Does engine size affect Energy reserves?

Kkabb · Post by **Kkabb** » Tue May 06, 2014 10:39 am

Is energy a fixed pool or is it affected by engine size? In this thread from a few years back there seems to be a consensus that only max IDS speed is affected. Based on that information I outfitted my ship with class 1 engines. I fly in inertial mode mostly and IDS 4 is good enough for safe planetary descent so the extra assembly points from reducing engines was a welcome change.

I only ask because last night some Veterans told me to upgrade my engines to increase my energy. I don't want to step on any toes. I simply would like there to be a definitive answer to this question since it's a little confusing.

[Edited on 5-7-2014 by Kkabb]

Post by **DaveK** » Tue May 06, 2014 11:49 am

A couple of us did some testing a while ago;

Engine size increases you maximum speed - this is its main change and function: However maximum speed is limited to just below 8000 regardless of frame and engines
Engine size affects fuel usage rate
Engine size increases acceleration but the effect is virtually unnoticeable and ceases to have any effect above 1500(ish)

There are discussions and graphs in the Mercenaries' Technical Guide (from SeeJay's site) concerning speed, acceleration and the effect of engines

Post by **Marvin** » Tue May 06, 2014 2:00 pm

With all the tweaks made to EM lately, any correlation between engine size and energy reserves needs to be tested ... and charted (the hard part for most testers).

Post by **DaveK** » Tue May 06, 2014 8:55 pm

sounds like something interesting to try!

Post by **Marvin** » Tue May 06, 2014 9:37 pm

I lost my stopwatch.

Post by **DaveK** » Tue May 06, 2014 10:41 pm

I've got a spare - I'll email it to you!

Iron man · Post by **Iron man** » Wed May 07, 2014 5:53 am

Report Engine enery : (energy set at 0w and 0s and tested in sp and fire particule and beam cannon in same time and civil ship wihout any crew)

Frame mirage Engine 10 : 8 sec2/ 8 .6
engine 7 : 7.7 / 7.4
engine 5 : 6sec 4 /6.1
engine 1 : 8.3/ 8.8

Frame Evoch E engine 10 : 12 sec /11.8

Someone can confirm what I'm saying?

PaulB · Post by **PaulB** » Thu May 08, 2014 3:16 am

From post: 169776, Topic: tid=11386, author=Iron man wrote:Report Engine enery : (energy set at 0w and 0s and tested in sp and fire particule and beam cannon in same time and civil ship wihout any crew)

Frame mirage Engine 10 : 8 sec2/ 8 .6
engine 7 : 7.7 / 7.4
engine 5 : 6sec 4 /6.1
engine 1 : 8.3/ 8.8

Frame Evoch E engine 10 : 12 sec /11.8

Someone can confirm what I'm saying?

They would have to know which Cannon and Beam you have to do a comparison.
It seems a bit odd that Engine 10 and 1 give the same results and 5 & 7 less.

Paul

Iron man · Post by **Iron man** » Thu May 08, 2014 9:02 am

The test is only to see if the energy change with the engine. I think it's not important to know wich cannon is using.

I'm agree with you this is strange the engine 5 and 7 give low result ..... if someone can confirm my result please I will be interesting to know why that gave this strange result.

Post by **DaveK** » Thu May 08, 2014 10:05 am

As soon as I get time I'll do a comparison with all 10 engines - same frame and equipment each time

Hopefully later today or tomorrow.

picommander · Post by **picommander** » Thu May 08, 2014 2:03 pm

Where you at it could you also have an eye on shield recovery? I'm currently tinkering with a starmaster and wings 13. Since I don't want to sacrifice max shields(10) I degrade engine 10 to 9. But then, whenever my shields are hit hard they seem to need a significant longer time to recover, no matter what energy distribution I use and/or using the harmonize shield button. Needs more careful testing though...

Post by **DaveK** » Thu May 08, 2014 9:49 pm

From post: 169871, Topic: tid=11386, author=picommander wrote:Where you at it could you also have an eye on shield recovery? I'm currently tinkering with a starmaster and wings 13. Since I don't want to sacrifice max shields(10) I degrade engine 10 to 9. But then, whenever my shields are hit hard they seem to need a significant longer time to recover, no matter what energy distribution I use and/or using the harmonize shield button. Needs more careful testing though...

Just to be sure - you want to know the effect of shield class on shield recovery time?

picommander · Post by **picommander** » Thu May 08, 2014 10:35 pm

From post: 169900, Topic: tid=11386, author=DaveK wrote:
From post: 169871, Topic: tid=11386, author=picommander wrote:Where you at it could you also have an eye on shield recovery? I'm currently tinkering with a starmaster and wings 13. Since I don't want to sacrifice max shields(10) I degrade engine 10 to 9. But then, whenever my shields are hit hard they seem to need a significant longer time to recover, no matter what energy distribution I use and/or using the harmonize shield button. Needs more careful testing though...
Just to be sure - you want to know the effect of shield class on shield recovery time?:)

Not quite. The effect of engine class on shield recovery time (if there is any). The idea behind isn't quite illogical (but rather comes from recent practical observations that still need to be confirmed): If your engine is hardly sufficient to accelerate your current truck (should be tested in a heavy frame like starmaster), energy would be dragged off from your shields. So my theory... but as I said, I only recognized this effect after my shields where hit hard and with engines c9 (instead of c10) as shields never won't degree 'spontaneously'. They just don't seem to recover as fast as they used to with a c10 engine.

Iron man · Post by **Iron man** » Fri May 09, 2014 12:13 am

Sorry i tought it was the energy recovering of your ship. This test is wrong them for what you are looking for. Sorry my misstake.

picommander · Post by **picommander** » Fri May 09, 2014 1:40 am

In the thread that Kkabb mentioned Maarschalk stated "They [larger engines] will use up more energy!"
If that was and still is true, than smaller engines should NOT have any negative effects on shields.
But exactly this is my impression, not quite easy to approve though. Maybe I should test with an extreme setup and fly the starmaster with c1 engines. If my impression is true, the effect on shields should be much worse then.

Iron man · Post by **Iron man** » Fri May 09, 2014 2:03 am

Going to make test again today if i can. If someone want join me you are welcome.

Sorry again for the confusion ( strange result on the test also.....)

Post by **DaveK** » Sun May 11, 2014 10:57 am

OK team. RL got in the way but I've now done the testing.

With human reflexes and a stopwatch it's unrealistic to claim precision to more than the nearest 0.5 secs, especially when the stop point is a change in cannon firing rate. So all the following times are plus or minus a quarter of a second. If an effect is quicker than that then it insignificant in combat:

All tests were done in a Starmaster equipped with custom cannon. I timed how long it took for combined beam and particle cannon to reach recharge firing (ie when they have to recharge in order to fire). This was detected when the particle cannon moved into slow fire mode. All times were repeated at least 3 times and the values averaged

Part 1: Effect of engines

Shield/weapon balance = -4/4 : class 10 shields
Engine classes 1 - 5 - 6 - 9 & 10 tested

Result: all engines gave a time of 9 secs

Part 2: Effect of shields

Shield/weapon balance = -4/4 : class 5 engine
Shield classes 1 - 3 - 5 & 10 tested

Results: all shields gave a time of 9 secs

To give a little perspective I then measured the firing time to recharge firing and the recovery time (the time taken for cannon to get back to 100%) at a variety of shield/weapon balances:

shield/weapon
energy balance - - - - firing time(secs) - - - - recharge time (secs)

-5/5 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9.5 . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

-3/3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.5 . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

0/0 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

3/-1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17.5

5/-5 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24

Conclusion:

1: Class of engines and class of shields don't make a measurable difference to recovery times

2: shield/weapon balance makes an enormous difference to recovery times

EDIT: A thought occurs to me. The tests I've done assumes (reasonably I think) that a longer firing time = a slower energy depletion rate = longer shield life in combat

If you want a more direct test the effect of engine size on shield strength you would really need to run the engines at full power and then time how long they can withstand a given firepower from a given range. That means the person doing the firing would have to formate on the test pilot and time how long it takes to blow him up. It would be a fascinating piece of research but would take a lot of time, patience and coordination.

When Marvin and I did a similar experiment to see how effective different cannon classes were, he was blown up dozens of times - all he had to do was sit, die and respawn. Testing shields would mean that he would have had to keep popping in the station to swap engines and each test itself would take quite a while to set up and perform

I'm game if there are any lab rats out there

[Edited on 11-5-2014 by DaveK]

picommander · Post by **picommander** » Sun May 11, 2014 4:46 pm

From post: 170019, Topic: tid=11386, author=DaveK wrote: [...]
If you want a more direct test the effect of engine size on shield strength you would really need to run the engines at full power and then time how long they can withstand a given firepower from a given range. That means the person doing the firing would have to formate on the test pilot and time how long it takes to blow him up. It would be a fascinating piece of research but would take a lot of time, patience and coordination.

That would be the interesting part. Though in my case I'm afraid laziness prevails curiosity.

In any case, thanks for the good work!

EDIT:
But wait... the strange thing I mentioned was not how long the shields withstand the fire, it's about recovery time in conjunction with different engines (difference between engine c9 and c10). That's not necessary the same. And if you blow the ship up you can't measure the recovery time.

[Edited on 11-5-2014 by picommander]

Post by **Marvin** » Sun May 11, 2014 4:57 pm

From post: 170033, Topic: tid=11386, author=picommander wrote:And if you blow the ship up you can't measure the recovery time.

Indeed. Good point. Coordination between shooter and target would be uppermost.

picommander · Post by **picommander** » Sun May 11, 2014 5:53 pm

What I was talking about was shields about half down (all shields yellow after harmonizing) and with a *significantly* longer recovery time than usual. I'd say something between 5 and 10 seconds. Since I'm usually under attack when this happens I'm busy with escape maneuvers, so no time for exact measurements. Energy distribution to shields didn't seem to have any effect on recovery time. So far I've only experienced this abnormality with engines c9 (on a starmaster) but not with c10 and it's pretty rare. Since these "dates" are anything else than precise I'd recommend just have an eye on it when fighting with the above mentioned setups (starmaster, engine c9/c10). If no one else would ever experience similar abnormalities it might be some strange and non-reproducible incident (though I already saw it at least 3 times).

[Edited on 11-5-2014 by picommander]

Post by **Marvin** » Sun May 11, 2014 6:05 pm

Recovery time also depends on how often you transfer energy from one shield to another ... each time you transfer, extra energy is expended.

Post by **DaveK** » Sun May 11, 2014 6:52 pm

If you're under attack, does that mean you are still being hit? As far as the experiment goes - same procedure as before but time until the test pilot indicated that shields are down to (say) 25%.

A thought has just struck me (it happens now and again

) . . . when you use the installed stealth generator is trashes the shield energy. So instead of having to handle combat or be chased by the experimenter to get the shields down, it should be possible to turn the stealth mode on and off and time the shield recovery whilst travelling at constant speed and with no danger of being hit by a passing hostile just before the timing run finishes

Can anyone see a problem with that? If not, I can do some measurements all by myself (as the song goes

)

picommander · Post by **picommander** » Sun May 11, 2014 9:30 pm

That's a brilliant idea, Dave! And no, I meant after I'm out of the heat, but there are still enemies around and so careful testing is of course almost impossible. If you would take the time and do that I'd much appreciate it. Personally I'm not in testing mood right now. After pacifying 2 systems, one of them initially hostile, I'd really like to start with what I always had in mind: Exploring. I think for exploring I'll switch back to the c10 engines. All I can do is whenever I see this same odd effect with these engines too I would report here and give a general all-clear signal (since I'd consider it normal if it actually happens with both shield classes). As a last comment I don't know how much and if at all my crew comes into account when it comes to energy/engine/shield distribution. Right now I have a weapon, a navigator and engineer on board, all at 100/100. I'm sure I want a Scientist for exploring but still not sure if I'll swap one of them or keep them all and add a 4th one. Or switching to navigator and scientist only, but it's always hard to say good bye to crew members who did a good job on your ship...

Busch · Post by **Busch** » Sun May 11, 2014 11:04 pm

Great test, Dave, and an interesting proposition with the stealth gen. I use the shield recharger with my two middle-weight go-to Q-ships (Phoenix and Sentinel frames, both light on shield cores.), and usually always fly with the power bias settings at -4/+4. With considerate usage (smooth trigger control and good sight-picture) of the primary weapons (custom builds on both), I can fire un-godly amounts down-range, leaving a small power 'foot-print'/short recharge time. Probably somewhere mid-range of the -5/+5 <-> -3/+3 significa you've posted above, I'd expect.

Post by **DaveK** » Mon May 12, 2014 10:58 am

OK . . .

Starmaster frame and a variety of shield and engine combo's - shield/weapon balance = 0/0 - timings carried out stationary and at V=1900. The timings are better than 1% accurate

Method: Stealth on , causing shields to drop to 10%. Simultaneously turn stealth off and start stopwatch. Time until shields reach 100% again

Results

Engines: C10 - C9 - C7 - C1 with Shield: C10; measured at v=0 and v=1900 and the C9 engine results repeated several times and also measured jinking with afterburner to simulate running like a headless chicken (no offense RC or Rooster

)
All timings = 55 secs on the nose

Engines: C10 and C9 with Shield: C1; measured at v=0 and v=1900
All timings = 55 secs on the nose

Conclusion: pretty conclusive

Secondary tests: as would be expected shield/weapon @ 5/-5 recharges shields in a fraction of the time ; @ -5/5 is like watching paint dry