I haven’t seen any mention anywhere in the game that the lamp burns fuel. It’s not in any tooltips. It may seem obvious if you’ve been playing for a long time, but for someone just starting out there’s no way to figure it out except by guessing. New players are the ones who are most likely to run low on fuel and have the most need to know this.
Fuel consumption seems about right to me. I’m still using the starting ship, so maybe it’s not always like this with bigger ships, but it seems very well balanced to me. I can get to where I need to go and carry a small amount of cargo back, but I have to plan carefully and make stops at different ports along the way to refuel. It’s a good way of making sure the player has an interesting journey and can’t just skip directly from London to their destination.
What annoyed me most about engines is that when I finally had enough money to get better engines and the cutter, I didn’t notice any increase in speed. If I have to pay and sacrifice cargo space (and thus range), then I expect the cutter to be significantly faster. Right now it doesn’t serve any purpose in the game unless you really need +10 veils.
There’s no reason why we shouldn’t be given useful information in game about the ships and engines. The max speed of the ships would be especially helpful to avoid wasting money.
also consider that while it consume more fuel, faster travel means you eat less food and get less nightmare. I once run a full cargo ship while lacking engine upgrade and it gnaws my precious supplies so fast… and we all know supplies is twice the price than fuel :)
I agree the Cutter needs to be a bit more agile – perhaps acceleration or maneuverability, moreso than speed – but a little extra speed would be nice, even if the Cutter isn’t supposed to be as fast as the Frigate or the Corvette.
I’ve recently started playing sunless sea, and while looking for some info on engines, I’ve found a lot of complaints about the small speed increases related to big fuel consumption increases, which does indeed seem annoying.
But then, as a physicist, I thought about the principles, and actually, the engines in the game seem to give a higher speed boost than physics should suggest. The data given in a couple of places seems to suggest that the 5000 power engine gives about twice the speed of the 800 power engine. In terms of physics, to go twice the speed in a situation dominated by hydrodynamic (or aerodynamic) drag, you need 8 times the power, so that would mean a 6400 power engine. So in real life this annoyance is actually worse, as it seems reasonable to assume that 8 times the engine power would also mean 8 times the fuel consumption in real life (it doesn’t in your everyday experience of driving more or less powerful cars, but that’s because you don’t drive them at full power all the time).
For those interested in the details: hydrodynamic drag scales quadratically with speed so you need to do 4 times as much work to go the same distance twice as fast, but you also need to do that work in half the time (because you’re going twice as fast), so you need 8 times the power.
That also means that the relation between engine speed 1 and 2 in the game is completely unrealistic, as you can never go twice as fast with only twice as much fuel consumption. ;-)
Note that a faster engine allows you to use up less supplies and acquire less terror. Also note that supplies cost twice as much as fuel (generally, but you can get supplies for free in chunks).
I think that the system works. It’s worth getting the Impeller, however, which gives you speed + efficiency. I also have the officer that adds to efficiency, and like everyone else, am using the clay men for extra engine power.
Seems like I’m extremely late to this thread, just started playing it and looking forward to the submarine DLC. Anyway, does anyone notice any difference with the ship weights? It says in one of the loading screens that heavier weight makes the ship travel slower/faster. BUT, I’ve tried using the Fulgent Impeller on the smallest 500 weight ship and it really didn’t seem any faster to me than on the other ships.
Lighter ships benefit less from stronger engines than heavier ships do. Basically, think of the bigger engines less as something to make small ships faster, and more to help big ships catch up with small ships.
I’m looking to make a mod that changes the fuel consumption to be more inline with real world analogs. I’ve changed the engines to all consume less fuel but what I really want to do is change the calculations. I’ll post if I get anywhere.
Real world fuel consumption at lower speeds is a fraction of higher speed consumption. I’d like to replicate that and increase the consumption rate for the emergency speed button dramatically. I’ll post if I get anywhere.
But too the conversation already ongoing…
When you look at the speed of a ship you have to take into account (gross oversimplification) the drag of the hull (already addressed in the thread) in the water vs. how much water the propulsion mechanism can move.
A propeller can only move so much water. A bigger engine can spin the propeller faster, but at a certain speed cavitation occurs (the propeller creates a bubble of air around itself and no long contacts the water. i.e. no water is being moved) and the ship loses speed.
If you wanted to increase the speed of the base ship dramatically, you’d need to increase the ability of the propellers to move water. Larger propellers, better made and angled, what have you… Theoretically you can change the propellers without changing the engine but larger propellers are harder to move so you’d end up at the same(ish) speed as you’d be using much more power to spin the props at the same speed than with smaller props.
If I can get into the base files, or if enough of the needed items become openly modifiable, I’d like to take a crack at making propeller items.
for this run, i spent the entire game sailing around on the Elderly Steeple engine, until i got the fulgent impeller. Everything inbetween is just utter trash, and is a good way to throw away all your echoes.
The fuel consumption rates should be looked at, i don’t think it makes sense that a new engine is less efficient. Imo the fuel use should scale more slowly than the speed, new tech is naturally likely to be better all around.
Instead of providing a gradual feeling of progression, the current system just punishes you for upgrading, and makes you regret your choice