Good engines? (in 0.4.38+)

[Csupasz Pisztoly]

Most engine related topics are based on the older version of the game, since then things got changed. Like the nerfed pulsar drive.

I'm in the early game (2028, with a bunch of ships and many habs on Mars and Luna). So far I found three engines that is usefull. There is some of my Monitor-class ship examples:

1,
Nova liquid rocket x6 with fuel cell, 33 propellant tanks, some armour in the front.
It got 876mg cruise, 876mg combat acceleration and dV of 5.2kps. It will not get anywhere far, but it is able to catch and kill other ships in orbit.

2,
Lars drive x6 with molten core fission reactor, 20 propellant tanks, some armour in the front.
It got 13.9mg cruise, 207mg combat acceleration and dV of 12.2kps. It's not too fast in combat, but can go between Earth and Luna under 2 days.

3,
Fission spinner drive x6 with molten core fission reactor, 50 propellant tanks, a bit more armour in the front.
It got 44.9mg cruise, 628.8mg combat acceleration and dV of 20.2kps. So far this is my best setup.

The third one seems like a decent engine at this stage of the game. But what engine should I research for mid and late game?

*update:
The setups above are bad...

Early to mid game Grid and Helicon drives are good for ships that goes far. But Grid is also good for planetary defense fleets, except for chasing other fleets. A few ships with fission spinner drives are enough to catch low-tech faction fleets.

[mk11]

#1 why do you need all that acceleration? If you are loaded up with missiles/torpedoes the enemy won't run and you don't get much from combat movements. Also, is a dV that low enough to dip down from LEO1 to ISSOrbit and back up again?

I find the Ion (or better Grid) drive a useful drive for the early game. You can move around orbits and even move between planets. Good for marine assaults, colonising, etc.

[Ericus1]

Fission spinner is generally an unsustainable consumer of fissiles for anything other than very niche use cases.

Adv. Cermet Nerva would be a much better early drive for your initial defense fleets. It's solid core fission, early, and cheap, and has much better Delta-V efficiency than any of the liquid rockets while giving more than sufficient acceleration. I stopped going liquid rockets after I found the fuel usage to be unsustainable on Veteran with the way the aliens constantly send little fleets at you.

Grid or helicon is what you want if you want to go somewhere far early-mid game. Burners/Flare/Firestar is going to be the mid-game fission engines you want to aim for.

And don't bother trying to traverse between LEO and Luna. There is nothing worth holding on Luna after you use Lunar metal to get your Mars sites up and running. Put 1 or 2 defense modules on your ground hab there if you were want to keep it, and call it a day. Same as I would do for asteroids. Mars, LEO, and Mercury (if you go there) get defended by fleets that really shouldn't ever leave orbit.

[Blaarg]

The overview in the following discord channel, while being made for 0.4.34, is still correct for 0.4.38.

https://discord.com/channels/462769550841348126/1219327631149891678

In short, if you want an upgrade for mid-game, use either Orion/H-Orion, antimatter microfission, or try rolling for one of the three advanced fission.

[Dr. Electrocutioner]

Grid is pretty decent.

[marten_fierce]

I think burner drives are the go to fission solution, until you get fusion. But for a task force that can go places, Grid/Helicon drive is a must and a really nice drive too.

[Csupasz Pisztoly]

Okay, now I have advanced cermet nerva. With that, I can build a monitor with these paramse:

Advanced cermet nerva x6 with solid core fission reactor, 55 propellant tanks, some armour in the front.
It got 36mg cruise, 432mg combat acceleration and dV of 11.9kps.

It seems like a good ship for now. I will research the other mentioned engines too.

I see, I can get assault ships verry far with grid drive.

[Dr. Electrocutioner]

Or ships with mobile science laboratories and fission outpost kits.

Within the asteroid belt you can get away with probes instead of the on board scanner, but you still want to drop the outpost with a ship because boosting from Earth becomes way too slow.

[marten_fierce]

Originally posted by Csupasz Pisztoly:

Okay, now I have advanced cermet nerva. With that, I can build a monitor with these paramse:

Advanced cermet nerva x6 with solid core fission reactor, 55 propellant tanks, some armour in the front.
It got 36mg cruise, 432mg combat acceleration and dV of 11.9kps.

It seems like a good ship for now. I will research the other mentioned engines too.

I see, I can get assault ships verry far with grid drive.

I don't think I've used Advanced Cermet drives, but 55 propellant tanks is a bit too much water, for what is essentially a suicide ship.
With Solid Core Drives, I think the Adv Pulsar is the only one to invest resources in (armour primarily), but it's not a guaranteed unlock. You can also keep 9dV , it's enough for LEO, but keep in mind that you can't transfer to the inclined orbits and back.

I'd aim for Lars or Fission Spinner drive in the Molter Core tree. They have better exhaust velocity of 15+ kps,
Lars is closed-cycle, so it's not that great, depending on your radiator mass. But you should still get a monitor design going, with 30 propellant tanks, and 1-1-11 composite armour.
With the Fission Spinner it gets even better, since it's open-cycle and it's on par with Adv Pulsar, but probably cheaper in research.

Honestly, the minimum requirements for a decent ship are nanotube armour, nanotube radiator and Fission Spinner / Adv Pulsar drive.

[Ericus1]

Advanced Pulsar has been heavily nerfed. It isn't a good drive anymore.

And you don't need anywhere near that ΔV for a purely defensive, early-game fleet that is never meant to leave orbit. You can get away with ~5 ΔV and be just fine, which would reduce the fuel tanks to about 8 per ship for escort or monitor Artemis torpedo ships.

As said, Fission spinner is unsustainable in terms of fissiles use.

Something like this is absolutely all you need to defend LEO and Mars: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3348959257

Edit: Wait, no, I'm thinking of Fission Frag. Fission spinner is okay for fissiles, but still requires a lot more tech and RP for an early drive while only having marginally better stats.

For reference, Fission Spinner requires ~30K research, and is significantly out of your way. Adv. Cermet Nerva requires ~ 13K, and you'd already have researched ~8.7K of that to get Nuclear Freighters anyways.

[wei270]

Fission Spinner 6x in my experince is pretty good for for those small 1 command point ship, because it is very light and you can go to 2g combat with 10 dv with is enough to go to mars if you really need to. it starting to becoming increasingly inefficient the bigger the ship gets.

Pegaus is the best early drive for obrtial defence. 1x pegaus is enough to get your escorts to hi 4g combat. with 10 dv.
why 10 dv for orbital defence. well............ i found that early game the alien irden star torps are the biggest threat, and you need ALOT of ion pd for them. But....... if you mix in a bit of maneuver you can cut the amount of pds by 1/2. what you probably still have hard time dodging them with 4g but what you can do is fly your ship in front of your station defence and pd ships, alien fire at your fast ships then you move the ships back pass your pd defences, this way the missiles are aimed at your faster ship as they run pass the pd defences this cuts the amount of pds needed by around 1/2. Also if you have x2 40mm on those escorts when you are running away from missiles targeting it in a vector with no curvature your chance of interceptions increase exponentially.

[Pawleus]

Originally posted by Csupasz Pisztoly:

Advanced cermet nerva x6 with solid core fission reactor, 55 propellant tanks, some armour in the front.
It got 36mg cruise, 432mg combat acceleration and dV of 11.9kps.

55 tanks? I would suggest to use Escorts instead and you can comfortably use them for the maneuvering missile combat even having just Teardrop as with very early tech I usually have in 2026 they can get to 3.3G combat acceleration and almost 10km/s deltaV while using only 3 tanks!

Originally posted by wei270:

Pegaus is the best early drive for obrtial defence. 1x pegaus is enough to get your escorts to hi 4g combat. with 10 dv.

No, with 1 Pegasus and 8 tanks you can easily have 4G and over 14km/s deltaV on Escorts for the maneuvering combat with tech I usually have about 2028/29.

[Ericus1]

Again, the entire molten core line is a significant diversion of RP away from what you need to end up with mediocre mid game drives. I'd rather knock out a cheap solid core drive that serves your needs for an early fleet of small ships, and then spend those RPs investing in better gas core drives, starting with burner and aiming for flare or firestar, than detour through molten core.

[Pawleus]

How is Molten Core detour if you are going for Gas Core, anyway? And Pegasus is so "mediocre" that if you can get it there is even not any point in going for Gas Core drives.

Originally posted by wei270:

i found that early game the alien irden star torps are the biggest threat, and you need ALOT of ion pd for them

Having Pegasus (and in many cases even Teardrop) you are currently wasting your slots for PD - haven't you seen how to make even Brilliant Sky missiles useless using Escorts with Pegasus in 0.4.41? https://imgur.com/a/c4zEDBv

[gimmethegepgun]

Originally posted by Pawleus:

How is Molten Core detour if you are going for Gas Core, anyway?

Because the faction projects that are a part of molten core don't in any way contribute to getting the gas core stuff. Only the global tech is needed.

[Pawleus]

Originally posted by gimmethegepgun:

Originally posted by Pawleus:

How is Molten Core detour if you are going for Gas Core, anyway?

Because the faction projects that are a part of molten core don't in any way contribute to getting the gas core stuff. Only the global tech is needed.

Yes, but Molten Core faction projects are far, far cheaper than Gas Core global tech AND very expensive (in comparison) Gas Core faction projects. Don't get me wrong, Firestar is of course better than Pegasus but if you are lucky to have Pegasus you can skip all Gas Core faction projects and go directly for Antimatter Pulsed Plasma Core Lantern which is cheapest to research from really good combat drives and way better than Firestar.