Engine

An engine is ship component that allow interplanetary travel. Without an engine your ship will be unable to move unless towed. The engine needs fuel to function.

Description

An engine is an absolute necessity for any ship that wishes to travel faster than 1km/s. The top speed of a ship is given by the equation:

  Power / Size * 1000 km/s

Any number of engines can be mounted on a ship, although only one variety of engine may be mounted per ship.

Usage

Speed is one of the most important aspects of a ship. Superior speed means higher capacity per time for cargo ships, and a battle fleet with higher speed has a significant advantage, able to dictate the range of the engagement, intercept the other force, or disengage a hostile force.

All engines use fuel to operate, limiting cruising range, with high powered engines consuming exponentially more fuel than the default value. Range and speed are generally increased at each other's expense, or by building a significantly larger and more resource-hungry ship.

Engines create a thermal signature, one that can be detected by Thermal Sensors, so having high-powered or numerous engines on a spy ship is not advisable. By dropping a ships speed or by designing engines with Thermal Reduction, a ship's thermal signature can be reduced.

Components

Engine Technology

Engine Technology increases power output per engine HS.

Technology	Conventional	Nuclear Thermal	Nuclear Pulse	Ion	Magneto-Plasma	Internal Confinement Fusion	Magnetic Confinement Fusion	Inertial Confinement Fusion	Solid-core Anti-matter	Gas-core Anti-matter	Plasma-core Anti-matter	Beam Core Anti-matter	Photonic
Power per HS	0.2	5	8	12	16	20	25	32	40	50	60	80	100
RP cost	-	2,500	5,000	10,000	20,000	40,000	80,000	150,000	300,000	600,000	1,250,000	2,500,000	5,000,000

Power/Efficiency

The Power Modifier of an engine increases or decreases power output, in exchange for a decrease or increase in fuel efficiency measured in units of liters of fuel per Engine Power Hours, or EPH. Through research, multipliers from 0.1 to 3 in intervals of 0.05 are available.

Modifier	0.1	0.15	0.2	0.25	0.3	0.4	0.5	1	1.25	1.5	1.75	2	2.5	3
Fuel per EPH	0.00	0.01	0.02	0.03	0.05	0.1	0.18	1	1.75	2.76	4.05	5.66	9.88	15.59
RP cost	30,000	15,000	8,000	4,000	2,000	1,000	-	-	1,000	2,000	4,000	8,000	15,000	30,000

Fuel Consumption

The fuel consumed by an engine to produce one Engine Power Hour. This has no effect on engine cost.

Modifier	1	0.9	0.8	0.7	0.6	0.5	0.4	0.3	0.25	0.2	0.16	0.125	0.1
RP cost	-	1,000	2,000	4,000	8,000	15,000	30,000	60,000	120,000	250,000	500,000	1,000,000	2,000,000

Thermal Reduction

Reduces the thermal signature of the engine. This adds no weight, but increases the cost to research and build the engine.

Signature (%)	100	75	50	35	25	16	12	8	6	4	3	2	1
RP cost	-	1,500	3,000	6,000	12,000	25,000	50,000	100,000	200,000	400,000	750,000	1,500,000	2,500,000

Engine Size

Engine Size ranges between 1-50 HS. Fuel consumption is reduced by 1% per HS. Larger engines are therefore more efficient at the cost of being less flexible during ship design, less redundant during combat and more expensive to maintain per-unit.

An engine that is at least 25 HS and has a Power Modifier of x0.5 or less is considered a Commercial Engine, all other variants are Military.