I am curious what $Power Output does, from a mathematical standpoint.
$Shield Regeneration Rate defines how quickly the shields recharge. Typing in 0.05 would give me 5% regeneration per second, or 20 seconds from zero to full. The exact amount of shield HP regenerated per second should be expressible as ($Shield Regeneration Rate)($Shield HP). However, is this total HP regenerated per second shared across all shield quadrants? If a ship regenerates 20 Shield HP per second, and two sections are damaged, do they each regenerate at 20 HP per second (per-quadrant regeneration)? Do they regenerate at 5 HP per second (because the energy is always split between four quadrants?) Do they regenerate at 10 HP per second (shared regeneration, split across only damaged quadrants)?
$Weapon Regeneration Rate seems to work just like shield regeneration, except without all the complicated issues of splitting (or multiplying) the effect four ways. I can define weapon energy regenerated per second in terms of ($Weapon Regeneration Rate)($Max Weapon Energy), right?
+Aburn Fuel and +Aburn Rec Rate define afterburner regeneration. Again, I can turn these numbers into a mathematical formula for how long a ship can remain in afterburner.
...Except this model is not perfect.
A surface-shielded Lucifer with INSANELY massive power output has an odd tendency to be invulnerable to no-shield-pierce beam cannons, almost without regard for how many are being used on it. A bomber with a power output of 7 also experiences the flying-fortress-effect - I can fly right through my new custom PD weapons and take no significant damage - and it seems to never run out of weapon juice.
Additionally, how do all of these numbers change when people begin allocating power to different places? The aforementioned bomber, at maximum shield output, can usually shrug off dedicated anti-bomber weaponry...which really is not supposed to be happening.
Does $Power Output act as a multiplier for all the values? Is this split three ways, between the weapon, shield, and energy routing system, so that the game engine knows how much stuff to allocate to which energy pools? Is this why typing in massive values renders ships invulnerable?
If I want 'ideal' mathematical regeneration, aka, the same stuff I get when I pull out a calculator and run the numbers for afterburner fuel and afterburner recharge rate...what value should I use? 3 immediately leaps to mind, since an even distribution would leave multiplier values of 1, 1, and 1 across the board - or, unchanged from table defaults.
