[Iranon]

Just a resource for people wanting to know how fast the different craft really cover ground. I disregarded length of individual afterburner boosts and acceleration/deceleration. These hold true on Insane, on lower levels these will be slightly different. Even the order might change because we can use afterburners more of the time (making afterburner top speed more and afterburner burn/recharge rates less important). Values are rounded to the nearest integer, ships are sorted in order of race/type/average speed on default settings.

First column assumes default energy distribution - values are ((burn rate * normal top speed) + (afterburner speed * recharge rate)) / (burn rate + recharge rate)
Second column assumes all energy to engines - values are ((burn rate * overclocked top speed) + (after burner speed * 2 * recharge rate)) (burn rate + 2*recharge rate)

Code: [Select]

Avg Speed:

Valkyrie 116 136
Pegasus 111 133
Loki 100 125
Perseus 98 118
Ulysses 97 122
Mara (Terran) 95 115
Myrmidon 93 113
Erinyes 87 101
Apollo 86 111
Ares 75 93
Hercules MkII 72 87
Hercules 70 89

Athena 80 98
Artemis 80 88
Zeus 73 93
Medusa 67 83
Boanerges 65 75
Ursa 56 72

Horus 117 140
Ptah 111 133
Serapis 95 107
Thoth 87 104
Tauret 86 102
Seth 80 101
Anubis 75 90

Bakha 79 85
Sekhmet 73 82
Osiris 67 82
Amun 51 75

Manticore 105 135
Astaroth 100 129
Dragon 97 117
Scorpion 93 106
Mara 87 99
Aeshma 82 89
Basilisk 80 89

Nahema 110 120
Seraphim 60 90
Shaitan 60 72
Nephilim 60 72
Taurvi 65 72

Feedback welcome, especially if I made a mistake. If I understand it correctly, energy to engine actually has no effect at all while you're holding down the afterburner button.

[Spoon]

If I understand it correctly, energy to engine actually has no effect at all while you're holding down the afterburner button.

I'm pretty sure it does have an effect actually. Since your recharge rate of the afterburners is higher, you'll 'consume' less when you afterburn. (usual consume rate minus recharge rate) so you can do longer with your afterburners before the gauge is empty

[headdie]

ok so
Valkyrie trashes its Perseus replacement
using my preferred campaign power distribution of two presses of page up and 1 press of home probably results in the Herc keeping up with the Herc II which are both thrashed by the Aries often cristened the "mobile turret"
the Ptah and Pegasus have identical speed stats

[ChronoReverse]

Did you take into account the acceleration and deceleration times as well?  In a Perseus, you won't spend more than a second or two at top speed before the burners run out for instance.  But at higher recharge rates, your speed might not have settled back to base when the burner is recharged.

Engine ETS boosting doesn't seem to increase afterburner time.

[Sushi]

It seems to me that the surest way to REALLY test this is to just time a fixed distance in-game...

[stuart133]

It seems to me that the surest way to REALLY test this is to just time a fixed distance in-game...

Or set up a mission in FRED whereby you have one of each fighter, and once they have flown a certain distance a message triggers. After that, a quick look through the message log will tell you which is fasted, and how long they all took due to times. The only problem is that I don't think that there is any way of getting the energy settings to change on a computer controlled ship.

[Iranon]

@ headdie: Yes, the Valkyrie is FAST... to put it in perspective, in terms of Speed the Perseus is halfway between the Seth and the Valkyrie (and the numbers ignore afterburner endurance, which is great in the Valkyrie, average in the Seth and slightly below average in the Perseus).

@ Sushi, ChronoReverse: I neglected acceleration and deceleration so results will be slightly different in the game. I don't trust myself to test this in a way that won't introduce even bigger errors though.
It also seems I was mistaken about difficulty levels - apparently reality matches the table entries on Hard, not Insane.

[QuantumDelta]

1) Are these values for just holding down tab every time the bar fills up or using the afterburner properly?
2) Are these values still reflecting no energy management (since energy does recharge in burners during a burn, it must do from long burn behaviour).

3) (Mostly at sushi/stuart) doesn't the AI manage their energy by default as they see fit? ie; mostly very high engine use very little shield/weapon use (*at least this is default), I've seen them dump energy into their shields too (this could be me having a bad memory, or mis-recalling someone using a fred script to do something in a mission but I'm fairly sure it was 'default' behaviour, you often see AI ships flying faster than a ships default maxtopspeed).

[Iranon]

@ Quantumdelta:

re 1) Worse, as I stated these values neglect acceleration/deceleration entirely. I assume you were referring to afterburner acceleration being faster than deceleration, and our corresponding ability to get a higher average speed when deploying the afterburner in short bursts? If not, please clarify.
Something closer to reality and assuming optimal choices is actually rather tricky, also see below.

re 2) I think you are mistaken about how it works. Testing indicated that energy to engines does nothing at all while you're holding down afterburners... burning from full to empty takes an identical time regardless of energy, and naturally OCL speed only matter until we reach top afterburner speed.
Just another way how the energy redistribution system results in pointless wastage unless you micromanage heavily, but there you go...

[Spoon]

re 2) I think you are mistaken about how it works. Testing indicated that energy to engines does nothing at all while you're holding down afterburners... burning from full to empty takes an identical time regardless of energy, and naturally OCL speed only matter until we reach top afterburner speed.
Just another way how the energy redistribution system results in pointless wastage unless you micromanage heavily, but there you go...

So you keep saying but i'm pretty damn sure that recharge happens when using the burner as well and as such, having more engine energy means a longer burn time.

[Droid803]

At any rate, it does allow you to re-burn faster, but an exact factor of how much is...probably difficult to calculate (and likely dependant on how the burner is used : short pulse or full discharge + recharge?)

[Iranon]

I am very very confused now. Just tested it again... on several different levels including Very Easy where your faster recharge on everything should make any differences very obvious. No mods. Doesn't make any difference at all in my game.
Those of you who got different results: Have you actually tested this while actually paying attention (rather than making a guess on what seems to be the case in normal gameplay)?

I assumed it worked like that until very recently myself (although... if afterburners recharged while using them, craft would be able to use them constantly on lower levels. This is clearly not the case). There are a few misconceptions that keep cropping up... e.g. the Power Output in the tables isn't actually used, and some people believe the various lies in tech room entries.

[MatthTheGeek]

My personal experience dictates me that the burners can't recharge while you're using them. With a good micromanagement (and a craft with a good afterburner reserve), diverting energy to weapons and/or shields between two recharges can prove quite effective.

[Spoon]

Yeah okay, so I was talking out of my ass.
I tested it by giving a plane more recharge a sec then burn a sec and it was exactly the same.
So ignore me and continue on with the actual discussion.