Main > Gameplay

Pulsing Kerosene

(1/3) > >>

nanoduckling:
So a question arose yesterday about the best way to use kerosene on a squid (actually the question didn't so much arise as was forcefully put to me by some jackass I will leave nameless who felt 'you really need to learn how to pilot a squid' is effective pedagogy and a good way to introduce yourself). I've gone and dug up my old calculations from when I started piloting to try to figure out when you want to switch it off. Assuming GoIO uses a linear drag model the ship will top out at 150% faster with kerosene with fully repaired engines as the drag forces match the thrust forces. If engines take damage the ship produces less thrust, and I again assumed this is linear. There is likely an effect from the turning here if engines are asymmetrically damaged but I assume this is minor. It seems to me you fall below normal top speed if engines are on average damaged below 66% (1/1.5).

A decent set of squid engis making use of parkor tricks can easily keep the engines well above 66% average damage (heck I can do that on my own and I'm a crap engineer), so it seems to me leaving kerosene on will always maintain higher speed than turning it off.

As to average speed the calculations for pulsing the kerosene depend entirely on the drag model, which I don't have access to. Has anyone ran speed tests with various duty cycles for the squid in the blast yard? I thinking run from one end to the other with repeated trials at different duty cycles and cycle frequencies and measure which one is faster with the same engis with some randomised design. I'm not especially interested in anecdotes here, it is likely psychological factors will screw with perception so multiple time trials under as controlled conditions as we can get are likely the only way to get an answer to this question. Anyone done this?

Watchmaker:
Drag is not linearly related to thrust.  Drag force is proportional to the square of velocity (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drag_equation).  Top speed is proportional to the square root of thrust if nothing else has changed.

nanoduckling:
Ah so it is quadratic drag rather than Stokes drag. Guess that makes sense given the Reynolds numbers involved. That makes the equations a bit more fiddly but as you say matching drag and thrust again gives us max velocity proportional to square root of thrust. I assume the calculations for engine damage work out the same though since that will only effect the thrust portion of the calculation.

Sprayer:
Use moonshine and all your kerosine problems go away.

ShadedExalt:

--- Quote from: Sprayer on November 26, 2014, 07:48:21 pm ---Use moonshine and all your kerosine problems go away.

--- End quote ---

Agreed.

When I use Kero, I just have the engi change his cycle a bit and add a whack or two to engines.  No real need to pulse.

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page