MPT/PTpMD Drive Diagrams
Looking at all those drive discussions going on I decided to start my own. Why? Because I find all current drive charts lacking and decided to make my own.
The main idea behind those charts is that when picking a drive player already has some planned scenario for using it, e.g. early interceptor or Alpha-base-busting dreadnought. So, when modeling drives you shouldn’t try to see how a certain drive performs on a certain ship but rather what kind of ship does drive allow to build (given certain constraints) and how economically effective that will be.
What are those constraints? Delta-V, cruise acceleration, combat acceleration and research point limit. First three should be self-explanatory. Last one is important because drives can have wildly different performance depending on (for example) reactor used or availability of utility modules. Researching even Neutronium Spiker for early drives can cost as much research as drive itself.
So, what do we plot? A MPT/PTpMD diagram. MPT stands for Maximum Payload (tons). PTpMD stands for Payload (tons) per Mining Day. Payload is defined as everything except drive, reactor, radiator and (possibly) EV and thrust-boosting utility modules. So, Maximum Payload shows us the largest payload drive can carry within above limits. Mining Day is an abstraction of resource cost.
Each component costs maximum of each individual resources costs divided by daily amount. E.g. if the cost is 10 metal and 5 nobles while you mine 100 and 10 respectively, then cost = max(10/100, 5/10) = 0.5 MD. This allows us to correctly compare costs based on relative resource scarcity. PTpMD tells us how many possible payload tons are we getting per unit of resource spent on the drive. (Note that this value includes only the cost of drive itself, you’ll still have to spend resources on building payload itself.)
Click to enlarge…
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