All-round_Combat_Travel Engines

[EGO_Aut]

Let's take a look at the engines, for example:

S Discoverer Vanguard
Speed (m/s) Acc.m/s² Boost Sp. m/s Trav.Sp. m/s
ARG All-round Mk3 321 169 2.567 4.492
ARG Combat Mk3 336 177 2.691 4.037
ARG Travel Mk3 321 169 1.925 5.775

These statistics makes no sense.
While the speed of combat engine is 4,5 % faster, All-round and Travel are equal, like the Acc.
The travel speed of All-round Mk3 are only 11% faster than Combat Mk3, but Trav. Mk3 are 29% faster than All-round Mk3.

Why not like this, the middle way:
ARG All-round Mk3 328 173 2.308 4.906

This would make All-round engines much more attractive.

[stillsuit]

Are you forgetting about 0/1/3 sec charge time for travel mode?

[CBJ]

As general game feedback rather than specifically about the Public Beta, this has been moved to the main forum.

[abc0000]

You also forget about the duration of the afterburner (how long will it take for the entire shield to burn out)
Cruise 4 / all-around 7 / army 10
By the way, what’s strange for earthlings is that they have 4/7/20 . . . (who didn’t know, this is a hidden feature of Terran engines =))
Although logically they need to do 8 / 14 / 20

[Vovadrik]

You also forget about the duration of the afterburner (how long will it take for the entire shield to burn out)
Cruise 4 / all-around 7 / army 10
By the way, what’s strange for earthlings is that they have 4/7/20 . . . (who didn’t know, this is a hidden feature of Terran engines =))
Although logically they need to do 8 / 14 / 20

Apparently terran's engines are in general the best because they reach maximum speed faster (even though maximum speed itself is pretty low) and since in case of other engines you spend more time speeding up or slowing down, terrans are the best

[EGO_Aut]

I think duration of the afterburner and start-up time of the traveldrive is OK, so i did not mention it.
But you are right with TER afterburner duration, it should be higher.

All-round engines need some love for S+M ships.
They have the bad side of travel + combat, bad speed of travel, bad travel speed of combat eng.

[Daemonjax]

In discussions regarding the difference types of ship engines, I don't really see anyone mentioning that balancing them seems to consider the human vs ai pilot factor.

When a human (you) pilots a ship, you're going to fly it differently than the AI.

You'll use pitch/roll and avoid yaw, while the AI will mostly use yaw.
You'll use strafe, the AI will not.
You'll use boost to get up to a decent speed before activating your travel drive, while the AI won't do that.
You'll avoid leaving travel mode to change directions by cutting the inertia dampeners, while the AI will drop out of travel mode before changing direction.

There's probably more stuff I'm forgetting.

And so, combat drives are almost always going to be the best for human controlled ships because they emphasize boost speed/pitch/roll/strafe. At the same time, the AI does a bit better with the all-around drives (mostly due to their reliance on yaw). I think this is by design, and should figure into balance discussions.

IMO

Personally, I generally put all-around engines on ships I'll never fly myself. Sometimes I'll put travel drives on those ships if most of what they do involves... traveling. But, of course there are other considerations -- like if you want to adjust the speed of ships in a multi-shiptype fleet for a specific purpose.

[Nanook]

...
You'll use pitch/roll and avoid yaw, while the AI will mostly use yaw...

Not me! I fly my ships like spacecraft, not aircraft. The reason aircraft use pitch-roll instead of yaw is because they need to maintain airflow across their wings. Spacecraft have no such need and thus can use the much more efficient yaw rather than the more complicated pitch-then-roll. So I never, ever use combat thrusters, which for some strange reason reverse the controls over the 'normal' thrusters.