ShipSim Cycles

Jericho

Has anyone figured these out yet? 

Our starter ship has about 100 for one cannon, but when I try to fire up a cannon on a Corvette with 500 spare cycles it says I need 900. I don't know what I'm doing wrong. I can't experiment because it's literally a money sink trying out different parts. I've sunk about 300k into figuring this out and part of that is because I bought the wrong parts in some cases. Anyone else having the same trouble or having luck with arming a corvette? 

Perfect

Modules and Superstructure take cycles. Are you certain that you have 500 available after the superstructure?  Ping me IG and we can walk through it a bit.

Matlkael

It's like balancing three things.

Superstructure limits your mass. Shipsim limits your cycles. Engine limits your power (halons).

All three use up a bit of mass, cycles, and halons. Upgrading your engine to provide more halons might also make it use up more cycles, which in turn may necessitate an upgrade of your shipsim. So on and so forth.

You need to find that sweet spot wherein all three needs are satisfied, plus have some extra for modules like cannons. And cannons should only drain 45 cycles apiece. You may have something else that is using up cycles.

Also: adding to SF CART does not cost marks until you actually SF CHEKOUT. Make sure everything is in order before doing so.

kamdian

Does anyone know how to actually look at a template, by the way? I can't for the life of me figure out the context for it. 

Perfect

Engines don't use cycles.
Engines produce halons
Shipsims require halons and produce cycles
Superstructures have minimum and maximum halons and use cycles
Modules use cycles
Shields need capacity
Most things have a mass that can't exceed your capacity.
Leftover capacity becomes cargo space

Squeakums

@perfect is that list comprehensive? Ie you didn't say shields or modules (edit: mistakenly had said superstructures) use halons, am I correct in assuming they don't since it wasn't mentioned? 

Perfect

Shields and modules are both in that list. I made some edits a few minutes after posting, maybe your question was posed then?

Jericho

@Tecton@Aurelius

So I've been tinkering, with the help of @Perfect and we discovered that it's impossible to get a missile launcher to work on this ship even though it has a large slot. 

The Sunderer has the slot for it, but there seems to be a cycle discrepancy between the Cannon and the Missile Launcher modules. A huge one. A cannon takes up 40 cycles, but the missile launcher wants 900. With the engine I have on the corvette nearing the halon max, I would need ShipSim 9 to be able to run it, but that completely drains my engine of Halon's making the ship unspaceworthy. So the issue is whether or not this is intentional, because we're not seeing other large slot items, or there was a mistake in the cycle usage for missile launchers. 

Fyrel

I'm not the devs, but it says on the starship basics page that homing missiles require a large number of shipsim cycles. There's always going to be a discrepancy there, the question is how much is acceptable?

Matlkael

That problem is not unique to missiles; interceptors and corvettes can technically install a skipdrive, for example, but the available superstructures are all too small to actually handle it.

Silva

From what I can read in HELP SHIPMODS, eventually we'll get mods beyond the Mine Layer and Missile Launcher that can slot into the large module slots on our ships. It could be like a 'Reduced Turn Speed' mod in the large slot, or a 'Faster repairs' mod into the small slot. Those mods are theoretical, those don't exist as far as I'm aware right now.

Also, if people are reading information from the shipforge about shipsim power usage, what's written in the shipforge right now isn't accurate. It'll list for the base shipsim, 500 halons/cycle, instead of 5 halons/cycle as is intended, and is the way it currently works when you check out SHIP DETAILS POWER/CYCLES. 

Last but not least, while it's impossible to cruise around with Tractor Beams in a Corvette, or Missile Launchers on a Destroyer, there are ships that can utilize the potential of operating many weapons. This Supercruiser can operate a Tractor Beam, 5 cannons and 2 missile launchers simultaneously, without being too slow (at least, if the increased mass doesn't depreciate the halons to maxspeed ratio by too much - I don't have enough data to infer anything since we really only have Interceptor/Corvette data. More than 500,000 halons [while weapons are off] to 117500 tons should be close to 3000 units of speed).

Details of said Supercruiser - https://ada-young.appspot.com/pastebin/Od0-GG2B

Perfect

I think the answer here is to slightly increase maximum halons on that superstructure (The Sunderer).  It doesn't need much, only lacking 239 halons in order to fit the shipsim (#9) required +whatever the devs want for thrust.

It seems like the point of the superstructure is to put an awesome huge weapon on it, as it can only have 2med and 1small in addition (though not even enough cycles for those, if there's a missile launcher mounted)

Maybe the plan is to release other large mods as mentioned in the thread, but today, it's not possible to fit a large weapon on it: