Editing Engine (section)

==Overview==
An engine is an absolute necessity for any ship that wishes to travel faster than 1km/s. Any number of engines can be mounted on a ship, although only one variety of engine may be mounted per ship. 

There are [[military components|military]] and [[commercial components|commercial]] engines, the difference being that an engine of size 25 HS and larger with a power rating of -50% and lower is automatically classified as commercial. Military engines flag any ship they are on as [[military vessels]], and thus subject to maintenance failures and requiring overhaul. Commercial-engined ships tend to be slower than their military-engined counterparts. This is offset by a much better fuel efficiency and no [[Ship Maintenance|maintenance]] failures. In effect, commercial engines are trading a high maximum speed for fuel economy.

You might get to the point where your empire operates hundreds of freighters, asteroid miners, fuel harvesters, tugs, troop transports and other non-warships. They need engines with great fuel economy or they'll eat up your reserves faster than you can build new [[Fuel Refinery|fuel refineries]] or [[Sorium Harvester]]s. 

The total power output from a ship's engines will determine the speed of the ship. Speed is one of the most important aspects of a ship. Superior speed means higher capacity per time for cargo ships, and a battle fleet with higher speed has a significant advantage, able to dictate the range of the engagement, intercept the other force, or disengage from a hostile force.

All engines use fuel to operate, limiting cruising range, with high powered engines consuming exponentially more fuel than the default value.  Range and speed are generally increased at each other's expense, or by building a significantly larger and more resource-hungry ship. As you research Fuel Consumption [[technology]], you can design engines that will use less fuel for the same power output. Fuel efficiency can also be improved with larger individual engines ([[CSharp|C#]] only). 

Engines create a thermal signature, one that can be detected by [[Thermal Sensors]], so having high-powered or numerous engines on a spy ship is not advisable. By dropping a ship's speed or by designing engines with Thermal Reduction, a ship's thermal signature can be reduced.

[[Missiles]] also have engines, but with somewhat different rules from ship engines. These function along the same lines, though. In [[VB6]], they have a separate design menu, with slightly different mechanics. In [[CSharp|C#]], they are designed as part of the missile's design, using the same basic mechanics as ship engines. The main differences are that you can select much smaller and more granular sizes, and that your power level can go twice as high. For example, if you have researched Maximum Engine Power Modifier x1.75, your ship engines can have power levels as high as 175%, but your missile engines can go to 175% * 2 = 350% instead.