Engine Operations

## Rebel Galaxy

There are four types of engines in a ship, and they can be a bit confusing at first.

None of the engines require any fuel, and none of them ever wear out. They can, however, be damaged during combat, which not only will cost money to repair but will reduce the ship's effectiveness in combat until repairs can be effected.

### Main Engines

The main engines, used for maneuvering (including combat) have four forward speeds in addition to full stop. The control keys or buttons for the main engines are called out in the upper right of the screen. Choosing full stop will activate braking which brings the ship to a stop fairly quickly and will try to keep it stopped. The current main engine setting appears in a four-segment bar in the upper right of the screen, and there are voice announcements when selecting full speed or full stop.

There are voice announcements when your ship is accelerating to sublight speed, or has slowed below sublight speed. The only significance is that the warp drive (see below) is only available when you're at sublight speed.

Maneuvering thrusters are activated when you turn your ship. If these become damaged in combat, turning may become difficult or impossible, at least in one direction.

There are retro rockets that can be used to quickly reduce speed (S key or left stick back). The retro rockets can be valuable in combat to match speed with a target. When applied simultaneously with turning, they make the turning motion much faster. The retro rockets are also capable of *slowly* backing the ship up (glaciers might be jealous of the reverse speed, but snails might not). The braking action due to the main engines being at full stop is disabled while the ship is moving backwards, so it will coast backwards for quite some distance.

### Booster

The booster can provide a short burst of additional speed (W key or click left stick). Available boost time is indicated by a solid bar in the upper right of the screen. The booster engine normally would be used with the main engines at maximum, but it can be used at any setting. If the booster is used with the main engines at full stop, the braking effect lets the ship move slowly, then stops the ship as soon as the booster cuts off. (When using a gamepad, remapping the booster to left stick forward may be more comfortable.)

There are three variants of boosters. The standard variant is the Sublight drive. The Null-Grav variant provides a lower acceleration but for a much longer time, giving the highest top speed of the three booster variants. The Slamjet variant provides a powerful acceleration for a short period of time, achieving a top speed between the sublight and null-grav variants (for the same level, of course).

### Warp Drive

The warp drive provides the ability to travel around the star system in a tolerable amount of time (a prompt appears at the bottom of the screen indicating the key or button to use). The ship can be steered while in warp, and steering may be necessary to avoid penetrating planet atmospheres, to avoid running into moons or the sun, or to avoid other items of concern (like large enemy fleets). Warp is only available when no large objects are around to present a collision hazard and when no enemy ships are around. Warp speed is quite variable, automatically reducing when passing near points of interest and other ships.

### Jump Drive

The jump drive works with pre-existing jump gates to allow travel to other star systems. When the ship gets close enough to a jump gate, a prompt appears at the bottom of the screen indicating the key or button to use. The Rasputin initially doesn't have a jump drive installed.

### Impairment

The ship's engines can become temporarily impaired, usually by Leech Rockets. Speed will be noticeably reduced and warp will be impossible until the effect wears off after ten to fifteen seconds. The amount of slowdown can be reduced by installing an EMP Ablation subsystem, which is available for almost a million credits at the Merchant's Guild, provided you've reached level 8 with the guild.

There is a voice announcement when your engines become impaired, and another when the impairment ends. Blue electric-like arcs will dance across the ship during the impairment.