Elite Dangerous: Power Management

System [SYS]

Most ship utility systems are here, but biggest impact this makes on shields. More pips to SYS will bring back online your shields much faster if they fail (enemy fire or silent run) also your shields will be able to take much more damage before failing, i.e., 2-3-4 pips will allow you to take 18-23-37 hits before shields will fail (numbers are only as a guide).

Engines[ENG]

This is straight forward – more pips to engines means ship will have higher maximum speed and blue "sweet spot" maneuvering zone also will be at higher speed with each pip (higher top speed means higher middle speed and if best speed for maneuvering is in the middle it will be higher).

The boost is not affected by pip amount to engines and is capped to 500m/s.

Also boost uses ENG capacitor bars (different ships use different amount per boost – some ships 4-5 bars per boost while other 6-7), and more pips to ENG will recharge capacitor faster thus allowing to Boost again sooner.

Weapons[WEP]

Increase weapon cooling capacity and not the damage the weapon does. With 0 pips you will not be able to shoot at all when guns will overheat.

Note: projectile weapons like cannons and multi-cannons require at least 0,5-1 (i would even say if you shoot them a lot then even 1-2 pips are needed) pip to WEP too from standard beta 1 or they will overheat and stop working.

8 pips

Incidentally, when you allocate pips at the moment, it draws equally from the two remaining systems. There are actually 8 pips, but we display 4 blocks that can be full bright (2 pips) and half bright (1 pip). The allocation also favours taking half bright blocks rather than splitting full bright blocks when only 1 pip needs to be reallocated (in the case where a system already has 7 pips).