Star Citizen – Power, Capacitor & Weapon Guide – What You Need To Know

A quick Star Citizen 3.14 Power, Capacitor & Weapon Guide looking at what’s new and what you need to know, with the time codes below so you can skip to anything in particular you want.

Power & Capacitors

Weapons & Systems Overheating is something that is not really a problem in Star Citizen 3.14… power allocation and capacitors are the more limiting factors.

Capacitors have a shared pool of energy that your ship makes use of.

There is a Shared “Power” Pool for Energy Weapons – The Less Energy Weapons OR if you turn some off, the more ammo cap there is for the remaining energy weapons… 

Energy Weapons recharge after not firing for a brief time.

Ballistics do not make use of this power. Different ships have different Capacitors and the amount, size and type of energy weapons will affect ammo capacity. 

Manned Turrets have their own isolated weapon capacitor system which will regenerate weapons faster and provide a deeper pool. Manned Turrets are very effective now!

The Power Triangle now has a much more direct effect on a ship’s systems.

You can adjust the Power for your ship in a couple of ways. Via the MFD moving the power indicator toward the system you want or via the F keys.

F5 – Weapons 

F6 – Engines 

F7 – Shields

F8 – Resets everything to default

You can hold the key to max power the system.

Puts more power to engines – This will have boost regenerating faster and boost being more efficient costing less to use. Using boost will give you more thrust on some axis based on your ship type. (If you put max power to engines you can have a 2.5-3 times faster regen AND your booster fuel is around a third more efficient)

Puts more power to Weapons – Only affects Energy Weapons and increases their Ammo Capacity and Ammo Regen Rate. (Maxing out the system can see 20% more Capacity and a can half the recharge time.)

Puts more power to Shields – Will have your shields more soaking more damage & regening faster. (Max power to shields gives you Around 33% more shield health and reg times drop to about 33% of what they were.)

You can and should change these power allocations on the fly during combat. Practice will be key tho to get used to the system.

If you don’t have any power allocated to a system then it won’t recharge at all.

There are more complex key bindings you can set for power, like no power to engines, which would then distribute all power to weapons and shields.

Weapon Changes

Missiles are powerful mid range Weapons for use in dogfights against larger ships.

In a single seater fighter you will need to go into missile operator mode to lock and fire missiles. This will mean you lose control of your other weapons while in this mode.

Lock a target to start getting a missile lock (T)

Wait for the missile to lock then fire with middle mouse

You can wait longer for a better lock, making the missile harder to counter

You can choose to fire a burst of missiles – by press G to add missiles (alt and G will reset this to 1)

You can fire before your missile has locked (after it’s armed which you can see on the HuD) this will dumbfire straight forward.

You can also choose / cycle which missile you want to use in the missile operator mode by pressing mouse 2 (if you have other types).

Launching lots of counter measures will help spoof. The appropriate ones for the missiles that are being used against you will be more effective. At time of recording flares weren’t working but chaff or noise fields are working just fine.

H – Decoy (hold to burst)

J – Noise Field

Typical Dogfighting range is geared around 1.2km

Energy Weapons

Energy Repeaters S4 and below are focused dogfighting / anti-fighter weapons.

Energy Cannons are more anti-larger ship now.

This does not mean that you cannot use them for dogfighting, just that they may lose out to repeaters.

Ballistic Weapons are Specialist with High Damage & EXTREMELY Low Ammo. They also have good shield penetration (directly impacting the ship) which scales up as a shield takes more damage.

They are great to use in Arena Commander where you can get ammo refills as power ups.

And used at the right times will rip a ship apart BUT require Regular Expensive Rearming AND you will be out of ammo very quickly.

They are not affected by power distribution AND other energy weapons won’t have to share their pools with them.

Other weapons like scatterguns & disruptors are much more specialized weapons.

High reward for the very close range scatterguns.

A Couple of Notes on Ships & Systems

Currently ALL SHIELDS are standardized for each Size so all S1 shields are the same no variant differences. As of recording it’s 1500hp for S1 Small Ships & Fighters , 7500hp S2 Heavy Fighters, 100k for S3 Larger / Multi-Crew Ships.

There is a lot more balance coming later well beyond the 3.14 patch cycle and variants will return. As heat isn’t much of an issue any more, you don’t need to worry too much about coolers currently.

Quantum Drive’s are worth changing.

Multi-Crew Ships with turrets are both tough and effective in game now and it’s no longer always the case that multiple people in multiple fighters are a better option.

All ship handlings have been reworked with roles for ships being more obvious, tuning them into light, medium, heavy and interdictor fighter roles as well as “larger” ships.

Light are fast and agile but low HP

Medium are good all rounders

Heavy have more health and lots of pew pew, can have manned turrets, but suffer from lower agility.

Indicators are for intercepting GET TO THAT PLACE QUICKLY.

Other larger ships have loads of health