Reactor Depletion

[Vinkor]

Hello,

I've noticed that after a reactor is built my depletion rises. The Collection goes up .3 but the depletion for example goes from 3.0-3.5 since depletion only works in .5 increments. Well I noticed that if I don't build anything else except a couple reactors, when they are done being built the depletion changes to 3.5-4.0. The deficit stays about the same but t acts like the deficit was decreased. I was just wondering if there was an explanation as to why the depletion goes up after I build reactors.

Thanks

[knucracker]

If you just start a game (like the first conquest mission) and build a single reactor (do nothing else).  Your depletion will be 1 while the reactor is building.  Once the reactor finishes building, the depletion will go to zero.

So reactors don't cause depletion by themselves.   Depletion is just a measure of the number of packets you are producing.  When you build a reactor, your energy production/collection goes up.  So you are able to produce more packets per second if you have demand.  This would be why you could see depletion go up as you built reactors (or built more collectors).

[Vinkor]

Thanks for the quick reply. So you mean when your energy goes up you depletion goes up because you can handle more packets being sent?

I never really made many reactors before I tried to beat Mouse Shadow on Spec Ops, because there's not much room for energy where you start but after I had my base at a stalemate with the creeper I decided to raise my energy so my weapons can get more ammo without that pause when they run out. So I made reactors since the collectors already made everything I could green, and at the time I think depletion was around 3 and about 10 seconds after all 4 reactors were built the depletion was between 3.5-4.0 even though I didn't change anything else.

[Karsten75]

That is the higher rate at which you can now supply packets to your weapons. In my experience, while you are running a deficit, the depletion rate is usually about .5 higher than the supply rate. So let's say you have a huge deficit, and you go from supply 4.0 to supply 4, then the depletion rate would go from 3.5 to 4.5.

[Vinkor]

Usually when I play I always try to keep my deficit around 50 for spec ops and conquest and between 100-150 for story. So if I understand what you are saying depletion is a good thing because it is how much i can have depleting at one time without hurting my energy/deficit?  I've beaten the game I'm actually beating it again right now in the other mode so I think I pretty much know how this works but I could be wrong. I'll take screen shots tomorrow and post before and after pics if you guys think it'll change anything.

[UpperKEES]

Over the past week I had similar experiences with reactors (I'm not sure if it applies to other structures as well).

I've created a map to test this. When I build 3 reactors with 3.4 energy available, you would expect the depletion to go from 0 to 3 and back to 0 after completing the reactors. This is not the case. Most of the time the depletion is 3, but for a few seconds it might be 3.5 or 4.0 or even 4.5 sometimes. Why is this? I've also attached screenshots for convenience.

[knucracker]

Depletion is averaged over a second.  When you have a fractional collection rate (which you almost always do) and couple that with the slightly less than 1 second packet request rate for three structures that were built at slightly different times you will get rates that seemingly bounce around a bit.  It all depends on how many packets were requested during any given arbitrary second long interval. 

Depletion is just a measure of how many packets Odin City produces over time.  Once those reactors (or any structure) is finished, depletion will go to zero so long as you aren't building anything else.

[UpperKEES]

the slightly less than 1 second packet request rate

Ah, so 1 structure requests a little bit more than 1 packet per second? I always assumed it was exactly 1 unit of energy per second when building without upgrades.

three structures that were built at slightly different times

I see. As the gauge is only updated once per few frames and the building of all structures has not started simultaneously, within a certain time frame the average depletion might be higher, right? The only thing that I keep wondering about is: why is the depletion sometimes not lower than 3 to compensate for the occasional 4.0 or 4.5 depletion?

[archn]

What about the idea of reactors actually depleting?  As in, they can produce x energy, after that runs out, then they can only produce y energy a second (which is less than x's per second rate)

[UpperKEES]

Maybe nice for the suggestions forum, but we are trying to find out why we see certain energy consumption rates on the depletion gauge. To answer your question anyway: the reactor is already expensive enough (see here), so degrading it doesn't seem a good idea to me.