Well, I have been busy for a time after I noticed I would need some extremely optimal designed engine systems in my new started game. There I cannot really research, only salvage, and thus will be fooling around with the very basics of voidmanship for quite a while, which means those are better
really good thought out to be of any challenge to the early threats out there.(especially the missiles)
So what I only fantasized before I put now into program. Maybe someone else has done it already - I didn't check. Chance is though that it wouldn't suffice to my craving for aesthetics anyway.
Often there are issues with smaller crafts as the engine design here can go against intuition. Like for example if you shrink an engine to 5/6 while maintaining velocity (so Power Factor goes to 6/5), it might still mean a greater range as in some cases this 1/6 could e.g. just double your fuel reserves.(Double fuel beats +60% consumption) Having this calculated to the optimum will mainly help with vessels of a tight tonnage planning schedule, so mainly missiles, fighters, FAC and to slightly lesser degree up to 15k ships. Any ship that can rely on multiple maximum sized engines though will just be fine with the rule of the thumb of 1:4 Fuel:Engines, which is always correct at that stage.
Some story, but here the links to this Excel document:
For people with google account:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B3vZFhO9KKngNThSZUxPWkRJdEE/view?usp=sharingFor anyone else:
http://www11.zippyshare.com/v/51234695/file.htmlIt is not really exhaustively tested, but still quite a bit. If you find something however, report it here or PN and I will possibly come to correct it.
Some advices when using the program:
- Though it may help you finding some numbers quickly with the "Engine Size" field, the program is mainly built for the "Propulsion Size" mode that combines engine and fuel, and thus allows calculation of optimized ranges.
- Play with the number: Sometimes a much more efficient engine configuration is just waiting around the corner (+-50 tons/ +-0.01MSP). This happens especially to uneven engine HS/MSP numbers as those often don't have good divisors, so the minimum engine size is bad, and as we all know, small engines are less efficient. Just watch the engine count and try to keep it as low as possible.
- Experiment: Set up a Propulsion System Target Mass for some med-sized craft (3-15k maybe) so that the system decides on how much fuel to add. Then set up any Custom Single Engine Mass, but without the Power Factor. You can see the system calculate the optimum power factor to your engine wishes. Now: Type in any engine factor lower than that and watch the vessel's Range display. Despite intuition saying that lower power grades should always result in further range, the result here shows of why this tool exists. -> It will drop nontheless, which means there is some optimum for the Power Factor that is not Zero.
///Edit(3.5.16): Google Drive Link updated.
