Topic: Mauler/battery relationship

[TarMinyatur]

I've never seen this quantified so I decided to check it out.

A Mauler-armed ship can recharge its batteries (the power source of the weapon) by having excess energy. You can have excess energy by making sure your shield reinforcement slider is set low (preferably off). If you have the reinforcement slider on maximum (which is standard procedure for any non-Mauler ship) then you'll never recharge your batteries!

The rate at which energy flows into the batteries is proportional to the amount of excess energy. However, there is an important limit to this rate. The batteries cannot accept more excess energy than the number of undestroyed batteries, thus you cannot "fastload" the Mauler's batteries.

An example is helpful:

Let's say a Klink MD5 War Cruiser has 10 batteries (it has taken some damage) and 28 power. It fires the mauler at a Hydran Ranger, which completely drains the 10 batteries. It can manage to generate 20 excess power after housekeeping, arming phasers, ECM, etc. Unfortunately (for the Bumphead), the excess power that can be transferred is limited to 10/turn. This means the 10 batteries will be fully recharged in about 30 seconds (1 turn at game speed 8). The other 10 excess power cannot be crammed into the batteries so the Klink decides to speed up instead.

The MD5 fires the mauler again. This time it needs to outrun the Ranger who wants to say hello with some Fusion beams. The MD5 can only manage to produce 5 excess energy. This flows at a rate of 5 energy/turn which will take two turns to fully recharge the 10 batteries.
 

[Rod O'neal]

I've never timed it, or really studied it closely. It always seems to me that it takes too long to recharge the maulers batteries though.

I used to like to use the batteries for shields and approach the enemy near the turn break. During the break tractor him, recharge batts, and you can figure out the rest.  I guess that I just miss the turn break.  

[TarMinyatur]

I've never seen this quantified so I decided to check it out.

A Mauler-armed ship can recharge its batteries (the power source of the weapon) by having excess energy. You can have excess energy by making sure your shield reinforcement slider is set low (preferably off). If you have the reinforcement slider on maximum (which is standard procedure for any non-Mauler ship) then you'll never recharge your batteries!

The rate at which energy flows into the batteries is proportional to the amount of excess energy. However, there is an important limit to this rate. The batteries cannot accept more excess energy than the number of undestroyed batteries, thus you cannot "fastload" the Mauler's batteries.

An example is helpful:

Let's say a Klink MD5 War Cruiser has 10 batteries (it has taken some damage) and 28 power. It fires the mauler at a Hydran Ranger, which completely drains the 10 batteries. It can manage to generate 20 excess power after housekeeping, arming phasers, ECM, etc. Unfortunately (for the Bumphead), the excess power that can be transferred is limited to 10/turn. This means the 10 batteries will be fully recharged in about 30 seconds (1 turn at game speed 8). The other 10 excess power cannot be crammed into the batteries so the Klink decides to speed up instead.

The MD5 fires the mauler again. This time it needs to outrun the Ranger who wants to say hello with some Fusion beams. The MD5 can only manage to produce 5 excess energy. This flows at a rate of 5 energy/turn which will take two turns to fully recharge the 10 batteries.
 

[Rod O'neal]

I've never timed it, or really studied it closely. It always seems to me that it takes too long to recharge the maulers batteries though.

I used to like to use the batteries for shields and approach the enemy near the turn break. During the break tractor him, recharge batts, and you can figure out the rest.  I guess that I just miss the turn break.