Have fuel engines only start when needed

[Blech]

I have a ship with loads of fuel engines, which are all fairly thirsty at low RPM. To reduce the fuel cost when just moving around outside of combat, I created a small electric engine/RTG engine to take care of the engines. The idea was to use automated control blocks to check when the electric engines were around 80% used, at which point I would start my fuel engines. My fuel engines should then shut down again when the demand for power got low enough to be handled by the electric engines.

But the problem is that I just cannot figure out how to actually make it work. It seems like no matter what I set my percentages to in the automated control blocks, the fuel engines either never turn on, or stay on indefinitely.

Does anyone have experience with this, or even better, a workshop vehicle where it is actually functioning?

Bonus question: I tried setting up 2 control blocks to manually switch the fuel engines on and off. That worked for the most part, but I noticed that when I took the craft out of play in the campaign, it started eating fuel again regardless of all the fuel engines having max RPM set to 0.
So again: Does anyone have experience with this? Did I run into a bug or is this inteded behavior?

Thanks in advance.

[Javelin99]

ACBs directly up close to the engines and you specify the distance the block functions at, or ACBS with no limits.

If there is another ACB that shuts off engines, then you need to set a different option for engines under specific conditions. A example being that if you shut off the engines with a ACB with no limits radius, they will stay off unless something over powers them. If this was a plane, the solution would be simple. Just have a normal ACB shutting them off under specific conditions, and then allow the engines to turn on again when under or above a altitude higher than the previous ACB.

For a ship, it is slightly more complex than that.


Also a electric engine uses fuel engines/fuel to activate and recharge their batteries.
Thus even with the lowest RPM, there is a likely chance of the engine using your fuel anyway. But if it is insane, then either you have too many batteries, a engine still on along with it, or a glitch that can be solved by reloading.

[breakthrough]

I recommend having a separate smaller fuel engine that runs efficiently out of combat instead of electric. Anything will a fuel engine will burn some fuel while out of play, but the fuel consumption from the last time it was in play will be used, so if a very efficient engine is running at the moment it is pulled it will work.

If you are having difficulty making a engine that is low output and efficient at the same time, you can get one here http://www.fromthedepthsgame.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=26052

[Blech]

Its odd that considering you have RTGs in the game, that there is no way to tell the ship to use Electric engines first.

Originally posted by Javelin99:

ACBs directly up close to the engines and you specify the distance the block functions at, or ACBS with no limits.

If there is another ACB that shuts off engines, then you need to set a different option for engines under specific conditions. A example being that if you shut off the engines with a ACB with no limits radius, they will stay off unless something over powers them. If this was a plane, the solution would be simple. Just have a normal ACB shutting them off under specific conditions, and then allow the engines to turn on again when under or above a altitude higher than the previous ACB.

For a ship, it is slightly more complex than that.


Also a electric engine uses fuel engines/fuel to activate and recharge their batteries.
Thus even with the lowest RPM, there is a likely chance of the engine using your fuel anyway. But if it is insane, then either you have too many batteries, a engine still on along with it, or a glitch that can be solved by reloading.

The problem is that there is no power% value combination I can find, which can turn both the engines on and off. It seems like something odd happens to the calculation when the fuel engines turn off. I even made a ACB/Light percentage indicator on my ship to see what was going on and it just jumps all over the place when you switch.

[FourGreenFields]

What I'd try is to measure how low the energy goes when at high load (RTGs generate energy 5 times a second, so it'll go low for a fraction of a second), then have an ACB activate engines if it drops too much.
Then turn the engines off once the load is gone (power fraction above/below, whatever, haven't messed much with it). May need to build a logical "AND" with an ACB that uses the same values, but a 1 second delay, to avoid the engines turning off before they even revved up.

[breakthrough]

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1127675610

This vehicle uses 3 ACBs to guarantee that the engine runs at max efficiency or shuts off entirely. The bulk of batteries required is why I usually just have a dedicated cruising engine, but this should be along the lines of what you want.

[Blech]

Originally posted by breakthrough:

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1127675610

This vehicle uses 3 ACBs to guarantee that the engine runs at max efficiency or shuts off entirely. The bulk of batteries required is why I usually just have a dedicated cruising engine, but this should be along the lines of what you want.

Cool, I'll take a look:)