Atomic or terrier?

[Gr8 Maniac]

I just got engineer redux for the DeltaV readings but found out that in every case that I could think of the terrier engine put out way more deltaV than the nuke engine.

Am I missing a fact or why would you ever take a nuke engine

[FactsDon'tCareAboutYourFeelings]

The Nuke engine is better when you have a larger ship, the Terrier's lower mass gives better dV in smaller ships. Also, the nuclear engine only uses liquid fuel, so you won't get it's max dV if you have normal rocket fuel tanks on your ship (use the airplane tanks for the nuclear engine).

[Chibbity]

Wut he said^

The Nuke only needs liquid fuel.

Terrier needs liquid fuel and oxidizer. Which means you can carry more fuel for the Nuke.

That said, the nuke itself is heavy so it's really best for larger interplanetary ships.

[RoofCat]

nuke beats Terrier at fuel volumes higher than 4.5t for single nuke (=7t for single Terrier due to less engine mass) and sooner on heavy ships with high dry mass. So use a lot of fuel to profit from nukes. It will be slow though and kind of annoying, so you may want to avoid nukes as long as possible. You can actually land and return even on Moho without ever using nukes. So no big deal.

Decent Terrier stage has 3500..5500m/s delta v. Proper nuke stage 8000..12000m/s. If your nuke stage has less than that, that's probably bad design (or intention).