Is there any point in Mass Reactor Ships?

[Game Loser]

I've been messing around in the mission editor so I can try and evaluate ship design effectiveness.

I built a ship with 18 reactors, a port, a tank, 2 engines and a few lasers for defence.
This kind of ship takes a while to build the Command Module (1e/s), but quickly after a couple of rectors come online, it builds relatively fast.
As has been discussed before reactors generate 1.5e/s, so 18R x 1.5e/s = 27e/s output.

I double checked building another ship directly from a custom energy mine of 27e , and another being built directly from a such reactor ship, out of range of the mine.
They built at the same rate give or take a fraction of a second.  The math seems correct.

However, I made a custom fight with a bunch of mini laser ships (nothing bus lasers and tanks) and found that an energy mine of equivalent output would sustain the fight whereas the rector ship would eventually not provide enough.  There seems to be a fraction of energy being used that I cant account for.  Perhaps not disabling the tank means that it draws some energy each time, as well as releasing it again, although a net consumption of zero, causes enough delay to break the system.

I suppose the only time a ship like this may have some use is if a map had a very limited source of energy from mines/mired land.  There would have to be enough defence to give enough time to construct such a ship however, so the question is would it even be remotely practical?

I've always been a bit of a turtler/camper in games, I really need to up my game when it comes to speed.

[GoodMorning]

The short answer is almost never.

The longer answer is that it's actually (sometimes) cheaper (and faster) to build two or three ships with the reactors spread out over them (cost of building the bridge). I don't know about the efficiency, but if you have the same generation you should have the same effectiveness.

Regarding their general usefulness, most maps which need them tend to be the ones with no mines at all. Generally you start with a ship containing a reactor and a port, and have to go from there. These maps are generally friendly to turtlers. The other use case is where the energy budget is so tight that the power gain is significant.

Your test only fails "eventually", so perhaps there is some rounding error in there (1 energy per 30 frames = 0.03333... being rounded to 0.033, say). But it souldn't be significant over a period of less than hours.

Finally, the move/build tech can double construction rate.

In other words, I built a ship or two loaded with Reactors, but it doesn't make a great deal of difference.

[TonnyT]

As GoodMorning said, they usefulness is extreme limited, I only find them useful on maps with a lack of energy mine coverage.