Thanks for doing this, it's great! There hasn't been many good steam tutorials since the steam update; but the way you explained it is really structured and concise. Actionable intel, as it were.
IIRC perfect staging is closer to 5:4 rather than 1:1, also feel fuel engines are better than you give them credit for. also im pretty sure you can throw multiple large pistons/crank, but that may have been reworked out
yes, though the benefit is only a few %, so its more something to cover in Part 2. Any also yes, you can put 3 pistons on a large engine, dont know how I missed that one, already corrected the description
I'm just gonna add, hybrid engines are still very possible with the addition of the steam pipe vent's pressure limit setting. Place it in between your cylinder output and the turbine assembly and set it to like 8 or so, and it'll keep pressure up for the turbines but not let it get high enough to jam the system.
An amazing video that has helped me a lot! A few remarks\questions: 1) the concept of backpressure was briefly mentioned but never explained or defined. I intuitively understand it,but that's bcs I already knew that piston convert steam based on a pressure difference. 2) what's those bugs with valves you mentioned? I rather like them for keeping boilers pressurized and reducing spinup times. I've noticed some UI issues when you feed a valve directly into a piston (in my case, that first large piston went red bcs it thought it was not connected and the reported ppm doubled), but it didn't seem to affect behaviour keep it up, can't wait for part 2! this was a video the community badly needed. I salute you for making it.
Thanks! 1) Theres not much to explain, you said it yourself, backpressure means pistons cant develop as much power since the power they can create depends on the pressure difference! I might go into more detail in part 2. Now its true that whatever is causing the backpressure now gets more pressure to play with, but I have never found a case where intentionally causing backpressure by adding turbines or even boilers was a good idea. Its confusing at best and ruins your engine at worst! 2) Some interface bugs related to the pressure being displayed incorrectly. Also pipes behind valves dont vent steam even if they have a leak! Great for damage control since you can have a leaky pipe with pistons at the end and you still dont loose steam. But I built an engine that can switch between 2 and 4-stage mode, so I need to vent pressure that would otherwise have been put back into the system and thats impossible right now because of the bug
@@edwardhett4381 thanks for the tip, but too late unfortunately. The new stable update fixed the bug, so I already built and tested the engine, and it works fine! I just need to make the video, hopefully this year still but no promises
Definitely a great guide, and still very useful. Still, waiting on the part 2… I’m not sure how to use water-tight shafts, and info on drills would be most appreciated!
Thanks a lot for this one! Very nice explanations. Your small steam engine is rly the most optimized form I can think of. However comparing small and large systems there is one issue you have not mentioned that I believe is very important - damage tolerance. Small steam can be disabled or reduced in power quite easily by incoming damage and there are a lot of fragile piping without much redundancy. Large steam hides most of the piping inside the pistons and the pistons themselves have a lot of HP and quite some armour. They are good and surviving spalling or HEAT or frags and make your ship more combat stable.
You make a very good point! Given my current upload schedule it looks pretty unlikely but I added it to the notes, in case I ever make a part 2 of the tutorial
Great tutorial! Now I have no excuse for using injector engines. Also a nice choice of background music. (For those wondering it's the Into The Breach soundtrack by Ben Prunty)
WOW. This is amazing. It took me hours just to figure out the turbines. Also, when did the large pistons change to only being able to connect to 1 side instead of 3?
@@livslab Ahh. I still cant believe that your 7x7 box is more efficient and more powerful than all fuel engines (caps out at 81.1 if you include the required fuel boxes)
@@livslab Also. If you want to do the same for fuel engines I can give you all the information and equations (except for gas duplication which I found out yesterday) for you to double check.
@@nicopence3148 well you do need quite a seizable steam engine until the numbers start to look good, its pretty hard to get that kind of numbers with more compact engines so on a small scale I think fuel engines might be better or at least competitive. Honestly I never built a fuel engine myself so I dont know what numbers to expect!
@@nicopence3148 GModism uploaded a tutorial for fuel engines yesterday (great coincidence) wich is quite nice. Though he only went over the theory and didnt really provide a solution for an actual engine. Thats what I regret the most about most tutorials because they go through the theory but dont bother teaching you the actual tetris wich is probably the harderst part. Thats why I showed off how to build the 7/7/x. So if you can throw a few blueprints my way I might just work my way through that topic, too!
I didn't know anything about piston engines before watching your video. Made some; 120 small pistons, 3 pistons per crank. 12 wheels. Material use/sec 97.3 Power output 59743 Power/volume 99.6 Power/material burned 614.1 No valves. 144 small piston version; 11 wheels. Material use/sec 116 Power output 70992 Power/volume 101.7 Power/material burned 612 168 small piston version; Material/sec 133.5 Power output 81512.2 Power/volume 102.7 Power/material burned 610.7 ---- Using this for new ship; 144 piston, 16 wheels, 12 shaft generators Material use/sec 116 Power output 12933.1 Power(or energy)/volume 106.5 Power(or energy)/material burned 655.5 Energy output 63104.2 Sam's Lab is #1!
Maybe there's been an update I didn't track, but steam engines used to have massive problems with highly variable power loads, such as when out of combat when shields, ammo facs, and high power systems don't need to be on, only propulsion systems. You had to use a control block to adjust fuel feeds to throttle loads, or a dedicated turbine generator to regulate combat power demand. Is this still a thing?
Best I can tell, the issue with steam is they cannot bank energy or shut down like other engines can, because they transfer energy directly to shaft horsepower. This means there will always be times, unless you have extra batteries for energy storage, that a small amount of materials are wasted spinning a engine that is essentially idling. Having extra energy storage for downtime or creating conditions with control blocks to kill the boiler are the only two ways to solve this problem. In my opinion though, steam still beats the tar out of internal combustion overall due to its effortless power output and relatively low material consumption at pressure, say nothing of the fact that no refinery is needed to refuel them.
Its a feature, not a bug. As mentioned in the video, steam engines need to run at full load to eliminate low efficiency at low power demand. Steam engines are best used as a booster. Best scenario is entering combat and use the ACB to turn on the boiler system for sudden spike in power capacity on a piston setup or use the ACB to turn on the boiler system to recharge the battery bank after a certain threshold is reached. The best thing I did on mine is use RTG to top off the battery banks while out of combat. RTGs can't really keep up to the demand so having some boosters for a quick top off is pretty good. Setting the ACB to turn on boilers for the steam turbine when battery bank power is low and shuts off when reaching 90% capacity. Even if you have ridiculous power consumption for your propulsion system, its pretty darn efficient setup.
I don't understand steam that well so I could be completely wrong but for the engine like the one you made at the end wouldn't it be quite advantageous to keep each of the rows of steam feeding pipes and the boilers feeding them separate so that a breach of one does not cripple the entire engine, as to make the engine tolerate damage better or would it not make much of a difference?
In general it's a good idea. Unfortunately I have an odd number of boilers, and they are different size, so distributing the steam equally is pretty hard. Thats what valves are for, they have the option to automatically close when a pressure loss is detected, which is great! More on that in my 2nd video on the topic, which will get released as soon as a few bugs involving valves are fixed!
@@livslab Makes sence, I played around with valves last night but they seem to add a lot to the bulk, regardless thank you so much for making this video, I learned quite a lot!
It's not a bad video, but it misses the point; the reason steam engines are my favorite is that it's very simple and interesting to make them switch modes. For example, on one of my ships I can press a key to make the output of the pistons (all connected) vent steam, which are also connected to medium steam turbines so they can efficiently transfer output steam to energy restarting the main pistons that are having their output blocked if it's not in inefficient mode. (venting the output) With another ABC to manually control the steam boiler burn rate, the ship now has 3 modes; inefficient mode, where it vents output steam for maximum torque from the propeller, maximum power and energy but obviously inefficient. Normal mode, when the boilers and propeller are running low automatically, while the steam turbines convert steam to energy when needed, turning the pistons back on. And finally, silent mode when the boilers are completely off and the last drops of steam are used to charge the batteries, so it doesn't waste materials. This system might not be the absolute most efficient, it is definitely not the most space efficient, but it's certainly more interesting than using prefabs to paste the same engine on all your ships. This video is very informative, but it seems to be made to completely reject any form of creativity in steam engine design and engine choices. I have learned a lot from this video, because before now I've never watched any tutorials, not even the in game one. I now know that medium turbines are most energy but not space efficient, and that the metrics from the menu are not correct when plugging two turbines into one generator. But I'm going to personally test everything, since I no longer trust this video. It truly feels to me that this video was created when they were angry and just wanted to vent. But I feel it's suppressing creativity, the opposite of what I subscribed for, and that is why I'm mentioning this. I am not unsubscribing because of one potentially misguided video though. I hope you, reader, are having a nice day since I do not expect many people to read to the end, this is the longest comment I've ever wrote. I hope I see you somewhere, kind reader that would patiently listen while a teenager rambles about creativity suppression since their first favorite thing in this game is steam engines. o7
Honestly, I thought this was a good video. Learned a lot more than on other videos trying to explain how to practically do steam engines. Getting a look at some good examples helps a lot more than looking at space inefficient designs that nobody would put into their vessels. With some extra testing of my own I now feel like I understand how they work and when it's a good time to use them.
I wonder what the numbers are for engine power efficiency, comparing steam turbine into an electric engine, a steam piston setup into generator into electric engine, or a piston engine directly. Will have to run then later. edit: Running some tests, I think that a 3*4+3*4 multi expansion large steam engine gets similar numbers to the small 7*7*x engine you featured. The large boilers actually fit into the 90deg space between the pistons, making it to be quite space efficient.
I think this ist a very good Tutorial, so many famous Deptharians here. But i have some Problems following your words because of the very limited microphone you use.
There have been a few last tweaks but according to the devs steam is going to stay the way it is right now. So Euda who helped me a lot with this vid hit me up and asked if we should do a final version. Though I cant make any promises about when its gonna come since I'm very busy IRL, and you can see my upload rythm (and thats with shitposts who take a lot less effort)
@@livslab thank you for the quick replie! sorry for my late replie XD. this video was already verry help full. it gave me quite the inside into how to correctly use steam. not to worry! if it happens it happens altho i do look forward to a new vid ^~^ even if it isnt about steam XD
I was thinking if you really wanted that .0000002 percent you could add a small turbine for all the excess low pressure steam kinda like the RMS Titanic's steam engine Edit: i hope they make turbines run at low pressure
@@_Zdex007 you're always going to b producing too much power with steam. Power demands fluctuate like crazy especially when running a lams. A steam will make power at a constant rate but a fuel engine is going to give you just the right amount of power.
Thats why I have normally gone for fuel. I know, and the stats clearly show, my standard go-to 3*3*3 fuel engine design gives 3200 power. The 7*3*3 variant gives 8000 power. The 10*3*3 variant gives 12800 power. Every extra 3*3*3 block (its a modular design) adds another 4800 power. I can tune the number of engines and modules to the amount of power and redundancy I need.
@@Damaddok82 That's why I just pump the excess into batteries for buffer. Not to say that fuel engines have no place of course, but efficiency on demand w fuel engines is also a pain in the ass, as making fuel engines that are efficient at whatever load level they work at is hard and very space inefficient as well.
Im still waiting for an update to fix a few bugs around valves to make a Part 2. After that Ill need to clean it up a bit and write instructions but yea, sure. Just be patient, this stuff takes a lot of work
Why do you need *so* much power? Ive built 1.5 million credit battleships, with multiple particle cannons, LAMS, lasers, depthkeeping propellers, shields, and other high-drain items, and never had issues that couldnt be solved with a couple of 3*3*x injector engines - cylinder-crank-cylinder on the bottom, 'jector-cylinder-'jector in the middle, and large rads over the top, with rads capping one end and the engine block and 8 rads at the other, this simple engine has been my go-to in both adventure and campaign. Love playing with steam engines though, they are hard to get the head round, there is no easy way of telling if you have too many pistons, too few pistons, too many boilers, too few boilers, too many turbines, or too few turbines....
Gas engine< steam turbines < steam pistons. Also turbines are already figured out (there’s already a chart in the discord for that) while steam piston just has more variables to take into account (well I can boil it down to the number of stages or even one) the equation for steam is just massive.
the engine you describe has great density for sure, but a pure injector engine will have awful efficiency. Its the issure of throwing a marauder's worth of resources into the furnace every second. A ship is great but if it uses so much resources you could build another ship for each 10 mins of combat you might want to rething your priorities. Injector engines are great for planes and small stuff where density is important but not for capital ships! You can tell if you are using more steam than you produce or not produce enough steam by looking at the pressure. If the pressure of the boiler is below 10 that means the boilers cant keep up. If it is at 10, the materials per second will regulate themselves down, so you can see at what % of max capacity the boilers are running, meaning you might be able to remove a few boilers if you have capacity left. Though more capacity will mean you can build up pressure faster.
@@livslab Where do small and large CJEs come in the efficiency chart, compared to injector engines, turbines, and piston engines (all as pure electricity generators)?
@@Debbiebabe69 no idea! how about you find out? Just build a few CJEs, press Q on them and see what numbers you get! At 06:49 you can see what numbers to expect from a decent steam engine!
How a from the depths tutorial should look like. Explanation by someone who thoroughly made sure they expertly mastered where every number and interaction works within the system, guided with a basic, short version, and a more in depth but precisely timestamped bigger section.
The turbines seem to be useful for starting out in adventure mode, imo (I'm on my 2nd try of it now, but I used to play FTD more in the past before adventure mode was a thing). At the start of adventure mode, when material *consumption* efficiency is king since you have so little and need it for building, I've been using an RTG or 2 with a battery bank and electric motor, since then I don't consume any resources when running normally. For combat (especially sustained) or emergency GTFO maneuvers though, sometimes your batteries will get run down. In that case, a small steam turbine set to turn on when batteries are below a certain level can be really helpful! It doesn't provide power itself like a fuel engine, but those have volume issues for small&cheap early rafts. The *power* requirements are solved by adding more batteries, since the electric motor/engine actually provides power based on the size of the battery bank it's connected to!
This is amazingly useful, thanks for the short version in the beginning, it prepared my brain for the rest of it actually. I have to go back and rework my bombers and single owned ship now. Hard part is making every OTHER aspect of my vehicles not suck now.
Figure I'd ask this here: Am I remembering things wrong, or was it previously possible to control the burn rate with a vehicle controller? I swear I was able to do that with my first steam engine.
You can still do this but you don't really have to now, as boilers don't just blindly boil at max (or the rate you ACB for) but only burn what they need to get to full pressure.
Probably an overclocked 820m particle cannon would demand more power that your engine can provide In that case I could try to make the scaled up version of the engine
Isn't the bottleneck on power per volume and material in a steam engine the number of cylinders connected to each section of shaft? It seems to me that more boilers don't accomplish much.
I have a very quick question, althought I'm a new player, why didnt you use the excess steam for electric steam turbines? For your small giant engine you showed us to build
Like I mentioned at 21:00, turbines create a lot of backpressure, meaning the engine runs at less power. The turbines, running at less than max pressure, loose efficiency, too.
why is it that you want your steam engines pushing at 100% all the time? I understand for the purposes of testing but I can't understand why they'd be worse if they weren't working at full power
Yes, it's most important for testing since using less power than you produce will screw up the numbers, making you think that the engine can put out more power than it actually can (when testing without load the engine will spin to a much higher RPM, increasing the theoretical power output, even though in reality as soon as you put the engine under load it will slow down and put out less power). In actual combat its just a matter of efficiency, a huge engine running on snall loads will still loose a lot of power to friction, so the numbers you saw in testing might be inaccurate, to the point where it might be better to run a fuel engine if you run your engine too inefficiently. But worst that can happen is a slightly worse operational cost of your ship.
I made an efficient and powerful engine my boat goes very quick now love it. One weird thing is that I don't get the large crank motor to work. When I build my ship using large crank motors it only was producing 60.000 out of 180.000 thrust. So I increased engine power and it didn't change... I didn't know what was going on at this point. I then disabled the engine. And it still produced 60.000 thrust. Then I disabled all engines and turbines and it still produced 60.000 thrust???. I deleted the large crank motors and with a lot of internal reshuffling in my ship I powered it with a standard crank shaft producing 170.000 thrust. Somehow material usage on my ship has gone down by doing that. What is going on? What am I missing? please help!
I think steam recieved an update since this video went up, not sure what changed though. Tbh I'm quite out-of-sync with whats happening in the game in general, haven't played in quite a while, so I cant help you. I suggest you ask over on the official FtD discord server, thery are very friendly and helpful people, I'm sure you'll find your answer there.
This must be the best steam engine tutorial out there. I know it was challenging... But would you be willing to also make one for the fuel engines as well? The material is lacking in that area.
no, it doesnt help. Backpressure happens when the steam cant get used up on the output, and since the steam tanks dont actually use steam they dont help with backpressure. In general they are pretty useless (lets be nice and call it niche) at the moment so I didnt bother talking about them.
@@livslab Idk, I've found some uses. They are rather niche, but they work well with steam jets that aren't being constantly used, I've found ways for them to work with valves to increase a system's durability versus EMP, and I expect I can probably find a few more. Plus, they store waaaay more steam than boilers, so they could be useful to keep providing high pressure steam for at least a few minutes after you lose enough boilers than you can't produce enough steam anymore.
Thanks for doing this, it's great! There hasn't been many good steam tutorials since the steam update; but the way you explained it is really structured and concise. Actionable intel, as it were.
IIRC perfect staging is closer to 5:4 rather than 1:1, also feel fuel engines are better than you give them credit for. also im pretty sure you can throw multiple large pistons/crank, but that may have been reworked out
yes, though the benefit is only a few %, so its more something to cover in Part 2.
Any also yes, you can put 3 pistons on a large engine, dont know how I missed that one, already corrected the description
I'm just gonna add, hybrid engines are still very possible with the addition of the steam pipe vent's pressure limit setting.
Place it in between your cylinder output and the turbine assembly and set it to like 8 or so, and it'll keep pressure up for the turbines but not let it get high enough to jam the system.
An amazing video that has helped me a lot! A few remarks\questions:
1) the concept of backpressure was briefly mentioned but never explained or defined. I intuitively understand it,but that's bcs I already knew that piston convert steam based on a pressure difference.
2) what's those bugs with valves you mentioned? I rather like them for keeping boilers pressurized and reducing spinup times. I've noticed some UI issues when you feed a valve directly into a piston (in my case, that first large piston went red bcs it thought it was not connected and the reported ppm doubled), but it didn't seem to affect behaviour
keep it up, can't wait for part 2! this was a video the community badly needed. I salute you for making it.
Thanks!
1) Theres not much to explain, you said it yourself, backpressure means pistons cant develop as much power since the power they can create depends on the pressure difference! I might go into more detail in part 2. Now its true that whatever is causing the backpressure now gets more pressure to play with, but I have never found a case where intentionally causing backpressure by adding turbines or even boilers was a good idea. Its confusing at best and ruins your engine at worst!
2) Some interface bugs related to the pressure being displayed incorrectly. Also pipes behind valves dont vent steam even if they have a leak! Great for damage control since you can have a leaky pipe with pistons at the end and you still dont loose steam.
But I built an engine that can switch between 2 and 4-stage mode, so I need to vent pressure that would otherwise have been put back into the system and thats impossible right now because of the bug
@@livslab maybe you could stick a second valve and that vents excess pressure in 2 stage mode?
@@edwardhett4381 thanks for the tip, but too late unfortunately. The new stable update fixed the bug, so I already built and tested the engine, and it works fine! I just need to make the video, hopefully this year still but no promises
Definitely a great guide, and still very useful. Still, waiting on the part 2… I’m not sure how to use water-tight shafts, and info on drills would be most appreciated!
Thanks a lot for this one! Very nice explanations. Your small steam engine is rly the most optimized form I can think of. However comparing small and large systems there is one issue you have not mentioned that I believe is very important - damage tolerance. Small steam can be disabled or reduced in power quite easily by incoming damage and there are a lot of fragile piping without much redundancy. Large steam hides most of the piping inside the pistons and the pistons themselves have a lot of HP and quite some armour. They are good and surviving spalling or HEAT or frags and make your ship more combat stable.
You make a very good point!
Given my current upload schedule it looks pretty unlikely but I added it to the notes, in case I ever make a part 2 of the tutorial
The best tutorial I could have ever wanted no ramble :)
Great tutorial! Now I have no excuse for using injector engines. Also a nice choice of background music. (For those wondering it's the Into The Breach soundtrack by Ben Prunty)
Fuel engines are still my goto because of how easy they are to optimise, but your explanation of steam turbines was perfect, so thanks!
WOW. This is amazing. It took me hours just to figure out the turbines. Also, when did the large pistons change to only being able to connect to 1 side instead of 3?
Yeah it took me hours to learn steam in general, too!
They can still be connected on 3 sides, my bad!
@@livslab Ahh. I still cant believe that your 7x7 box is more efficient and more powerful than all fuel engines (caps out at 81.1 if you include the required fuel boxes)
@@livslab Also. If you want to do the same for fuel engines I can give you all the information and equations (except for gas duplication which I found out yesterday) for you to double check.
@@nicopence3148 well you do need quite a seizable steam engine until the numbers start to look good, its pretty hard to get that kind of numbers with more compact engines so on a small scale I think fuel engines might be better or at least competitive. Honestly I never built a fuel engine myself so I dont know what numbers to expect!
@@nicopence3148 GModism uploaded a tutorial for fuel engines yesterday (great coincidence) wich is quite nice. Though he only went over the theory and didnt really provide a solution for an actual engine. Thats what I regret the most about most tutorials because they go through the theory but dont bother teaching you the actual tetris wich is probably the harderst part. Thats why I showed off how to build the 7/7/x. So if you can throw a few blueprints my way I might just work my way through that topic, too!
Nice one!
Keep up the good work. You make things easy to understand 👍
Love your tutorials
I'm currently working on the vehicles for Deserts of Kharak. For the Galssian faction, can you put steam engines on spin blocks? I don't remember
Yes you can :)
^^Easily one of or the best Steam guides, "like and favourite this shit" as Robbaz would say
I didn't know anything about piston engines before watching your video.
Made some;
120 small pistons, 3 pistons per crank.
12 wheels.
Material use/sec 97.3
Power output 59743
Power/volume 99.6
Power/material burned 614.1
No valves.
144 small piston version;
11 wheels.
Material use/sec 116
Power output 70992
Power/volume 101.7
Power/material burned 612
168 small piston version;
Material/sec 133.5
Power output 81512.2
Power/volume 102.7
Power/material burned 610.7
----
Using this for new ship;
144 piston,
16 wheels, 12 shaft generators
Material use/sec 116
Power output 12933.1
Power(or energy)/volume 106.5
Power(or energy)/material burned 655.5
Energy output 63104.2
Sam's Lab is #1!
Wow, the most comprehensive guide I have ever seen. Thank you so much!
Maybe there's been an update I didn't track, but steam engines used to have massive problems with highly variable power loads, such as when out of combat when shields, ammo facs, and high power systems don't need to be on, only propulsion systems. You had to use a control block to adjust fuel feeds to throttle loads, or a dedicated turbine generator to regulate combat power demand. Is this still a thing?
Best I can tell, the issue with steam is they cannot bank energy or shut down like other engines can, because they transfer energy directly to shaft horsepower. This means there will always be times, unless you have extra batteries for energy storage, that a small amount of materials are wasted spinning a engine that is essentially idling. Having extra energy storage for downtime or creating conditions with control blocks to kill the boiler are the only two ways to solve this problem. In my opinion though, steam still beats the tar out of internal combustion overall due to its effortless power output and relatively low material consumption at pressure, say nothing of the fact that no refinery is needed to refuel them.
Its a feature, not a bug. As mentioned in the video, steam engines need to run at full load to eliminate low efficiency at low power demand. Steam engines are best used as a booster. Best scenario is entering combat and use the ACB to turn on the boiler system for sudden spike in power capacity on a piston setup or use the ACB to turn on the boiler system to recharge the battery bank after a certain threshold is reached.
The best thing I did on mine is use RTG to top off the battery banks while out of combat. RTGs can't really keep up to the demand so having some boosters for a quick top off is pretty good. Setting the ACB to turn on boilers for the steam turbine when battery bank power is low and shuts off when reaching 90% capacity. Even if you have ridiculous power consumption for your propulsion system, its pretty darn efficient setup.
I don't understand steam that well so I could be completely wrong but for the engine like the one you made at the end wouldn't it be quite advantageous to keep each of the rows of steam feeding pipes and the boilers feeding them separate so that a breach of one does not cripple the entire engine, as to make the engine tolerate damage better or would it not make much of a difference?
In general it's a good idea. Unfortunately I have an odd number of boilers, and they are different size, so distributing the steam equally is pretty hard. Thats what valves are for, they have the option to automatically close when a pressure loss is detected, which is great!
More on that in my 2nd video on the topic, which will get released as soon as a few bugs involving valves are fixed!
@@livslab Makes sence, I played around with valves last night but they seem to add a lot to the bulk, regardless thank you so much for making this video, I learned quite a lot!
@@livslab True, but they're also weak to EMP, so they can easily cause leaks as well.
I like your words Magic man
It's not a bad video, but it misses the point; the reason steam engines are my favorite is that it's very simple and interesting to make them switch modes. For example, on one of my ships I can press a key to make the output of the pistons (all connected) vent steam, which are also connected to medium steam turbines so they can efficiently transfer output steam to energy restarting the main pistons that are having their output blocked if it's not in inefficient mode. (venting the output) With another ABC to manually control the steam boiler burn rate, the ship now has 3 modes; inefficient mode, where it vents output steam for maximum torque from the propeller, maximum power and energy but obviously inefficient. Normal mode, when the boilers and propeller are running low automatically, while the steam turbines convert steam to energy when needed, turning the pistons back on. And finally, silent mode when the boilers are completely off and the last drops of steam are used to charge the batteries, so it doesn't waste materials.
This system might not be the absolute most efficient, it is definitely not the most space efficient, but it's certainly more interesting than using prefabs to paste the same engine on all your ships. This video is very informative, but it seems to be made to completely reject any form of creativity in steam engine design and engine choices.
I have learned a lot from this video, because before now I've never watched any tutorials, not even the in game one. I now know that medium turbines are most energy but not space efficient, and that the metrics from the menu are not correct when plugging two turbines into one generator. But I'm going to personally test everything, since I no longer trust this video. It truly feels to me that this video was created when they were angry and just wanted to vent. But I feel it's suppressing creativity, the opposite of what I subscribed for, and that is why I'm mentioning this.
I am not unsubscribing because of one potentially misguided video though.
I hope you, reader, are having a nice day since I do not expect many people to read to the end, this is the longest comment I've ever wrote. I hope I see you somewhere, kind reader that would patiently listen while a teenager rambles about creativity suppression since their first favorite thing in this game is steam engines. o7
Honestly, I thought this was a good video. Learned a lot more than on other videos trying to explain how to practically do steam engines. Getting a look at some good examples helps a lot more than looking at space inefficient designs that nobody would put into their vessels. With some extra testing of my own I now feel like I understand how they work and when it's a good time to use them.
I wonder what the numbers are for engine power efficiency, comparing steam turbine into an electric engine, a steam piston setup into generator into electric engine, or a piston engine directly. Will have to run then later.
edit:
Running some tests, I think that a 3*4+3*4 multi expansion large steam engine gets similar numbers to the small 7*7*x engine you featured. The large boilers actually fit into the 90deg space between the pistons, making it to be quite space efficient.
I think this ist a very good Tutorial, so many famous Deptharians here. But i have some Problems following your words because of the very limited microphone you use.
yeah, I am aware of it. Low-end microphone plus a big, echo-ey room, and 0 skills in audio-editing. Though all 3 should change soon!
are you still thinking of making a second video? if so do you already have any idea on the time when you will upload it?
There have been a few last tweaks but according to the devs steam is going to stay the way it is right now.
So Euda who helped me a lot with this vid hit me up and asked if we should do a final version.
Though I cant make any promises about when its gonna come since I'm very busy IRL, and you can see my upload rythm (and thats with shitposts who take a lot less effort)
@@livslab thank you for the quick replie! sorry for my late replie XD.
this video was already verry help full. it gave me quite the inside into how to correctly use steam.
not to worry! if it happens it happens altho i do look forward to a new vid ^~^ even if it isnt about steam XD
Is that platform available on the workshop?
sorry, not yet. Working on it, I will upload it once I finish part 2
I was thinking if you really wanted that .0000002 percent you could add a small turbine for all the excess low pressure steam kinda like the RMS Titanic's steam engine
Edit: i hope they make turbines run at low pressure
So you can't attach multiple large pistons on one crank?
I have to disagree that steam is better in every way. Fuel engines can give you the right amount of power and can do it almost instantly.
Just a simple steam turbine can outperform a fuel engine in both ppm and ppv.
@@_Zdex007 you're always going to b producing too much power with steam. Power demands fluctuate like crazy especially when running a lams. A steam will make power at a constant rate but a fuel engine is going to give you just the right amount of power.
Thats why I have normally gone for fuel. I know, and the stats clearly show, my standard go-to 3*3*3 fuel engine design gives 3200 power. The 7*3*3 variant gives 8000 power. The 10*3*3 variant gives 12800 power. Every extra 3*3*3 block (its a modular design) adds another 4800 power. I can tune the number of engines and modules to the amount of power and redundancy I need.
@@Debbiebabe69 IMO that makes fuel a bit more flexible.
@@Damaddok82 That's why I just pump the excess into batteries for buffer. Not to say that fuel engines have no place of course, but efficiency on demand w fuel engines is also a pain in the ass, as making fuel engines that are efficient at whatever load level they work at is hard and very space inefficient as well.
Will you upload this to the workshop?
Im still waiting for an update to fix a few bugs around valves to make a Part 2. After that Ill need to clean it up a bit and write instructions but yea, sure. Just be patient, this stuff takes a lot of work
12:14 Steam turbine Chart
i punk the steam
Here’s the steam engine calculator: docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Pw6dlEfw3uM63UTAxylRZs8q2DSLbdIAvvzWVQZTT3Y/edit?usp=sharing
Also got a 890 ppm and 30 ppv large steam engine.
So is the part 2 gonna happen any time soon or is it canceled?
Really struggling to get any good ppm with large steam engine parts for some reason
Why do you need *so* much power? Ive built 1.5 million credit battleships, with multiple particle cannons, LAMS, lasers, depthkeeping propellers, shields, and other high-drain items, and never had issues that couldnt be solved with a couple of 3*3*x injector engines - cylinder-crank-cylinder on the bottom, 'jector-cylinder-'jector in the middle, and large rads over the top, with rads capping one end and the engine block and 8 rads at the other, this simple engine has been my go-to in both adventure and campaign.
Love playing with steam engines though, they are hard to get the head round, there is no easy way of telling if you have too many pistons, too few pistons, too many boilers, too few boilers, too many turbines, or too few turbines....
Gas engine< steam turbines < steam pistons. Also turbines are already figured out (there’s already a chart in the discord for that) while steam piston just has more variables to take into account (well I can boil it down to the number of stages or even one) the equation for steam is just massive.
the engine you describe has great density for sure, but a pure injector engine will have awful efficiency. Its the issure of throwing a marauder's worth of resources into the furnace every second. A ship is great but if it uses so much resources you could build another ship for each 10 mins of combat you might want to rething your priorities.
Injector engines are great for planes and small stuff where density is important but not for capital ships!
You can tell if you are using more steam than you produce or not produce enough steam by looking at the pressure. If the pressure of the boiler is below 10 that means the boilers cant keep up. If it is at 10, the materials per second will regulate themselves down, so you can see at what % of max capacity the boilers are running, meaning you might be able to remove a few boilers if you have capacity left. Though more capacity will mean you can build up pressure faster.
@@livslab Where do small and large CJEs come in the efficiency chart, compared to injector engines, turbines, and piston engines (all as pure electricity generators)?
@@Debbiebabe69 no idea! how about you find out? Just build a few CJEs, press Q on them and see what numbers you get! At 06:49 you can see what numbers to expect from a decent steam engine!
@@Debbiebabe69 Low PPV, but really high and easy PPM. I wouldn't use them as the main power source for a craft, only for out of combat.
Really the best and most easy to understand tutorial on steam engines out there. Can't wait for the next one!
How a from the depths tutorial should look like. Explanation by someone who thoroughly made sure they expertly mastered where every number and interaction works within the system, guided with a basic, short version, and a more in depth but precisely timestamped bigger section.
The turbines seem to be useful for starting out in adventure mode, imo (I'm on my 2nd try of it now, but I used to play FTD more in the past before adventure mode was a thing).
At the start of adventure mode, when material *consumption* efficiency is king since you have so little and need it for building, I've been using an RTG or 2 with a battery bank and electric motor, since then I don't consume any resources when running normally.
For combat (especially sustained) or emergency GTFO maneuvers though, sometimes your batteries will get run down. In that case, a small steam turbine set to turn on when batteries are below a certain level can be really helpful! It doesn't provide power itself like a fuel engine, but those have volume issues for small&cheap early rafts. The *power* requirements are solved by adding more batteries, since the electric motor/engine actually provides power based on the size of the battery bank it's connected to!
This is amazingly useful, thanks for the short version in the beginning, it prepared my brain for the rest of it actually. I have to go back and rework my bombers and single owned ship now. Hard part is making every OTHER aspect of my vehicles not suck now.
Germans talking about engineering is the best ASMR. Change my mind.
Figure I'd ask this here:
Am I remembering things wrong, or was it previously possible to control the burn rate with a vehicle controller? I swear I was able to do that with my first steam engine.
Pretty sure ACBs can still control burn rate. Probably maximum shaft speed as well, but I'll have to check.
You can still do this but you don't really have to now, as boilers don't just blindly boil at max (or the rate you ACB for) but only burn what they need to get to full pressure.
Okay now do the cube of steam with the large pistons.
But seriously your small engine cube has revolutionised my designs. Thanks
I am anoyed that I cant use a large fly wheel on a small crank or piston
Liked and subbed. Thanks for outdating all of my ships... Guess it's time for a rework.
Probably an overclocked 820m particle cannon would demand more power that your engine can provide
In that case I could try to make the scaled up version of the engine
Isn't the bottleneck on power per volume and material in a steam engine the number of cylinders connected to each section of shaft? It seems to me that more boilers don't accomplish much.
I have a very quick question, althought I'm a new player, why didnt you use the excess steam for electric steam turbines?
For your small giant engine you showed us to build
Like I mentioned at 21:00, turbines create a lot of backpressure, meaning the engine runs at less power. The turbines, running at less than max pressure, loose efficiency, too.
@@livslab Yea I kind of tried that like 5 minutes ago right now, Now I know lol..
Edit: either way good video
Thanks!
Also: small giant engine. Hilarious :)
Thanks, FTD is my favourite voxel builder but theres no proper literature on most of its mechanics other than "mat make powah"
25:36
Turns out a hybrid crank motor/piston prop is possible.
Dude this is such a great tutorial! Could you do more please?
why is it that you want your steam engines pushing at 100% all the time? I understand for the purposes of testing but I can't understand why they'd be worse if they weren't working at full power
Yes, it's most important for testing since using less power than you produce will screw up the numbers, making you think that the engine can put out more power than it actually can (when testing without load the engine will spin to a much higher RPM, increasing the theoretical power output, even though in reality as soon as you put the engine under load it will slow down and put out less power).
In actual combat its just a matter of efficiency, a huge engine running on snall loads will still loose a lot of power to friction, so the numbers you saw in testing might be inaccurate, to the point where it might be better to run a fuel engine if you run your engine too inefficiently. But worst that can happen is a slightly worse operational cost of your ship.
SAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAM
WAZZAP
Very good
Hello can you upload the steam engine design you came up with to the workshop? I tried replicating it but am having some issues. Thanks!
thanks :)
I made an efficient and powerful engine my boat goes very quick now love it.
One weird thing is that I don't get the large crank motor to work. When I build my ship using large crank motors it only was producing 60.000 out of 180.000 thrust. So I increased engine power and it didn't change... I didn't know what was going on at this point. I then disabled the engine. And it still produced 60.000 thrust. Then I disabled all engines and turbines and it still produced 60.000 thrust???.
I deleted the large crank motors and with a lot of internal reshuffling in my ship I powered it with a standard crank shaft producing 170.000 thrust. Somehow material usage on my ship has gone down by doing that.
What is going on? What am I missing? please help!
I think steam recieved an update since this video went up, not sure what changed though.
Tbh I'm quite out-of-sync with whats happening in the game in general, haven't played in quite a while, so I cant help you.
I suggest you ask over on the official FtD discord server, thery are very friendly and helpful people, I'm sure you'll find your answer there.
@@livslab okay, thanks. It was only due to this video I was able to build a steam engine in the first place and I like them more than fuel engines.
Amazing video
thanks man, there was one thing i didnt got but your in depht explanation actually covered that nieche part, you rock.
Incredible video, explained pretty much everything one needs to know
Really helpful to get a grasp on steam, I've been to overwhelmed by it to try so far, appreciate it!
Now i saw it with headphones- that is ok. Thanks for editing - #notborderwise
I’m still wondering why this channel doesn’t get more support
That platform, is it on workshop?
nope, sorry. I am planning to do a Part 2 with a bunch more info and detail and a few demo engines and upload the platform then
Great video style, love the concise information
This must be the best steam engine tutorial out there.
I know it was challenging... But would you be willing to also make one for the fuel engines as well? The material is lacking in that area.
they don't seem to understand fuel engines very well, (I don't any better) so it may not be the best idea
Please, stop waggling the camera at everything you're trying to direct our attention to. So motion-sick now...
sorry :X
Thank you for the tutorial.
5 minutes in and this is a huge help!
Borderwise has nothing on you, thank you for valuing your viewers time. You rock.
Nice viedeo
if you use steam containers as a buffer between pistons and turbines, does it stop any backpressure?
no idea, gotta test that one
no, it doesnt help. Backpressure happens when the steam cant get used up on the output, and since the steam tanks dont actually use steam they dont help with backpressure. In general they are pretty useless (lets be nice and call it niche) at the moment so I didnt bother talking about them.
@@livslab that sucks, oh well.
@Henrik Freitag I was wondering if it provided a barrier to prevent backpressure, and thus allowing you to use a turbine with the excess steam
@@livslab Idk, I've found some uses. They are rather niche, but they work well with steam jets that aren't being constantly used, I've found ways for them to work with valves to increase a system's durability versus EMP, and I expect I can probably find a few more. Plus, they store waaaay more steam than boilers, so they could be useful to keep providing high pressure steam for at least a few minutes after you lose enough boilers than you can't produce enough steam anymore.
What are the stats on that small engine?
which one? care to provide a timestamp?
The big one at 17:47
@@micgil4193 It has 3 variants:
the 2-Stage one has 134ppv and 550ppm
the 3-Stage one has 110ppv and 670ppm
the 4-Stage one has 87ppv and 716ppm
@@livslab ty