Basic play for the Engineering station

Only put one dot on 'tactical'. In combat leave one dot on 'warp' - any more is a waste any less is reckless.

Torpedoes are scarce so make every one count by coordinating closely with weapons to maximise the energy in them at the moment they are fired and quickly switch power (usually back to beam) once fired.

Only take a system offline if you are going to pay very close attention to the main viewscreen and the other players - you may not need any rear shields right now but it only takes a second for the enemy to be hitting your rear so either make damn sure you're on it or LEAVE THE REAR SHIELD ALONE

don't underestimate the importance of 'maneuver'

If the captain orders the WEAP to hold fire on the torpedoes, take power away from the torpedo system and put it into beams. (Clear this procedure with the captain first, so as to avoid problems.) Depending on the situation, you could instead put the energy into Maneuver, Shields, etc.

When I'm captain, I prefer to have one "tick" of energy just floating free if possible, just to be able to quickly boost some needed system without drawing that power from somewhere else.

Also, it will probably fall to ENG to keep an eye on the ship's energy levels, so don't be shy about reporting them to the captain.

What benefit do the varying levels of energy have on the various systems?

For weapons, more power means more damage.
For shields, more power means you can take more hits to the shields before they go down.
For impulse and warp, more power means more sheer speed.
For maneuver, more power means faster turning.

I'm actually not sure what more power in Tactical does, but I know that no power in tactical means that you lose sensors.

Something we only learned tonight (finally) is that the left column of dots stands for Damage Control, and is used to repair damaged systems faster. The column on the right (purple dots) is for actual ship power usage in battle, etc.

We still don't know what more power to Tactical does either..

As far as we know, more power to Tactical does nothing. At least, I've never heard of it affecting anything. I'm sure Thom has a plan for it, though.

Power to shields seems to increase both shield resistance (?) and shield regeneration rate.
Power to torpedoes speeds up reload time.
Power to beams increases damage.

Actually, that's incorrect on a couple of counts.

Power to shields only affects recharge rate, and power to beams only affects fire rate, not beam damage.

Eh? Power to shields seems to affect shield resistance, although I haven't done any extreme tests, enemy opening volleys (the first few seconds) seem to deal far less damage at 4 shields than at 1 shields. This might be circumstantial, but it seemed like the damage dealt was much less than shield regeneration should have been over the same period.

I will double check, but I'm pretty sure that I've checked it before and found it to be the case.

I DID write code to make strengthened shields take less damage.

// adjust damage for "strengthened shields"
float d = (float)systemArray[SYSTEM_FRNT_SHIELD+shieldIndex].energy-NOMINAL_SYSTEM_ENERGY;
damage /= 1+d*0.2f;

However, strengthening beams does NOT make them do more damage per beam; it just decreases their cycle time.

Yeah, when shields got buffed, shield resistance... yeah. I didn't know that beam cycle time was increased only, though. That kind of diminishes the value of beams, at least... until Thom adds critical hits! /shameless plug

Ah, interesting. Well, that's good to know.