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News:

Starsector 0.97a is out! (02/02/24); New blog post: Simulator Enhancements (03/13/24)

Poll

How do you use this Hull mod?

On every damn ship!
- 15 (24.6%)
Only on the slowest ships.
- 12 (19.7%)
To make fast ships faster!
- 1 (1.6%)
Here and there - a sort of balance.
- 8 (13.1%)
Not at all, or very rarely.
- 7 (11.5%)
Very often, most ships.
- 18 (29.5%)

Total Members Voted: 61


Pages: 1 [2]

Author Topic: Augmented Engines - too necessary?  (Read 8748 times)

Xanderzoo

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Re: Augmented Engines - too necessary?
« Reply #15 on: April 03, 2015, 09:42:12 AM »

I put it on all ships with burn speed below four. I can't stand crawling along at burn three. :)
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CopperCoyote

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Re: Augmented Engines - too necessary?
« Reply #16 on: April 03, 2015, 09:53:59 AM »

I put AU on basically any ship that can reasonably fit it. I even put it on Gemini. Dictating the flow of combat is super useful.

Even outside of combat I use AU on basically every thing. Even my fleet of Atlases have it equipped. I don't even mind the loss of a quarter of my cargo hold. The added speed is worth it. Having a speed of 6 means i can (slowly) outrun anything that my Tech 10/Combat 10 destroyer can't solo. Also Navigation 10 because it's so useful.

The biggest exception is frigates because they're so much faster than every thing else (especially after navigation bonus) i don't put AU on some things. For example: shuttles, hound, Cerberus, wolf, vigilance. Most of the other frigates need the speed boost in combat however.

For me It's not even about travel time. I'm content to play the game without even using the 5X speed compression. The ability to avoid massive losses in ships weapons and cargo has saved me substantially more time so far than having shorter travel time ever could have.
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Dri

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Re: Augmented Engines - too necessary?
« Reply #17 on: April 03, 2015, 11:02:30 AM »

Hmm, looking like its seen as mandatory by multiple players!

Perhaps the Unstable Injector should be about combat speed/acceleration and Augmented Engines should be changed only to Burn Speed but made cheaper OP-wise and possibly have the cargo space penalty removed. I feel its sorta like a "have your cake and eat it too" type of thing right now...
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Aeson

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Re: Augmented Engines - too necessary?
« Reply #18 on: April 03, 2015, 11:14:27 AM »

Hmm, looking like its seen as mandatory by multiple players!

Perhaps the Unstable Injector should be about combat speed/acceleration and Augmented Engines should be changed only to Burn Speed but made cheaper OP-wise and possibly have the cargo space penalty removed. I feel its sorta like a "have your cake and eat it too" type of thing right now...
Yes, at the time of this post, 4 people apparently feel that it's mandatory. Similarly, 4 people feel that it's not worthwhile, 5 people use it occasionally, 6 people use it to even out the fleet speed, and 8 people usually use it. There's not a particularly clear consensus that it's a mandatory hull modification; changing it so that it's "no longer mandatory" when there's that little apparent consensus that it is in fact mandatory is foolish.
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Solinarius

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Re: Augmented Engines - too necessary?
« Reply #19 on: April 03, 2015, 12:44:20 PM »

I think this poll is slightly ineffective due to redundancy and how many options there are. A practical poll is a good poll!

If I didn't mod the game, I'd be using AE on every cargo ship and on the lagger of the fleet. I feel anything could be better than the current balancing of burn speed. Even my rudimentary method: frigates set to 10 or 9; Destroyers set to 9 or 8; Cruisers set to 9-7; Capitals set to 8-6". This has allowed the biggest fleets in the sector to catch my burn 10 frigate fleet a few times. I also don't take navigation, feels like cheating :P.
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TheHengeProphet

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Re: Augmented Engines - too necessary?
« Reply #20 on: April 03, 2015, 01:41:04 PM »

I think that AE SHOULD cost the boatload it does.  A lot of people feel it is neccessary for their ships to have a survivable flight speed, however I feel that generally I can spend those points elsewhere to increase my ship survivability.

Front Shield Emitter/Stabilised Shields and Extended shields is always (with the exception of capitals) cheaper than either AE or UI.

I don't think it's a neccessary choice, but I do think it should be a choice, and that choice should cost you.
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Dri

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Re: Augmented Engines - too necessary?
« Reply #21 on: April 03, 2015, 02:04:47 PM »

Meh, I'd say its definitely a heavily used hull mod and perhaps a bit too good - more people are using it than not by a fair margin. But then those that use it only on slow ships or in a balanced manner here and there are a healthy amount of the poll.

I think this hull mod (and other speed boosted hull mods) should be kept in Alex's sight as the game progresses but yeah, nothing that need immediate attention.
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Silver Silence

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Re: Augmented Engines - too necessary?
« Reply #22 on: April 03, 2015, 02:15:54 PM »

I use Augmented Engines and Auxiliary Thrusters on any ship I expect to see combat. Having speed over your enemies allows you to dictate the engagement, not them. You can engage and disengage freely, while they cannot. Getting caught in a slow ship by more than a couple ships is death if you cannot quickly bring them down because you cannot back off to vent. Tactical error? Perhaps. AE means less such occurrences. AE does get out of hand as I mentioned in your other thread, Dri, when you stack it with the no-flux bonus perk and the maneuverability perk. Then you can get just about any ship flying like it's a destroyer and small ships become the embodiment of the blitzkrieg.
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Pushover

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Re: Augmented Engines - too necessary?
« Reply #23 on: April 03, 2015, 06:03:55 PM »

I don't think that augmented engines are really a big problem, despite me using them on every cruiser/capital ship. It's more a function of how important burn speed is. The in-combat bonus is useful, but being able to avoid giant fleets because your fleet is not well balanced is very important, which is also why the navigation skill is arguably the best skill in the game.
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Serenitis

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Re: Augmented Engines - too necessary?
« Reply #24 on: April 04, 2015, 11:05:56 AM »

Navigation skill needs a balance pass - it favors frigates too much.

This. This so very very much.
Frigates are plenty fast enough by default, but the current skill boosts give them even more while all but ignoring the other ships.
The current distribution of boosts is pretty much backwards with respect to 'opening up' the larger classes of ships as the game progresses.

Right now I put AE on virtually everything it will fit on, frigates get it just for the combat speed (more burn is irrelevant as their support can't keep up anyway, and UI is too much of a liability) because frigates live or die by speed - more is always better.
Everything else, with the exception of small tankers, dog freighters and shuttles gets it for the very badly needed burn speed, the combat speed boost is just a nice bonus.
The cargo and fuel penalty is completely irrelevant compared to the flexibilty and supply savings (and less tedium) more speed gives you.

I think that AE SHOULD cost the boatload it does.  A lot of people feel it is neccessary for their ships to have a survivable flight speed, however I feel that generally I can spend those points elsewhere to increase my ship survivability.

Speed is survivabilty. To the point where a good 75% of ships are just not fun at all play without AE (and some are just not fun even then with the current balance).

I would be totally fine if AE just gave a non-gimped combat speed boost, and the base ship speeds were re-balanced like this:
frigates set to 10 or 9; Destroyers set to 9 or 8; Cruisers set to 9-7; Capitals set to 8-6".
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Aeson

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Re: Augmented Engines - too necessary?
« Reply #25 on: April 04, 2015, 01:59:20 PM »

Quote
The cargo and fuel penalty is completely irrelevant compared to the flexibilty and supply savings (and less tedium) more speed gives you.
Personally, I find the supply savings aspect to be negligible, and the time savings isn't that significant at moderate burn levels. Even a very large fleet is unlikely to be spending more than maybe 10 supplies per day on crew, and Augmented Engines don't help at all with supply consumption for CR recovery and hull repair, as far as I know.

There's also a specific situation where the supply savings are very much not worth it by comparison with the cargo penalty: cargo runs. The minimum possible burn speed your fleet can have in the game is 2 (and even that gets boosted to 7 in deep hyperspace if I'm not mistaken), and if you boost a fleet from burn-2 to burn-4 you've cut the travel time by 25%. If the burn level is higher than 2, you've cut the travel time by less than 25%. Therefore, it's only with the slowest possible fleet performing cargo runs which never get into deep hyperspace that fleets fully outfitted with Augmented Engines are as viable in units of cargo shipped per time unit as fleets which are not outfitted with Augmented Engines (both can be beaten by fleets which only use Augmented Engines where needed to boost the fleet speed, though it can still be better to leave off the Augmented Engines if you're trying reactive trading rather than stockpile trading, as one big load arriving within the time limit is slightly better than one marginally smaller load arriving within the time limit), and even so they become less economical as soon as you enter hyperspace (because you need more total trips to move the same amount of cargo, which increases the fuel expenses) and they become less time-efficient and less economical as soon as you venture into deep hyperspace.

Quote
because frigates live or die by speed - more is always better.
I disagree. There's a point beyond which more speed is not generally helpful and there's a point beyond which more speed is actively harmful; the same is true for acceleration, and especially for acceleration in combination with speed. Those points vary from person to person, depending on reaction times and personal preference, and I'd tend to think that at least the 'actively harmful' point can't be reached in the base game for the vast majority of people, but they exist.

High speed + low acceleration -> controls may feel sluggish. Kind of like how capital ships feel, except that once this gets going it's actually going.
High acceleration + low speed -> controls may feel too responsive, but at least you're probably not going to overshoot too much.
High speed + high acceleration -> controls may feel too responsive and you're probably going to overshoot a lot. For me, the Hyperion falls into this category due to its rotational performance.
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Pushover

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Re: Augmented Engines - too necessary?
« Reply #26 on: April 04, 2015, 04:10:10 PM »

The travel time cut down can also be the difference between making the shortage, or missing the shortage. Missing the shortage is often very expensive if you invested a lot of money in the cargo. Burn 2 to burn 4 is a 120 movespeed to 160 movespeed increase, which is 33%. Burn 4 to burn 6 is 160ms to 200ms, which is 25%.
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Aeson

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Re: Augmented Engines - too necessary?
« Reply #27 on: April 04, 2015, 11:24:15 PM »

The travel time cut down can also be the difference between making the shortage, or missing the shortage. Missing the shortage is often very expensive if you invested a lot of money in the cargo. Burn 2 to burn 4 is a 120 movespeed to 160 movespeed increase, which is 33%. Burn 4 to burn 6 is 160ms to 200ms, which is 25%.
Yeah, I covered that. Not in as much detail, but:
Quote
if you boost a fleet from burn-2 to burn-4 you've cut the travel time by 25%. If the burn level is higher than 2, you've cut the travel time by less than 25%.
Increasing movement speed by 33% is equivalent to reducing the travel time by 25%. As the base movement speed grows, the relative movement speed bonus and travel time reduction decline.

In my experience, events last long enough that if you're paying attention and not doing silly things like "ooh, let's try to cash in on that ore shortage on Agreus that we heard about two or three weeks ago," then any midrange or better burn level is generally adequate to respond before the event ends. Burn-2 is an extreme case; burn-5 or burn-6 is far more normal, and +2 burn levels do much less for you there (~18% travel time reduction; 7 days instead of 6 doesn't matter that much). There's also the little issue of the free +5 burn you receive in deep hyperspace, which screws with the efficiency of Augmented Engines quite a bit for long-distance interstellar travel.

Anyways, math:
P = gross profit per cargo unit after tariffs
D = cargo space on the ship(s) you're considering putting Augmented Engines on where Augmented Engines will affect fleet travel time
E = the rest of the cargo space available in the fleet
S = fleet daily supply consumption
X = (speed of the slower fleet)/(speed of the faster fleet)
T = time in days that the slower fleet takes to complete a journey of length L
C = per-unit supply cost

Maximum net profits ignoring fuel costs:
Code
Slow Fleet:  P*(D + E - S*T) - S*C*T
Fast Fleet:   P*(0.75*D + E - S*X*T) - S*C*X*T

Setting the two equal and solving for T:
Code
0 = P*D*(1 - 0.75) + P*E*(1 - 1) - P*S*(1 - X)*T - S*C*(1 - X)*T
0.25*P*D = S*(P + C)*(1 - X)*T
T = P*D / [4*S*(P + C)*(1 - X)]

This gives the minimum duration of a trip where the lost cargo of Augmented Engines is paid for by the savings on supply costs. A simpler, albeit less accurate, form of the equation is
Code
T = P*D / (4*S*C)
which assumes that both the slow fleet and the fast fleet set aside the same amount of cargo capacity for supplies for the trip (which, despite being less accurate, may be more realistic since you probably want to have a bit of a reserve of supplies on hand).

So, what does this mean? Well, if you have a fleet consuming S = 1.5 supplies per day and you want to boost it from burn-4 to burn-6 by putting Augmented Engines on a Tarsus (D = 300, X = 0.8), and if gross profit per cargo unit after tariffs is P = 10 credits per unit with supplies costing C = 100 credits per unit, then the trip will need to last 22.7 days at burn-4 (25 days using the simplified equation) before Augmented Engines saves you enough in supplies to cover the lost potential gross profit. The longest direct route between any two stars in the base game is about 9.4 lightyears. If you somehow undertook this journey at burn-4 for the entire duration of the trip, it'd take you about 11.75 game days to complete this trip (but it won't actually, since there's a +5 burn bonus available in deep hyperspace, which you'll benefit from for some part of the journey). If you're going to make the run with a full hold one way and an empty hold the other way and if it costs nothing to add Augmented Engines to the fleet and remove them at either end of the trip, you're probably better off without Augmented Engines while the hold is full and with it while the hold is empty. If you're going to be running a full hold each way and selling all the cargo at both ends of the trip, you're definitely better off without Augmented Engines.

In my view, the case for using Augmented Engines on a trade fleet that is capable of at least moderate burn levels is very weak, unless you're underutilizing your trade fleet's capacity by enough that the lost cargo capacity doesn't matter, or unless you're at the point in the game where getting the most profit per run doesn't matter.

As far as justifying the use of Augmented Engines by its reduction in supply cost per distance traveled, I'm of the opinion that that is not sufficiently large relative to fuel costs and especially battle recovery costs to be worth worrying about, especially if you're regularly engaging in combat or interstellar travel. The trip in the example above works out to about 18 lightyears, and the fleet consumes about 27 or 34 supplies over the course of the trip. The Tarsus freighter that we know is in that fleet consumes about 36 units of fuel to complete that trip. If this is a fleet of 1 Tarsus Freighter and 2 Enforcer Destroyers, then you're looking at a fuel cost roughly 5 times that of the supply cost since fuel usually costs something close to the supply cost, and choosing Augmented Engines saves you a whole 20% on supply costs. Big deal. 5 + 0.8 is not much different from 5 + 1. It'll help a little, but not enough to make much of a difference. Battles are even worse; a single engagement which costs you only the base deployment cost of a ship typically costs you on the order of 10 or 20 days worth of supplies for the standard minimum crew of that ship.
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Serenitis

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Re: Augmented Engines - too necessary?
« Reply #28 on: April 05, 2015, 03:01:44 AM »

Maybe I'm coming from a different angle than some folks here becuase of two things I (presumably) do differently than others:
  • I ignore trade almost entirely* because this game makes it utterly tedious AND dependant on some random event. Just not interested. Too much hassle.
  • I don't fly frigates myself, I leave them entirely to the AI because I hate (am terrible at) twitch gaming. And more speed always = more survival for the AI.

Thus I consider a cargo penalty to not be any kind of downside worth worrying about. While the extra speed directly increases the survivability of my fleet and reduces the amount of idle time I must sit through between interesting events.

* I'll usually do a few runs to Asharu if the event runs at the start of the game, then I'll probably never bother again except to sell loot.
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