[Vehicles] Marine Steam Engines

[David L Pulver]

Originally Posted by Marasmusine

Hello all, time for my annual Vehicle-related post.

This time I'm looking at marine steam engines. It seems to me that their power-to-weight ratio is much lower than those used for locomotives.

I was aware of some issues with marine propulsion - In my Vehicle Design rules I added extra options for marine condensing, condensing, and high performance steam engines (as well as flash boilers, oil firing, and long occupancy etc.) plus also a cheap modifier.

Bearing in mind it's just one engine for 30 years of development, so it's likely to be somewhat off, this gets me 120 lbs./kW for TL6 compound steam engine with the marine condensing option (x1.2 weight, volume, cost; x0.005 water consumption as long as vehicle is in water) but as little as 50 lbs./kW for a high-performance version for a locomotive (at higher cost).

Of course, extra rules of this sort added to the book's lengthy and complexity, which ultimately resulted in its undoing ):