How do you make a USEFUL electric engine?

[An Ning]

Never fiddled with these until recently, but here is what I know of them:
1) If a battery is touching a battery that is connected to an electric engine, it connects to that battery and engine
2) Multiple electric engines cannot connect to the same battery/interconnected battery set
3) Connecting more batteries to an electric engine does not increase its power
4) Size of the initial connecting battery has minimal impact on electric engine's power


My initial understanding of electric engines was they were supposed to be capable (not "incredible", but "capable") and compact with the downside of very high expenses... but these 4 findings make them incredibly space-consuming, incredibly low-powered AND incredibly expensive. I mean to have 2000 power I needed 40 individual engines connected to batteries that in no way touched each other -either in a line of 80x2x1, or in a line of 20x2x3 because of needing a space between them due to 1 and 2.

So is there a way to make a USEFUL electric engine (in terms of power/volume consumed)?

[pizzasheepz]

3 is incorrect, the way electric engines work is they take about 5% of the energy of the connected batteries and turns it into power. (Exact percentage may vary) personally, I can get a good 35k power off from 700k battery bank (using one engine only) but the real problem is supplying the power. I can only use about 18k of that power to have it sustainable.

[TUBono]

4% Exactly. In my opinion, electric engine is not efficient if you're considering 'voulume'. Single block of battery can hold 1000 charge, which means 40 power/block.

If you want 2k power, you need at least 50 blocks of batteries.
If you have more than 50 blocks of fuels, you may consider it.

[Draco Militis]

to be fair, with RTG's, i feel its more of an efficency thing, as you never need fuel for them.

[TUBono]

RTG generate endless power, but it's expensive, heavy and huge.

[Draco Militis]

Originally posted by TUBono (conscripted till 2018):

RTG generate endless power, but it's expensive, heavy and huge.

But it is a 1 time cost. They are more useful on larger things that arent going to move much anyways, and its not like they're so heavy you can't use them on anything moving.

[xchrisx88]

steam engines, even when I dont like them, they are AMAZING when it comes down to generating energy power
using 1 large boiler and 2 compact turbines, I get 825 energy per sec for as little as 0.4 resources per sec

dont forget you can change the efficency of the electric engine to have less max power available but in return the energy drain is slower

[Hankerfied]

excellent in smaller applications. (1k power and less)
necessary if using railgun or particle cannon.
so in for a penny out for a pound,

[Bits]

Originally posted by TUBono (conscripted till 2018):

RTG generate endless power, but it's expensive, heavy and huge.

Its pretty cheap if you know what you are doing, its pretty light and its tiny.

[Mortazel]

More batteries = more power (as long as the are charged). Available power decreases as batteries drain.