Maneuver Drive

Module

Maneuver Drive

Maneuver drives are the slower-than-light (sublight) engines of a spacecraft. No spacecraft can survive in space without a working and fueled maneuver drive.

Depending on the quality of the fuel used, the maneuver drive will fluctuate. These fluctuations can be mitigated by a skilled engineer manning the engineer station. High fluctuations can cause any helmsman to have a significantly higher chance of crashing.

Since space stations rely on the maneuver drive to keep orbit, it will fall from orbit and be destroyed if the maneuver drive goes offline.

Maneuver Drive Types

The type of maneuver drive can be selected in the design.

Maneuver drive type can also be changed using maneuver drive modules after the ship has been constructed.

Gravity Drive

Gravity Drives are the primary engines of space faring vessels. They are produced using Grav Couplings which require resources found on all moons.

Gravity Drives are the next step up from the Rocket Drive, and allow for more advanced maneuvering in space. They are also cheaper to make.

Rocket Drive

Rocket drives are only slightly less advanced than gravity drives, their main advantage is that they can be be made without the need for eludium, making it useful for any empire's first ship before they have established their first moon colony.

Rocket drives burn hydrogen directly, rather than using electricity from the spacecraft's capacitor.

The main disadvantage of the rocket drives is that they can't negate gravity from gravity wells, and even worse they can't escape the gravity of a supergiant star. On top of that they are also harder and slower to manufacture resource wise.

Quotes from patch notes

Related patch notes

Update 2014-02-11: Rocket Drive Physics Rockets and spacecraft with rocket drives should behave more like they are subject to Newtonian physics. Done. Rockets and rocket-driven ships no longer ignore gravity when engine is running outside the atmosphere envelope of a planet. Rocket automatically applies braking in all directions when: not moving significantly (<1 m/s), throttles off, unoccupied, and not touching the ground. This causes it to hold position when you exit in space, assuming gravity field isn't too strong. Rocket braking no longer has the gravity-negating effect of gravity drive braking. Ships with any kind of maneuver drive module now apply braking in all directions when: drive is on, throttles off, not touching the ground, no nav course set, and helm unoccupied. Some might call this auto hover. This could prove helpful when transiting intergalactic wormholes. AI pilot is a little shaky with wormhole travel using rocket drives, possibly useless near massive stars. Beware. AI pilot may pass dangerously close to stars when piloting rocket driven ships. Beware. Update 2014-02-13: Rockets Should Burn Hydrogen Rocket drives should burn hydrogen directly, instead of taking power from the capacitor. Done. Design analysis updated to show values calculated accordingly. No 'hold' power setting is shown for rocket drives because they do not use less power when holding like gravity drives.