Engines & Thrust
- The Dev Team
All sublight engines are designed to provide thrust in sublight space. There are two types of travel in sublight space.
Standard Travel
This is used for short range maneuvers, anomalies or combat maneuvering. The speed is simply whatever the maximum designated speed is for that ship in m/s.
Hyperdrive Travel
This is used for longer range, but still sublight travel. Hyderdrives have a spool up time and a spool down time which prevents them from being fired instantly. They also interfere with a ships onboard sensors and leave a larger thermal signature than standard travel with sublight engines.
T2 Engine Information
Hyperdrive is Base Speed * 50 / second for out to 1 billion kilometers, and Base Speed * 100 / second for distances beyond 1 billion kilometers.
Hyperdrive has a spool up and cool down time of 60 minutes.
Hyperdrive removes the ability to use sensors while engaged.
T3 Engine Information
Hyperdrive is Base Speed * 150 / second for out to 1 billion kilometers, and Base Speed * 300 / second for distances beyond 1 billion kilometers.
Hyperdrive has a spool up and cool down time of 30 minutes.
Hyperdrive removes the ability to use sensors while engaged.
Thrust & Maneuver Information
Hull Size | Top Speed Formula |
|---|---|
Under 100HS | Thrust To Weight / 200 |
100HS - 4,000HS | Thrust To Weight / 1000 |
Above 4,000 HS | Thrust To Weight / 2000 |
Build Concepts
There are a few concepts when building ships, but we’re going to break down the two most common when it comes to engines and thrust planning.
Single Engine
Pros
Provides simpler construction.
Less complexity for maintenance & engineering.
Cons
Can be rendered dead in the water by maintenance issue or damage from combat etc.
Multiple Engine
Pros
Has more redundancy allowing partial thrust if one or more engines is down due to maintenance or damage from combat etc.
Cons
More complex for maintenance and engineering.
Longer construction process.
Important Notes
Sensors will still work when engines are spooling up or down from Hyperdrive.
During spool-up/spool-down times, only PDF platforms work, and the ship is fully idle in all other senses.
If there is a unknown or enemy contact within sensor range, the spool-up will not be ‘tacked on’ to the timer, but rather will be it’s own timer, during which the unknown/enemy contact is still able to potentially communicate or engage.
It’s important to understand that as a ship gets larger, it gets harder to propel that larger mass, this means that large ship designs must either focus on being very efficient but sacrificing speed, or must heavily invest into engine % of HS overall at the cost of much higher fuel use for speed (This is primarily for military/combat applications)