steam powered proppellers

[the_jevry]

anyone has a guide yet on the steam powered proppellers and if yes what are keywords i should google?
i have a basic one setup in (what i would qualify as) a light cruiser but it doesn't have the desired speed/power/buildup time. and strangely enough it has a 50% higher reverse speed. it goes 12 mps forward but 17 mps in reverse.

[Rampant Rabbit]

I've been experimenting and enjoying the change. Main difference for me has been running the steam engines faster to get a higher RPM. 1 5m prop on a large ship running about 120rpm has been enough to go around 12m/s

[Admiral Obvious]

Steam props are fairly easy. You just have to make a small boiler, a very small crank, hook that up to the prop, and maybe add in a few flywheels (or whatever it is to up max RPM) and you'll be flying.

There's also a small bug where steam props in reverse actually GIVE engine power instead of take from it, so that's why you're going backwards faster.

[Rampant Rabbit]

Hmm.. Thought of something to try tomorrow.. Reduction gears say they give an 8x(?) increase in prop shaft increase, so now wondering what'll happen if I try those in series. Guessing it might not work because I think the output expects a prop shaft, and the input a regular one.

Liking it so far, and main wishlist item would be a way to split drive shafts so one engine can drive 2 propellors (or more). Think that's on the to-do list for the overhaul though.

[Silamon]

I cant seem to get the 2m sealed propellor shaft to work. It says the second meter can pass through any block, and it does. Problem is it does not seem to connect to the propeller... What am I doing wrong exactly?
Edit: as for the reduction gear it says it can connect to either propellor or engine shaft, I think you can stack them.
Second Edit: figured out the problem. Have to add another 1m propellor shaft on the other side. I *really* Like these steam propellors, I am in the process of converting my battleship to steam power to take advantage of them. Went from like 30 huge propellors and a max speed of around 22 km/s to 4 steam propellors and a max speed of 35 km/s. Quite the upgrade I would say o.o
I do hope they add a way to split the steam engines so you can have one engine power more than one propellor though.

[Korvre Tailpoof]

you want your steam engine to run as fast as possible. so as few pistons with as high a pressure as you can pull off. reduction gears reduce efficancy but allow finer control over the prop. with one it may take 11 sec to wind up to full speed, with multiple itd be faster but you loose some power.

[FunPun]

How do you even build one? I'm trying right now and can't connect them right.

[Silamon]

Originally posted by Kor'Vre Tailpoof:

you want your steam engine to run as fast as possible. so as few pistons with as high a pressure as you can pull off. reduction gears reduce efficancy but allow finer control over the prop. with one it may take 11 sec to wind up to full speed, with multiple itd be faster but you loose some power.

Actually it seems to be the other way around. With 1 reduction gear it says I need an engine rpm of 160 to reach the max propellor rpm, with 2 reduction gears it only needs 80 engine rpms to reach the same max propellor rpm.

[the_jevry]

okay so i have been experimenting further, looks like it is a very new feature (derp me)
so far i figured out that
-reduction gears can be stacked to improve response time in trade for less power
-you ALWAYS need at least 1 engine/proppeller shaft between components
this means to you guys who are having trouble to get certain components working (like 2m shafts that can go trough walls) try adding a shaft on both ends and see what happens.
i already fixed my proppeller not working by putting a 2m into the wall and then adding a 1m on the outside, then putting the proppeller on the 1m.

i am running the isseu that my turret bases are on the bottom of the ship (maximise firepower!)
so i am having trouble getting the shafts to the rear of my ship, now you may ask why don't i put the boilers on the rear on the ship? i really want the boilers in the middle. so i can afford less armor on the tip and rear of my ship.

[Silamon]

Originally posted by the_jevry:

okay so i have been experimenting further, looks like it is a very new feature (derp me)
so far i figured out that
-reduction gears can be stacked to improve response time in trade for less power
-you ALWAYS need at least 1 engine/proppeller shaft between components
this means to you guys who are having trouble to get certain components working (like 2m shafts that can go trough walls) try adding a shaft on both ends and see what happens.
i already fixed my proppeller not working by putting a 2m into the wall and then adding a 1m on the outside, then putting the proppeller on the 1m.

i am running the isseu that my turret bases are on the bottom of the ship (maximise firepower!)
so i am having trouble getting the shafts to the rear of my ship, now you may ask why don't i put the boilers on the rear on the ship? i really want the boilers in the middle. so i can afford less armor on the tip and rear of my ship.

You can move the engine shaft over 1 meter at a time with the axis shift gears. The way I got around that was to shift the engine shaft to the side of the ship, then have the shaft go all the way to the rear of the ship, then more axis shift gears to move the shaft closer to the center of the ship, before going to the reduction gears and propellor.

[the_jevry]

OUCH steam engines eat your resources fast. i have made a setup of 3X 5length boilers at 73 burnrate to reach my required 70 rpm.
but turns out that in combat that one ship will burn 15 resource per second.
luckily the 2 small boilers i put in to decrease the time it takes to get to a reasonable speed only take 0.4 but that is still a painfull amount of resource going to waste.
edit: well i got it down to about 14-15 total for a fast 50 rpm instead of around 17-18 so that is a slight improvement.

[Silamon]

yeah boilers can burn materials crazy fast if you let them go full blast all the time. The idea for large boilers is to set it to burn full blast until it has more than enough power to run everything, then have an acb turn the burn rate down to say .4. So now you are burning considerably less resource, and the engine will keep powering everything for a while. Then you can have another acb to turn the boilers back up when the power is too low.
You can also set an acb to turn off the boilers entirely when less than 10% of the power is being used so you are not burning resources even when the ship is not moving.

I do wish you could use fuel though, since that is a whole nother step to add for efficiency. You can get a lot of fuel out of 1 resource...

[the_jevry]

will try a few acb's for that then.

furthermore, i doesn't seem to be worth it to use small steam engines on for example DDs.
i am having trouble matching speeds with a fuel powered one and i'd rather not burn more than 4-5 resource/second.

[Silamon]

It probably works best on large ships to be fair. I have not tried it on a smaller ship but my 350k resource battleship got a rather significant speed boost with the conversion to steam propellors.

And I don't need a wall of 20 huge propellors to do it either
Fantastic update imo.

[Matt]

something I'm sure you've noticed, but bears mentioning: maximum engine shaft speed changes with components. shaft bearings give you a 5% increace each, crankshafts give you a slight reduction. that means that if you include 15 bearings in your setup, you have double the max shaft RPM, and thus are very unlikely to damage the system. Reduction gears reduce shaft efficiency 5%. If your engine is just to drive a prop, use multiple sets of reduction gears, but if not, then probably don't.

Your shaft is a stored energy system. Set your boiler burn rate off shaft speed. Think of it like a battery. the shaft stores rotational energy for you to use, higher speeds/more mass increace your stored energy. This battery leaks though, the higher it's charged the more it leaks power away. you should always have your shaft spinning if you will need power at all, but you don't need to keep it at max speed. Slow it down a bunch when there's not a need for max power.

[qwerty9131]

I'm a little disappointed that we can't use turbines instead of pistons. It's what modern ships use. On that note a gas turbine system mixed in with the custom jet would be pretty cool