Engine efficiency - what EXACTLY does it do?

[Wilhelm]

basically title.

please no answers like 'it make ship go brrrr' or 'obviously how efficient the engine is!'
;D

[Nitemares]

it affects the speed characteristics of your ship.

A low efficiency means that your ship will take longer to get up to speed, adjust speed, and (if your efficiency is really bad!) may not be able to reach the designed top speed of the vessel.

A High efficiency will INCREASE and acceleration and deceleration of the ship (nice for dodging torpedoes, or incoming fire).

[Wilhelm]

Originally posted by Nitemares:

it affects the speed characteristics of your ship.

A low efficiency means that your ship will take longer to get up to speed, adjust speed, and (if your efficiency is really bad!) may not be able to reach the designed top speed of the vessel.

A High efficiency will INCREASE and acceleration and deceleration of the ship (nice for dodging torpedoes, or incoming fire).

thank you. do you have some numbers on that?
at which efficiency % top speed is affected?
how much de/acceleration % gets substracted when?

i searched everywhere for the formula

[chiyen]

Originally posted by Wüstenfuchs:

thank you. do you have some numbers on that?
at which efficiency % top speed is affected?
how much de/acceleration % gets substracted when?

It's on the Ship Design menu, which adjusts real-time.

The first thing you should look at is "acceleration".

Top speed is another parameter, which mostly affects "range", other than weight and cost.

[Rear]

Hover over each of the numbers on the right-hand side of the ship design screen and you can read exactly what they modify on your ships.

A lot of the stats in this game scale with penalties below ~67 and buffs above ~67.

Engine efficiency affects a combination of old stats and newer stats, so it's kind of mixed up:

Acceleration is -88% at 0, +0% at about 63.5%, +50% at 100%, then +188% at 300%
Torque at High RPM is -90% at 0, +0% at about 47.4%, +100% at 100%, then +290% at 300%
Operational Range is -38% at 0, +0% at about 65.3%, +20% at 100%, then +78% at 300%
Cruising Speed is -5% at 0, +0% at about 66.5%, +2.5% at 100%, then +10% at 300%

Of those, operational range is probably the most important in campaigns. I always try to have at least 65% engine efficiency on every design.

[lurker-beta-version]

Originally posted by Rear:

Of those, operational range is probably the most important in campaigns. I always try to have at least 65% engine efficiency on every design.

This is not always optimal. For example, I have a cruiser with a diesel engine with a range of 20k. And the engine efficiency is 26%. Well, why do I need more? Thanks to the diesel engine, it accelerates quite vigorously. The range is sufficient. And the second pipe will shift the center of mass. Or worse, on some hulls it will reduce the available turret space.
And yes, the additional amount of fuel weighs less than the 2nd pipe, with the same range. There is also no smoke penalty and a smaller silhouette of the ship.

[Wilhelm]

Originally posted by Rear:

Hover over each of the numbers on the right-hand side of the ship design screen and you can read exactly what they modify on your ships.

A lot of the stats in this game scale with penalties below ~67 and buffs above ~67.

Engine efficiency affects a combination of old stats and newer stats, so it's kind of mixed up:

Acceleration is -88% at 0, +0% at about 63.5%, +50% at 100%, then +188% at 300%
Torque at High RPM is -90% at 0, +0% at about 47.4%, +100% at 100%, then +290% at 300%
Operational Range is -38% at 0, +0% at about 65.3%, +20% at 100%, then +78% at 300%
Cruising Speed is -5% at 0, +0% at about 66.5%, +2.5% at 100%, then +10% at 300%

Of those, operational range is probably the most important in campaigns. I always try to have at least 65% engine efficiency on every design.

Originally posted by lurker-beta-version:

Originally posted by Rear:

Of those, operational range is probably the most important in campaigns. I always try to have at least 65% engine efficiency on every design.

This is not always optimal. For example, I have a cruiser with a diesel engine with a range of 20k. And the engine efficiency is 26%. Well, why do I need more? Thanks to the diesel engine, it accelerates quite vigorously. The range is sufficient. And the second pipe will shift the center of mass. Or worse, on some hulls it will reduce the available turret space.
And yes, the additional amount of fuel weighs less than the 2nd pipe, with the same range. There is also no smoke penalty and a smaller silhouette of the ship.

thank you both. thats the kind of information i was looking for!

[Reaper King]

As the others said engine efficiency can be quite important. For most dds its sadly something you can't really optimize. Sure, you could have 100 percent engine efficiency but it will leave your dd with no room for any armaments. Therefore you might have to accept something worse. For capital ships ? If you can afford it you should maximize your engine efficiency. Essentially the metric is measuring how efficiently your engines are turning burned fuel into power for your ship. The higher the efficiency the better the range, the better the speed, and the more powerful engine output you get. If you want fast ships with high range it's a cruicial metric. If you don't care about that combo then it doesnt matter so much.

[Timrath]

Does efficiency above 100% do anything?

[chiyen]

Originally posted by Timrath:

Does efficiency above 100% do anything?

Someone explained that above. Usually it's not worthy to do 300% efficiency. It's in diminishing return.

[Netscape1964]

Originally posted by lurker-beta-version:

Originally posted by Rear:

Of those, operational range is probably the most important in campaigns. I always try to have at least 65% engine efficiency on every design.

This is not always optimal. For example, I have a cruiser with a diesel engine with a range of 20k. And the engine efficiency is 26%. Well, why do I need more? Thanks to the diesel engine, it accelerates quite vigorously. The range is sufficient. And the second pipe will shift the center of mass. Or worse, on some hulls it will reduce the available turret space.
And yes, the additional amount of fuel weighs less than the 2nd pipe, with the same range. There is also no smoke penalty and a smaller silhouette of the ship.

how the hell did you manage such bad efficiency with diesel? by the time i have those i'm usually at 100%+ with teh smallest funnel on the small hulls. and even on the biggest battleships i get like 30% with teh smallest funnel.

[Flash]

Originally posted by Timrath:

Does efficiency above 100% do anything?

100% puts ur engine at its optimum performance.

An Engine's top speed (even at lower efficiency) will almost always be very close to optimum top speed (at 100% efficiency) (Disregarding ThermoDynamics and other sciences that the game does not take into account for the purpose of simplicity).. The major stats u need to be focused on is that higher efficiency upto 100 will get u more acceleration per second and help u attain top speeds quicker. The problem is more noticeable on larger ships or ships with the quick turning rudders since u lose speed much faster or turn at a much slower speed and so if ur in close combat or say dodging torpedoes u want to turn quickly and run away as quick as possible after turning.

Anymore than 100% efficiency and u get slowly dimnishing returns (sort of like overclocking ur CPU.. gets faster, needs more voltage and gets hotter, lowers lifespan etc.)

(Edited) Game makes the player choose the ideal speed they want so it auto calculates new Engine HP etc. on its own. Hence speed isnt considered by player here. Just wanted to inject this info here

[hurepoix]

I m not sure it affect speed in itself.
Acceleration for sure.
Cruise speed for sure (that affect journey speed too)
Operational range for sure. For what I experienced after 200 % there is about no gain.

Counter part is the number of funels needed, and smoke interference it causes. Smoke interference can be considerable at early era, but become anecdotic in late game, due to refined fuel and better towers.

[redhongkong]

mainly acceleration . how fast it picks up speed again when going down to 0 (dodgeing torp etc)

[Chris]

My ships usually have like 160-190% efficiency because im insanely good at optimizing my ships. So they tend to get going or change speeds really fast and thats desirable because I take a shotgun approach with my battle cruisers and put them in the middle of the enemy fleet point blank and then dump into them and end up one shotting everything because 18 inch guns tend to do that lol.

[Flash]

Originally posted by Chris:

My ships usually have like 160-190% efficiency because im insanely good at optimizing my ships. So they tend to get going or change speeds really fast and thats desirable because I take a shotgun approach with my battle cruisers and put them in the middle of the enemy fleet point blank and then dump into them and end up one shotting everything because 18 inch guns tend to do that lol.

About 140% should be good to give more speed especially when u take a shot or 2 causing engine problems. This game likes to take on facts for realism but foregoes a lot of logic when it comes to speed. There should be higher chance for fires and engine damage\destruction when efficiency above 100% and also when ships move at flank speed for too long