Sorry for the second post, but I just wanted to make sure something hasnt broken. The armoured trains have a fuel consumption of 60MW - is that correct? Thats 100x the fuel consumption of standard trains, consuming solid fuel at a rate of 5 a second, and even rocket fuel at a rate of 0.6/second. That feels like an insane quanity of fuel consumption even for a couple of trains.

I noticed when going to set up my first of what was planned to be quite a few trains and went to use a sludge to coke recipe i have - lucky for me i like to check stuff like this - with the cokes 1.6MJ, the train can barely make a single trip around the small loop i made even when full to the brim with 250 coke as fuel.

Yes, there is a high fuel consumption. I recommend you use a better fuel source than coke.

The fuel cost is usually per trip, because the train stops consuming fuel once it hits max speed, which is normally very fast since it burns so much fuel.

Was certainly a reality check, thats for sure lol - actually need to worry about the efficiency of the fuel for once. I do feel that one hundred times more fuel-hungry is maybe a LITTLE excessive - even ten times more would be a shock to the system of fuel production, especially with the unique challenges Rubia brings.

However, as I said in the other post, I won't whine about your design choices, your mod your rules after all! I'll see how it feels with some rocket fuel production - after all I can always tinker myself if i feel its completely unmanageble for me.

If you start playing with it, you’ll understand why it is a massive upgrade over vanilla trains, not a downgrade.

Because trains stop burning fuel at max speed, and train accelleration is proportional to fuel burning rate, the better way to see it is that armored trains ALLOW you to burn fuel way faster.

Ahh, I see - so 100x fuel drain, but 20x acceleration power, with no drain at max speed. Or at least, it would be.

Just tested it and it still drains fuel at max speed on a straight. Nowhere NEAR the crazy drain of the acceleration, but still a couple coke a second. Probably manageable with better fuel. No idea if this is caused by a different mod or if the passive drain on rocket fuel is just so low that its not noticable, but either way thats not an issue with Rubia.

Weak fuel is not a good fit for Rubia’s trains, which effectively demand rocket fuel or better. The passive drain can add up, but a trip of 1 chunk vs 10 chunks should still roughly cost 1 rocket fuel per trip. With 5 fuel slots, that is about 25 laps with rocket fuel.

The details of the train have a large impact (eg 1-1 vs 1-1-1 vs 1-4….). No other mod is responsible for this large energy cost. The only actual inefficiency in fuel comes from the locomotive’s 5x weight and 20% burning efficiency. Armored wagons have 5x weight for 2.5x capacity. So an armored 1-4 train burns 25x as much fuel for 2.5x the cargo delivery of a vanilla 1-4. This is 10x cost of fuel/cargo, while getting 4x acceleration to a 1.5x top speed. Short trips are vastly faster, as are trains entering and leaving stations.

Point being, there is a high cost to balance a high value. While producing more good fuel is trivial.

Sorry, I think there was a misunderstanding with my last reply - there seems to still be a fuel drain even at max speed, albeit MUCH MUCH slower than when accelerating. I understand your reasoning for the increased cost and the logic behind it being an upgrade.

Using coke again was just to test the max speed drain - I'll definitely switch to a far better fuel now I understand how the system works. Let me just again say that Rubia is great lol. Very unique challenges but extremely satisfying to learn to work with, and Im excited to go back in and rebuild at scale.

Thanks. I appreciate it.

I understood what you meant. I was just giving you an overall view of the math so you can see where all the numbers are going.