So what are the better drives now?

[chrisddickey]

So now that people have more experience with the "open / closed" system drives, which are best? All the drive guides I have seen predate that modification.
The Daedelus Torch used to be very highly thought of, but it now needs an absolutely huge radiator that makes it less appealing, especially for otherwise small ships.

What drives would people rate as particularly good or bad for different types of ships (small, medium, large)?

Has anybody written an updated drive guide with that system in place?

[RipoffPingu]

Originally posted by olstar18:

No you didn't. I pointed out that there are a lot of issues with the ui and you had a rant that ignored the issues that you know full well it does have with how information is presented to you. Is there a way to look at two drives at once for example.

eh, the UI is pretty fine as is - sure, its lacking a lot of QoL features, but it does the job fine - i already addressed some sort of feature to directly compare drives in another comment i made, and i recognise many people would want something like that

[olstar18]

Originally posted by RipoffPingu:

Originally posted by olstar18:

No you didn't. I pointed out that there are a lot of issues with the ui and you had a rant that ignored the issues that you know full well it does have with how information is presented to you. Is there a way to look at two drives at once for example.

eh, the UI is pretty fine as is - sure, its lacking a lot of QoL features, but it does the job fine - i already addressed some sort of feature to directly compare drives in another comment i made, and i recognise many people would want something like that

Ok so your just trolling.

[AgaresOaks]

Originally posted by gimmethegepgun:

It doesn't tell you how much open-cycle reduces radiator mass by

The problem is it CAN'T tell you this. Radiator mass is function of what radiators you're using, the efficiency of your reactor, and the total output of your reactor. Your drive selection only controls the latter.

As for the problems everyone's having, it mainly boils down to most people not having any intuition whatsoever for what levels of thrust actually map to.

To give a mass of 1 kg an acceleration of 1g, you need to apply ~10N to it. A very lean ship is ~1000 tons (~1 million kg), so will require ~10M Newtons of thrust per kiloton per g of acceleration desired. (ignoring spikers) Ships below 0.5g effectively can only do very minor combat maneuvers.

As for delta V, if you keep the same mass, it's literally linear. If you want to hold the amount of delta V constant but decrease propellant mass it's more complicated. However, for low values, you can approximate it as linear-ish. 10% of dry mass as propellant will give around 10% of your exhaust velocity as the final delta V. 50% of dry mass as propellant (ie. 1/3 total mass) is about 40% of exhaust velocity. 100% of dry mass as propellant (50% of total mass) is around 70% of exhaust velocity. If you want the exact formula, it's just the rocket equation. The tooltip provides an ok breakdown of what each amount of delta V means in practice. Some other helpful late game numbers are ~400-600 kps for a fast round trip to the asteroid belt and ~1000kps for a one-way trip to the Kuiper belt.

Originally posted by chrisddickey:

So now that people have more experience with the "open / closed" system drives, which are best? All the drive guides I have seen predate that modification.

Nothing much has changed other than the molten fission drives being now significantly better than solid core fission drives and the two open cycle gas fission terawatt drives getting a small buff since they're more fuel efficient since there's less radiator mass. (they were already acceleration capped) A bunch of solid fission drives got a buff... but advanced pulsar is still a better drive.

Also, technically speaking, if you're on antimatter drives and don't need the delta-V (ex. for defence ships), then the second plasma drive generates more thrust than the third one since it's open cycle. But on a practical level, you want to be deploying such ships on offence.

It should be noted that otherwise, the drives haven't changed. There were already drives in game which were open-cycle just not labelled that way. Most were (and remain) closed cycle.

[chrisddickey]

Thanks.
I do think that the best way to present the ship components for comparison would be to have a sandbox off the main menu (like the skirmish mode), where every component in the game is researched, and one can just swap different components in and out of a design and see how it affects the ship.
I mean that is how I design anyway, but as it is you have to spend a few hundred thousand research points to play with a drive. Being able to play with the designer outside of gameplay would allow you to experiment much more easily.

[gimmethegepgun]

Originally posted by AgaresOaks:

Originally posted by gimmethegepgun:

It doesn't tell you how much open-cycle reduces radiator mass by

The problem is it CAN'T tell you this. Radiator mass is function of what radiators you're using, the efficiency of your reactor, and the total output of your reactor. Your drive selection only controls the latter.

It should be made more clear that literally all of the waste heat generated for the drive is expelled and thus doesn't need radiators (though it should actually fix this part first, because there's no way ALL of it is getting expelled, and then after fixing that part it should tell you what percentage of the drive's waste heat is expelled)

[RipoffPingu]

Originally posted by olstar18:

Ok so your just trolling.

no? the UI does the job fine in my experience

[olstar18]

Originally posted by RipoffPingu:

Originally posted by olstar18:

Ok so your just trolling.

no? the UI does the job fine in my experience

That or you are ignoring the issues people are bringing up.

[RipoffPingu]

Originally posted by olstar18:

Originally posted by RipoffPingu:

no? the UI does the job fine in my experience

That or you are ignoring the issues people are bringing up.

...what issues am i ignoring? i recognise better UI would be better for most people, i'm just saying that in my experience the UI is perfectly fine

[olstar18]

Originally posted by RipoffPingu:

Originally posted by olstar18:

That or you are ignoring the issues people are bringing up.

...what issues am i ignoring? i recognise better UI would be better for most people, i'm just saying that in my experience the UI is perfectly fine

The issues mentioned in my first post. The one you responded to with a rant.

[Pawleus]

Originally posted by chrisddickey:

What drives would people rate as particularly good or bad for different types of ships (small, medium, large)?

For small early ships (Escorts are the best) I would recommend:

1. Pulsar - a stopgap to Advanced Pulsar, missile Escorts with over 2G combat acceleration are possible at the cost of very low armor and deltaV

2. Advanced Pulsar - can be unlocked with 100% probability, 3-4G missile Escorts, very efficient even with early tech (2-4 tanks) at the cost of low armor and deltaV but can be refitted with later tech and even antimatter (for Antimatter Spiker) to have good armor and deltaV even over 20km/s. Biggest problem in later game is vulnerability to plasma as the drive is too weak to have good acceleration, spiker, hydrogen slush and heat sinks at the same time (in Escort there is not enough space and larger ships are too heavy) and armor alone is often not enough (but Escorts are cheap and can be replaced fast).

3. Fission Spinner - open cycle so even with early radiators it's great. With just 3 tanks, 4G missile Escorts can have 15km/s deltaV while decently armored and with early light heat sink (without it over 20km/s deltaV). Extremely cheap and efficient designs can be created with this drive even despite worse EV than in Advanced Pulsar. No need for any spiker in case of Escorts.

4. Pegasus - can be refitted from Fission Spinner up to the ultimate missile Escort for defensive purposes with 4G, over 40km/s deltaV, Lithium Heat Sink, 10-2-50 Adamantine Armor (even in 0.3.112 it can reliably win 1vs1 against alien 4G Corvettes, with Lanceheads 2vs1 against anything up to alien plasma Frigates, almost always without any losses, and sometimes 2vs1 is enough even against alien Dreadnoughts, Assault Carriers and alien Battlestations on stations but 3vs1 is reliable)

Escorts with these drives don't need any PD but early designs can rely on anti-missile function of Vipers when in need - very useful when outmaneuvering alien torpedoes is not an option.

[Adanu]

Originally posted by RipoffPingu:

Originally posted by olstar18:

Yes it gives you a great deal of information but not in a way that is easy to understand. The ui needs a few usability passes.

...it just gives you the raw numbers? it doesn't hide any value from you - yes, its not exactly visualized like on a graph, but thats arguably a good thing because that means the game can present ALL relevant information instead of a LIMITED amount of information that a graph can portray

its not hard to understand at all, it just takes more time to understand - sounds the same, yes, but it is different

I get where you're coming from, but look at it from this perspective.

I don't want to have to look up actual rocket science to understand what my engines in this game are doing. Relative comparisons would be a godsend that I wish they'd give.

[POWER WITHIN USER]

Originally posted by Adanu:

I get where you're coming from, but look at it from this perspective.

I don't want to have to look up actual rocket science to understand what my engines in this game are doing. Relative comparisons would be a godsend that I wish they'd give.

Yeah but he saw all the values once, memorized them and now he can not only tell you the difference between every engine, he can also calculate their performance in any given scenario.

If the effort he invested into becoming a literal Terra Invicta human calculator was instead spent on understanding that other players are built different and would want the UI to let them highlight two things at the same time as to compare them -instead of selecting engine/missile/gun #1 then hovering the cursor over #2 or worse, relying on 3rd party software- he wouldn't type posts like "the UI is fine tho?".

[RipoffPingu]

Originally posted by POWER WITHIN USER:

Originally posted by Adanu:

I get where you're coming from, but look at it from this perspective.

I don't want to have to look up actual rocket science to understand what my engines in this game are doing. Relative comparisons would be a godsend that I wish they'd give.

Yeah but he saw all the values once, memorized them and now he can not only tell you the difference between every engine, he can also calculate their performance in any given scenario.

If the effort he invested into becoming a literal Terra Invicta human calculator was instead spent on understanding that other players are built different and would want the UI to let them highlight two things at the same time as to compare them -instead of selecting engine/missile/gun #1 then hovering the cursor over #2 or worse, relying on 3rd party software- he wouldn't type posts like "the UI is fine tho?".

except i haven't memorized values at all for the drives, and still constantly check the differences between e.g daedelus and zeta boron. i say the UI is fine to me personally because i don't mind having to switch between the two of them constantly, but i also recognise that many people are annoyed they would have to do this and would rather have some tool to directly compare two drives and such.

also, you really, really don't have to look very much into "actual rocket science" to understand the stats this game gives to you - the most complex stat you would need knowledge of is maybe delta V and exhaust velocity, but even then the game gives you a very handy rating in brackets right next to these values, so you don't even need to research these more complex values (or, if you do, the research is minimal) to understand what a drive does.

[olstar18]

Originally posted by RipoffPingu:

Originally posted by POWER WITHIN USER:

Yeah but he saw all the values once, memorized them and now he can not only tell you the difference between every engine, he can also calculate their performance in any given scenario.

If the effort he invested into becoming a literal Terra Invicta human calculator was instead spent on understanding that other players are built different and would want the UI to let them highlight two things at the same time as to compare them -instead of selecting engine/missile/gun #1 then hovering the cursor over #2 or worse, relying on 3rd party software- he wouldn't type posts like "the UI is fine tho?".

except i haven't memorized values at all for the drives, and still constantly check the differences between e.g daedelus and zeta boron. i say the UI is fine to me personally because i don't mind having to switch between the two of them constantly, but i also recognise that many people are annoyed they would have to do this and would rather have some tool to directly compare two drives and such.

also, you really, really don't have to look very much into "actual rocket science" to understand the stats this game gives to you - the most complex stat you would need knowledge of is maybe delta V and exhaust velocity, but even then the game gives you a very handy rating in brackets right next to these values, so you don't even need to research these more complex values (or, if you do, the research is minimal) to understand what a drive does.

To understand what a drive does not the stats of 50 different possible drives that you can research.

[RipoffPingu]

Originally posted by olstar18:

Originally posted by RipoffPingu:

except i haven't memorized values at all for the drives, and still constantly check the differences between e.g daedelus and zeta boron. i say the UI is fine to me personally because i don't mind having to switch between the two of them constantly, but i also recognise that many people are annoyed they would have to do this and would rather have some tool to directly compare two drives and such.

also, you really, really don't have to look very much into "actual rocket science" to understand the stats this game gives to you - the most complex stat you would need knowledge of is maybe delta V and exhaust velocity, but even then the game gives you a very handy rating in brackets right next to these values, so you don't even need to research these more complex values (or, if you do, the research is minimal) to understand what a drive does.

To understand what a drive does not the stats of 50 different possible drives that you can research.

um. i dont see how thats relevant, you can just get the stats of those drives you want and compare stats, it doesn't take anything more complicated than understanding what a drive does - just more time to compare the stats.