Duncan Idaho Posted February 14, 2017 Share Posted February 14, 2017 I have a nice little ship that I have been upgrading, but as I've added to it the acceleration and max speed have slowly dwindled. However try as I might I cannot seem to make it go any faster. Adding extra engines actually causes the thrust to go *down*. Why? I just cannot figure it out at all. Can someone please explain this to me before I tear my hair out? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Xsinx Posted February 14, 2017 Share Posted February 14, 2017 I have a nice little ship that I have been upgrading, but as I've added to it the acceleration and max speed have slowly dwindled. However try as I might I cannot seem to make it go any faster. Adding extra engines actually causes the thrust to go *down*. Why? I just cannot figure it out at all. Can someone please explain this to me before I tear my hair out? The build menu shows the current speed/truss according to your current number of engineers... In other words, unless you have a large amount of extra engineers, the numbers you see in build mode mean nothing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Duncan Idaho Posted February 14, 2017 Author Share Posted February 14, 2017 I have a nice little ship that I have been upgrading, but as I've added to it the acceleration and max speed have slowly dwindled. However try as I might I cannot seem to make it go any faster. Adding extra engines actually causes the thrust to go *down*. Why? I just cannot figure it out at all. Can someone please explain this to me before I tear my hair out? The build menu shows the current speed/truss according to your current number of engineers... In other words, unless you have a large amount of extra engineers, the numbers you see in build mode mean nothing. I read that too, and so added more engineers to my ship before building. With the new engine the amount of engineers is sufficient yet my speed is still lower. Before: http://pasteboard.co/y3mmoQEl7.jpg With engine selected and ready to place: http://pasteboard.co/y3mZiZ4l5.jpg With new engine: http://pasteboard.co/y3nGUkvRU.jpg So somehow despite adding a new engine roughly the same size as my other two, my thrust has *decreased* by 0.1 m/s^2! Edit: I suspect there is some weird diminishing returns on adding engines, coupled with the fact that having more engineers increases thrust. So somehow the amount of increased thrust on my original setup with 4 extra engineers is larger than the amount of thrust added by attaching an entirely new engine which then reduces the amount of 'extra' engineers to 1. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Xsinx Posted February 14, 2017 Share Posted February 14, 2017 Umm this is indeed weird. I read a couple of times that there were diminishing returns but I always assumed they were from people who misunderstood the crew issue vs build menu, but you provide convincing evidence they were right. Then again the current max speed you have is pretty good... and I suspect the issue might have to do with the fact it's an iron ship. Iron is one of the heaviest metals in the game. Also experiment with length vs volume, I think engines are volume based but there is a minimum size for them to be effective. Perhaps your engine is just too small to give anything? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Duncan Idaho Posted February 14, 2017 Author Share Posted February 14, 2017 Actually it's entirely titanium apart from the engine I added (which was for testing only). I think I have made sense of it. The force from engines is directly proportional to their volume in the game. As they most likely have constant density we can write F = C m_E / d where m_E is the engine mass, d is the density, F is the force and C is some constant of proportionality. As F = m_S a where m_S is the total mass of the ship and 'a' the acceleration, a = C m_E / (d m_S ) So in the limit that the entirety of the mass of the ship is dominated by engine we have m_E ~ m_S and so the acceleration a goes to a constant C/d. In this limit the only way to make the ship faster is to decrease the density by using a higher-tier material for the engine. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Larky2k Posted February 16, 2017 Share Posted February 16, 2017 or the fact you built an Engine out of 1 of the heaviest materials in game. Bild it with the Titanium and it will go up. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ohm is Futile Posted February 17, 2017 Share Posted February 17, 2017 or the fact you built an Engine out of 1 of the heaviest materials in game. Bild it with the Titanium and it will go up. I feel you're missing the core of the issue being that the stats screen does not show the engine's potential, only what it will do right now, with your current crew, which is an issue. Also, yeah, heavier material, I get your point, but the greater the percentage of your ship is dedicated to engines, the faster it should go, regardless of material. Sure iron is heavier and less efficient, but if I stick an engine to a block, and then I try on a bigger engine without changing anything else, anyone would expect that to go faster and, currently, the info panel does not reflect that since it accounts for an increased need for engineers, which is misleading. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GrimJahk Posted February 17, 2017 Share Posted February 17, 2017 I follow you, and agree. I think that is also what screws up my build screen with thrusters... Build screen should show what speed is possible... ...just as it shows your max HP, it doesn't show 0HP because you don't have a mechanic on board ...or the guns showing 0 DPS because you are lacking gunners... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DivineEvil Posted February 17, 2017 Share Posted February 17, 2017 Duncan Idaho The problem you have is that you have too much armor on your ship. This means, that the ship has a relatively high mass relative to volume. Engines has power dependent on their volume, but their power is diminished by mass. That means, that larger volume of the ship is needed to be devoted to Engines in order to combat the weight. The engine you're adding doesn't have enough power to influence the inertia, so its additional mass has a little bit higher influence that its volume. Long story short, you need to thin your armor coverage down. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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