Idle ship has animation of a working engine

Is it truthfully idle though?
Like are you sure that it's not un-/loading cargo?
Because that's how trains are (or at least were at some point).

Duplicate of https://discord.com/channels/803508556325584926/1478767261912268841

eryk500 [discord] wrote:

Is it truthfully idle though?

yes, ships are smart enough not to burn fuel when loading/unloading

The only ships I know of, which keeps the engine on is some ferries in Norway. They push the flat front into the dock and use the engine to push themselves to not move. I saw a video of it where something like 6-8 people boarded and the ferry reversed back out after only 22 seconds. Cargo ships shuts down the main engine while docked as well as on board diesel power plants if they are hooked up to shore power. They do have dedicated power plants rather than running power off the main engine precisely to allow them to have power even if they shut down the main engine.

eryk500 [discord] wrote:

Is it truthfully idle though?

Trains are different through. If they need to move to get all the cars to some unload device, then the engine will naturally stay on. Shutting down the engine will usually also shut down the compressors, which affects the air brakes. At least some countries leave an engine running, possibly even overnight in order to consistently refill the brakes to compensate for leaks. Mechanical brakes can be used too, but they take so long to set properly that it's primarily for long term stops.
We can argue if the trains should shut down the engines if they wait for cargo to be (un)loaded, particularly if the train waits for belts backing up. However it's realistic either way. It takes an hour to cold start a diesel locomotive and 5 minutes if the engine is hot and has passed startup checks (faster if there aren't any electronics). Turbines are hard to start and steam takes 8 to 24 hours to cold start (72 for the American giants), through once hot they stay hot for days. It's not uncommon to have them unheated for 3-4 days before they are cold enough for repairs.

I am seeing this on game load for most ships at the docks. Once they head out to sea and return, the animations shut off once they get back. After opening save, un-pause and you should see the animation come on.

the propshaft being violently active while locked to port is an age old bug ive noticed in some cases, a common one was if you paused the ship at some point during constructing the modules, but possibly also pops up if the ship has been at port for several years

oh yea now that you point that out, I'm definitely seeing this behaviour with almost all of my ships, i think the couple that dont only just ported at save load

but if they are not consuming resources (diesel, hydrogen or oil) than it's only a visual bug

Fixed in the next patch. Just a visual glitch.