Stormworks: Build and Rescue: Steve’s Guide to Building Paddle Wheels

Many paddle wheel designs have been built in this game over the years. Some working great, others not so much. Others don’t even work at all, and it’s just hidden props doing all the hard work. Many players don’t even know that it’s possible to build working paddle wheels in this game! Here I will give a complete explanation on how to build a set of paddle wheels, what the best design is, why others are flawed, quirks of different components to watch out for, and even some little-known tricks so you can have reliable, powerful and trustworthy paddle wheels fitted to any ship you want, no matter the size!

On top of the guide, I have made a Present Paddle Steamer so you can quickly see how to build a basic paddle wheel.
Link Here: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3332262131
I also made Perfect Circle Kit consisting of all circle sizes from 7×7 to 53×53, which can be used in the wheel part of your paddle wheels if you want.
Link Here: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3332264089

All you need to do is this:

1. Slap down a pivot where you want the paddle wheel to be and place some blocks on top to the desired width. This is your paddle shaft.

Make sure that the paddle wheel itself is spaced one block away from the hull, so it’s not rubbing
against it. Reasons why are in ‘Important Design Quirks and Tips’.

2. build out spokes on either end of the paddle shaft out to where you want the diameter to be, do the same with wedges if you want 8 paddles.

3. place fin rudders on the ends of the spokes. These are your paddles

4. For the fin rudders on the diagonal paddles, input a constant 1 or -1 so that the rudder itself is lined up with the diagonal spokes.

Make sure that the diagonally placed paddles have the fin rudders angled forwards relative to the diagonal spokes, with the rudder itself set back to be aligned with them. Reasons why are in ‘Important Design Quirks and Tips’.
(if you’re confused, just look at the picture)

To keep it brief, the best component is the Fin Rudder, with Control Fins coming in a close second.

Reasons why fin rudders are the best option include:
-Having the second highest force-to-size ratio
-Easy to work with
-Not needing pivots to make diagonal paddles
-Second least wind-catching component

Reasons why control fins are the second best option include:
-Having the highest force-to-size ratio
-Small
-Great for serving as a power boost on a set of paddle wheels that aren’t quite powerful enough
-Being the least wind-catching component

Control surfaces and wing components do technically also work, but they are not nearly as powerful as the other options.
Here’s a test done with two barges. They are both fitted with paddle wheels of the same size rotating at the same rpm. One is fitted with fin rudders and the other with control surfaces.
The barge with the rudder-equipped paddle wheels achieved 20 knots, while the one with control surfaces could only go at 14 knots.
Wing sections are even worse, as they need to use pivots to be set at an angle.

The paddle wheel design that has served me well for years is actually little more than the basic design previously discussed.
It’s just wheel structure itself, the rudders as paddles, and that’s it. No additional pivots are needed, no top-secret tricks that few know how to do. That’s what makes it a great design. It gets rid of all the unnecessary complications to achieve the best simplicity and reliability.

Here’s How to build it:

Place the pivot where you want your wheel to be, and build the paddle shaft onto it. Make sure that the pivot head is not sunk into the hull, to ensure that random destruction is kept to a minimal.
Both small and large pivots work equally well, it’s just down to preference. I usually use the larger pivots because the sound is less… screechy.
Keep in mind how wide the paddle wheel is, how many wheel structures there are, and how well the fin rudders will fit.

Build out your spokes from the paddle shaft, ensuring there is at least a 1-block gap between the paddle wheel and the hull and paddle box.
If you are making paddle wheels that use 1×2 wedges, make sure a block is placed in between the
two layers. These are where the rudder will be placed from.
Paddle wheels typically use either 2 or 3 wheel structures. In this example I am building 3.

Build the wheel structure itself, either making it from scratch or copy-pasting one of the wheel sizes from my Perfect Circles kit.
Try to make it as consistent as possible. Not only would it look bad if it was wonky, but it could have issues with properly fitting in the paddle box.

Obviously the paddles are the most important part of the paddle wheel, so getting it right is crucial.
Generally speaking with how many rudders you should add, the more the better. The wheel will spin at a more realistic speed relative to the ship’s speed, and they will be very powerful.
However do make sure that the ship isn’t too susceptible to being blown around by the wind, otherwise known as Shopping Bag Syndrome. A combination of extremely powerful paddle wheels and other features on the ship that use wind-catching components could make your ship a little too easy to be tossed around. Of course, it won’t be perfect, so instead aim for acceptable tolerances.

The diagonal paddles are built in a slightly interesting way. One side will be smooth, covered by wedges, while the other shows the exposed fin rudders. Aesthetically it’s not perfect, but it can easily be covered with XML-stretched wedges if your design allows it.
The end result resemble something like this. Blocks in green, wedges in blue, fin rudders in red.
Note the direction that the rudders on the diagonal paddles are set to angle towards if given a number input.
Once built, input a constant number into the fin rudders of the diagonal paddles to align the rudders with the paddles. 1 for 1×1 wedge paddles, and 0.5 for 1×2 wedge paddles.

Here’s one of Birkenheads paddle wheels for example. It consists of 12 paddles each with 6 fin rudders. No additional pivots are needed, and it’s plenty powerful.

One thing you can do if your paddle wheels aren’t quite 100% satisfactory is adding control fins wherever possible for a boost. Control fins are insanely powerful for their size, and being a 1x1x1 block, they can be squeezed into places where the bulkier fin rudders don’t quite fit.

Take Celtics paddle wheels for example. I wasn’t entirely happy with how powerful they were initially, so I slotted in some extra fin rudders on every other paddle wheel for a power boost, which helped to get them just right.

As with everything, this design falls short of absolute perfection. Here I will outline the notable quirks of the design, as well as important tips and things to be aware of when designing your paddle wheels.

One important oddity I actually just discovered while making this guide is that how the fin rudders on the diagonal paddles are placed will greatly impact how the paddle wheel itself will affect the whole ship.

Here’s the basic explanation:

If the fin rudders on the diagonal paddles are placed such so that they are angled forwards relative to the paddle, with the rudder set to flap back to be flush with the paddle, the paddle wheel will want to dig itself into the water when it’s spinning.
If the fin rudders on the diagonal paddles are placed such so that they are angled backwards relative to the paddle, with the rudder itself set to flap forwards to be flush with the paddle, the paddle wheel will want to push itself out of the water when it’s spinning.
THIS IS ASSUMING THE FIN RUDDERS ARE POINTING OUTWARDS. IF THEY ARE POINTING INWARDS, THE OPPOSITE IS TRUE.

This only applies to paddles built at a 45 degree angle with 1×1 wedges, as with 1×2 wedge paddles there isn’t really much you can do about it and the setup of the paddles means they actually cancel each other out, as long as they are configured so that the side of the paddle with the exposed rudders is facing towards/away from the other diagonal paddle (the 45 degree paddle if there is one. If there isn’t, the exposed side of the two 1×2-wedge-paddles should be facing towards/away from each other). Note the configuration of the rudders in the photo showing the constant number input in the previous section. The exposed sides are facing each other.

Take this example with two test barges. The barge nearer to the camera has the fin rudders on the diagonal paddles angled back with the rudders flapped forwards, while the barge further from the camera has them angled forwards with the rudders flapped back. As you can clearly see, the barge further from the camera is digging deep into the water while the closer barge is having no troubles at all.

Luckily this one isn’t as complex. Here’s what there is to know:

Placing the control fins so that their “base” is pointed toward/away from the paddle shaft will give you significantly more power than if they are placed such so that their “base” is parallel with the paddle shaft, or just “placed sideways.”
Here’s another test with a pair of barges. The one that has the control fins on the paddles placed “upright” goes 15.5 knots, while the one that has the control fins placed “sideways” only goes 13 knots.

Why they do this, I do not know. It’s not really a huge deal that will break your builds, but it’s enough to point out, just in case you notice an inexplicable power drop from using the exact same parts, just configured differently.

This won’t matter much for smaller ships, but if you’re building larger paddlewheelers with very powerful paddle wheels, it’s a pretty good idea to follow this step.
The reason why is because a build can only handle so many rudders/fins/whatever before it starts to do some weird stuff… If a paddle wheel has too many fin rudders, is submerged too deep in the water, and is driven by pivots that aren’t powerful enough, it will begin to violently spasm out and run a high risk of destroying itself and ship around it.

The solution to this is simple. Make the pivots that drive the paddle wheels more powerful.
You can do this in two ways. First, crank the gear ratio of the pivot all the way up to 1:32, then multiply the number input accordingly. Velocity Pivots aren’t limited to an input of 1 to -1 like electric motors and other components. They can be fed as high a number as you want, and their only cap is their RPM, which is no less than 600. Plenty fast.

The other solution is even more plain. Just add more pivots.
This can be done is a couple of ways. One is to connect the physics body of the paddle wheel to the decorative engine, assuming one is fitted, and actually lines up with the paddle wheel itself. (shockingly rare amongst paddle steamers on the workshop)
The other is to extend the paddle shaft outwards to connect with the paddle box, and have the other pivot placed there. Connecting the paddle shaft to the paddle box was indeed something that was once common on paddle steamers, although it fell out of favor sometime around the 1860’s.
NOTE: Connecting the paddle wheels with the engine may cause one or both paddle wheels to unintentionally stop splashing. Please read ‘To Splash or Not To Splash?’ for more info.

For the best over-the-top safety, I like to employ both solutions

Pretty much what it says on the tin.
This is very important for making sure what you’re building is reliable. With how the game splits builds up into large physics parts, there is the common issue with parts rubbing against each other, catching the edge of one of those parts, and then everything starts getting destroyed.
You will be able to get away with the paddles being up against the hull and paddle box ONLY if the paddle wheel is especially small, like 9 blocks in diameter, OR if the entire hull up against the paddles just happens to be composed of one giant slab of a physics part. Better safe than sorry though, so make sure the paddle wheels have breathing space except for only the smallest of paddleboats (like my Alligator tug Skagway).
For especially large paddlewheelers, in the size range of Celtic, Oakland and Birkenhead, it’s also a good idea, although not absolutely essential, to have a 2-block gap between the outer ring of the paddle wheel and the surrounding covering of the paddle box on top (meaning that for the sides, a 1-block gap is still fine).
I’ve had a couple issues before while building Celtic of the paddle wheel colliding with the paddle box that had a 1-block cap from the paddle wheel, but in that case simply lowering its top speed worked fine enough.
Of course, nothing is perfect, and no matter what you do you’ll still likely run into the paddles wheel destroying stuff sooner or later, but it’s still best to keep it to a minimum as much as possible.

This can apply to pretty much every ship, but it’s more important with paddle steamers.

The reason is simple: The action of the paddle wheels and the water causes the whole ship to pitch backwards a lot. It’s not at risk of flipping your vessel end-over-end over and over again (unless you’re trying to make a stupid fast paddlewheeler), but it is enough to make it look silly.

How many you need and what value to set them at depends entirely on the individual ship, but I usually find 2 rudders per end working well enough.
Here’s Oakland for example. She’s got 3 rudders in the bow, and 4 in the stern, all set to a constant 0.8.

I suppose with all my talk about why the design I use is the best, I should also discuss the flaws of other designs that are commonly seen among other creations.

This is by far the most common mistake I see. Granted it’s not much of an issue on a small scale, but things quickly fall apart the larger you go.
The worst way this is done, and the most often way it is done, is by placing the pivots at the paddle shaft.

The biggest issue with it is low physics. Not everyone has a NASA-level computer to run anything in this game without a sweat, and some players (such as myself) prefer to use low physics all the time to keep the game running as smoothly as possible. Low physics is also what ruins using pivots to set the diagonal paddles. A pivots strength greatly decreases the lower the physics is. It also runs a much higher risk of the paddle wheel bugging and destroying itself due to the greater number of physics bodies that are flailing about.

When the pivots don’t have enough strength to hold the paddles in place, you lose power. When the paddle hits the water, the force of the water against it will wrench the paddle back until it smacks the more solid paddle behind it. Once out of the water the pivot pull it back into position, and the cycle repeats. This may not destroy the paddle wheel, but it will make it much weaker. Some ships I’ve tried have had their speed drop by to 7 knots when going from high to low physics.

Another issue is the greater risk of the paddle wheel bugging out and destroying itself. The risk of this is also increased with low physics, but it’s present at any setting. The reason is simple: a bunch of physics bodies on top of physics bodies flailing about in a confined space is a recipe for disaster in this game. Granted it won’t happen ALL the time, and indeed plenty of paddlewheelers with the design I have tried had no issues when it comes to this, but still, it’s better to be safe than sorry.

Yet another thing is lag. More physics bodies = more lag. I don’t think I need to go into more detail than that.

Another thing I see often is using control surfaces and wing components for the paddles. I already mentioned this in ‘What components to use for the paddles’, but I’ll cover it more extensively here. Again, not ideal, and here’s why:

Control surfaces and wing components have three main things working against them. Their size, their relative weakness, and their tendency to catch the wind. For wing components as well there’s the issue of needing pivots to set them diagonally, which as you’ve just read is not recommended.

Control surfaces are pitifully weak in the water, which is why you probably noticed your ships not wanting to turn much if you ever tried using them as a rudder.

Here’s a test done with a pair of barges. One has a set of 8-float paddle wheels (floats being a common alternate term for paddles), each one with two fin rudders. The other barge has an identical set of paddle wheels, except the two fin rudders are swapped out for a single control surface per paddle. This may seem unfair putting two against one, but keep in mind that even at just 2, the fin rudders are taking up far less space.

Both barge’s paddle wheels are spinning at the exact same rate.
The barge with the fin rudders achieved a speed of 20 knots, while the other with the control surfaces reached only 14 knots.
This may not sound like too drastic a difference, but the fin rudders are powerful enough to where the relatively small and lightweight barge is well below their max capacity. I’ve seen ships that have control surfaces for the paddles crawl slowly along while the paddle wheels flail desperately to move the ship forward. Not ideal in the slightest.

Some of you may want to point to the lovely old SS Windale as contradictory to this, but keep in mind, that ship is fairly small and extremely lightweight, and the paddles spin at a ridiculously fast speed. It makes sense that she’s a speed queen even with the sub-optimal configuration.

The feathering paddle wheel is a strange and wonderful invention. It is a special type of paddle wheel designed such so that, using a set of rods and linkages, the paddles stay nearly level for the entire duration they are in the water, which means they don’t waste energy harshly smacking the water upon entering, pushing uselessly downwards before going level, then pitching upwards and wasting more energy there, before finally exiting and letting the water slowly drag off of them. With the feathering paddle, you’re getting as much as possible out of an otherwise infamously inefficient propulsion system, great improving efficiency and thus slashing fuel costs. They became very popular around the 1870’s, and have since dominated the world of paddle steamers.
At least in real life.

When it comes to Stormworks, they aren’t quite such the wonder-machine. Let me explain.

Can you actually build a working set of paddle wheels in this game? Yes, but only kind of.

After building a few for testing, here’s what I found:

1.
You get basically no efficiency boost. Unless you are very, very, VERY frugal, the pivots powering your paddles are already working well below capacity, and pivots cost basically nothing to power when it comes to propelling A WHOLE SHIP. The ONLY benefit you’re getting out of a set of paddle wheels is that they don’t cause the ship to pitch back as much, which can just as easily be fixed by a handful of vertical fins hidden in the keel… so that kinda defeats the purpose.

2.
They are extremely fragile. You pretty much need high physics enabled at all times to keep them from instantly breaking, which as I discussed before, not everyone likes to do. The huge amount of physics bodies, pivots, moving parts, and high stress on the paddles means that as soon as you set the physics detail to anything other than high, the whole setup will instantly crumble unless they are powering an very lightweight boat at low speeds.

Here’s a test done on the Chaubunagungamaug. The barge is fitted with a pair of 31-block-diameter paddle wheels with 8 paddles, each paddle having 4 fin rudders. They are set to propel the barge at about 10 knots.

At high physics they work fine. No seriously concerning things are happening, although the pivots holding the paddles are being wrenched off-center from their bases by a noticeable amount.

At medium physics, they are barely holding themselves together. The pivots are getting wrenched considerably, and the paddles are on the verge of actually flipping backwards entirely.

At low physics, they break almost instantly. The pivots give way and several of the paddles flip back, and then they start striking the half-built paddle box around them. They hardly complete a single rotation before they are completely wrecked.

So in conclusion, feathering paddle wheels in this game are functional, but not practical. Perhaps you could build a set as a neat novelty to impress your friends or something like that, but beyond that, I cannot recommend using them at all. Building a nonfunctional decorative set could be pretty cool though.

You may have noticed an unusual thing about most of my paddle steamers. The paddles don’t produce any splashing! Believe it or not, this is something that you have complete control over!

The way to do it is somewhat complex and difficult to explain, but I will try to make it easy to understand.

First, we need to understand an odd quirk with physics bodies. They have a “dominance level,” so to speak. You may have noticed that the primary physics body for builds is always a pinkish-red color. This is the main physics body of the whole build, and the one that will be “Anchored” when a build is set to be stationary in the Addon Editor.

The rest of the physics bodies may look like a random mess, but it all follows an order. The first physics body that is added next is the “Next Most Dominant” (I’m just going to shorten it to NMD from now on), and that repeats with every newly added physics body.

For example let’s say, on the workbench, you reset to a new vehicle, with the familiar white default block. Then place three pivots, one after the other, on the back of the block.
The default block and the bases of the pivots that were placed on it is the #1 most dominant physics body (red). The head of the first pivot placed is the #1 NMD (green), the head of the second pivot is the #2 NMD (blue), and the head of the third pivot is the #3 NMD (yellow).
It is important to note, everything you just read not only applies to physics bodies, but separate blocks as well.

All of this means two things.

First, observe what happens when you merge two physics bodies together. The more dominant physics body always overrides the less dominant one, and they both become the more dominant physics body, even if you click on the less dominant body to merge first.

Here, I merged the bodies 3 and 4 together. The blue one overwrote the yellow one, even though I clicked on the yellow one first to merge them.

The next implication of this whole NMD thing is much more important, and relies on a glitch.

If you have two structures on the same physics body that are completely separated, not being connected by any blocks at all, the game sort of ignores a few physics-related things that the latter-built structure should be doing.

The first is something you may have experienced before but couldn’t figure out why it was happening. The enclosure of the second structure is completely ignored and it acts like it’s not a sealed structure, having no buoyancy, displacement, or floodability. This doesn’t have much of anything to do with paddle wheels, but is worth noting anyways in case you ever experience that glitch.

The second is more important for this guide.
The game ignores the fact that the second structure should produce any splashing particles!
The structure will produce no ocean foam or any splashing particles at all as the game kinda forgets that it exists.

You can probably see where this is going.

By having the entire paddle wheel be the secondary part of another separate structure, you can remove the paddles ability to produce any splashing! And what makes a good stand-in for that separate structure? A decorative steam engine!

If you build the engine first inside the ship, then build the paddle wheels afterwards and merge them, the paddles will not splash.
If you forgot or goofed up the order that you should have built them, don’t worry, you don’t have to rebuild it! All you need to do is grab the entire paddle wheel inside a selection grid (remember to include the pivot that the wheel connects to), press ‘Move/Cut’, then press ‘Paste’, merge the base of the paddle wheel’s pivot back to the ship, and you’re all good! The paddle wheel will no longer be considered the “earlier-built structure”.

Once that’s all cleared up and you have the separate engine and paddle wheels, all you need to do is this:
1. Open a hole in the hull (if needed)
2. Bridge the gap between the crank shaft of the engine and the paddle wheel with temporary blocks
3. Merge the two physics bodies together
4. Delete the temporary blocks and fill the hole back in
5. Repeat on the other side and you’re done!

Here’s a chart for the different paddle/engine configurations for splashing vs no splashing.
technically you can have both worlds with one paddle splashing and the other not, but it will look odd…
The brightly colored paddles/crankshaft represent the different physics bodies and how they’re connected.
That’s all for this guide. Yes it’s super long, and in some places difficult to understand. I know. I’m not the greatest at explaining things, but I tried my best to keep it clear. Hope all of this helps and happy paddling!