Energizing

Let’s start with the basics of energy in Ares:

• The base amount of energy for most cruisers is 1000 energy.
• All ships have 5× their base energy level in battery.
• A destroyed ship will release one energy pod per 500 energy it has.
• A picked-up energy pod will provide 150 energy to its recipient.

Now, when a ship picks up energy, the recipient’s energy meter is first replenished. If that fills up, the ship’s battery is next. If that fills up too, where does the surplus go? It turns out that it will go to the owner’s cash reserves.

Unfortunately, every tick of money is equivalent to 51200 energy, or about 342 energy pulses, so you’re not likely to benefit from picking the spillover (it seems that there may have been a unit mismatch; this is Ares’s representation of “200.000” and isn’t really intended to mean 51200).

A ship’s battery is also replenished when leaving warp; all of the energy spent warping flows back into the battery. In theory, a ship could burn all of its energy repeatedly entering and leaving warp, which would resupply almost 4× the ship’s base energy as money. For a cruiser, that would be 4000 money, or about 1.5% of its purchase cost.

For obvious reasons, this is not recommended.