engineering has gotten me interested down into the details of how these ships work, the energy they consume and they way it is converted in the modules. After spending many hours analyzing all the details I could find I'd like to share what I have learned to help you be more effective at PvE combat.
Reading through guides/videos/in-game information I found out that there is a huge blind spot that never gets discussed as THE most important piece of the puzzle. Everybody is comparing ships, weapons, shields, modules but very rarely it gets mentioned that without an optimized system in place, they will be running completely out of sync and not to their full potential.
What does this mean in practical terms when upgrading your chosen combat ship? It means that you will waste a lot of time and effort by focusing in the wrong areas first like upgrading your ship with weapons that are too powerful for your power distributor to handle.
If I was to choose THE single most important piece of equipment on any given ship, without a doubt that will be the power distributor. Why? .. Let's have a look at what it actually does.
In Leeman terms it basically takes a giant hose of electrical current, splits into 6 different streams (12 actually if you count half pips) and then it redirects that power to the 3 main areas of the ship inside a tank (capacitor) of very limited capacity.
Systems - This is where your shields live
Engine - This is how fast your ship goes / how maneuverable it is
Weapons - This is how long your weapons can fire
Now the redirection of electrical current into the three different areas has IMMENSE consequences. Much much more than getting a better module class or even engineering. Let's have a look below to the difference of performance on a stock FDL with 0 pips in a system and 4 pips in a system. I have added a couple of lasers to burden the weapons a bit more than the stock.
So what is happening here? Keep in mind when balancing your power distribution that 1 MW = 1 MJ
First the systems/shields. With zero pips all it takes is 271 MJ of energy to bring your shields down. But with 4 pips the shield will go down only after 678 MJ of energy has been fired at you. This is absolutely critical and it is because the game has hard coded 60% resistance of all damage at 4 systems pips. It means with 4 pips in systems you are suddenly running a shield which has effectively 2.5 times better durability (in raw damage). This is why it is absolutely crucial to use your pips during combat. The recharge time will also be twice as fast with all the pips on.
When the time comes to upgrade/engineer your shields you need to always make sure that the power distributor is not the bottle neck. You can have the best Biweave shields with engineering faster charging but it won't matter much if your power distributor can't pump enough juice. Generally the recharge rate of the shield should always be lower than your max power distributor output (this allow you to recharge the shield at maximum rate by using only 3 pips in systems... and every free pip simply improves your ship performance).
Next - Engines. As you can see the difference between 0 pips and 4 pips is not that big. Definitely nothing too dramatic to make huge difference in PvE... It may be important to put 4 pips in Engines if you are chasing some eagles or simply want to escape with boost spams.
Weapons - This is the area where the power distributor is of outmost importance. In the example above, 4 pulse lasers on 0 pips in systems will fire only for 7 seconds before the capacitor of weapons is exhausted. Even with 4 pips you will fire 22 seconds. If you were to upgrade your power distributor you will be able to fire forever. This is why it is the single most important thing to consider when trying to improve your weapon damage capability is to upgrade your power distributor so you can get the maximum potential of the weapons you already have (before buying new ones). If you just bought higher class weapons, you would be able to fire them for half the time.. so not much weapon performance in real terms would be gained. Consider also the fact that if you choose weapons that have low power draw you will accomplish two things. One, you will be able to fire them for much longer with only 2 pips in weapons. Two , those 2 pips you are going to save from the weapons will provide you 30% of resistance to your shield, effectively adding 30% to your overall defense!
A good rule of thumb when considering new weapons is to always calculate if you will be able to fire them for at least 15-20 seconds without draining your power distributor or your ship collapsing from heat... and how much damage you will deal in that period. If not , always upgrade/engineer your power distributor first. Looking only at DPS is kind of useless really. Consider that firing a beam laser for 3 seconds at 9 DPS will inflict only 27 of damage and then will have to wait 7 seconds to cool/recharge. But firing a pulse laser at 7DPS for 10 seconds will inflict a total of 70 damage.
I can't recommend enough playing with https://edsy.org/ and testing how the power distributor upgrades/engineering affect the performance of your systems/engines/weapons under different pips allocation. If you are the analytical type like me that likes an interesting complex system in need of optimization then this can be considered a whole mini-game within the game. As stated above, the difference between an optimized/un-optimized power within the ship can be as much as 2-3 times in actual combat performance.
Happy hunting
. I will share tomorrow my current Mercenary/Bounty optimized build with reasoning for the choice of each module/engineering upgrade - Raziel's Wrath.
Reading through guides/videos/in-game information I found out that there is a huge blind spot that never gets discussed as THE most important piece of the puzzle. Everybody is comparing ships, weapons, shields, modules but very rarely it gets mentioned that without an optimized system in place, they will be running completely out of sync and not to their full potential.
What does this mean in practical terms when upgrading your chosen combat ship? It means that you will waste a lot of time and effort by focusing in the wrong areas first like upgrading your ship with weapons that are too powerful for your power distributor to handle.
If I was to choose THE single most important piece of equipment on any given ship, without a doubt that will be the power distributor. Why? .. Let's have a look at what it actually does.
In Leeman terms it basically takes a giant hose of electrical current, splits into 6 different streams (12 actually if you count half pips) and then it redirects that power to the 3 main areas of the ship inside a tank (capacitor) of very limited capacity.
Systems - This is where your shields live
Engine - This is how fast your ship goes / how maneuverable it is
Weapons - This is how long your weapons can fire
Now the redirection of electrical current into the three different areas has IMMENSE consequences. Much much more than getting a better module class or even engineering. Let's have a look below to the difference of performance on a stock FDL with 0 pips in a system and 4 pips in a system. I have added a couple of lasers to burden the weapons a bit more than the stock.
So what is happening here? Keep in mind when balancing your power distribution that 1 MW = 1 MJ
First the systems/shields. With zero pips all it takes is 271 MJ of energy to bring your shields down. But with 4 pips the shield will go down only after 678 MJ of energy has been fired at you. This is absolutely critical and it is because the game has hard coded 60% resistance of all damage at 4 systems pips. It means with 4 pips in systems you are suddenly running a shield which has effectively 2.5 times better durability (in raw damage). This is why it is absolutely crucial to use your pips during combat. The recharge time will also be twice as fast with all the pips on.
When the time comes to upgrade/engineer your shields you need to always make sure that the power distributor is not the bottle neck. You can have the best Biweave shields with engineering faster charging but it won't matter much if your power distributor can't pump enough juice. Generally the recharge rate of the shield should always be lower than your max power distributor output (this allow you to recharge the shield at maximum rate by using only 3 pips in systems... and every free pip simply improves your ship performance).
Next - Engines. As you can see the difference between 0 pips and 4 pips is not that big. Definitely nothing too dramatic to make huge difference in PvE... It may be important to put 4 pips in Engines if you are chasing some eagles or simply want to escape with boost spams.
Weapons - This is the area where the power distributor is of outmost importance. In the example above, 4 pulse lasers on 0 pips in systems will fire only for 7 seconds before the capacitor of weapons is exhausted. Even with 4 pips you will fire 22 seconds. If you were to upgrade your power distributor you will be able to fire forever. This is why it is the single most important thing to consider when trying to improve your weapon damage capability is to upgrade your power distributor so you can get the maximum potential of the weapons you already have (before buying new ones). If you just bought higher class weapons, you would be able to fire them for half the time.. so not much weapon performance in real terms would be gained. Consider also the fact that if you choose weapons that have low power draw you will accomplish two things. One, you will be able to fire them for much longer with only 2 pips in weapons. Two , those 2 pips you are going to save from the weapons will provide you 30% of resistance to your shield, effectively adding 30% to your overall defense!
A good rule of thumb when considering new weapons is to always calculate if you will be able to fire them for at least 15-20 seconds without draining your power distributor or your ship collapsing from heat... and how much damage you will deal in that period. If not , always upgrade/engineer your power distributor first. Looking only at DPS is kind of useless really. Consider that firing a beam laser for 3 seconds at 9 DPS will inflict only 27 of damage and then will have to wait 7 seconds to cool/recharge. But firing a pulse laser at 7DPS for 10 seconds will inflict a total of 70 damage.
I can't recommend enough playing with https://edsy.org/ and testing how the power distributor upgrades/engineering affect the performance of your systems/engines/weapons under different pips allocation. If you are the analytical type like me that likes an interesting complex system in need of optimization then this can be considered a whole mini-game within the game. As stated above, the difference between an optimized/un-optimized power within the ship can be as much as 2-3 times in actual combat performance.
Happy hunting
. I will share tomorrow my current Mercenary/Bounty optimized build with reasoning for the choice of each module/engineering upgrade - Raziel's Wrath.