POWER MANAGEMENT
Power is one of the most critical resources in pixel starships. Every room you put on your ship should make you evaluate, is this the best use of power? Look at the room DPS chart for a ranking of rooms by power efficiency.
There are a number of things you can do to switch power around, or use it more efficiently.
First, let’s cover how power is allocated. AI is executed in frames, right? In every frame, every room runs its AI in the order that the room was first built on your ship. The power commands for each room will pull from available power until there is none left. What this means is if you don’t have enough power on your ship to power all rooms fully (and are using increase by one on all rooms), then the highest power rooms won’t be fully powered.
In frame one, all one HP rooms will get fully powered and all other rooms will get one power.
In frame two, all two HP rooms will get fully powered and all other rooms will be at two power.
In frame three, let’s say you don’t have enough power to give one to all remaining rooms that need it. The oldest remaining rooms will get one more power for three total, and all others rooms will be at two.
If you want to have a room take precedence over other rooms for power, just use the action “set max power”. Then, that room will get fully powered in the first frame, while other rooms using “increase by one” will get only one. Later in the battle, if you don’t have enough power, the “max power” room will still get precedence. The “max power” command is still valid even if it can’t power a room to max, it will just grab all remaining available power.
Here’s what power management looks like in practice
AA
Anticraft lasers only need to be on when the enemy has craft out, so use this:
1) Enemy has deployed craft – increase power by one
2) None – decrease power by one
This is better than the condition enemy hangar has HP, because it’s more precise. They could have a hangar, but deploy planes only sporadically.
Typically, you won’t have enough power on your ship to have free power to give to the AA. Pick your least critical rooms that have 2 or 4 power, and use this ai:
1) Enemy has deployed craft – decrease power by one (or set power to one, if you want to keep the current reload on that weapon and have the free power to do this)
2) None – increase power by one
Security gates
Gates are very similar to AA, you’ll only need them on some of the time.
For python 2, use:
1) Enemy teleport HP greater than zero – increase power by one
2) None – decrease power by one
For python 3, use:
1) Friendly room has enemy – increase power by one
2) None – decrease power by one
Also, you’ll need the reverse AI to remove power from other rooms if you want the sec gates to actually get power.
PP/PD
These shield busters are great at the start of the battle, but less good after that because they lack strong system damage, and the emp effect is too short to be useful. (See room ai tricks “EMP every reactor” for a useful application if you are boarding.)
Try this AI:
1) Enemy ship has full hp, increase power by one
2) None, decrease power by one
Then, set up another weapon to power up on the opposite conditions. Why don’t I use the condition enemy has active shield? Don’t I want these guns to shoot when the shield is up? Yes, but the active shield condition will cause the power to the gun to flicker off and on as the opponent’s SHL or SB recharges. This will remove the charge the PP or PD is building when the power turns off, and when it turns on it probably won’t shoot before the shield is down again.
Engines
Engines increase your missile dodge chance, so why would you have them on if the opponent has no missile launchers? For fun? There is no fun in this game, only domination. Command 2 is optional, because the engine only helps dodge some craft shots, namely the firehawk’s fire shots and corsair’s emp. The most used craft in the meta are defenders, and so powering the engine is not useful much of the time, and takes key power when you might want to be powering your AA.
1) Enemy missile HP greater than 0 – increase by one
2) Enemy has active craft – increase by one
3) None – decrease by one
Cannons
The EMP and ION cannon use the most power of any room. While both are important, it can be useful if you are using more power than you generate to have these rooms be the lowest priority, so that other rooms are powered first. There are a few ways to do this:
Option 1, if you only have one or two excess power to put into the cannon once all other rooms are charged. This AI will power up the cannon as other rooms are damaged and can’t use the power, but give back the power if all rooms are healthy.
1) Friendly room HP < 50%, increase power by one
2) None, set one power (use set one to keep the reload, especially for ION)
Option 2, if you have three or four power to put into the cannon. Given the “increase by one” logic, at the beginning of the battle the cannon will get three or four power, but will be last on the list to fill up because it requires the most power. Later in the battle, once rooms are damaged, the cannon will take power from those damaged rooms and use it. This can be good if you expect that the focused room will keep getting hit and its reload reset – it’s better to use that power in the cannon.
1) None, increase power by one
Engines Power Sink
For rooms that you don’t want powered at all unless another room is damaged, you can use this AI. It works best for engines, since they don’t have a charge that is wasted when they depower. For weapon rooms, use Option 1 in cannons above.
1) Your reactor less than 100%, set zero power
2) Any your room less than 100%, increase power by one
3) None, set zero power