Better methods on making your ship faster

[Drancon101]

Heya, I've just recently built a boat with 16 large engines (Not the modular engines) that all power three large propellers. However the ship can't seem to push past 20 speed units (I call the readout on the default setting on the digital display speed units when measuring speed since I can't figure out if its mph, kph, or knots)
The ship itself is pretty hydro-dynamic and isn't very heavy, relatively. Anyone know how I can push the speed up past 20 units? I tried using gearboxes to make the props spin faster, but they just take away from the speed

[ChariS]

You said the gearboxes take away from the speed... is it possible you've got them backwards?

You could try using horizontal rudders to trim the nose up and bring it on plane. Larger ships wouldn't really do that, but boats do.

Other things to note... drag calculations are weird. The game biases for large single surfaces heavily over contoured designs, so even if it 'looks' hydrodynamic, it might not be as efficient as two wedge-like designs.

May be a good idea to upload it to the workshop, too. A lot of folks here can look at the design and give more detailed pointers.

[Teamkiller]

"Units" are m/s - read descriptions of blocks carefully. 20 m/s - it's 70 km/h / 30 knots. It is realy fast for a ship, that accomodates 16 large engines!

If you still want to go faster:
- smart use of gearboxes - you should fine-tune your reduction rates to get max from you engines (usally two geaboxes, sometimes opposing each other for some ratios)
- reduce water drag by removing all long angled blocks (at least underwater)
- use water gliding or even waterwings to rise your ship up from the water. Pitch stabilization requred.
- Over-RPS you engines (with slider) - to 30-40 RPS. It would requre MASSIVE heat sink system, may be engine alternation (8 engines at 40 RPS produce more thrust than 16 at 20), etc.
- Change to jet-turbine-electric power

[Ra-Ra-Rasputin]

Originally posted by Drancon101:

Heya, I've just recently built a boat with 16 large engines (Not the modular engines) that all power three large propellers. However the ship can't seem to push past 20 speed units (I call the readout on the default setting on the digital display speed units when measuring speed since I can't figure out if its mph, kph, or knots)
The ship itself is pretty hydro-dynamic and isn't very heavy, relatively. Anyone know how I can push the speed up past 20 units? I tried using gearboxes to make the props spin faster, but they just take away from the speed

The speed is meters/second. The linear speed sensor tooltip does tell you this, but it's easy to miss.

If you link me your craft i can promise at the minimum doubling its speed.

[Drancon101]

Originally posted by Ra-Ra-Rasputin:

Originally posted by Drancon101:

Heya, I've just recently built a boat with 16 large engines (Not the modular engines) that all power three large propellers. However the ship can't seem to push past 20 speed units (I call the readout on the default setting on the digital display speed units when measuring speed since I can't figure out if its mph, kph, or knots)
The ship itself is pretty hydro-dynamic and isn't very heavy, relatively. Anyone know how I can push the speed up past 20 units? I tried using gearboxes to make the props spin faster, but they just take away from the speed

The speed is meters/second. The linear speed sensor tooltip does tell you this, but it's easy to miss.

If you link me your craft i can promise at the minimum doubling its speed.

I actually managed to push the speed up to 24m/s from 20m/s with messing around with gear boxes. Though gearboxes are quite complicated to figure out how to use so it took me quite a bit to get an actual result (I essentially was just trying random ratio combinations and got lucky)

[Ra-Ra-Rasputin]

This is the extremely simplified super short guide to getting gear ratios right:
Gear a boat so that at full throttle you're somewhere around 11-14 RPS.

That's it. The absolute simplest, most unga bunga guide to making your boat go at a decent speed.

If you want a lot more detail, you can check out my gearing and engine guides, too!

[Console]

Can you upload your ship? Maybe i can help you.
I got a very big ship, it got a mass of around 125.000 and goes over 30m/s. Using 22 large engines and 2 giant props.
My other speedboat, which i named "Stormhunter", is made for going fast in bad weather, it can reach up to 90m/s in "full-speed mode" and goes between 30m/s and 40m/s in "normal" mode. It has a mass of around 27.200 and is using 8 large engines and one giant prop.

[ElfBossHogg]

If you want to get more power out of the engines here's a suggestion... add fly wheels to the output of the engines and use a clutch to take power from the rotation when you need it.

Fly wheels will require extra spin up on your engine and you won't have power immediately on startup but the advantage is that when they get up to speed you will have a significant amount of sustained inertia that you can translate in to torque for your propellers. It works wonders with steam and generators. I was able to up a system that only produced 1500 SWatt power to over 8500 with flywheels.

[Ra-Ra-Rasputin]

Flywheels are basically just mechanical capacitors. For moment power they're absolutely fantastic, such as pulling a hard stop or a hard manouvre, but in most cases you'll likely need an electric engine starter on your modular engine to use them and for sustained power output they don't mean that much of a difference.

[ElfBossHogg]

Originally posted by Ra-Ra-Rasputin:

Flywheels are basically just mechanical capacitors. For moment power they're absolutely fantastic, such as pulling a hard stop or a hard manouvre, but in most cases you'll likely need an electric engine starter on your modular engine to use them and for sustained power output they don't mean that much of a difference.

They will take more power to initially spin up. However when they get up to speed they will impart additional inertia to the drive shaft they are powering. In RL they are capacitive but in SW they appear to be more inductive when it comes to rotational momentum. They appear to reduce the torque required to maintain a sustained rotation with a portion of the new power input actually being added to the system.