Deck Conn Power Planner

Open this page beside Deck Conn. It is a planner, not a live overlay. You write a doctrine, fund floors, allow one spike, and you do not renegotiate all seven buses because a smear looked rude. Pair it with Ship Systems and the systems tier list.

Step 0 — name the doctrine

Circle one before you undock:

• Quiet intercept — default for investigate orders. See tactics.
• Loud interceptor — known hostile or already under fire.
• Escort home — prize in tow, reactor scare, or fuel short.

If you cannot circle one, you are not ready for a campaign patrol. Run a standalone scenario from Combat instead.

Step 1 — write floors you will not steal

Floors are the amps that stay even when you are greedy.

Bus	Quiet floor	Loud floor	Escort floor	Notes
Sensors (passive)	High	Medium	Medium	Do not go blind.
Sensors (active)	Off until paid	On	Off	Loud is a decision.
Propulsion	Medium	Medium	High	Range is survival.
Weapons	Low ready	High	Low deterrent	Spike, do not live here.
Defenses	Medium	Medium-high	High	Campaign insurance.
Auxiliary	On	On	On	Named for a reason.
Batteries	Charging	Spend-and-recharge	Charging	Empty batteries are a lie.
Fuel	Reserve for home	Reserve for home	Reserve plus prize	Winning the fight is not the patrol.

Copy the table into a notebook. Replace “high/medium/low” with the actual ticks your build uses once you have seen the terminals. This wiki will not invent a fake 0–100 scale.

Step 2 — allow one spike

A spike is a single turn where batteries plus reactor feed one bus above its floor:

• Active ping to identify weapons and drive before a capture.
• Weapons pulse into propulsion or guns, then back.
• Propulsion burn to change range, then back.

Forbidden: two spikes in the same turn. That is how the plot dies. If controls make it easy to mis-assign, slow down. The game is turn-based.

Step 3 — patrol checklist

Before undock:

1. Reactor started, departure checklist complete (Getting Started).
2. Doctrine circled.
3. Floors funded.
4. HQ order read twice.
5. Capture and destroy commands located so a misclick cannot rewrite the story.

After a contact:

1. Did the spike return to floor?
2. Can you still see?
3. Can you still move?
4. Can you still go home?
5. Did the crew station that executed the spike deserve a note, not necessarily a promotion yet?

After the patrol:

1. Change one line of the table, not seven.
2. Check Updates only if the build changed, not because you feel unlucky.
3. If a prize is aboard, switch the doctrine to escort before the next smear.

Step 4 — failure log

Write the bus that ran out first. That bus is your next floor. If weapons ran out, you may have been in the wrong doctrine, not the wrong gun — reread Combat. If sensors ran out, you pinged as a lifestyle. If fuel ran out, the campaign already told you this would happen.

What this planner is not

It is not a claim that Deck Conn exposes these exact labels in a spreadsheet. It is a mapping onto the launch feature list. If a patch adds a bus, add a row. If a patch publishes numbers, replace high/medium/low. Until then, command with floors and one spike.

Return to the Tools Hub for requirements, or to the Guides Hub when you need prose instead of a table.