Spaceship engines and speed?

[Wombleburger]

Hi all,

Can anyone enlighten me on the effects of building engines on the speed of the spaceship in BtS? (Perhaps point me in the direction of an existing thread?)

In my latest game (on Epic speed) Joao II launched a ship with a single engine just 3 turns before I launched a ship with both engines. My twin-engined ship was scheduled to win me the game in 15 turns, so I (naively) assumed Joao II's single-engined ship wouldn't get there for 30 turns (12 turns after mine, given when he launched), but he beat me to the punch by 1 single turn! (Cue much nashing of teeth and cursing, threats to never play again, shortly followed by starting a new game...)

Clearly building 2 engines doesn't make the ship travel twice as fast (at least on Epic speed). So, how much faster does the second engine make it go?

 

[blitzkrieg1980]

Shoulda invaded his capital That stops the spaceship altogether

 

[TheMeInTeam]

2 turns on normal speed, the exact same as a thruster.

Usually you won't build 2 engines and save time, unless you get fusion before other space techs and have enough cities to handle the production (it happens to me when I get internet and beeline genetics/fusion while the AI researches the other space techs for me).

 

[Wombleburger]

Thanks for the responses!

Blitzkrieg1980 - I would've invaded his captial, but he was far away (playing on a Huge map), his captial was waaaaay inland, and shortly after he launched the ship he capitulated to Saladin who had nukes and wasn't afraid to use them (he used them on Joao to make him capitulate in the first place). I think a better idea (that I saw in another thread), would've been to send a few boat-loads of spies over to his territory to sabotage his spaceship before he launched!

TheMeInTeam - 2 turns fits with what happened to me (I launched 3 turns after him and arrived 1 turn after.) Does spaceship speed not scale to game speed then? I was playing on Epic, so I assumed spaceship speed would be slower.

 

[ParadigmShifter]

It does scale for gamespeed, I think it is 7 turns for another engine on marathon. Don't know about epic though.