OK.....note having played the demo 'cept for the one time I was visiting a friend(I get the internet on the University comps, and can't dl stuff, and my comp in my room isn't on the net, blech), and not having really read the preview stuff, I don't quite get what the power cores do...I know they power shields...and do some sort of cheaper building or something....but I don't really get how that all works.....so can someone explain how the cores and shields work??

Shields can't work without them and some buildings only function at 1/4th of their normal rate without a power core in range of them.

so uh..would 4 power cores make a building make stuff 4 times faster?

not sure havn't tried that but i can tell you that one makes it go faster.

I'm not sure about that either...hehe..i hope its not so...then people would put like 8 power cores by a troop center and spit out troops instantaneously.

Without a powercore all buildings research and produce units at 25% their capacity. 2 power cores won't do anything, however I am curious to know if powercorse make droids work fasteR? I can't confirm this maybe it's just my opinion but it seems like they work slightly faster while "under the influence" or energy.

No, it won't make the buildings faster if you build 4 power cores, but let's say you have a shield generator powered by 4 power cores.... the attacker would have to destroy all four before the shueld went down :D!

Have you seen a power core being attacked yet? Those things go down fast...i dont think it will matter that they have four of em...they really are frail.

Just build lots of defenses around them.

just build 4 power cores and put walls around them... it works for me

Power cores sound similar to the Protoss pylons from SC except that in SC you can only build buildings close to a pylon and if building has no pylons to power it, it completely shuts down.