How are they avoiding the bootup time on most modules then?
No, it is a bug. They used to actually come to a complete stop for a while (pretty much about how long it would take most of us to flip all sorts of modules around and reboot,) but now they just keep going as if exactly nothing happened. I want to be clear, I absolutely understand power management perhaps better than most who do a lot of combat (I keep my ship engineered for multi-purpose use including long range exploration, so I needed a smaller power plant.) Several modules must be lost the moment I deploy hardpoints and I'm fine with that. I've also worked quite hard to manipulate things around to where if I lose my power plant I can still fly out of there at top speed (though I'd lose boosting, most pirates won't be able to keep up with me all the same.) I even have to give up life support to keep thrusters running at 40%. A number of modules must be disabled for me to be able to deploy hardpoints without going dead in the water instantly and I keep my AMFU and vehicle hanger bay disabled except when specifically using them (if I ran both at the same time I'd be dead in the water even with hardpoints stowed and now with my latest setup I lose priority 5 stuff so can't FSD out if I'm using one of those two. Once I get a FSD boost module I'll have to deal with toggling it off to use those too.) Trust me when I say that I have experience with and understand power management. Actually, one of my biggest annoyances is that they don't have a more effective way for us humans to manage power (namely I want multiple power profiles. Then switching back and forth in a hurry would be quite easy. Though as an ultra-paranoid some of my power hungry things like shields that
technically shouldn't be necessary while travelling will stay going all the time.)
Now, I presume your idea here is that they're actually actively turning modules off and on exactly as needed so there is never more than the minimum running at each moment to do only exactly what is needed. Going just by that concept alone you might think they could get away with just two or three or so modules going at once. Most modules don't have huge boot times, but they all have at least a tiny bit and some are fairly long. I know this quite well from experience. Now, as you surely are aware most aren't as long as the FSD with its well known long boot time obviously. However, things that have effectively "zero" boot delay still take probably about a second and a half (I haven't really timed it) to fully activate and become working again. You can actually test this quite easily if you want. Disable your cargo hatch, then turn it on and see how long it takes you to be able to deploy the cargo scoop. (Yeah, I know this one all too well from scooping mats after combat with the cargo hatch disabled during combat. Kind of frustrating really sometimes as I watch good prey escape while I focus on mats I desperately need even though the actual delay is quite small.) Now imagine having that happen with, oh, say your thrusters (this is the main thing they'd have to toggle a lot since they're the biggest power hog usually. Note that NPCs effectively don't have flight assist since they don't need it so they technically could pull this off somewhat in theory, but...) Those several moments it would take for the thrusters come back online would prevent them from making any of the movements they make. Also, you must surely already realize that you can't toggle the shields at all without losing them. If you turn off the shields, the only way to get any shields back is to come to effectively a complete stop (ok, it was something like 50m/s, but I forget the exact number off the top of my head) and do a full system reboot -- without being shot during this time. NPCs may not even get this nice little "safe" reset bonus that players get actually. I don't know.
The fact is, we can see even from our point of view as the player that the NPCs are somehow working at much greater than 40% capacity. Even if not 100%, they're doing just fine without even doing a system reboot. If nothing else, the fact that the game is letting them use AI (which is illegal in the ED universe btw, but we'll put that aside since some are already in trouble with the law anyway so why not one more thing) to toggle stuff on and off super quickly but won't even let the pirates among us use it gives them an unfair advantage -- even ignoring the whole boot time consideration. Just no matter how you look at it this is not working as intended. My bet is that the old functionality where they are dead in the water for a little while while rebooting and moving modules around was the intended effect and that it will probably be like that, just maybe tweaked to be a bit faster (usually I had time to take out one component using just one laser and saving my secondary ammunition, though it seems like when the reboot is completed whatever component I took out is also back to full capacity -- getting the full benefits of the reboot and perhaps then some.)
Now, that said, while I may not always be happy with their priorities, the FD devs don't seem to be lazy at all to me. People fuss and complain, but they're always working on this game. I see all too many just phone it in with no updates for a really long time and basically zero fixes for anything once the game is more than a year old or so. So I don't really get why people almost viciously attack them just because their priorities seem wrong. I too would like to see certain things focused on more quickly than certain other things, but I can't deny that they
are legitimately working on things and getting stuff done. My bet is this time around the priority was the FSD boosters and just some other things that were already in the patch pipeline hitched a ride along with that fix. Regardless, I take out a
lot of powerplants and definitely get plenty of time to observe the effects. Or lack thereof.
PS. I have a lot of experience with the powerplant issue because I fly a courier and I'm going after anacondas, gunships, etc etc and I often go for the powerplant since my total damage is relatively low but constant (so it takes a while to wear them down. Like a million mosquitoes sucking a few drops of blood from you at a time until you collapse, lol.) Honestly I should have already given up going after power plants since the chance of an explosion at 0% is lower than one might think, but I keep thinking this will be fixed ASAP and it doesn't make a lot of difference what I target otherwise usually.