The transmission is how I do what I do. From a mach 0.6 steamer to a tank that flys. Alright so you may notice that your engine stalls or your “fast” boat is still slow or just not making enough power for your creations. Well lets go over how i do transmissions and how to set up gear and all the fun.

Ok lets go over clutches, gears and load on the engine. Clutch, clutch is like a variable valve but for transmission. Give it a number and it will start to engage. From 0.6-1 is what you want depending on your creations. Now setting your clutch lower will make the load on the engine lower which means you can have more rps on whatever you're trying to do but will also lose rps the lower you go.

Next is gear. How gears work is there is a off ratio and a on ratio. When the gear box is not receiving an on/off input it will stay at your off input and when it does receive one it will switch to that next ratio. Now the way your gearbox is facing also has an impact on the gear.

Toward engine is more rps, more load, less torque
Away from engine is less rps, less load, more torque
Engine -> gear[<] more rps
Engine -> gear[>] more torque

1:1 is 10 rps [>] 10 rps
1:-1 is 10 rps [>] -10 rps

1:2 is 10 rps [>] 5rps
2:1 is 10 rps [<] 20rps

Oh and there is no difference between 1x1, 3x3 and 5x5 gears besides just looks.

it was due to the devs adding a torque limit. so the gears would snap if they were overstressed. they later removed this feature due to how bad it was implemented

Something else you can add to your transmission are flywheels. What flywheels do is slow down the engine and add torque. To add to a non-mod engine is clutch > flywheels > clutch. Mod clutches so basically 3x3 clutch > flywheels > 3x3 clutch and same for 1x1 and 5x5.

So let me go into detail of a flywheel. A flywheel is a very heavy weight on the engine. To make it harder to start up but once the engine turns over it's hard to stop. It also adds torque to the engine and if there is a use shift in load the flywheel will keep the engine at more or less the same rps.

Flywheel = kinetic battery

Next is gens. What a gen does is when you give it rps it will generate power. Turbines, alts, and solar panels also generate power but a gen does it best. They will also add load to an engine so just be aware of that. The small get is what i usually use on my creations but if i want more power i'll use a medium to large gen. My trucks and aircraft use small gens, my larger trucks and boats use medium gens and my freight train uses large. I do this because my trucks and aircraft only need to charge their systems. My larger trucks and boats need to charge their systems and the vehicle is towing or charging and my train needs to power everything behind it.

Alts also remove torque from the engine oh and there like 15x less effective then a small gen.

Ok so you keep hearing me say load on the engine and what is that. Well load is load on the engine. With a much smaller load your engine doesn't need that much fuel while at a high load your engine may A: stall or B: use a lot of fuel and make a lot of heat. So how do you measure load. Well sadly you don't or i just don't know yet. But keep in mind that more load on engines = more heat and fuel usage and with mod engines a huge shift in load will make the rps sky rocket. Ways you can decrease load is by adding gear for more torque. Engine -> gear[>]

ok so i found out something. wheels have a constant load like gens. I'll be honest. i thought wheels would act like irl wheels where they can keep on spinning if they are off the ground but this is SW so i don't know why i thought that. thanks to lazy cat for letting me know. See, even with 4k hours I'm still learning.

Simple stuff you can do with your transmissions is have all your engines hooked up together with the same pipe and keeping all your gears in one line. Another thing you can do is add a torque sensor. rps*torque=power (in stormmworks) and (rpm*torque)/5252 = horsepower but since torque is broken this doesn't really work. You can try (rpm*(torque*0.7376))/5252 which will convert Newton meters to foot pounds. Personally my favorite is (rpm*torque)/100 and this is what i'm going to be using.

ok just ignore all of that because the real equation of HP is (x*10)*1.34102209 and x is the torque meter. Now x*10 will convert it to kw so you can convert it after that.

So let's go into detail on torque in sw. Torque is the torque of the entire system until gears, clutches and flywheels are added. It's more or less a useless number but for towing it's a good number to look at. When towing a large vehicle you want a lot of torque. Not only is your engine going to run easier but hopefully you won't have wheel slip. Torque is good for cars, boats, trains and that's about it. Yes you can have more rps but that will add load to the engine. Aircraft like planes and helis need rps because they need to actually fly and hold there alt.

Now something else you can add to your transmission is a motor. When your starter is on you can also have a motor on your transmission to help your engine start. I usually do this on my jets so I can fire them up faster. Basically you set it up like this. Engine -> motor -> clutch.

Ok let's go over how rps pipes and fluid pipes work. Since rps and fluid are different you can actually use a cross pipe to transport fluid and rps through the same pipe and it's very helpful.

Alright, I know that was a lot of info to read and you probably didn't read all of it, so i'll be going over how I do transmissions. This is how I do transmissions.

Car trans
Engine -> gen -> gear[>] -> gear[<] -> gear[<] -> gear[<] -> gear[<] -> [clutch] -> wheels

I usually do this for my ground vehicles like cars. The way it works is by having the engine run a gen then have gear but when you actually shift to first gear (clutch) then what you set your gears to will activate. The way I do the gear is a bit weird because of the clutch but I could explain. There's always going to be 1st, 0 and a - on the panel. Let's say we have a 5 speed trans. This is what that might look like.

R[>] 2[>] 3[<] 4[<[ 5[<] 1[clutch]

1st “gear” is always going to be the clutch. This is how you get the car moving
2nd is the first gear. Usually set to off of 1:2 and a on of 1:1. This is usually direct engine power to the wheels or tracks
3rd-5th is going to be more rps and less torque. Good for drag racing

The 0 is always neutral. Someday i might change it to a N
The - is always the reverse. Someday i'll make it a R

My gears are usually a nice mix of auto and manual transmissions.

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Train trans
Engine -> gear [>] gear[<] -> [clutch] -> wheels

Since the train needs to go forward as fast as backwards I use a separate gearbox but that's not needed. The other gear is usually set to 2:1 and the engine rps is usually at 10. This makes sure the max rps the wheels can be at is 20 which can also be too high some times.

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Boat trans
Engine -> gear[<] -> [clutch] -> prop

For ships the transmission is usually tiny. All i really need is 1 gear set to off 2:1 and a on of 1:-1. Since my ships need speed over torque, I don't need much rps on the engine.

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Now we are entering the realm of weird transmissions. Stuff I really can't talk about. Even my boat and train transmission dont look like that. There's always gens, gears and clutches in the system that would just be confusing to read. My aircraft transmissions are even more confusing due to the way I set them up but you have seen how I set my car one up so you should have a better understanding of gear… maybe. That's saying your brain ain't dead yet.

Something i forgot to add in is CVT. A CVT or constantly variable transmission is a transmission with gears that you can change on the fly. A cvt is basically two clutches hooked together. One clutch leads to a gearbox set for torque and the other is a gear that is set for rps. Now a problem with this is that this doesn't work because your transmission will lock up but there is a work around. Modular clutch -> crank -> Modular clutch. This is how people make one way rps pipes… ish. There are a few downsides.

A: your engine has no load on it anymore but it also does as well
B: you can lose from 2-17 rps from them
C: it doesn't always work

Ok so let me go over how they really work. Basically you need to engage one side at 0 and one at 1 on 0 throttle (i'm saying 0 throttle sense i don't know how you have your trans hookup) and when at full throttle aka 1 you have the sides flipped. So the side you want to default to be engaged is the low gear aka [>] and the side you want to engage at full throttle be [<]. Easy. just look at the link.

Link to a cvt: https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2560418439

Ok so you know how i said one way rps pipe ish. Well there's a reason why I said that. When you have a clutch like this clutch > crank > clutch you end up making the game act.. Weird. This is how you end up making cars have way too much power but your engine will not be faster. Don't ask me what I'm saying, I didnt code the game. Ok, so on a normal CVT (using the normal clutches) your engine will stall. Now when I mean stall I mean it will lock up. Now why does it work with a mod clutch? I'll be honest. I have no clue. It acts like a one way pipe but it also doesn't. Ok i have a theory.

So my theory is that fact your running it through a crankshaft. So if the rps hits one clutch first instead of the other then it will only let rps go that way.. Maybe. Just an idea and most likely should test it.

Yeah this is why i don't want to talk about CVT so let's move on to combine gears… much more fun.

Ok so the idea behind combining gears is having 4 gears and turning it into a 7 speed trans or something like that. So the way to do it is confusing to say the least. So you need to reuse gears over and over again. So at first you may have 1 gear used. In a second you may have 3 uses. in third, you may have 2 gears used and in fourth you may have 5 gears being used. Ect ect. Yes. I know what I just wrote. Now I'll be honest again. No clue how these work nor really care how they work. You could probably find some pages on them and if you do come back I can put it on here so people can easily find it.

this is literally ripped straight from my engine guide