Modular Engine Questions in 2024

[WhiskeyOne]

Hey all, I am new to SW but a veteran of the genre. I jumped into the game easily and spent some time building a few decent vessels and test beds until I had confidence in what I was doing.

At that time, I decided to make my first "large" vessel: a 20m gunboat. This hull had some great early tests and I wanted to prioritise speed and maneuverability. It shot off very quickly even with a lot of weight and I anticipated some more of that speed would diminish as I built all the systems.

Turns out a lot more weight was added then I thought and the speed fell off hard. I had the largest prefab engine so I was rather surprised it was underpowered for the vessel size. So I took this opportunity to experiment with modular engines... Unfortunately cooling, power output, consistency, etc have been a challenge.

With all the updates, changes, rollbacks, re-roll-outs, I am having trouble finding reliable info. I'm seeing a lot of new and old videos which go back and forth, zig zagging on facts through the years. Reddit is full of even more contradictions. Things from 2021 are right today, and different info on the same topic from 2023 is wrong... Tons of bad information.

I want to create a thread to talk about engines in 2024, as a quick search I did didn't find anything like this.

Any input is welcomed, otherwise I will compile my own observations here and make a guide.

QUESTIONS ARE:

- What are the general high/low RPS limits of a cylinder (x1 x3 x5)?
- What is the specific power of these cylinders at max safe RPS?
- How much of a resource does a cylinder consume at at max safe RPS?
- Does every cylinder need all 4 connections (fuel, exhaust, air, cooling x2 )?
- If not, are their benefits to having more connections (other than cooling)?
- Why does my temp probe no work? It says to place on crankshaft...

And I will add more as they come to me or if others have questions to add.
Cheers.

[Phil]

More cylinder, lower RPS to under 15. Sea cooling is hard to get good flowrate on, so radiators with at least 60L/s cooling loops are good.

[GrumpyOldMan]

Originally posted by WhiskeyOne:

- What are the general high/low RPS limits of a cylinder (x1 x3 x5)?
- What is the specific power of these cylinders at max safe RPS?
- How much of a resource does a cylinder consume at at max safe RPS?
- Does every cylinder need all 4 connections (fuel, exhaust, air, cooling x2 )?
- If not, are their benefits to having more connections (other than cooling)?
- Why does my temp probe no work? It says to place on crankshaft...

Modular engines range from 0 to 60 rps, above 2rps are required for the engine to run under its own power.
Your rps range can be anywhere between 2-60 rps, it's not making much sense to go beyond 42, since that's where the peak torque output is. Lower rps means more fuel efficiency at full throttle and load. It's viable to gear smaller vehicles to reach 42rps at full throttle, while on bigger vehicles it's easier to just add more engines/cylinders to keep rps as low as possible for efficiency. 100-150km range is easily doable, taking my 11m patrol boat as an example, running at 42rps full throttle, no overheating.

Regarding cooling it's best to use a fresh water tank with large electrical pumps, gotten way better results compared to not using the tank for some reason:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3114294781

Cylinders that are adjacent (sides touching another cylinder) share resources and form some sort of a cylinder bank. Use engine manifolds to share resources among multiple banks.

Usually you only need 1x of each resource connection since the space DLC.

Temp probes only work on 1x1x1 crankshafts and are basically useless, best use the cylinder composite channel 3 to get a temperature readout.

As for controlling air/fuel valves I consider this controller to be the gold standard:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2386277437&searchtext=simple+afr+controller
Able to control supercharged engines, can set the stoichiometric ratio (no reason to use anything other than 0.2).
Easy to set up, all mathed out, no PID or air pressure shenanigans needed.

[WhiskeyOne]

Originally posted by GrumpyOldMan:

Originally posted by WhiskeyOne:

- What are the general high/low RPS limits of....................

Modular engines range from 0 to 60 rps, above 2rps are required for the engine to run under its own power..................

Excellent info! I saw your guide on cooling with the amendment for post space DLC. Glad to see you here as you seem to be a sage on the topic.

I was using the ZE engine micro to good effect. Made some tweaks to peak at ~24 knots on sea state 1. Definitely open to plug in that one you suggested and see differences.

I'll pour through the rest of the info later when I'm online. Thank you greatly for this comprehensive detail!