On Outfitting: Part 4, Power, Propulsion and Fuel
18 Apr 2021Kissamies
Now that we have covered the offence and defence, it's time to dive deep into the guts of my ships to see what makes them go. In this part, I will cover Power Plants and Distributors, Thrusters and FSDs as well as Fuel Scoops and Tanks. I will also reveal some principles of my shipbuilding that concern how my ships are able to maneuver and travel.First of all Power Plant, the beating heart of the ship. I always go for A-rate because of the heat efficiency. If I want to save weight, I simply use a smaller A. Never D, which has horrible 0.75 efficiency. I don't like overheating when I'm fuel scooping and I do that a lot. This is also evident in my engineering. The standard go-to is Armoured with Thermal Spread. It gives the PP extra capacity while making it run cooler and gives a lot of extra integrity. the cost is some extra mass, and some of my more recent builds may go for Stripped Down instead if the ship runs cool otherwise and I don't expect to travel too much with it. I love the Low Emissions mod when I can use it. Usually I can't use full 5 grades but it's very good even partially. Always with Stripped Down to counter the mass increase, unless it's a real special build with max efficiency. Then it's Thermal Spread. I use Overcharged only if I have a really power hungry build that demands it and even then I use as little grades as I can get away with and always with Thermal Spread. There are some instances where I'm especially worried of power plant damage and I go for Double Braced for any of the blueprints, but that is very rare.
So Power Plant: As cool as practical. The Guardian Powerplant is equivalent of G4 overcharged A with the heat efficiency of G5 without Thermal Spread. The only perk is that it's more durable than Overcharged. Useless for me except for a stopgap solution while I'm shopping for a proper one.
Continuing the previous metaphor, the Power Distributor can be thought as the arteries. It is not quite as important to be A-rated, but on my combat ships it generally is. Got to have power to weapons while the shields get enough pips as well, after all. Engineering is generally Charge Enhanced, but a lightly armed or weaponless light build might get downrated Engine Focused and a laser miner Weapon Focused. Traditionally, the mod is generally Cluster Capacitors, but lately I have begun using Super Conduits too.
The Guardian PD is more usable than the PP, especially because of its 104% capacity, and it might linger in my ships longer. It nearly always gets replaced by a fully engineered regular version if the ship is important enough, though.
With the power covered, it's time to move to the legs. My Thrusters are generally A-rated, but D-rate is not all that rare either. The engineering is nearly always Dirty with Drag Drives, though the Enhanced Performance Thrusters need Drive Distributors instead. Clean Tuning is a trap because it uses more power, which ends up generating more heat anyway. Depends on your PP efficiency, though. I guess it might be better if you wanted to keep as cool as possible while also doing combat maneuvers and boosting. My experimental shieldless DBS uses Clean drives to test this principle. When I'm less concerned with realspace performance and want more jump range, I'll use the D-rated thrusters. Still Dirty Drag, though. There are few cases where I use A-rated Dirty with Stripped Down, though.
Now for the really interesting part, the Frame Shift Drive. I like long jumps and aim for decent range even for the ships that aren't meant for travelling. I think 25 ly is the kind of jump range where the plotted route stops being too zig-zaggy and starts being more efficient-looking, so that's what I aim for. Failing that, the 20 ly is the lower limit, though I still do have few builds that go even below that. Mainly very specialised combat builds. For a build that is meant to travel through the Bubble, I consider 35 ly the comfortable minimum, but don't sweat too much about beating that. The exploration ship requirement is considerably more, but I don't absolutely min-max them. Currently, they are little shy of 70 with full tank and I think that's enough.
So needless to say, my FSD is always A-rate and never undersized. Generally engineered with Increased Range and then either Deep Charge or Mass Manager depending if it's smaller that 5 or not. I have built some Faster Boot drives in the past for combat ships with power problems, but those always ended being pretty unsatisfying even when I kept them close to home. Our Aseveljet bubble is large enough to require a few jumps if you travel from side to side. These days there's the double engineered v1 drive that includes this perk while also having the best optimal mass, though. Shielded mod I have never used.
Regardless of all the wonderful engineering some ships would still be hopeless if it wasn't for the Guardian FSD Boosters. Much like the Guardian shield boosters for the shields, they benefit most the ship that have bad jump range. Naturally my exploration ships use them to get all the jump range they can manage, but I feel that the benefit is better felt when added to those horrible sub 20 ly jumpers. Also remember that you don't necessarily need to use the big ones. Even the modest boost of 4 or 6 ly can push the jump range to acceptable levels.
I have to mention the Engineered V1 5A FSD again because it is so great and I have recently spent some time upgrading most of my fleet with it. The combined Increased Range and Faster Boot optimised mass increase is so great that I'm not compelled to go for Mass Manager all the time. It runs a bit hotter, so I chose Thermal Spread to scoop with naturally hotter ships, like the Imperial Clipper. Its intergrity is a bit lower, so I used Double Braced on a few combat ships.
Finally the FSD and the ship itself needs fuel. The Fuel Scoop is the favored method of keeping the ship traveling independently. I generally go for A-rate. Power consumption is rarely a factor because it's only used in supercruise, so I can put it on lowest power priority. I have sometimes used for B or C-rate just to cheapen the rebuy cost, when I feel the particular ship doesn't need to travel that much. As for the size, explorers always get the largest possible scoop. On other ships, my rule of the thumb is that the scoop needs to be the same size as the fuel tank if it is to be used seriously. I also have some ships where the scoop is smaller, but those are "top-up" scoops just to add a little range and also for emergencies. I also have them so I can jet cone boost from those white dwarfs. I'm crazy that way.
Most people consider extra Fuel Tanks dead weight and I used to do so too, but have found some use for them. First I added one on my exploration Krait Phantom because I had a size 3 slot with no use. It helped me to jump a couple more neutron stars before I needed to step off the highway to refuel, so not completely useless. Later on, I also started to add them to my plasma slug APA armed ships that had too small size 4 tanks. This worked fine, and when I flew those ships around the bubble to visit engineers, I noted that they travel really well too. They definitely have enough range to crisscross the Aseveljet bubble a few times. Some people shrink the ship's core fuel tank for better jump range. I never did that even when I didn't care for the extra tanks.
Generally the power generation must be balanced against the power consumption, and sublight performance as well as the jump range is tied to the weight of the ship. Just like everyone else, I tend to balance the payload between A- and D- rated modules for best performance vs speed. More of that in the next part.