A very specific question. When designing a tug for the first OMPs, which generally come in around 110ktons more or less, what speed and what fuel cap do players aim for to move those beasts in a reasonable time frame? This question is actually independent of engine tech, because if you’re shooting for, say, 3000 km/s, it doesn’t matter (sorta) how you get there.
So, for example, is that 3000 km/s and say a million litres of fuel likely to be enough to reach most bodies in Sol humping 110ktons of mining platform, and return? It would be… awkward… to run out of gas halfway to the place the OMP is supposed to orbit. We’re talking a towing speed of around 225 km/s, after all.
Icerangers app for engine designs is still useful for certain cases. It has a feature that lets you include towing tonnage when calculating engine design and fuel requirements.
Real tugs are limited with safe speed margins. In Aurora there is no such mechanics, and you can tow a ship as fast as the engines of the tug allow.
In addition, max speed in Aurora is linear from the engine power, while in real world’s liqid and preudo-liquid mediums it’s cube root, which means optimal engine tonnage part in Aurora is higher (while tug is functionally just an engine).
Cube root dependance is actually very easy to implement, yet the majority of players (including Steve himself) see no value in realism itself and self-balancing mechanics, so it remains.
Well there is friction because we’re not moving through space, we’re moving through “space”. Essentially by building our ships out of trans-newtonian elements we’re able to interact with some kind of higher dimension which, for all intents and purposes, turns space into a “fluid” of sorts. It lets us turn on a dime and ignore actual physics, but in exchange if our engine powers off we immediately stop and don’t keep moving (because friction).
In real space the absence of friction means engine power sets the limit of acceleration instead of the limit of speed. Yet the resulting mechanics is not that easy to play with, that’s why, after some time trying to make Newtonian Aurora, Steve decided to stay on the easy and traditional (for games) pseudo-Aristotelian movement mechanics.
The lore is, Aurora engines are moving ships through some preudo-liquid medium, which interacts somehow with the relativistic time-space.
Yeah, somebody did a Newtownian physics mod for Space Empires, and it definitely changes things. No third dimension in Aurora or most space games, either.
– Mal
Try Terra Invicta if you’re interested in playing with realistic space engines and 3-D space without being too much hardcore nerdish. You’d need just scramble through the political starting phases of the campaign to reach the orbital and interplanetary combat era.
I try to have the fastest tugs that I can.
This is my current design (that could evolve in the next future, because the engine tech has improved (and maybe I’ll mount some passive sensors)):
Commercial Inertial Fusion Drive EP625.00 (5) Power 3125 Fuel Use 1.98% Signature 150.00 Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 250,000 Litres Range 165.2 billion km (168 days at full power)
This design is classed as a Commercial Vessel for maintenance purposes
This design is classed as a Tug for auto-assignment purposes
Simplest way to get the speed you want, build the station to be towed, click the copy design button, then start slapping on the tugs engines and tractor beam to the station after you untick no armour. Add some fuel tanks to see what range you will get. Then remove the station parts and you have basic tug.
Dont be too worried about tugs that are slower than 1500km/s when towing, at a minimum I always have 700km/s while towing something. If it cant tow faster than that then I will get a larger tug and or new tech engines (did this in current game for the 200k population orbital habs I needed, only built 3 of those Uber tugs). Or I will break up the station to be smaller, so instead of say 10 mining components it will have 5 and I just build twice as many stations.
As someone already said, fuel usage is kind of the most important part of the tugs as they will be using a lot of it.
Disagree a bit here. The easiest way is to use cargo modules on your tug design to simulate any tonnage you are going/want to tug. Won’t be exact as stations have no armour, but is really close.
It is more efficient as well to understand what u can tug, therefore build, given your current tech capabilities and displacement constraints than try to design a tug powerful enough to meet your needs.
Or at least I find it easier as you’ll have to just get rid of the cargo modules.
