Engines + scout question.

[🎮 PalkoVvodets 🔑]

Trying figure out best engine setup for "M" traders/miners and "S" explorers.
1) Heard npc are bad with "travel" engine type. Thus "all-round"/"combat" is better for them. Is that true?

In regard to miners => Alligator + travel travel engine is the best choice for safe/stable mining, not to worry about threats. But even quickest "Boa" trader with combat engine cant hit 400 m/s which not too big to bypass all threats. Thus:
2) Is it worth to use combat engine on traders? Or anyway they will be shot down and better choice is travel one?

Most important is the best engine for scouts. Regular explore command takes ages to investigate single sector. And it seems rookie pilots with explore order dont seem use travel mode at all. And I've tired drawing hexes above ecliptic to make proccess quicker (I know "explore" is about 3 axes scouting).
3) So what is better engine for scouts and what are circumstances to use (if any)?

P.S. No mods offer, please.

[Wraith]

In term of traders.
You can use either combat engines or all rounder it doesn't really matter to much but I prefer combat engines.

S and M traders do best with Argon Engines.

L and XL traders do best with Terran Engines.

Scouts you want fast base speed so Split Engines are the way to go. (if your using explore command).
Let the scout use explore command and just do other thing while they are exploring.
They get a pretty good amount of EXP for doing so.
They also uncover all the fog of war now unlike before.
Always have your scout be 2 star piloting from the beginning as they can reach 5 star with explore command.

What I do is discover a bunch of sector and then give a bunch of explore command to my few scouts.
I then expand the orders and make it max range.
I just do missions and my own thing after that and by the time my scouts finish exploring the multiple sectors they are 3+ star pilots ready to do the more advance commands.

My personal co-pilot is always an explorer first that I boosted to 2 star then became 5 star through exploring and combat.

[🎮 PalkoVvodets 🔑]

Originally posted by Wraith:

You can use either combat engines or all rounder it doesn't really matter to much but I prefer combat engines.
S and M traders do best with Argon Engines.

But does it make sense? I mean even with argon combat engine quickest Boa has only 285 m/s and can be caught by pretty many fighters/corvettes. Isn't better to just equip travel engine instead and keep fingers crossed about pirates/xenons etc?

Originally posted by Wraith:

Always have your scout be 2 star piloting

Its not that easy to get exactly pilot seminars and extremly boring. I got plenty 1-start managment offers and not a single piloting so far...

[Wraith]

2 star piloting is super easy to get
Basic seminar is pretty much always available in station trader
And 1 star seminar you can get every other station at least 1 as well in the station trader.

Leveling a pilot to two star is a walk in the park

[Wraith]

Originally posted by 🎮 PalkoVvodets 🔑:

But does it make sense? I mean even with argon combat engine quickest Boa has only 285 m/s and can be caught by pretty many fighters/corvettes. Isn't better to just equip travel engine instead and keep fingers crossed about pirates/xenons etc?

Not really argon engine have the fastest travel speed.
The difference with travel drive engine is that they have the longest spool up for more speed while combat have the shortest spool up for less speed.

I personally don’t like the spool up of travel engines so I recommend combat engine or all rounder engines

The point being that S and M size ship reach top speed fast so a ship with argon engine will outrun the enemy before it get knocked out of travel drive.

If they do get knocked out they can re enter travel drive quickly while in flee mode with combat and all rounder but not with travel engines.

[BurlsoL]

Originally posted by 🎮 PalkoVvodets 🔑:

And it seems rookie pilots with explore order dont seem use travel mode at all.

This is the big thing really.

Pilot skill affects the distance from objective that decides if travel drive will be used and how far away from the objective it will be disengaged. As exploring works from in inner to outter, the distances between objective points is short enough that travel drive isn't used. With a skilled pilot, this is less of an issue.

For exploring quickly... Have your scout carry an advanced satellite. Drop Advanced satellite at center of area, Set to explore. Pick up satellite. Drop small satellites at points of interest. Repeat as needed. This will make the first few rounds of the explore command taken care of, so that the ship is mostly moving at speed. instead of stopping and turning alot at the start.

Suggested to have at least 1 or 2 star pilots doing your exploring though. Exploration gives very little piloting experience as it only counts once the whole action is completed. If using rookie pilots, better to just plan the route manually with a few dozen move-to commands.

[Wraith]

Originally posted by BurlsoL:

Suggested to have at least 1 or 2 star pilots doing your exploring though. Exploration gives very little piloting experience as it only counts once the whole action is completed. If using rookie pilots, better to just plan the route manually with a few dozen move-to commands.

Actually exploring give the proc to level every time something is discover by the pilot not when the action itself is completed.
so every station,gate,faction hq discover proc a chance to level.
It also capped at 5 star unlike some other way of leveling so it one of the fastest way to level up a pilot to 5 star early game.

It goes from highest to lowest chance of leveling up.
HQ station, Gates, Important stations, normal Stations.

[Huillam]

Originally posted by 🎮 PalkoVvodets 🔑:

But does it make sense? I mean even with argon combat engine quickest Boa has only 285 m/s and can be caught by pretty many fighters/corvettes. Isn't better to just equip travel engine instead and keep fingers crossed about pirates/xenons etc?

No. You're not only increasing the odds of your trader getting killed, you're also making him slower overall.

To make the right choice, you can't just use maximum speed, you also need to take the attack (the time it takes for an engine to reach maximum speed) into account. While those numbers aren't displayed in-game, they have been compiled:
https://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?p=5023742#p5023742

Let's imagine you gave your Boa some Argon Travel Engines. While its maximum speed is high, said engines need 3s to charge before travel mode activates, then they'll need 45s to reach maximum speed and your pilot will need to decelerate 30s before reaching its destination. With such numbers, it's fairly possible your ship will never ever reach maximum speed.
Now with combat engines: No charge time, 15s to reach maximum speed, 10s to decelerate. And your ship is more likely to escape pirates, Xenons and Kha'aks.

Overall, Combat Engines are best. The choice is about the manufacturer between Split and Terran. Terran engines will maximize your profit in safe areas, Split engines will keep your pilot alive.


Just remember to set your pilot AI to flee/comply to attack and pirate harassment as it's dumb enough to retaliate if you stick to the default "Use judgement".

[🎮 PalkoVvodets 🔑]

Originally posted by Huillam:

Just remember to set your pilot AI to flee/comply to attack and pirate harassment as it's dumb enough to retaliate if you stick to the default "Use judgement".

Okay, but that also means that trader aware of danger long before enemy close enough to "shoot" OOS and run on radar sight. As that enemy may already rush in with travel mode activated.
And if that assumption is true most of the time trader wont be "trading" but escaping random aggresive engagements.

If assumption is false than trader will never make up even moderate travel speed as constantly be shot. Or it behave somehow otherwise?

[Huillam]

Nope they're dumb. I lost numerous traders because they decided to trade with a station that was under attack by an entire Xenon fleet.
The setting will only apply when the ship is directly attacked or harassed.
Xenon and Kha'ak attacks tend to happen in very specific sectors and it's easy to blacklist those.
Pirates harassement isn't that common. Their ships tend to scout entire sectors and don't come into contact your own ships that often.

As long as you avoid dangerous sectors (anything bordering a Xenon sector or hosting a Kha'ak base) your traders will spend most of their time trading.

[🎮 PalkoVvodets 🔑]

ok, thanks

[Wraith]

Kha’ak don’t attack trader unless they run into them though.

So a kha’ak base mean nothing.
It more Xenon and pirates that can cause problems

[BurlsoL]

Originally posted by Wraith:

Kha’ak don’t attack trader unless they run into them though.

So a kha’ak base mean nothing.

Not really.

Kha'ak attack anything that gets close to them. Will even attack your stations if you don't have any defenses. The main reason why you don't often have traders being attacked by the Kha'ak is because the trader is moving between gates at travel speeds, usually among other traffic. But in less congested systems, traders are still vulnerable near gates or stations.

Regarding engines, yeah combat or all-around seem to be better for ships that don't travel long distances regularly. Only Terran travel engines manage to do kinda what they're designed for. I'd swear that someone got their numbers backwards in terms of charge and acceleration.

[Kalisa]

I tend to also stick with combat engines for most of my ships, only changing between split or terran depending on how often the ship may need to use travel or not, or all arounds for a good balance of the 2, not sure whats really the best though. as for anything large and above between travel and all around, i never use travel.
Like stated above, wish travel were actually ideal for travel mode, make it fast acceleration and high speed, but limited out of travel mode, so weak boost and top speed, but oddly combat are far better acceleration in travel mode and spool up to travel mode.
I figure travel mode is probably ideal for freighters that need to go long distances though with limited course correcting where the spool up and acceleration wont matter as much, most of my routes tho are not like that though.

[blackphoenixx]

Most of the time your traders will be OOS, where travel engines are significantly faster. This is easy to test.
They also only need to run from pirate minotaurs and destroyers which most of the faster ones manage fine even with travel engines.

Combat engines make sense for miners because they use boost when escaping Khaak attacks and those have much slower shield drain when boosting. If you're not worried about Khaak attacks travel engines are more efficient though even over short distances (also easy to test).

If you want to go with combat engines for safety ARG and TEL are the fastest over any distance >150km (they're basically even in most cases), for M travel engines TEL's faster acceleration is generally superior to ARG's slightly higher travel speed.

Split engines (of any kind) are a terrible choice for traders & miners since their low travel speeds cripple their efficiency hard compared to any of the others.

All-around engines are also not worth using since they have no advantages over either of the others, they're pretty much the worst of both worlds (no instant TD, high boost shield drain, mediocre cruise and travel speed).

[Kalisa]

i find split engines are great for my large miners that only ever use their travel drive on returns, they literally use normal speed going to asteroids for some reason (figure its because its less then 10-15km usually?) and at 100 speed it takes them ages, and so split have the far fastest non travel speed which improves these ships effeciency. splits are ideal only in cases where they wont be using travel drives often.
Terran drives are superior for their acceleration for large+ ships, theres a good drag race video between ships using all the different drives, and even at 300km the terran drive wins, and shorter flights its a much bigger difference.
for mediums, again i prefer terran combat drives over argon and teladi simply for the near instant acceleration in these drives, only in longer distances do the teladi or argon come ahead and that requires long distances of uninterrupted travel
In general terran have the best acceleration and deceleration out of travel, and the best boost conversion for engines, but they lack the overall top speed that other engines have. just a shame these are all stats not normally displayed on a ship stat page.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6LfH3aZukwo is a great example of large engines and terran, does both in and out of sector testing, so it seems for large engines and above at least, terran are superior at least for travel, split take still if not using travel much. like those odd miners that refuse to use travel mode >.<