Bugs and feature request for capacitors for weapons.

[PM]

Capacitor is not truly empty when power is at zero, but at negative something, around -10s or -20s. If there are multiple capacitor weapons charging, the empty greyed out part of the bar even extends to the left for weapons right of the leftmost weapon shown.

Capacitor should not fire if power consumed by firing the weapon would drain power in capacitor to the negatives.

Capacitor should always appear even when power is at zero. It should only disappear when power is full at 100.

A way (a function) to access current power and (another function to) manipulate it directly (in <OnFireWeapon> event). For example, a weapon that uses all power stored in capacitor and fires a shot based on that power, such as the main gun from R-Type.

[Atarlost]

There were previously multiple capacitors. This should not have been changed since the capacitors are part of the devices that use them.

If it has been changed it should be reverted.

[PM]

There were previously multiple capacitors. This should not have been changed since the capacitors are part of the devices that use them.

What? I do not understand. Can a weapon have more than one capacitor? If so, how?

What I meant about multiple capacitor weapons is if the player installed, say... three or four Ares lightning turrets, and drained them all, one at a time in quick succession, such that multiple weapon recharging images appear at the bottom.

[Atarlost]

Ah. It sounded as if you were describing multiple capacitor weapons using the same bar and running it into the negatives.

Since I haven't run a multi-capacitor build in 1.2 and had noticed nothing odd when I did in the past I assumed things had changed.

[Yama]

Unless their behavior has changed since 1.08, weapon capacitors have an additional problem: They generate their own power while charging, rather than drawing it from the ship's reactor!

I started a thread about this in the Shipyards forum just over two years ago: How can I make a weapon capacitor draw power while charging?

.... I thought that a weapon with a capacitor timer should draw full power while it's capacitor is charging, the way the capacitor in a Transpace Jumpdrive does. I'd always assumed that the Ares Lightning turret worked that way, but of course I was wrong. It too draws no extra power while it's capacitor charges.

This makes no sense when comparing the powerUse and DPS (damage per second) of the Ares Lightning cannon with that of the Lightning turret. The powerUse of the Lightning turret is 100 mw, which is less than three times the 35 mw powerUse of the Lightning cannon. Yet the DPS of the Lightning turret is 320, almost five and a half times the 59 DPS of the Lightning cannon. This would be reasonable if the weapon drew full power while the capacitor was charging; sufficient power could be stored in the capacitor during charging, to makeup the shortfall during firing. But how can significant power be stored in the capacitor, when it draws nothing but idle power during charging?? .......

At the time I was working on a Tinker Station mod. One of the new services that my tinkers were going offer was modifying some standard weapons, adding a "Lightning Turret" type capacitor, so they could be fired in limited bursts from a ship with an inadequate reactor (for example a TeV 9 in a ship with a 25 MW reactor). I gave up on that line of weapons when I couldn't manage to make their power consumption realistic; they just seemed too much like cheats.