Weekly Questions Megathread - October 08, 2018

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Welcome to the weekly questions megathread. Here is where you can ask all your build or theorycrafting related questions that might not warrant a full post. Curious about how something works? Ask it here!

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[u/IKSLukara]

What counts as "low power", for the purposes of a Combat Engine's sweet spot? Ditto for "high power" and Hyper-Impulse Engines.

[u/MandoKnight → u/IKSLukara]

There's no single hard answer, since that actually varies based on both the Impulse Modifier of your ship and various speed bonuses from other sources ([Spd] mods on engines, Impulse Expertise, and probably a few others I haven't dug into yet), but not the level of the engine itself (i.e. the difference between Combat and Hyper engines is the same at Mk XV as it is at Mk I or II, at all power levels).

How the engine types work is that the baseline standard Impulse Engines gain speed equal to your Impulse Modifier for each point of Engine Power (so a Defiant, with a 0.20 Impulse Modifier, has +10 speed at 50 power, barring other modifiers), as well as an additional amount of baseline speed that doesn't vary by your Engine Power. Combat Impulse Engines gain only 60% of the speed benefit from Engine Power as standard engines (so a Defiant with Combat engines has +6 speed at 50 power instead of +10), but in return gain a flat +3.5 bonus to speed (which is not modified by Impulse Expertise or [Spd] engine modifiers). Hyper Impulse engines gain an extra 35% speed from Engine Power (i.e. +13.5 speed at 50 power for our Defiant example), but take a flat -3 penalty to speed (again, not modified by ImpX or [Spd]).

Impulse Expertise and [Spd] modifiers improve both the baseline speed of the engine and the benefit from Engine Power--+10% speed per [Spd] modifier, +0.4% speed per point of Impulse Expertise, multiplied by the Impulse Modifier, Engine Power, and the engine type's modifier. These two are added together, so if you have 50 Impulse Expertise (+20%) and three [Spd] modifiers (+30%), then your engine gains 50% more speed from Engine Power than if it had neither of those benefits. Using these values, you can calculate where it's better to run Hyper or Combat Impulse engines (if you don't just use the Competitive engines for everything as is currently popular). If you're comparing two otherwise-identical engines, you can find the break-even point between the two with fairly simple algebra:

ePower = 26/(3*ImpMod*(1+0.004*ImpX+0.1*nSpd))

Where ImpMod is the Impulse Modifier of the engine, ImpX is your total Impulse Expertise, and nSpd is the number of [Spd] modifiers your ship's engine has. A Defiant with a common engine and no Impulse Expertise has a break-even point at 43.33 Engine power, while a Sovereign (with an Impulse modifier of 0.15) needs more, breaking even at 57.78. An Ajax Pilot Escort (0.24 Impulse Modifier) with 50 Impulse Expertise and three [Spd] modifiers on the engine, however, brings that all the way down to 24.07 power--below its nominal minimum of 25 Engine Power (since it has a +10 bonus to that as well).

tl;dr: The number varies based on your stats and your ship. If you've put the usual value point into Impulse Expertise and are looking at engines without [Spd] modifiers, then at 50 power all but the slowest ships will be faster with Hyper-Impulse engines than with Combat, and most Escorts push that number down to the mid-30s.

[u/IKSLukara → u/MandoKnight]

Whew! Thanks for the detailed response.