[Spaceships] Powering smaller systems

[ericbsmith]

Originally Posted by Peter Knutsen

It's a deliberate game design decision, to allow for the creation of ships which have more power using systems than power generation, so that the characters commanding them have more decisions to make.

It also makes sense in a lot of universe's. In many backgrounds a ship may not have to use FTL drives, STL drives, Shields, or Weapons all at once. If you're only ever going to use 8 PP all at the same time it's inefficient to give the ship a reactor that's larger than that.

Beyond that it's quite possible for a ship to have a damaged or destroyed reactor, so have to make a choice about which systems can continue to run on remaining power. Not all ships go poof Star Trek style just because they lose a reactor.

Originally Posted by SCAR

I see no problem having Power Plant power smaller systems on this 3-to-1 basis. You could also allow 3PP from smaller power plants to provide 1PP for a standard system if you wanted (although I'm not sure that would every really be worth it).

If you only need one or two PP and you're using higher end Fusion or Antimatter plants you can get the extra PP out of a smaller Reactor, leaving you the other smaller sections to place other ship systems in.

[SCAR]

Originally Posted by ericbsmith

If you only need one or two PP and you're using higher end Fusion or Antimatter plants you can get the extra PP out of a smaller Reactor, leaving you the other smaller sections to place other ship systems in.

True, but it's probably still a farily highly optimised design decision.

[RyanW]

Originally Posted by ericbsmith

It also makes sense in a lot of universe's. In many backgrounds a ship may not have to use FTL drives, STL drives, Shields, or Weapons all at once. If you're only ever going to use 8 PP all at the same time it's inefficient to give the ship a reactor that's larger than that.

Oh sure. No argument there. But in everyday operations, that won't be "juggling" as I meant it, and would almost never need the Increase Power task. "Come about, power down weapons, and begin charging the hyperdrive conductors" is quite a different beast from "I need those meson beams online, now!"

[Kale]

I'd say getting 2 and 1/3 power point out of a nominally 2 power point reactor could be done routinely, but I'd apply a penalty to maintenance checks. That way you could squeak out a tiny bit of power for a 1/3 size system without needing a separate reactor. Running a ship this way might violate local safety regulations though, and get you into trouble if your ship was inspected...