Overview
How to get the most bang for your buck with FTD’s engines.PREFACE: I have yet to get around to updating this guide for the new engines due to real world commitments, but rest assured I don’t plan on abandoning this guide.
Introduction
Hello and welcome to this guide which outlines things I have discovered while trying to build the most powerful, and efficient engines possible. Like many others, I’m sure, I played around in the Vehicle Designer, and made ridiculously inefficient engines like this:
Naturally, I suffered the consequences of this when starting the campaign and thinking these engines would be sufficient.
Here, I’ll be focusing on Efficiency, but as we will discover, efficiency of an engine and power output itself are largely linked.
So, what are engines?
Engines are, in the scope of FTD, often the core of any successful vessel or fortress. They provide the lifeblood of your creations: Power Output. Without this, ships and airframes are just eye candy, weapons will not fire and/or reload, fortresses will crumble, and other components such as resource gatherers will become inoperable.
Engines are made from a number of components:
These components are essential to the functioning of a given engine assembly.
Engine Block – This is the first block necessary to begin construction of an engine. Viewing this block in any camera mode or by moving the build cursor over it will reveal all information about your engine, such as its Power Output, Fuel Efficiency and various part counts.
Crank Shafts – These blocks extend outwards in a single line from the front of the Engine Block. Similar to the Engine Block itself, Crankshafts are vital to the construction of the engine, as they are required in order to attach Cylinders.
Cylinders – Cylinders are the components that provide power for the engine assembly. The amount of power they will generate, and the amount of fuel they will use is dictated by the type and quantity of auxiliary components connected to them either directly (in the case of Exhausts) or via Carburettors. Cylinders are attached to the Crankshaft itself, and can be place on top of, and to either side of Crankshaft blocks. They cannot be attached to the underside of the Crankshaft.
Carburettors – Carburettors, or Carbs for short, are attached directly to Cylinders and provide the means to connect other auxiliary components to the engine assembly. Carbs can be attached on top of Cylinders, to any available side, but not underneath the Cylinder. Alone, they do not provide any bonus power or fuel efficiency to the Cylinders they are connected to.
These parts are what define the stats of your engines; Their Power Output and Fuel Efficiency.
Fuel Tanks – These provide an internal fuel supply for your engine. Each fuel tank provides 1000 fuel to your engine. In-game, their full name is “Engine’s Own Fuel Tank”. Of the Auxiliary Components, only these blocks can be considered a “must-have” on any given engine assembly, though an engine will still work without them provided that there are other fuel sources aboard the same Constructible. Adding Fuel Tanks to an engine will increase the overall power output and fuel efficiency.
Superchargers – Like the previous component, Superchargers are attached to Carbs, with the same placement restrictions. Superchargers also provide bonus power output and fuel efficiency to the engine, however, they will not function if there isn’t at least one internal Fuel Tank attached to the same assembly. The ratio of Superchargers to Fuel Tanks also plays an important role in the final statistics of an engine.
Exhausts – Exhausts are connected directly to Cylinders, and provide bonus power output and fuel efficiency. They have the same connection restrictions as Carbs.
Author Comment – Unfortunately, in the current build at the time of writing (Alpha 1.55), Exhausts are arguably of limited use. Their positive impact on the final stats of an engine are outweighed greatly by their negative points as outlined here:
> They take up a valuable slot on a Cylinder that could be better used by a Carb and its associated auxiliary components. Using the aforementioned Carb to connect more Fuel and Superchargers yields much greater benefits than the Exhaust would provide.
>They produce smoke emissions that clip through blocks. While not hugely important at this time, in the future when multiplayer is developed further, this factor will reveal to hostile players the location of your engines, putting them, and the vessel they power, at much greater risk of destruction. This is especially problematic with fortresses.
Author Opinion: Avoid using Exhausts unless they get reworked to be of more use in the future.
Building An Engine
The first step in creating any successful engine, once you’ve decided where to put it, is laying down your initial, necessary components; The Engine Block and Crankshafts.
In this example we’re looking at the “Mound of Blocks” method, which maximises the number of simultaneous connections between components, as well as cramming as much power output and fuel efficiency into the shortest space possible. As you’ve probably guessed, it’s these connections that define the statistics for your engine, thus, more connections are favourable. It’s worth noting that you can make powerful and efficient engines with much smaller lateral and vertical dimensions, however, this comes at the cost of greatly increased length, or longitudinal dimensions.
So with this in mind, our next step is to place our cylinders. We obviously want to ensure that we can establish as many simultaneous connections as possible, so grouping Cylinders into threes (Above, and to either side of the crankshaft) with space in between each group to add Carburettors.
Then go ahead and place your Carburettors next to and on top of your Cylinders like so:
Now that we have the beginnings of our “Mound of Blocks”, things get interesting. You may notice that components placed into the gaps between the Carbs can have up to four connection points. In this example, I’ve chosen to put our Superchargers into these slots, as well as on either end of the assembly, so we have 8 total.
We discussed in the previous section how the ratio between Fuel Tanks and Superchargers has a role to play in the final stats of our engine assembly. After various configuration experiments, I’ve found that a ratio of roughly 1 Supercharger to 4 Fuel tanks gives optimal results, and thus, in this design, we can simply fill in any remaining slots with fuel tanks.
This ratio can vary depending on where you place certain parts (putting Fuel tanks in place of Superchargers (In the 4x-Connection Slots) for example, would likely disturb the 1:4 ratio) and whether you make use of the Carb slots on the ends of the engine (which I have not done in this example), so I encourage experimentation.
If you’ve been following this walkthrough to the letter, though, your engine should look like this:
And with its 2186.335 Power Output, and a Fuel Efficiency of 0.00000000000007343461 Fuel Units Used/Power Unit Produced, your engine is good to go!
Further Considerations
Here I’m going to explain some concepts that are either important points to consider when building an engine, or misconceptions regarding engine configurations. More will be added as they crop up, but for now, there are only two points that may be of interest.
This guide is all about efficiency, but a number of people may be baffled regarding the way the game displays the value for this.
When looking at an Engine Block, you may have seen an efficiency value such as, for example:
“0.1E-15”
And thought to yourself, “Uh, and that means what, exactly?”.
This form of notation is used for numbers that are either incredibly large, or incredibly small (And thus, too lengthy to display easily in a compact fashion). In this case, it is the latter. The “E” part is always equal to 10. If we expand this number into more traditional mathematic notation, we get:
“0.1 x 10^-15” Which would equal 0.0000000000000001.
The most important part here is the “-15” part (That’s NEGATIVE 15). The larger this number (or smaller, depending on how you look at it) the better. For example, an engine with a Fuel Efficiency of 0.1E-20 is more efficient than an engine with an efficiency of 0.1E-15.
Engines can share components with neighbouring engines.
Here we see the upper engine (Marked in red) sharing fuel tanks (Green) with the lower engine (Blue). This can be incredibly helpful when planning a vessel, as it allows one to make the most of space available while still getting the desired performance from one’s engines.
To-Do List
- Go over Electric Engines.
- Add example designs.
- Possibly make and add a supplemental video guide.