Nuclear ships don't work?

[sea.dart]

I'm trying to make a ship using a nuclear reactor. I saw several people have created their own ships with success and I have tried to copy what I believe they did. Unfortunately I can't seem to get my boat to go faster than around 5 m/s even though I have a multiple turbines inline. Can someone give me a clue how to actually make a nuclear powered ship that performs well and preferably doesn't use a bunch of random cheats?

[bendigo (1983-2023) RIP]

There are too many variables involved to give you an accurate answer. The best way to know what to improve is if you post it to the workshop and leave a link here so somoeone can take a look at it.

[sea.dart]

Certainly.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2782911635
Thank you for any help you can give.

[bendigo (1983-2023) RIP]

I was able to get a bit more speed out of it but not much, The turbines are just not very powerful. one thing i changed was adding pipes to the steam out on the port side turbines, the way you have it, the steam can not come out of the turbines basically locking them up. You might get more power from them if you add a pump for each steam out port on the turbines. If you can get more power, you can try adding a larger propeller, or more propellers. The ship sits pretty low in the water so it will have quite a bit of resistance, it will never be very fast. I was able to get it up to 9m/s by taking off the generators and adding steam exhaust from the turbines,

[Select A Key]

using flywheels and their clutches helped my for my nuclear sub

[AdmiralTigerclaw]

I've looked at this, as I have a working 38 knot carrier.

So first, you've split your steam (green pipes) and run it through all the turbines.

What you want to do instead is take your boiler steam-out and send it to the first input of a steam turbine, then come out of that turbine and go into the NEXT turbine, and so on, worming the steam linearly in series instead of splitting your pressure parallel. And between each turbine out to in, place a large fluid pump to 'repressurize' the steam.

Second, you have a very poor choice of cooling for the condenser. Even as I type this, I'm glancing at the condenser running at 77C. Which is very hot. Your ship is in the ocean, the world's largest heat sink and cooling system. Pump water in from a belly intake port and run it through a heat exchanger that shares heat with a closed loop to the condenser. That will cool it MUCH more effectively than a radiator with a fan on it. Use the following two loops:

[OCEAN IN] intake port >> PUMP >> HEAT EXCHANGER SIDE A >> [OCEAN OUT intake port]

[CONDENSER HOT] >> PUMP >> HEAT EXCHANGER SIDE B >> [CONDENSER COLD]

Third, you have your two power generators on the front producing WAY less power than you actually have available. You want to put some gearboxes in that will take their RPS to about 60 for optimal electrical power production. The running RPS in the turbines at the moment looks like it's 9, resulting in two generators producing ~18 swatts each. You can get a LOT more electrical reserve power with the gearing added.

Fourth, after doing a quick test, I recognize that engaging your clutch via the 'throttle' key does result in your turbines spooling down to 1 RPS. That means that large screw is consuming more torque than you produce and you're maxing out at your total output. While you can do this, you lose your electrical generation whenever you throttle up.

With the nature of the nuclear steam loop, you would actually do better with a turbo-electric pumpjet propulsion system. Instead of driving your propulsion directly with the turbines, you just spin a set of generators at optimal speeds at all times, and then use electric motors to run fluid jets. Electric motors can you rig up programs to run at whatever speed settings you want.

EDIT: Okay, so I just put up my nuclear carrier. If you go over it, you should be able to get an idea of what goes on. Mind you, it's a biggun.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2783038095

[smoking gorilla riding a harley]

i noticed you took AdmiralTigerclaw's advice on engine device, but when he said to use the turbines to gen electricity and drive a motor, you used a single electric motor. i would advise trying multiple to get her up to speed. however, this would require more power. to get more power, i would advise powerplant optimization (I.E. trial and error of things like how to set up your generators gearbox and numbers wise, and how adding/ removing things affects engine performance.

[sea.dart]

Thank you for all of your input. I don't know why but I seem unable to get a flywheel to work. It keeps reading 0 rps no matter how I hook it up. I did hook up the piping in series with individual pumps which seems to help. I also added more generators and a motor to drive the propeller. I finally got it to the point where I am maintaining a 100% charge on the batteries. However, oddly enough the propeller doesn't seem to do anything no matter how many gear boxes I add to it. I still get just over 6 m/s even though I added additional propellers and multiple gear boxes. I am hesitant about adding in water jets since they don't really produce any thrust and can't really be used to tow boats.

[bendigo (1983-2023) RIP]

A large motor sholu be more than powerful enough to get the ship up to a decent speed, The problem is getting enough power to make it work. With that many turbines you should be able to get one large generator to make that much power.
Then use a small generator to power the electronics. You want to try to get the prop up to at least 19 rps.

[Dragon]

If you don't mind using flywheels, you can cut the powerplant out of my tanker and use that - or use it as a template get your own powerplant sorted. It's in the middle of the ship between the cargo tanks, it's quite modular and closed loop so it should be easy to cut out, it's not dependent on external water sources so you can even stick it into an airship or base if you want to. You can also cut the powerplant panel from the ship's bridge, then it should work right off the bat on it's own. Cut it instead of copy, to keep logic connections intact.

It's a hot running system so it can also be started up in sub-zero temperatures. It uses 8 turbines developing 4200 power. I use it to drive 2 large electric motors for main propulsion and another large motor for bow thrusters.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2706782188