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Thoughts on Power Transfer Post Season 13
bossheisenberg
Member Posts: 603 Arc User
I'm wondering just how important power transfer rate is now after the nerfs to power levels and leech. Seems like it wouldn't be as important as it used to be. My power transfer rate is between 300-400%, with the plasma warp core, RCS accelerator with EPS, nausicaan power siphon, k13 android boff, and a few other things. Has anyone tested whether it still holds up?
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More important than ever to have a good amount of EPS trasnsfer...
There's some info to unpack here.
Firstly, EPS and how overlapping works. The system itself hasn't changed since S13, and I doubt it will change for a long time.
I have a post on this over on Reddit (but I know people don't like to go there...for some reason), so I'll quickly explain why and what happens with EPS as it seams to cause some confusion.
When we add power or remove power from a subsystem, one of three things happens:
So what this means is that adding more power without removing it once you've reached max is futile. There is a big differance between gone and cannot be accessed. This extra power we can't get to behind the Max subsystem limit is what we commonly call Overcap.
When we apply a drain (most commonly in weapon system drain from energy weapons) we have both our target and out max value reduced by the same amount. So if we fire a Beam at 100 weapon power, since we are lower than the default max we can assume this is the same value as our target (for the purpose of this example). Thus we will reduce our target by 10 and our current by 10, both reaching 90.
Since there is no extra power anywhere, this number will stay at 90 until the Beam cycle ends after 4s, and we regain that target power back to get to 100.
This is the critical point in which EPS becomes important. We now have a disjoint. Our weapon power when a beam stops is 90, but since the beam is no longer draining so our target is at 100. EPS will try to make our system go back to reach 100 from 90, but will do so in values of 5 power at a rate of our EPS. By default this is once per second (or 5/s).
So it will take 2s for the power to be regained from firing a single beam. However since a beam will be on CD for only a second, only 1 transfer will occur and we will be firing at 90 power once again. Move this two two beams and our initial power on the second volley is less than it started with.
100 -> 90 -> 80 -> 85 -> 80 ->...
What this means is that without adequate power, EPS is essentially useless. Conversely, without adequate EPS, Overcap is useless since you cannot regain power to target fast enough.
What we've seen with S13 is that our main source of Overcap (leech) has been reduced from ~20-40 (depending on DrainX skill) in a subsystem to just 7.5. This is a huge drop in potential Overcap power, which means that if you don't change your ways of gaining power, or mitigating your losses, you're going to see minimal gains in EPS because you don't have the power to support it.
Things like EWC and Supremecy have now become essential if you want to maintain high energy weapon damage. The energy weapon cost reduction from EWC and Supremecy let you drain less from your subsystem and have more Overcap power to work with.
So while 300% EPS is still really goo to have, you must also think about how you can acquire more power in the subsystem.
To better explain let's look at what happens when you fire a standard beam with the EPS skill nodes chosen (for 10/s), 125 current power and 160 max power.
What will happen is that when the beam fire, both target and current will be reduced by 10. So our current becomes 115 but our target becomes 150. We have a disjoint and EPS begins to try and reach target. However, unlike the previous example we are still firing the beam. So over the course of one second we regain 10 power, and once again reach 125 power. Since the max has been reached, we will see no power changes. The beam will continue to fire as if at 125 power, or a 1.125x modifier. When the beam ends its firing cycle the power will be restored, and we will once again have 160 target.
The main different here is that the beam can fire at a much larger weapon power setting, thus have a much higher damage output.
This is exactly the answer that I was looking for. Thanks for the explanation, this is what I was talking about when I said power transfer isn't as important post-nerf.
Because of the nerf to overcapping, giving reduced returns on power levels over 125...