Fuel Engines
Fuel engines consume fuel and make Engine Power for your Vehicle. They are some of the most easy engines to set up, bar the need to sometimes implement exhaust pipes.
Overview
Fuel engines are a versatile engine choice. They can be built either powerful and inefficient with injectors, less powerful but fairly efficient with carburetors, or a combination of the two. Fuel engines create large amounts of heat, which has to be dissipated. Typically this is done through exhaust pipes, though if the engine compartment isn't sealed that can work as well. While fuel engines primarily create engine power, they can be configured to also produce electric energy.
Components
There are a variety of components that fuel engines can use, depending on the requirements of the design.
Core Components
- Fuel Engine Generator - Core, foundational block of a fuel engine. If destroyed the engine will stop functioning. Should be well protected and away from enemy weapon fire.
- Cylinder - Creates the power for the fuel engine. Can be placed directly onto the fuel engine generator, but will typically be placed on a crankshaft on all but the smallest of fuel engines. They create 10 power by themselves, but have much greater output when you attach an injector or carburetor. Also requires exhaust or radiators to prevent overheating.
- Exhaust - Pipes that direct the exhaust from fuel engines out of the vehicle. Fuel engine exhaust can be vented into the air or into water. An engine without proper exhaust (or radiators) will become less powerful as it overheats. Radiators can mitigate this issue.
While the components below are not technically required on fuel engines, it's incredibly difficult to build a useful engine without a combination of most of these components.
- Crankshaft - Connects to the fuel engine generator. Cylinders attach to the crankshaft to provide power to the engine. While not technically required, almost every fuel engine will have crankshafts. Multiple crankshafts can be used to give longer banks of cylinders, similar to how real life engines use crankshafts.
- Injector - Provides a large boost to a cylinder's power generation, but is inneficient. Good for creating power dense engines where efficiency isn't a priority. An injector increases a cylinder's power output by 200.
- Carburetor - Not as powerful as an injector but much more efficient if used with superchargers and turbochargers. Good for creating efficient engines where size and power density aren't as much of a priority. A carburetor increases a cylinder's power output by 100.
- Supercharger - Connects to a carburetor to improve fuel efficiency. A supercharger works at any RPM, but is most effective at low-RPMs.
- Turbocharger - Connects to a carburetor and exhaust pipe (or cylinder) to improve fuel efficiency. Turbochargers are built inline to the exhaust pipes and increase in effectiveness the more exhaust is pushed through them, meaning turbochargers work best at maximum RPM.
- Radiator - This part connects to cranksshafts or cylindars to cool connected cylinders. Radiators can be used in lieu of exhaust pipes, but are heavy and less space-efficient than exhaust pipes.
In Practice
Fuel engines are a great way to create large, fast amounts of Engine Power. Their components allow for high modularity and customization; often if a a fuel engine needs to be larger you only have to copy and paste slices of the engine down the crankshaft. Balancing injectors and carburetors allows players to balance between power density and fuel efficiency.
There are some downsides to fuel engines. They utilize Fuel, which is highly volatile so it needs extra protection. They also create large amounts of heat, which can be seen with IR detectors.
One effective strategy for fuel engines are small 5x5x5 cubes that can be duplicated for redundancy. -Need examples of meta fuel engines-
Comparisons to Other Engines
Fuel Engine vs Steam Engine
- Fuel engines create nearly instant power when turned on, while steam engines will require some form of startup time if they need to build up steam.
- Fuel engines generally work well at idle, while steam engines will be incredibly inefficient at idle, to the point where turning them off is preferable.
- Fuel engines have better power density than steam engines, especially at small sizes. However, steam engines scale upwards better than fuel engines do; at large sizes and full load, steam engines can both offer better PPV and PPM.
- Steam engines, especially large ones, have components that are harder to destroy compared to fuel engines. Those components will be much larger than one block, however.
- Fuel engines require fuel storage, which is volatile so it needs protected. Steam engines burn materials so no additional dangerous storage is needed.
Fuel Engine vs Electric Engine
- Fuel engines have much better power density than electric engines.
- Fuel engines are much cheaper than an electric engine and its battery bank.
- Fuel engines require fuel storage, which is volatile so it needs protected. Electric engines use energy, which is expensive but safer. However, energy generation requires either extremely expensive RTGs or a generator created from a fuel or steam engine. This makes electric engines typicaly impractical for primary engine power sources.
- Fuel engines create large amounts of heat, which can be seen with IR detectors. In comparison, electric engines do not create any heat.
Fiel engines are a good cheap source of engine power, especially compared to Custom Jet Engines and Electric Engines. They're also more flexible and responsive than Steam Engines. A couple ACBs or a breadboard can be used to alternate between engine power and electric energy generation, making them a good one size fits all engine for a lot of purposes.
Additional Guides
Several users have uploaded prefab-able fuel engines, included below: