Posted by: Jorgen_CAB
« on: February 09, 2017, 04:53:30 PM »Very interesting, but why is this a problem? I mean, commercial vs military is just a label, right? If you renamed 50% engine efficiency as "normal" you could say "In most, but not all, circumstances it is best to have a normal efficiency engine. Overpowered engines are only really useful for smaller military ships, or in cases of serious shipyard/maintenance/jump drive size constraint".
I'd much rather see the whole military/commercial engine labeling removed altogether.
It matters for Jump Drives... you can build really large very cheap Jump Ships for you military ships if they use Commercial Drives. This is both in build and research related costs and it will be a significant reduction in cost.
Given all the research and economical benefits of building and researching cheaper engines you can put more research into engine technology and have more advanced engines and even with even less fuel guzzling engines thus the speed will usually end up higher than it otherwise would if you built more regular engines.
When you look at the whole chain of benefits from industrial, research, infrastructure and ship design you will save allot of resources and as a result have more advanced technology and more ships. Saving on fuel and engine cost and research is that costly.
I simply role-play that ships with weapons MUST have military grade engines, so I never abuse the Commercial Engine exploit on Military combat ships. I will give Commercial Engines to some Military labeled ships but never to combat oriented ships.
Very interesting, but why is this a problem? I mean, commercial vs military is just a label, right? If you renamed 50% engine efficiency as "normal" you could say "In most, but not all, circumstances it is best to have a normal efficiency engine. Overpowered engines are only really useful for smaller military ships, or in cases of serious shipyard/maintenance/jump drive size constraint".
I'd much rather see the whole military/commercial engine labeling removed altogether.
It will matter if you want large and cheap Jump Drive ships. You can save considerable amount of research and build costs on Jump Drives if you can use commercial versions.
If you also have hangars on most of your capital ships then there is no best fuel to engine ratio either...
Anyway, I don't think there is much point in fuel to engine ratio unless you carry too much fuel. Better fuel efficiency always lead to reduced cost in extracting fuel and your overall infrastructure. Cheaper engines also lead to cheaper ship per power the engine output, less maintenance and crew spaces on the ship. You can't just look at the engine to fuel ratio when power settings below 1x is involved.