The listed powerplant ratings on ships seem completely wrong - and we need more info

veridiac · Post by **veridiac** » Thu, 10. Nov 05, 07:09

Has anyone else noticed that? I noticed it first when my captured superfreighter couldn't fire as long as my M4 despite having a larger powerplant, so I decided to do some tests. I fired 2 AHEPTs in each of the M3's (horray for the power of scripting) and got these results :

Barracuda Raider (627MW) 10 seconds
Nova Raider (825MW) 20 seconds
Perseus Raider (825MW) 23 seconds
Mamba Raider (715MW) 16 seconds
Falcon Vanguard (726MW) 14 seconds
Xenon L (780MW) 8 seconds <----!!!!!!!

Notice how the minor differences in listed powerplants in no way reflect the massive differences in available weapon power, and in the case of the xenon L is flat out backwards and wrong - the L has the weakest powerplant of all by a huge margin yet the listed rating says it should be close to the top!

Regeneration rates seem to be in line with the true laser capacity I only tested a couple though, I counted how many AHEPT shots I could fire off in 15 seconds with drained energy reserves :

Nova - 50 shots
Falcon 40
Mamba 46
Xenon L 28

I also did a few tests on the M6's, firing 2 BHEPTs (should've used alphas so I could compare to the M3s but wasn't thinkin about that at the time)

Osprey (2650MW) 32 sec
Dragon (2150MW) 67 sec
Centaur (2500MW) 32 sec
Nemesis (2500MW) 36 sec

note that the dragon, which supposedly has the worst powerplant, has nearly TWICE the firepower of the other ships (which it really should be ing a crappy-shielded split ship, but the stats don't say that....)

Anyway, if you ask me the information availble on pretty much every ship and weapon in the game is entirely insufficient - Please egosoft we need more information, and we need it to be correct. It makes no sense to me that I couldn't find out accurate information on what I'm buying and kills the immersion to some degree. If you ask me we should have all the following info available at a minimum (in addition to whats available now)

Lasers : Damage per shot, energy used per shot, rate of fire, (or DPS & efficiency - how efficient weapons are is of huge importance now that the laser batteries aren't weapon dependant) and tracking speed

Missles : Damage yield, speed, and turn rate

Ships : Laser energy capacity, energy regeneration per second, and *number of lasers per turret* (less important in X3 than in X2, but still usefull to know - I always thought it was nuts to not have this in X2, I mean juding from ship info in game, a carrier had the same firepower as a destroyer.....)

Anyway, I'm sure all this and much more will be parsed out of the data files and posted somewhere soon enough (or maybe it already has been and I missed it) but i for one would really like to see it available in game.

Disclaimer : I only ran each of the tests once and I was using a stopwatch to do it, so theres a chance some of the figures are a bit off, but in general they should be close.

hrett · Post by **hrett** » Thu, 10. Nov 05, 07:27

First - I really like the game.

Second - he is absolutely right. And dont say that ship/weapon specs are "spoilers" either. Go to any car lot - the spec for each are posted right there on the window. You can also look them up online. Same for weapons. They have no advertising in the X universe? No documentation comes with any product bought?

Please get this correct. I like to know what I am buying.

Fraz86 · Post by **Fraz86** » Thu, 10. Nov 05, 07:45

I agree that it would be nice to have some accurate stats. Some would argue that you get more immersion from having to discover things yourself. This isn't really true for me... I'd rather understand advantages and disadvantages up front so that I can make logical decisions rather than haphazardly learning things by trial and error. Realistically, I'm sure that detailed specs would be available for practically everything. It especially troubles me that apparently some of the in-game statistics are wrong. Like you mentioned before, that can seriously inhibit my immersion, if I can't even trust the information the game is telling me.

DarthVodka · Post by **DarthVodka** » Thu, 10. Nov 05, 08:02

Could something else like shield capacity, or even engine power/speed be having an effect on power? I haven't looked at the ship specs so don't shoot me if I'm way off mark here... just an idea.

craigww22 · Post by **craigww22** » Thu, 10. Nov 05, 13:05

. It's just one thing after another! I've spent forever trying to determine the best ships to use, and now I find out they didn't even include the right STATS?

Why am I still playing this thing?

esd · Post by **esd** » Thu, 10. Nov 05, 13:21

DarthVodka, you are correct - one must assume that a ship's power generator does more than just power the weapons.

craigww22 · Post by **craigww22** » Thu, 10. Nov 05, 13:27

But then it would be a pointless indicator, since weapons are the only variable in power usage. Well, perhaps also shields.

Did you have the same shield in all ships, and were they fully charged?

Angrybeever · Post by **Angrybeever** » Thu, 10. Nov 05, 13:28

I remeber in wing commander (going back a bit) you could change the power output setting so you could send more power to sheilds and less to thrust or more to weopons and less to sheilds. Would be good if you could do this on X.

jlehtone · Post by **jlehtone** » Thu, 10. Nov 05, 14:04

Angrybeever wrote:I remeber in wing commander (going back a bit) you could change the power output setting so you could send more power to sheilds and less to thrust or more to weopons and less to sheilds.

That was in later versions. The X-Wing had it way back: one generator, lasers, shields, and propulsion. Both conrol of where the power goes and a chance to move energy from one system to the other. Nice, but it is not here.

Basically, if there are other systems consuming energy, then their energy consumption should be an available statistics too. We could at least reduct the others from the generator values to just look at the power available to the guns. I could easily understand, if the shields would consume some. Taking hits would drain guns. That would make sense. Then it would also make sense why Boron Dolphins do have generator, but no gun slots.

Same guns, each possible shield combination, at full stop and at full speed, several samples per ship. Plenty of experimentation. Client: "Can you tell how much mayhem I can do with this gun?" Seller: "No" Client: "Then I have to experiment on you"

DJ Aitch · Post by **DJ Aitch** » Thu, 10. Nov 05, 14:05

Fraz86 wrote:I agree that it would be nice to have some accurate stats. Some would argue that you get more immersion from having to discover things yourself. This isn't really true for me... I'd rather understand advantages and disadvantages up front so that I can make logical decisions rather than haphazardly learning things by trial and error. Realistically, I'm sure that detailed specs would be available for practically everything. It especially troubles me that apparently some of the in-game statistics are wrong. Like you mentioned before, that can seriously inhibit my immersion, if I can't even trust the information the game is telling me.

If you highlight the ship you want in the shipyard list and then press I on your keyboard you will get the 'advertised specs'. Does say that in the manual.

TokenSDragon · Post by **TokenSDragon** » Thu, 10. Nov 05, 14:19

Since shields can probably affect the speed of weapon draining too. How about doing your timing test again with all ships using the same shields? Say... 10MJs in total? We can figure out the ratios of power to guns and then perhaps figure out what kind of draw the engine has by comparing the top speeds to the powerplant to the seconds of white-hot-electric-death.

Since I haven't even gotten out of argon prime, I can't really do that yet, but if someone's got a nice load of ships and a little time to kill, we'd all appreciate the numbers!

Scoob · Post by **Scoob** » Thu, 10. Nov 05, 14:39

I thought there were TWO parameters to consider, the Power Generator and the actual max laser energy.

Basically as you fire laser energy reserves are depleted (there's your number of shots for a given weapon) once you stop firing, the rating of your power generator effects the recharge rate. So it's the amount of energy in the laser energy "battery" that dictates the amount of shots in that first volly, not the power generator.

Now, this may just be me but it appears that your weapons recharge more slowly if your shields are also recharging. Maybe it's the heat of battle making me impatient, but it certainly seems that way. It makes sense as both shields & weapons should draw on the power of the ships generator to recharge.

As originally stated though, some ships appear to have for too small power generators, especially the larger craft. An M1 or M2 ships initially volly can be devastating, but after that the refire rate is awful as each turrets fights for available energy.

It would be nice to have all the power generator/shield & weapon recharge details confirmed. Hope it's not like X2 where a ships power plant appeared to be meaningless.

Scoob.

Bane_v2 · Post by **Bane_v2** » Thu, 10. Nov 05, 14:42

hrett wrote:First - I really like the game.

Second - he is absolutely right. And dont say that ship/weapon specs are "spoilers" either. Go to any car lot - the spec for each are posted right there on the window. You can also look them up online. Same for weapons. They have no advertising in the X universe? No documentation comes with any product bought?

Please get this correct. I like to know what I am buying.

I agree 100% with veridiac and hrett. The amount of information available in the game is inadequate to a fault. Statistical, in-depth information on ships, shields and weapons as well as full explanations on the purpose and use of all ship upgrades is an absolute necessity that the X games have lacked since X2 at least.

Forcing the players to seek this information from external sources is, put simply, WRONG.

steel chicken · Post by **steel chicken** » Thu, 10. Nov 05, 16:13

Bane_v2 wrote:
hrett wrote:First - I really like the game.

Forcing the players to seek this information from external sources is, put simply, WRONG.
Oh so sorry, they had an unreasonable deadline to meet.

esd · Post by **esd** » Thu, 10. Nov 05, 16:15

Bane_v2 wrote:Forcing the players to seek this information from external sources is, put simply, WRONG.

They don't force you to do that at all. You could always do what I do - try stuff and see what it does.

Part of the fun is discovery.

Ryuujin · Post by **Ryuujin** » Thu, 10. Nov 05, 16:35

Is everyone overlooking a very simple thing? - Shields.

There is a correlation between shield capacity, power generator, and energy available to the guns. The L and the Falcon have weak generators, but very strong shields, causing their firing time to drop exponentially, whereas the Mamba has a teeny generator, but very little shielding, and actually gets a fair bit of mileage out it's guns.

Still whatever the truth, it vindicates what i've said all along; The Perseus is the best balanced fighter

Bane_v2 · Post by **Bane_v2** » Thu, 10. Nov 05, 16:40

esd wrote:They don't force you to do that at all. You could always do what I do - try stuff and see what it does.

Part of the fun is discovery.

That's a load of bull and you know it. If you seriously believe that I have a PC to sell you. Send me $3000 US and I'll ship it to you right away. You'll find out the specs of the PC upon arrival.

Mightysword · Post by **Mightysword** » Thu, 10. Nov 05, 16:52

But if we talking about shielding then I won't dare even think about getting a Phoenix. This ship has the highest shield rating (10GJ) however I believe it has the smallest power generator, just how often one think it can fire

cwaHardy · Post by **cwaHardy** » Thu, 10. Nov 05, 17:34

Well im no expert but i was just editing ships for fun and learning, it seems to me that the power you see advertised only affects shields, a 750 powered nova's shields will deplete faster and recharge slower than a 850 powered nova.

In the Tships file there are seperate numbers for laser energy.

hrett · Post by **hrett** » Thu, 10. Nov 05, 17:58

esd wrote:
Bane_v2 wrote:Forcing the players to seek this information from external sources is, put simply, WRONG.
They don't force you to do that at all. You could always do what I do - try stuff and see what it does.

Part of the fun is discovery.

I agree. Discovering what is out in space. Not basic information.

Imagine this:

I walk in to a spaceship lot. See a nice pretty new buster.

Me: Ohh nice! I really like that. Please tell me about it.

Teladi Salesman: Itsss called a Bussster. Very nice.

Me: Does it come with an owners manual?

Teladi: Nope.

Me: Well - gimme some specs. How does that baby perform?

TS: Hassss a power generator, can hold 6 weaponsss of the type A&BIRE, APAC, and Massssss Driver. It goessss 175 mph and has 3x5 MW shields.

Me: Cool! 6 weapons! How long can I fire them when i get into a tiff? The main purpose of this baby is to defend myself! Gimme the skinny.

TS: Cant tell you. Have to find out for yourssssself.

Me: Well - ok - how fast do the shields recharge?

TS: Cant tell you. Have to find out for yourssssself.

Me: Well - do they recharge based off the power plant? Does the wattage effect energy pool AND recharge rate?

TS: Maybe.

Me: What kind of answer is that? Tell me about the power plant. Cant have my lazers and shields running dry in mid combat or I will die. Cmon - anything?

TS: Cant tell you. Have to find out for yourssssself. Or, after you buyssss it, you can hacksss into the ssshipssss code and you might be able to get it that way. But if you are not a haker, you are basssssically out of lucksss...

Me: Cool. Ill take one. Does it come in blue?

TS: (Under his breath). Ssssucker! One born every minutesss!

Again, I love the game. But come on. Please?

egosoft.com

egosoft.com

The listed powerplant ratings on ships seem completely wrong - and we need more info

The listed powerplant ratings on ships seem completely wrong - and we need more info