Hi everyone. Today I had a weird thing happening after loading a save from a couple of months ago. My SV speed was always 120 m/s in space but it's now 53 m/s and while shield is reloading I have a generator overload that causes damage to it. This has never happened before and my ship is intact. Also I took over a Zirax Drone Base but when I turn the power on I have a generator overload that destroys one of the generators in a few seconds. I even tried installing 6 T1 generators with no success. I've never had any overload event in the past playing for 200+ hours so I ask you, please, did something change? Why is my ship now half speed taking damage while shield is reloading? I'm assuming something has changed since I had two similar situations (ship and Zirax base) in the same game run. Or better... am I missing something ridiculously obvious? Thanks to whomever can solve that mystery for me.
Sounds like you are playing with CPU setting turned on and you are way over CPU limit for your tier. Add CPU extenders. Once you are too far over CPU limit and are at 0% CPU efficiency the generator overload and destruction can be nearly instant (which is kinda stupid IMO). POIs don't have to worry about CPU. If a POI doesn't have extenders and you add a player core the overload can also be nearly instant. You have to add the proper amount of CPU extenders before adding a player core (which is impossible to know until you actually add a core ).
CPU vs Power Draw. If you're over CPU capacity, as the drone base most definitely will be, it will reduce the output of all generators. If the power draw exceeds the now-lowered output, the generators take damage after 2 minutes. However, the further over the limit you are the shorter the delay and the more damage dealt from overloading. In the case of a drone base, it's several thousand blocks of combat steel which take half a million CPU or more than the drone base has available dropping the generator output to less than 1% and the power draw being 500% over the 1PU output will almost instantly explode the generators. In the case of your SV. If it's not over the CPU limit, it's because the shield generator draws a buttload of power. A few months ago would be before the overload mechanics for generators were added. Where if you went over 100% power output nothing would happen. Now that you go over 100% power, those old ships don't work without exploding. If you use your jet thruster's Boost, it will massively increase your power consumption too. Which guarantees some generator damage after boosting for too long.
Weird thing is that I have that setting turned off since my first play. :/ Will try the extenders. Thanks for the tip. I see. Is there a way to calculate how much power I will need to turn that base online? I tried looking at Statistics, but I don't see how I can estimate power usage before turning all on. So if I add more generators to my existing ship will it work again? Thanks a lot for all your hints, guys.
If you have CPU turned on, No. The generators will just eat more CPU and degrade all your generators' output further. If you have CPU turned off, then yes.
Thanks again, @Vermillion. It's turned off. I will try customizing my ship then. About the Zirax base, there's nothing I can do, right? There's no way to estimate power before it's turned on?
Turn the power off as soon as you stick the core in and then check the generator output vs consumption, and the CPU efficiency. This is all due to building blocks consuming CPU. Almost all the dungeons and POIs in the game exceed the maximum build limit of the CPU system.
this really should be a depends on the specifics answer I had this exact situation, not enough power available to charge shields but I had enough CPU to add another generator. After adding the 5th generator I am able to charge shields without going over power usage only need 2 generators for regular operations I had the CPU available because it is a tier 4 SV that is over tier 3 by less than 5000 CPU
I have tried but can not get the p menu open fast enough never mind hit the power switch. Y disabled due to several accidental losses of all perishables. But the destruction of the generator is so fast I do not think that would work either.
This may be the ridiculous speed capped by mass issue. If your ship has more mass than some formulas say it should have for the thrusters you have it will limit speed rather than acceleration as most of us expect. to test this you would need to remove mass (including cargo) or add thrusters (this subject to CPU) Unless the problem is your efficiency because you are over CPU, there is a p menu tab to look at your CPU statistics.
@Vermillion and @stanley bourdon thanks for all the advices. I'll keep those in mind since I've been playing the game the easy way and now I'm moving to more exciting things. I manage to see what was happening. It was a bug after all. The settings screen accessible from the Difficulty button on the loading game screen is not changing the "CPU Points" of an existing game. I mean, I started this game with CPU points turned on and in some point in the past I've changed it to off. But as I see it now it never turned it off in my existing game although the setting shows that. So all I needed to do was to add the correct tier extenders and my ship is completely back to full speed and not overloading generators. I didn't even need to add any more generators. I'll file a bug report later but, boy, that was a tricky one to find. Thank you all.
They should be subject to the same CPU rules. If they cant be, then another sign that the CPU system is broken. (And yes - getting rid of CPU on building blocks would be a start).
Have to diagree there in all honesty. I think it's fine as it is, just have to remember to turn the power off asap.
I quite like this idea. Then raiding bases would be even better as you could pinch the CPU extenders and used them on your bases.
Or you would have the CPU extenders to make a big base after raiding one of the POI's. More interesting.
There are a handful of POIs that can be raided for extenders as it is. The Abandoned Assembly Yard gives a full set of every base extender, and the advanced zirax snow POIs will usually have an extender or two in the core room. The Epsilon Communications Center should also have some extenders and all the zirax, polaris and legacy warships. It's actually pretty annoying when people complain that a POI hasn't got enough loot because they're not counting a T4 extender worth 4 ultra rare containers' worth of loot as valuable.
It isnt just about being able to loot extenders. If they were subject to the same rules, then you could blow them up to cause a cascade failure of the POI (ie the same crap we have to deal with) if the opportunity arose. I dont even mind if the damn thing end up getting blown up and becoming non lootable under reasonable circumstances (rather than some nonsense reason) - it is just that needing different rules for POIs suggest to me a failed mechanic that they have to employ a hack to get around. Let face it, once you have found a gold asteroid or two the issue of access to T3/T4 extenders is just a matter of waiting for the assemblers to eventually make them. Yes - it would be nice not to have to go AFK for a very long time while that happens, but beyond that - they are easily available within a few system jumps usually. and finding a system that should have them is not hard any more.
Interesting enough I manage to raid, install core on all of Zirax bases on my planet and on space without any generator overloading. I just need to pay attention if the CPU requirements are being met before turning the power on. If I don't want to have that base as my own I don't need even to turn it on. I just grab the most valuable pieces and get out. If I do want that base for myself, I just install the required extenders and everything works as expected. Easier than I thought at first. Either way the generator overloading change is ignoring the CPU Points setting because it'll only stop destroying stuff after you met the CPU requirements even when that option is off. I agree that there's so much loot in those POI which is fun with some of them well hidden. It makes raiding them Zirax horde much more interesting.
