That's not true. All 5 ticks get consumed and supplied every time. It's just that the server/client at intervals removes a few ticks (in both consumption and supplied). This is probably a client <-> server sync issue.

Watch the power storage closely of the item you're testing on, you'll see it climb with 5 ticks per burst but at some point you also see it decline a portion all in 1 go.
Can you confirm this?

I've retested. Used a button to activate the power supply beam or just an activation block. With an undocked power core, Each test was for one activation. the power supply beam should transfer 360k power per tick consumes 450k. total of 5 ticks transferred should be 5 x 360k should be 1,800,000 power. The power storage block is always getting 1,440,000 power per activation. I'm using a cloaking and radar jamming module to drain power out of the power storage block. After repeated testing I'm still getting 1,440,000 power per activation not 1,800,000 power. I'm in single player. I haven't yet gotten a single instance of all 5 ticks of power yet with logic. While the power core isn't docked.

When I retested with the power core docked it got even weirder. Sometimes the first out of 5 ticks gave me half a tick power roughly and I ended up on 1.6mil. sometimes I got all 5 and rarely I got 3 ticks. In some cases I could see the first tick go in and then be removed. One test the first activation got 1.8mil power the next ended up with 2.5 total so I only got 700k from the second activation.

This is all in single player mode. If this is considered normal then okay this isn't a bug. Not sure what I can do to be sure of what my power supply cores are doing though. For purposes of running things I'm going to have to assume that's its only doing 4 since that's what seems to be happening most of the time.

-Feedback-

Hm, was this a power supply beam with or without support? The support version has issues with logic where 1 out of 5 ticks don't seem to apply.

http://phab.starma.de/T46

If this isn't the case, then it's probably the issue I talked about.

No slave or support modules was attached to the power transfer beam.

Alright, going to investigate it a bit more and then change this task a bit.

Tested in SP a while ago:
This appears to be some synch issue.
I see all 5 ticks apply their power drain + supply which is completely normal. However...After a 2 or 3 bursts, I see the power storage of my target jumping back to a previous state. The same goes for my power consumption, it jumps back up from back when I had more power.
As far as I can see, this keeps happening consistently every X bursts, the netto result at the end will always be less than 5 ticks per burst because of that. It seems to be around 4 ticks per burst although that really depends.
It just looks like the server checks the power supplied/consumed, disagrees about it what the client tells you and then corrects that. The client however was correct, the server isn't so that's causing this weird loss of ticks.
PS: Most likely this is affecting shield damage too

I can't reproduce my old findings anymore...It may have been fixed but it could also be another issue influencing the results. (T46)

I noticed yesterday, I have two beams that alternate with 2.5 second timers, and the beams seem to shut off prematurely for like half a second before the full 2.5 seconds has passed. There's a noticeable delay between the beams activating, it should be instant. I can upload the docked reactor if you want to see for yourself.

Seeing power transfer beams were mostly used for internal docked power modules that required high efficiency and that isn't required anymore this ticket can probably be closed. While the issue is annoying its not really important when remotely powering another entity which was probably the reason for the power supply beam in the first place.