Ship Engine Optimization

What this mod does

This mod is a tool where you can compare and choose the most suitable engines for your ship.

What does “most suitable” mean? Basically, it means that your ship can meet a certain dv and TWR, while having the lowest total weight.

You may choose and compare at most 3 engines from the game (except solid fuel engines), each categorized by their fuel types. To use the “Engine Performance Chart”, you must specify the payload of your ship (the payload must contain all necessary part excluding the engine, and the fuel or fuel tank that may be utilized by the engine). Then, you may choose to draw the x-axis by setting a target dv or a target TWR. You may now use the chart generated to choose the “most suitable” engine.

If you speak Chinese, you can watch this video for more details on how this mod works.

What this mod does NOT

1. The calculation assumes that all the fuel tanks you are using have the same wet-to-dry ratio. Therefore, if you use fuel tanks with variable w/d ratios, or have w/d ratios different from what is showing in the menu, the calculation will be inaccurate. Fortunately, w/d ratio is normally not very impactful, so the calculation would still be close to the actual results. In the future, a feature where you can input custom w/d ratio will be implemented to compensate for this issue.

2. As of now, not all modded fuel types are supported (especially for Real Fuel). If you see an engine showing a w/d ratio of 1, it means that the fuel type of this engine is not supported, and it will not be shown in the graph. More mod compatibility will be added in the future. However, I personally do not plan to add Real Fuel compatibility myself, because I am not familiar with RF.

3. For engines with multiple modes (Rapier, for instance), only its first listed mode can be used in calculation.

4. Engines with variable specific impulse (for example, some engines in Far Future Technologies have this feature) will not be supported.