OK, I'm still the new guy so I get to ask the dumb questions. I thought that if you added more engines to a design you would get more APs. I took the basic Pathfinder class and added 10 more engines and it still has a rating of 2AP. Do I have to wait for advanced engines? Is there a formula for figuring out how many engines are needed to actually get the number up?

Thanks for the help,
Mahdi

Yes, there is a formula but it depends on the total trust vs total weight of the design.
It is total trust from the engines devided by the total tonnage of the ship or fleet if you have more than 1 ship. Total tonnage includes engines but does not include fuel or other sorts of cargo.

I will use Mk III Nuclear engines for an example: Each Mk III Nuclear engine puts out 1,000 tons of trust. Assuming you have 4 of these on a 1,000 ton ship design you would get to a total trust of 4,000 tons.
4,000 tons of trust / 1,000 tons of weight gets you 4 APs for this ship.
So a 1,000 ton ship design which includes 4 Mk III Nuclear engines would have 4 AP.

As you get better engines, the number of engines needed to get to the same amount of AP's will deminish, assuming the other part of the design remains the same.
Also, no ship can ever get below 2 AP. Even if you put a single Mk I Nuclear engine on a 1,000,000,000 ton ship it would still have 2 AP.

Hope this helps to clarify things.

Calamaran.

OK, so since I'm a new empire and only have MK I which have 300 lbs thrust (I think that's the spec) then you would need 120 engines to get a 12,000 ton ship to a level of 3 AP. Is that correct?

Mahdi

Correct. Unfortunately, the weight of the 120 engines is also 12,000 tons so you could not put anything else in the design.
If you want ships with higher AP and have them do anything else but making in system moves you will need better engines first.

Calamaran.

You put great thrust in your spell-checker, don't you?

Here are a couple of thoughts about engines and AP's.

I don't recommend trying to get higher than 2 AP's out of your designs until you get Mk I Fusions or Mk III Nuclear engines. they will both provide a 5 AP design but is it really worth it?

Assuming that the most efficient design includes 50% engines, you can easily see how the AP progression will go.

Mk III Nuclear Mk I fusion = 1000 thrust = 5 AP
Mk IV Nuclear Mk II Fusion = 2000 Thrust = 10 AP etc.

Engine thrust simply doubles for a while.

It is possible to get higher AP ships out of lesser engines if you design the ship with 100% engines. This tactic is really only useful for ships that will stay in system and only need to patrol or do planet scans.

I would recommend waiting until you get to Mk II fusions before worrying about it.

There is also a ship building spreadsheet out there that does all the calculations for you.

Thanks for the advice,

Mahdi,
Vereor est mens iuguolo

Kick me a message or email and I'll see if I have some of the basic sheets laying around that I can send you



/Locklyn

Of course the numbers do get rather large as tech progresses. Mk IV Antimatter is 64,000 thrust (or around 320 AP if you want in a 50% design ship .. 32 AP in a 5% design). And there is more beyond. You can set-up some pretty radical convoy routes eventually. Imagine a 100 AP cargo ship. Even with a small cargo capacity of say 100,000 tons, you can move a huge load in convoy runs.

Actually, good question for everyone. What IS the highest AP ship you've built? Come on, I know you want to brag.

[/quote]

Of course the numbers do get rather large as tech progresses. Mk IV Antimatter is 64,000 thrust (or around 320 AP if you want in a 50% design ship .. 32 AP in a 5% design). And there is more beyond. You can set-up some pretty radical convoy routes eventually. Imagine a 100 AP cargo ship. Even with a small cargo capacity of say 100,000 tons, you can move a huge load in convoy runs.

Actually, good question for everyone. What IS the highest AP ship you've built? Come on, I know you want to brag.
[/quote]

and if starts everyone running multiple 100 AP convoy routes how long until we have to wait unitl Tuesday or Wednesday for turn results? I am not a computer guy, but it seems that convoys would eat up a huge amount of computer time. I was a bit suprised there was not a cap on convoy routes like some standing orders in victory. But as I mentioned, I am not a computer guy.

Before the Mk II tomatoes start flying at me ...I am not suggesting a limit on convoy routes. I am just a little curious about how how things work sometimes. I used to love those books that showed the inside of planes and ships (still do).

Takeda

847

2 colony berthings and ~100 Mk I total conversion engine no warp
You can move a lot of pop in a hurry, but be willing to take crap when
your in-system friends get 1200 page turns with just convoy alien sighting reports.
Even your best friends get a kick out of calling you "SPAM BOY"

Let's see, that 100K freighter with 100 AP is put on a convoy route...

Oh no, it didn't work as planned! And that REALLY screwed up production on 5 worlds....

OH NO! The HW didn't build X and Y and Z! Now my orders for next turned are FUBAR!

Where did this convoy route go bad? I can't seem to find it in these 60 pages of print out of bad convoy results. And it moved what to where?????? How am I gonna get all those Improved CM's back to the right place? Oh, another convoy route I guess....

How many orders is this gonna take to fix? I can't afford to put my kid and one of Pete's through college as well!

How do you built an 8 AP 1 Meg freighter again?

Octus

(Rate limiting step in mega APs and convoy routes is a typo in an order.)

Or you could have a six 240 AP 3 Mton freighters in a convoy route and suddenly wonder why they stopped out in the middle of nowhere...ah....240 AP means a lot of fuel And then you build a 240 AP fuel tanker to ensure that those bad boys get their fumes...*sigh*

/Locklyn

Sure hope that didn't happen to anyone on these boards......

True, but I was even more suprised that there is not a cap on APs per ship. How about those 100-200 AP skimmer ships that SKIM, OC, 100-200 times per turn. Multipy that by about 20 ships........ and you have 6- 8000 orders on skims alone. At, lets say 10 orders per page, you have 600-800 pages of a turn, that is doing nothing but supplying fuel dumps.
and people wonder why turns are so long......

This is why I've always been surprised that there are not upgrades to the Fuel Shuttle technology. An Advanced Fuel Shuttle that skimmed 2000 fuel per skim would cut down drastically on the AP needed for a skimming operation as described by Kurassier.

It might not be appropriate early in the game, but as engine technology increases to ridiculously high levels allowing for insane amounts of fuel to be skimmed, it would at least cut down on turn length and therefore I would imagine it would cut down on processing time as well.

And, its build requirements could be advanced electronics and advanced steel allowing for further weaning from regular components as an empire advances. Streamlined production queues is always a good thing.

...or a higher tech level orbiting fuel production station, towed into position, that can produce significantly more fuel per production run than the inefficient skimmers, not using APs (no engines!) and with a cap on skimmer APs generally.

Current high AP is 857. Yes it is a skimmer and it does skim 12M a turn. It also adds some 100+ pages to a turn printout.

Fuel was not that big of a deal early in the game, but it is critical now. 80% of my problems stem from fuel shortages of one kind or another.

Maybe in the next game there will be a cap or some other mechanism. Changing the current version would kill it.

And the idea of 8 AP as a cap is really short sighted. I have routine convoy routes that are 40+ hops in one direction. Large empire management would be impossible without convoy routes as they are.

I don't know why there would need to even be a cap.

I have never heard Pete say, "Sorry your turns are late because of all of these high AP convoy routes." Rather I hear him say these really big battles are slowing down the processing and then Locklyn admits he attacked another empire. Of course lately the delay has been because of Pete's health or lack thereof but that is due to flu season rather than software or hardware performance when running the turns.

Stay healthy Pete.

Ali,

Good point. I wonder why Locklyn keeps launching so many battles. I though that the old PA was supposed to be the agressive ones. Hmmmm.

He's bored.....

Or, he's really a pacifist and just talks like a war monger....

Or just a warmonger

8 is too low, I agree, just thought there would be a cap. And a cap would have to be in future versions as I also agree that installing a cap now would be vastly unfair.
As far as the high AP skim convoys, what would be nice to have instead of 100+ pages, would be a report that simply said ' Fleet X successfully skimmmed X fuel and deposited into pop group #.' or something to that effect.

That would be nice, but it would probably be a nightmare to code into the program based on the step execution nature of order processing. Thinking a bit outside of the box, you might be able to code in a workaround if you added a new order (e.g. CSKIM, <Fleet ID>, <Pop Group ID>) that temporarily "converted" your skimming Fleet into structure akin a Fuel Distillation Center. All of your skimming fleets would execute their skims during the Mine Production phase of the turn and give you a total fuel skim for the turn as a single line report.

The psuedo code would be something like this ...

Total_Skim = 0;
Fuel_Offloaded = 0;

DO WHILE (<Fleet ID> AP) > 0

SKIM, <Fleet ID> ; Fuel_Skimmed = (<Number of Fuel Shuttles> * 200 * <Fuel Source Modifiers>)

If (Fuel_Stored + Fuel_Skimmed) > Fuel_Tankage THEN
Total_Skim = Total_Skim + (Fuel_Tankage - Fuel_Stored);
Fuel_Stored = Fuel_Tankage;
ELSE
Fuel_Stored = Fuel_Stored + Fuel_Skimmed;
Total_Skim = Total_Skim + Fuel_Skimmed;
END IF;

If (<Pop Group ID>) > 0 THEN
OC, <Fleet ID>, <Pop Group ID>, "Fuel", Fuel_Stored;
Fuel_Offloaded = Fuel_Offloaded + Fuel_Stored;
Fuel_Stored = 0;
END IF;

(<Fleet ID> AP) = (<Fleet ID> AP) - 1;

END DO;

If (<Pop Group ID>) > 0 THEN
PRINT: Fleet <Fleet ID> skimmed <Total_Skim> Fuel and offloaded <Fuel_Offloaded> Fuel to Pop Group <Pop Group ID>. The rest was jettisoned.
ELSE
PRINT: Fleet <Fleet ID> skimmed <Total_Skim> Fuel. The rest was jettisoned.
END IF;

... or something similar.

-SK