X4 Propulsion Lab, Part 1: Capital Engine Testing

It's more fair to the Boron to present their combined ratios as averages of transit and battlefield. Those averages are: L -17%, XL -31%.

Thank you for your work. I quickly realised that I wouldn't know anything for sure without practical testing, but I had no idea how to go about it - or any inclination to go to that much effort, honestly.

I automatically assume Split all around were the best. Well for combat they were but I didn't realize how good Teladi engines were for non-combat. Thanks for a very informative video!

Thank you so much for doing something like this -- super valuable resource for the community to have access to!

Thanks for this legend! I would never have used TER engines otherwise. And it is a considerable difference.

Loving your vids on X4, cheers for taking the time to make them dude.

Nice use of the Intro Case Scene OST from X2 for the ship race.

That was very helpful! I love being dissapointed with my choice of enginex XD

Huh, if only I had known. I had used to put split engines on a lot of my capital ships because I did not consider the travel speed buildup. I had always felt the split were sluggish on long travels.

this is so good job captain, you just made a really happy suscriber :>

During long military fleet transit I usually just sit in SETA somewhere else in the universe while doing empire management stuff or watching YouTube so it usually doesn't matter how long it takes for ships to get there so Split should win but I still use Terran because once in high detail you still often need to transit from one end of a sector to another, and split travel times just make my brain hurt. Maybe I should use them on the AI escorts cause they tend to exit travel drive either too far or too close to the enemy so forward speed should help them but at that point it's just easier to fit everyone with Terran gear. However for trading in the case I don't want to bother with Terran economy I might just favor Teladi so this was an informative video for me. It's a bit iffy because of Engine Parts and mainly the Antimatter Converters but you might be even able to sneak it into a Closed Loop economy.

My testing, "shortened" to fit: Teladi L or XL All-Round engines. They do best even if they are nowhere near as fast as Split ones but because they are good for getting TO travel speed or out quickly, those are generally the best and going outside that is something to think about before doing. Split travel speeds are terrible. Paranid M Combat or Argon M All-Round. The time spent spooling up for travel engines make them entirely useless in any sort of combat, including when you are hit by a pirate. You just can't fail to get hit in 3 seconds. Argon do best all-round, Paranid are best combat engines, and carrier cases are for most irrelevant here. Split S Combat for carrier fighters, Paranid S Combat for combat military ships, Argon S All-Round on anything else. Carrier fighters never get to travel speed, so that being terrible is not a problem. Patrols need to avoid having low travel speed. But a default setup should be the All-Round, of which the Argon are the best at it. If you want decent travel speed but high normal speed and, importantly, don't care that there is that terrible 3 second delay for it, the Split Travel at either S or M do make good engines, the only travel engines that are any use at all, their natural speed means most combat is faster than normal, but if there isn't any combat, they can get to decent high speed in travel mode. Terran engines don't have any (or much) spool up time for non-capitals, but don't get to high speeds, even the Argon outpace them. Teladi engines have a minor boost in that the time taken to get to their lower top speed is quick, but that only really matters for travel, and that 3 second delay means you should never bother with travel engines, so the Teladi benefit doesn't matter. Boron engines don't have a spool up time for medium and small craft, but are boron only.

Thank you so much.

Always good with tests. I'd be pretty interested in the sheet you logged and did the calculations in.

Thanks man! And please do summup for someone who is 5 lol

Question I got 3 builders training service crew and marines non stop And 5 star service man i distributing between my fleet How much service crew should be on a destroyer or freighter to take effect? Im usually sending 20 5 star service crew to 1 ship, but some of them has 45 seats and some over a 100 What is a optimal quantity?

I still prefer BOR engines for my personal L/XL ships because I absolutely loathe the charge time. Often makes me just skip travel drive and use SETA instead. Wish it could be modded completely away (in-game mods that is) - or y'know, just let us put frigging Boron equipment on the other ships - remove the organic glow effect on other ships and hey presto, looks OK. For AI ships, I don't really care, but I've noticed after doing a few tests myself that Terran are usually faster. Why Egosoft still hasnt added all engine stats to the upgrade menu after 6 years is beyond me. More tests please, like M and L turrets, destroyer main batteries and such.

I feel like an average between the transit and combat performance might have made more sense than sum of the two numbers. Good work though! I did a few drag races a while ago and these numbers match what I found back then. My tests were more focused on the different combat ships than the engines though, so all I really found out was that the erlking is quite busted.

Did you preform a test with Full cargo instead of empty cargo there is added drag effect that can give the edge to Teladi let's say over the TER?

But could an unladen heron carry a coconut?