Question: Engines and firing order

[Grandpa Kim]

Narf, I gather you mean the supply component. Though I've never tried it, I'm sure mixing levels 1, 2 and 3 will not force them all to act as level 1's. The same would apply for cargo. Each component, no matter what the level will act as it should. Note: supplies for each engine type and level are the same-- 500 units.

[oleg]

Are you sure about engines ??? I thought all "ship movement" are add up and then devided by "engines per move". Otherwise how "efficient engines" work in Proportions

[Fyron]

Engines use 2 wholely separate abilities. Standard movement is added up and then divided by engines per move. Bonus movement is not. In stock, all engines have 1 standard movement. They just have increasing bonus movement. With bonuse movement, you get the worst bonus from all components on the ship that have the bonus movement ability. So, 5 QE and 1 Ion Engine give you a worst bonus movement of 1, resulting in only 6 movement for the ship, rather than 9 with all 6 QE.

Proportions/AIC (and other mods with QNP type propulsion models) primarily use engines with increasing amounts of standard movement and no bonus movement. Mixing true QNP engines does not result in any loss of movement points, unlike mixing stock engines.

[ January 10, 2004, 00:34: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ]

[PvK]

Exactly what Fryon said. True for unmodded, but not for standard engines in mods with QNP, such as Proportions, AIC, or P&N.

As for components with supply storage, their destruction simply reduces the supply storage capacity of the ship. Supplies are only destroyed when supply capacity is reduced below the current amount of supplies on the ship. I don't know how anyone would think this would be related to the discussions on engines, speed, or firing order.

PvK

[oleg]

Ah , thanks ! I see

Last time I played unmoded SEIV was more than a year ago. Get used so much to QNP mods that totaly forgot how it works in the stock game

[Grandpa Kim]

Quite right, Oleg, I was speaking of the stock game. I'm not sure about the supply amount for most mods, but it seems to me the efficiency derives from the amount of supplies used to move one sector. In stock, each engine, no matter type or level, uses 10 units of supply per engine to move one sector. I know in Devnull, that amount decreases as the engine level increases. It starts over when you discover a new type. Therefore you can go farther with Ion III than you can with Ion I. I don't know what would happen if you mixed different levels of Ion engines in this circumstance.

[Suicide Junkie]

All engines burn their "supply use" about of supplies when the ship moves a square.

So if your engines take damage, you'll use up less supplies to get where you're going.

In stock, if you have 4 Ion drives, you spend 10+10+10+10 = 40 supplies per sector.
If you have 1 quantum drive, you spend only 10 per sector, and still travel 4 per turn.
If you use 4 quantum drives, you get a speed of 7, and use 40 supplies per sector.

Just add up the supply use of all your surviving engines, and you'll spend that every square you move.