Laser Engines

[Enderon]

What are the best engines for offensive and defensive lasers, or some even some combinations of steam or something, im simply trying to avoid injector engines for now

[Aperson]

Steam for designer stuff fuel for campaign because steam is more space efficient while fuel is more resource efficient.

[Aperson]

Also I personally would recommend that you don't use offense lasers because they get hard countered by smoke.

[Videogames]

Originally posted by Enderon:

...im simply trying to avoid injector engines for now

Yes I too find myself often avoiding having literally no power.

Batteries work quite well on a compromise between space efficiency to provide a buffer of power for lasers to use. (No, RTGs are godawful, overpriced, oversized, and underpowered; this game needs REAL nuclear, not this bootleg trash.) Steam turbines luckily are an essentially pain-free way to get thousands of power. (Just ignore the fact that the battery system in this game makes no sense; can't railguns/shields just be connected to, you know, the GENERATOR to begin with?)

[Oobaneko]

Originally posted by Videogames:

Originally posted by Enderon:

...im simply trying to avoid injector engines for now

Yes I too find myself often avoiding having literally no power.

Batteries work quite well on a compromise between space efficiency to provide a buffer of power for lasers to use. (No, RTGs are godawful, overpriced, oversized, and underpowered; this game needs REAL nuclear, not this bootleg trash.) Steam turbines luckily are an essentially pain-free way to get thousands of power. (Just ignore the fact that the battery system in this game makes no sense; can't railguns/shields just be connected to, you know, the GENERATOR to begin with?)

WITH NUCLEAR KA-BOOOOOMS!!!!
Seriously, game need SATAN-2 warheads, not those Babies.

What about lasers - just use them for LAMS - it worth it a lot.

[FourGreenFields]

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1QK-9SooX7hIpkou5E3RE6wLeYQ97-HLU6mI1uL5Svws/edit#gid=259640699
(Not mine, owner may edit it)
(Also, note that "optimal RTG" seems to be lowest cost RTG, not lowest volume)

TL;DR You usually want a turbocharged engine (power/fuel depends on how long you want to run it without refueling, and how much you value the running cost - recommended somewhere along the lines of 300-1300 power/fuel). Steam is much more powerdense, but costs far too much to run.

[Kurama Kitsune]

If you want to use fuel engines, you can check out some of the ones here.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1433931027

Depending on how much space you have for the engine, you can go with a more efficient one, or a more power-dense one. That engine raft in the link has a variety of engines with different fuel efficiencies from T1-T5 (basically numbered by the number of turbos that are attached to each carburetor). Most people probably wouldn't use something above T3 outside of niche uses though (T4 and T5 are very efficient, but have much lower power density).


A good T1 engine can still have over half the power density of an injectron, but use a fifth of the fuel (the best on the raft come to the 40-45 range of PPBB, or power per bounding box. I think the basic 3x3xN injector engine comes to somewhere in the 70s for comparison). The best T2 engines come to the 23-25 PPBB range and get a little less than 4 times the fuel efficiency of a T1. The best T3 engines at the time I type this that I am aware of get around 15-18 PPBB and a little less then 4 times the efficiency of a T2. After that, it basically halves PPBB each time you add another turbo and multiplies fuel efficiency by another little-under-4.

[R1tzo]

Originally posted by Kurama Kitsune:

If you want to use fuel engines, you can check out some of the ones here.

Oh nice. 20k ppf is just what i needed for my stupidly oversized railgun barge.
_____________
It wasn't.

[Vinier McNuggNugg]

If they add actual nuclear power I hope they add a large steam turbine that puffs steam out like a vape god

[R1tzo]

Originally posted by Videogames:

(No, RTGs are godawful, overpriced, oversized, and underpowered)

Yet when placed en masse they surpass any fuel engine. I have crammed my boat with top PPF engines from that raft yet I was unable to sustain the power output, speed and defences.

What really must be done as well is giving the railgun chargers ability to store power. They dont just drain the power reserve from the pool, okay?

[Vinier McNuggNugg]

If the engine gets shot thats a lot of repair cost

[Vinier McNuggNugg]

I assume