Reactor overload: which devices are disabled first?

[gunship256]

When a ship's reactor overloads, how does the game determine which devices are disabled first? Is there a way to override this?

For example, if the player prefers that the shield be the last item to be disabled, is there a way to make this happen?

[sun1404]

Not sure about this, but it seems to be whatever drove the power use beyond the limit. If you fire a weapon and the power use goes up too far, the weapon is disabled. If your shield is damaged and the power use spikes too high, the shield is disabled.

[gunship256]

Thanks for the reply! Is there a way for a mod to know when a reactor has overloaded, and if so, which device caused the overload?

[pixelfck]

As far as I know there is no mod that gives you information on which devices pushed the reactor over the edge and I doubt it would be possible to create such a mod because I think the information is not available for scripting.

I think however, that the device with the highest energy consumption is disabled first, but I didn't test it.

As for a warning system, you reactor load readout starts to flash when the reactor is overloaded. only after some seconds (2? 3?) a device is disabled.

Cheers,
Pixelfck

[sun1404]

I thought it's the highest consuming device too, but I'm pretty sure I have had different devices turning off in the same loadout.

Oh, or maybe it's the highest consuming at the time of the overload. Then it could be the shield if it's regenerating, or it could be the weapon if you're firing.

[pixelfck]

Oh, or maybe it's the highest consuming at the time of the overload. Then it could be the shield if it's regenerating, or it could be the weapon if you're firing.

This is what I meant. A weapon typically gets disabled if you fire it, otherwise it typically is the shield generator while it is regenerating. I've never tested what happens when you install devices which structurally overload the reactor, but it should be easy enough to try out.

~Pixelfck

[sun1404]

I believes the game prevents you from doing that.

[Xephyr]

I believes the game prevents you from doing that.

Normally it does, but if you have the device installed via the playership xml or installing it through an event, then it's doable and functional, at least to a limited degree.

As long as the devices idle power is low enough for your reactor to handle it won't be disabled right away, and in the case of weapons you can usually get one shot fired off before the device is disabled - it's then not able to be re-enabled.

I suspect this could also be done via a reactor downgrade.

[regurgi]

Oh, that's an experiment that could be tried to discover this all.

Create a playership with two player items and a bunch of devices. One of the items enhances the reactor GREATLY, and the other deenhances it. Start game, enhance, Install devices that go over it's normal rating, deenhance, note order of shut down. My personal suspicion is that whenever something is updated it notes how far along the reactor track it is, and disables itself if the reactor track is too high. So nothing would disable under it changes it's power usage.

If that's not what happens, then repeat the experiment a few times to see if it disables the same stuff every time, and try to figure out the commonality.