FireSight
Posts: 1
2/24/2015
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So, I just got far enough in the game to get my first ship equipment upgrade, and chose to upgrade my engine. I mean, faster is better, right?
Yeah, no. Suddenly it takes me 1 fuel to go from London to Mutton Chop Island. For a mere +200 engine power, my fuel useage has more than doubled. Cripes. Using 2% of a barrel of fuel per tic seems really really wrong. Please tell me this is a bug. Otherwise I'm never upgrading my engines ever again.
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Miguk
Posts: 3
3/11/2015
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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.
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http://fallenlondon.storynexus.com/Profile/Miguk
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Soupturtle
Posts: 6
3/13/2015
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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. ;-)
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SporksAreGoodForYou
Posts: 291
2/24/2015
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One of the tooltips mentions it. Something like "save fuel by turning off your light".
But, also, remember these guys come from building Fallen London. They've excelled at the story part. I don't know if you've done Saviour's Rocks yet, but that whole story is incredibly cleverly designed within the limits of the systems they have, and epic to boot. The real strength of the game is how the writing suggests everything, but rarely spells it out explicitly.
But I think we can all agree that this doesn't translate well into explaining game mechanics. Those should be written out in stone, and new players trained on them repeatedly until they're burned into their memory. A tutorial mode where you play your own scion and you're on our father's ship (which is big with many guns and a fast engine), limited terror, and he slowly gives you more and more control of the ship, which is a basic run through of how the concepts work,, would be hugely useful. Then your father leaves you at port, and word comes he's died at zee, and here's your inheritance - just enough to buy a new ship. And you're off.
Also, they're stumbling just a little over the real-time elements. I mean that with the greatest respect in the world - this game has literally owned me for a few weeks, but there are definitely things that are poor game design outside the story, and the optimisation is severely lacking. Things like frame-rate affecting turning speed. Anyway, you get my point.
edited by SporksAreGoodForYou on 2/24/2015
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Jascob
Posts: 40
2/25/2015
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Red-XIII wrote:
Mica wrote:
"Look here, the new engine, 3x times the size, 3x the fuel, 1.2x the speed!"
And "strictly speaking shouldn't be sold to civilians" because it'd be a scam. 
Add "at 10x the cost" and you have a firm grasp of how government contracts work.
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Gregg Johnson
Posts: 263
2/26/2015
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Red-XIII wrote:
... and we have an incalculable mess.
Which I imagine is working as intended.
MisterGone wrote:
I still maintain that the game would be better served if the size of the sea were increased, so then they could make stuff like the rate of speed more noticeable and have a greater effect.
(By this I mean keeping the size of the islands and land masses the same, just increasing the size of each sea square by a percentage (10-25% would be my estimate) so that there was more sea relative to the amount of space the islands take up - there would have to be some addition to the coasts to make up for the increase, but as an art cost that would be relatively minimal).
YES PLEASE. The 'zee feels way too cramped at present, especially with the Impeller, and anything smaller feels too slow (though really it's just right given SAY and the aforementioned crampedness). I am a little concerned that just expanding the 'zee without adding any additional content in between islands might diminish the experience somewhat, however. It needs to be larger, but there also needs to be more out there. More things like the Eye that aren't tied to any specific tile, but migrate around and shock you out of your reverie at the most inopportune times. Floating masses of something darker than black (is it kelp? can we eat it?) etc. Or just discoverable flavour like the Wreck of the Mikko. On the one hand doing this properly is a lot of work, on the other hand the longer it is delayed the more work it will be.
The coasts in particular are a bit underdeveloped right now, especially the Tomb Colonies (which by the lore should include more than just Venderbight).
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Iodine
Posts: 1
2/24/2015
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This feels like a bug to me, or at least poor design. If the developers really wanted to make the basic engine the most efficient in the game (which is crazy, but whatever) and basically make upgrading moot for vast majority of new players who are just scraping by, then that should be presented upfront and spelled out clearly in the item descriptions or the tutorial.
Same goes with lamp fuel consumption... This game is so well written, it boggles my mind that important stuff like this get left out of the game.
There should just be a fuel usage/sec written in plain sight next to the fuel meter so people can intelligently manage their fuel instead of all of this guesswork.
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SporksAreGoodForYou
Posts: 291
2/24/2015
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To clarify, fuel usage is 0.1% of total engine power * fuel efficiency at full speed.
If you have 2000 engine power, fuel usage is 2% per second. If you have the impeller (50%), milebreaker(10%) and tireless (5%), you'll have 5000 engine power, 65% reduction, so 1.75 per tick without a light. It tracks fractions of percentages.
Lamp is 1% per second, all ships, all lamps.
Full Power = 2x fuel consumption for 1.75x speed.
It appears that all ships have a soft top speed, after which additional power adds very little benefit. Still not sure how (or even if) weight factors into this. I suspect it's more for a guideline, indicating you'll want a bigger engine. Those calculations don't appear to be in the readable game files.
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Guest
1/12/2016
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Nanako wrote:
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
Generally, I like to get The Serpentine as a stop-gap until The Fulgent Impeller , and if you do the math, getting the Leadbeater & Stainrod 'Illyrian' or maybe the Leadbeater & Stainrod 'Boadicea' (but it's not much of an improvement it being +500 more power for +1000 more Echoes) is better for non-starter ships needing additional displacement until the stop-gap/end-game engine. After the +1000-1500 engines, as you can note yourselves on each engine, you start to hit increasing diminishing returns for the cost paid on the other engines versus their improvements. (For the geeks, here you go.)
Even with the savings in fuel for getting there faster, the amount is so slight, it will take you in-game years to ever see any improvement in cost, and that won't show up in any guaranteed echo recovery for what you paid for it. The time spent getting that money can upgrade other things like Guns/repair items or on the Impeller quest itself.
For starter ships, never buy any upgraded engine period. There is no additional weight to disperse.
Don't bother with anything besides The Serpentine and The Fulgent Impeller as that won't benefit at all form the speed boosts considering the starter ship's speed governing we've witnessed based on the increased fuel consumption, but at least you can get the stats/efficiencyboost. And should you upgrade ships, those two always work on the higher weight well.
edited by the truthseeker on 1/12/2016
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rosedragon
Posts: 38
3/11/2015
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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
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SouthSea Rutherby
Posts: 224
3/11/2015
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Miguk wrote:
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.
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.
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Now the proud captain of Mr. Eaten's Revenge
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