Drives have several stats associated with them and I'll do a quick breakdown of why they matter for those who want a deeper look at ship design, but basically drives fall into three categories, transitional drives, evergreen drives and drives that are not useful at all. I decided to arrange them in that order, because when you get to evergreen drives you will almost always know it, and it is difficult to avoid converging on these, so transitional drives are the most useful to understand.

I want to primarily use this guide to call out drives that *I think are useful* and provide details about the reasons why. Of course, if all you have are subpar drives and you *REALLY* need to build a ship, go ahead and use it. Though in my opinion in general you don't have a use for ships if you can't at least get to an early game useful drive. I want to call out that there is a measure of subjectivity mixed into this list as I’m trying to consider when I think you will get it, what it’s primary usefulness at that point in the game might be, what and how much strategic resources you are likely to have and what you might want to be doing with a drive at that stage in the game, in addition to the raw drive stats and requirements. With all the inter-dependencies and variability involved, no two games will be exactly the same, so you might find a transitional drive coming too late or a better ‘useless’ drive to actually be the best drive for your particular circumstance, but I believe that the latter case will be rare. As such this is not exactly a ‘source of truth’.

Happy to discuss those who disagree with an overall rating for a particular drive in the comments, or perhaps have a critique of my overall approach to rating these, perhaps due to a broader ship design oversight.

Required Power Plant:
Included for completeness, limits the types of power plant that are compatible with the drive. Largely doesn’t matter since it’s probably the best plant for the time you want to use that particular drive anyway.

Required Power:
limits powerplant types and scales the amount of weight your powerplant uses and indirectly the amount of waste heat generated, less is always better, but the best overall drives in the game are power intense.

Mass:
offsets thrust and delta-v (effectively fuel). Barely matters compared to other stats and only applies to drives that have 0 required power (because other drives mass is calculated based on power plant and waste heat requirements)

Thrust:
makes you go fast, large impact on ship cruise and combat acceleration. Generally higher is better
Exhaust velocity:
impacts fuel usage. vitally important to hit certain thresholds for different use cases, since adding fuel tanks eventually becomes infeasible due to the addition of mass.

Power use efficiency:
impacts the required power plant efficiency and increases waste heat which needs to be offset by radiators (making them heavier and more expensive) and weight and materials required for power plant which has it's own efficiency factor which also feeds into waste heat and radiator size. In theory it should impact the useful life of heat sinks as well.

Propellant:
only really matters if anything or hydrogen are listed here, otherwise it's basically flavor text. Hydrogen can use the hydrogen containment line, which is invaluable, “anything” can use the remass scoop to get fuel from gas giants or refuel without a station with the in-situ utilization module, both of which are honestly a bit questionable in terms of value unless you cannot maintain your orbitals.

Propellant materials per tank:
This times the number of tanks on the ship times the percentage of delta-v used up determines the refuel cost of a ship. Largely not important unless it contains antimatter or large quantities of fissiles

A Hidden Stat “sustained thrust”:
Drives have a kind of on/off characteristic which translates how much thrust rating is applied to cruise acceleration. It’s not reflected in the stats and you basically have to trial and error to see what it is, but unsurprisingly drives like the rockets have a steady burn and drives like the exploding drives tend to generate a lot of instantaneous thrust but fall off for longer accelerations.

Delta-V is how much you can change the ships speed vector, or more simply put how much fuel you have. In space, ships will travel on momentum so you need to burn fuel to start or stop but you kind of coast en route. However, travel time limits will create minimum delta v requirements for far off destinations.

2 KPS -
the ship will be capable of one way trips in orbit consistently enough to intercept. The ship will often need to be scrapped after a single outbound trip as it will lack fuel to return to station

4 KPS -
mostly capable of intercepting ships and returning to station in the same orbit as long as no combat maneuvers are performed (focus on turrets and missiles)

10 KPS -
A fairly useful threshold to target for earth-moon operations. You can honestly get by on less for Mars, you really shouldn't ever have to build this low for any other system, but stay away from gas giant orbits and it should be okay for most low grav operations.

30 kps -
You can fly around the inner system with this much, double it if you want to go to a planet you don't have a way to refuel at, but I can't think of a good reason to send a fleet to an inner system location that you don't have a base at, so I will exclude it's round trip value from the useful KPS list. Generally more than you can use up in a single combat interception.

100 kps -
Barely enough to start to attack distant locations (alien bases)

300 kps -
You can often outbid alien fleets when engaging them, broadly useful for interplanetary travel

1000kps -
You rarely need more than this, although adding KPS can sometimes help you get places faster (since you can burn and slow down longer en route)

Venture Liquid Rocket -
Most likely the first limited useful drive you will get. Can be made to reach the in system KPS thresholds without too many tanks as long as you keep your design light overall.

Nova Liquid Rocket-
The very first drive you might send something out of system with. Straight upgrade for venture liquid rocket ships

Super Kronos Liquid Rocket -
A rather interesting drive that pushes very hard for small ships at an acceptable level of fuel efficiency, the only rocket that will I would consider putting on any ships after early game. Incompatibility with key utility modules limits late game use, but in theory could be used for an early inter-system alien base strike and can serve as a base drive for very strong low tier ships. Since it's light, fuel efficient below about 4k wet tons and uses no power what-so-ever. Notably for an early game drive in that it's useful and uses a trace amount of uranium and volatiles as fuel. So might be used as an 'alternative' material drive (water being the most ubiquitous but also primarily demanded fuel)

Lorentz Drive -
Very low powered moderately efficient drive that can be unlocked early and is relatively easy to stack for additional power. (5 stack supported by second fission reactor - which will likely be the second reactor you unlock). This is the first drive that I would consider using for combat maneuvering, which means you can usefully mount a nose weapon with this drive.

Helicon Drive -
Slightly more efficient than the Lorentz Drive, but as an early game drive under performs it in terms of speed and combat performance because of additional weight related to waste heat. Will give you more fuel efficiency however, so you may find it useful on intermediate weight ships.

Heavy Dumbo Drive -
Inefficient but powerful drive that is useful on moderate weight interceptors due to very high thrust. Too fuel inefficient to use for heaviest weight classes, but can support hydrogen utility modules so it's better than it looks on paper, requires medium tier fission power plants to operate, on a critical research line so easy to pick up if you are controlling research priorities.

Pulsar Drive -
A somewhat unremarkable drive that is a prerequisite for the advanced pulsar drive so it's a must to 'transition through'. Relatively low power use, hydrogen propellant compatibility and acceptable fuel efficiency, make it viable for mid weight ship classes. As a bonus, like the dumbo drive it's part of a critical research path so you don't need to go out of your way for it.

Advanced Pulsar Drive -
From a practical perspective, nearly twice as good as the pulsar drive, it's a staple drive for light and moderate weight ships for much of the game. Works with all the fission plants, and the main drawback is that it doesn't work with not fission plants when you start to unlock them. Compatible with hydrogen modules. Workhorse of a drive. Barely acceptable performance for heaviest ship classes when fully stacked.

Fission Spinner Drive -
Usually better, but sometimes worse than the advanced pulsar. Depends on weight class and supporting technologies. Requires tier 2 molten core, and does support hydrogen containment technology. Generates substantially more waste heat then advanced pulsar. Better on heavier ships due to enhanced thrust rating.

Pegasus Drive -
Straight upgrade of fission spinner, with better efficiency but more required power resulting in more waste heat, better than fission spinner for any tech level but advantage scales with improved radiators.

Fission Lantern -
The only pure water gas core drive worth using, a bit heavy on metal requirements (due to high power usage), but very high trust makes for a great interceptor engine, I think it is too heavy to stack for this use case, at a minimum of 1000 tons per engine stack but you can still achieve 4.0 gs combat acceleration (max) up to 5600 wet mass, and you can maintain a respectable 1 gs combat acceleration up to 22k tons. Unfortunately low fuel efficiency mostly limits the engine to rapid earth/mars interceptions. Hydrogen module compatible which helps.

Flare Drive -
Low powered and very fast drive with decent fuel efficiency that supports hydrogen tankage. Shines in interceptor role, but capable enough to be used for interplanetary travel. Can support even the heaviest ship classes, would call it an 'endgame drive' for it's role but Firestar is EVEN BETTER.

Minmag Orion/Advanced Minmag Orion/ Orion/H-Orion -
I put these together because they don't deserve a lot of real estate in the transitional drive category, but they can't be outright dismissed because of their unique but most likely not very useful when unlocked properties. Minmags are extremely light and fuel efficient drives that don't support modules or scale well for heavier ships, but can find use in small utility vehicles that need to leave the local system (like colonizers). They can't be stacked, don't support utility modules and use relatively expensive reagents for fuel, but are kind of off in their own tech tree which you probably won't but possibly could unlock fairly early. This is enhanced by the fact that they are fixed mass drives so don't really benefit or need supporting tech. Orion/h-orion are their big brothers which share many of the same features and limitations, but trade a lot of thrust for some efficiency, which makes them usable on large ships.

Firefly Torch -
Amazing on paper, but combination of moderate power use efficiency, and insane power usage limit it's utility due to radiator weight. Unlikely to actually be put to use since it's a very late stage drive to suffer from such a drawback, but it's serviceable if underwhelming on large ships. I could not imagine putting this drive on a smaller ship since a single stack will probably account for more than 50% of your total design weight and take more than 2.5k in radiator materials radiator (so you might as well pack some gear). Only compatible with flow-stabilized z-pinch fusion reactor. Supports spikers.

Icarus Drive -
Very capable drive whose performance exceeds most drives, but soon to be rendered obsolete by the Icarus Torch. Supports Hydrogen utility modules as well as spikers. Due to low power requirements might still find a use in very light ships late game (if you want to build one).

Triton Reflex Drive -
Not very strong but fairly fuel efficient low power drive that might see usage on long range missions.

Advanced Helion Torus Drive -
Suitable for small ships, could be used to make a barely space worthy larger vessel. Very fuel efficient. Supports spikers which should be used. Hydrogen containment optional.

Advanced Helion Reflex Drive -
Similar to the Advanced Helion Torus Drive, but gives up much of it's fuel efficiency for enough instantaneous thrust to make it potentially tolerable for combat usage on a heavier vessel. Give it both the spiker and the hydrogen containment vessel.

Mag Protium Fusion Drive -
A solid drive that is likely to be unlocked too late to find much use. Efficient out of the box but does not support hydrogen mods. Worth unlocking if you don't have a good all purpose drive when it shows up, but doesn't really stand up to a lot of the other drives that you should have or soon have. Too good to be called 'useless' but probably too late to be 'transitional'.

Antimatter plasma core drive -
Due to the high performance ratings, low power consumption and full module support and relatively low antimatter requirements, I could see using this drive for the short term, but that antimatter doesn't really get you anything that you can't achieve with other high end, research intense drives, so it's pretty meh. Primary reason to use it is interception where it might be used as a more fuel efficient but slower interceptor with better in combat maneuvering.

Neutron Flux Drive- Useful on very small utility vessels, intense fissile use limits strategic value.

Firestar Drive -
Arguably the best drive for in system interception and definitely the best drive that is gas core exclusive. Thrust performance on par with torch drives, has hydrogen utility module support which can allow for very high efficiency, can in theory gear up a dreadnought with this drive and send it on anti-alien base operations, although there are (much) better drives for out system operations. Still it's likely to be the first 'can do everything' drive that you unlock.

Icarus Torch -
Very high thrust performance, relatively low waste heat generation for the power consumption, extreme efficiency and full utility module compatibility make it one of the best drives in the game. Requires hybrid confinement fusion reactor tier II or greater. EDIT: Usually slightly worse than Zeta Boron details of why in comments.

Daedalus Torch -
One drive to rule them all. It's this one. Extreme fuel efficiency, low waste heat and full utility module support make this drive my go to for new ship designs. The only drawback is a lowish cruise acceleration, but I still find it adequate for intercepting even with extremely heavy ships.

Zeta Helion Drive -
Not the best end-game drive but balanced between performance factors and reasonable material cost make it a solid all-arounder for any ship size. Full utility module support.

Zeta Boron Fusion Drive -
More powerful and less fuel efficient than the Zeta Helion make it more practical for higher tonnage, since you're likely to be using very large ships when this drive is unlocked, slightly more useful then the still very, very useful Zeta Helion. Full utility module support. EDIT: Usually slightly better than Icarus Torch details of why in comments.

Protium Inertial Torch -
Less thrust and no support for hydrogen modules makes one of the weaker performers on the end game list, on the other hand, it still outperforms almost all other drives in the game including the zeta helion which is also on the shortlist of endgame drives.

Protium Converter Torch -
Struggled with placing this one. It's an end game drive for sure, but too heavy and energy intense to be useful for most players ever. You need nearly 6k metal per drive and stacking will barely improve performance, but starts out with so much thrust that in terms of performance a single drive will max combat acceleration up to 200k tons and give you a high end level of cruise acceleration on all but the heaviest ships (69 at 200k tons) Not intrinsically all that fuel efficient but because of the thrust to weight ratio, very responsive to adding propellant tanks. If your ships are extremely survivable and you're okay with a moderate level of fuel efficiency and you want top end combat maneuverability and interceptor performance on a single all rounder platform this is the drive to use.

Advanced Antimatter Plasma Core Drive -
about 20% better than the basic drive which still leaves it on par with late game drives that don't consume antimatter, but with a couple of super colliders in operation you could use this as a replacement for the firestar for fast interception and it operates with very low non-antimatter fuel consumption, just ensure that you have a reliable source for the ultra rare input material it requires to maneuver. Since it's fast and fuel efficient enough it can be used for most build use cases with sufficient antimatter reserves.

Neutron Flux Torch -
Fixes some of the issues with the neutron flux drive due to much better fuel efficiency, but comparatively quite heavy, making it in some cases less suitable for small ship usage.
Due to power requirements and reactor line characteristics on this drive it will greatly benefit from teir II reactor, shedding about 80% of it's weight from that one tech upgrade. With tier II saltwater core can produce good to moderate performance on all ship sizes. The key drawbacks of this drive are the materials to construct and keep in service. Not as bad as a Pion Torch, but only okay fuel efficiency for a torch make it undesirable as your main fleet drive, whereas initial build cost makes it too expensive for expendables, leaving it as a kind of special projects drive. Probably will only be used in limited quantities due to cost of operations but as long as you can afford to keep it in service it's a very functional drive which I sometimes use even for endgame ships (for example colonizers).

Apex Solid Rocket -
Probably the first drive you will get
It's fast, but absolutely fuel inefficient. Will completely drain your early game resources to field even a few ships of this type for basic low earth orbit interceptions. Also will almost instantly run out of fuel if doing combat maneuvers. If your desperate for intercepters and somehow can afford to refuel these you may find a use, alternately you could build very low fuel disposable interceptors with this drive and then retire them after a single interception. Pair with missiles so you never have to turn. As the worst drive it is also the most inappropriately named drive in the game.

Meteor Liquid Rocket -
Apex solid rocket but barely a little bit better in terms of efficiency. Light weight so you don't lose much by stacking it.

Neutron Liquid Rocket -
Pushes a bit harder than meteor which is honestly speaking useless.

Diana SuperHeavy Rocket -
Better than the other rockets here but still too fuel inefficient to be useful - which makes it a step backwards for it's research tier.

Resistojet-
would you try to cook meat with a lighter? No? Well you wouldn't try to go to space with a drive like this either. Totally useless.

Tungsten Resistojet -
Better than the base resistojet, but still wouldn't put it on a spaceship, ever.

Arcjet Drive -
If you launched a ship towards mars with this drive on day one, then started researching towards the final drive in the game and designed a ship based off of it, built it and sent it to Mars too, the second ship would get there first.

Plasma Wave Drive -
At 1200 newtons of thrust it's still too low powered to go on a ship, but 6 of them reach barely acceptable performance levels for an extremely early game ship. Still difficult to recommend under any circumstances.

Hall Drive -
Basically nothing good about this drive, but interesting in that it sucks equally for combat and cruising, which is rare.

Ion Drive -
Light and efficient but overall bad.

Grid Drive -
You can make a barely combat worthy vessel by stacking 6 of these, but outperformed by the lorentz line except in terms of efficiency at very low weights

Colloid Drive -
Very low power usage drive that you *might* use if you only have fission reactor one and want to build a ship. Generally worse than the Lorentz series in every way, but a bit more combat capable than grid. Low but acceptable fuel efficiency, Uses volatiles.

VASIMR-
Trash drive that can be made insanely fuel efficient with Hydrogen traps, but gets places so slowly that you won't really care.

Ponderomotive Drive -
Upgrade for VASIMR - Still too weak to be of any realistic use.

Pulsed Plasmoid Drive -
Another impossibly weak drive, this one uses metal.

E-beam -
Slow AND inefficient due to relatively low power efficiency underperforms similarly rated rives

Amplitron Drive -
You can make some barely acceptable ships by stacking this drive but it's still not good enough to recommend it at the point of the game you get it.

Mass Driver -
The only good thing about this drive is that it uses 'anything' for propellant so you can pair it with in-situ which I've never found useful strategically.

Superconducting Mass Driver -
Massive upgrade from the Mass Driver puts it roughly on par with Amplitron with the drawback of using 6x as much power.

Kiwi Drive -
Underpowered solid core fission drive, which unlocks early but is generally outperformed by the better rockets.

Nerva Drive -
Slightly higher thrust and lower efficiency than the kiwi, same basic problems.

Snare Drive -
Generally still a dog, but pushes hard enough to possibly find some use on scaled early gas-guzzler ship designs. Like the previous drives can support hydrogen utility modules which are a must if using it, but unlike the previous two designs I can barely see a use case for this one, so I'll call that out here.

Cermet Nerva -
Generally outperformed by liquid rockets, although more fuel efficient and can be upgraded with hydrogen trap, but given this is a dead-end research path, I'd avoid it.

Advanced Nerva -
Moderate upgrade of the cermet Nerva, which shares all the properties of the line

Dumbo - In terms of performance halfway point between the Advanced Nerva and Advanced Cermet Nerva, more interesting than the Nerva series because it's in a more useful tech tree, with an actually useful upgrade following it. Consider researching but not using to access the Heavy Dumbo

Advanced Cermet Nerva -
Better than the rockets except for super Kronos (and better for in combat maneuvers than that rocket), but represents the pinnacle of this technology and is too delta-v inefficient to really take advantage of in combat speed advantage over the Kronos. In my opinion, it's still overall worse than that rocket.

Pebble Drive -
Very power usage efficient (low waste heat) drive that still underperforms advanced pulsar drive, and relatively uses a lot of fuel. Not really much reason to use this when you get it, although I guess it saves building materials over a pulsar design.

Particle Drive -
Pushes slightly harder but generally worse than the pebble drive which it sits directly next to in the tech tree.

Lars Drive -
The dog of the liquid core fission series - no reason to use this drive.

Vortex Drive -
Not much of a reason to use this drive, unless you've failed to unlock any of the transitional drives before getting to gas fusion cores.

Super Vortex Drive -
Relatively low exhaust velocity (fuel efficiency) and TERRIBLE power efficiency virtually guarantees this drive will be useless by the time it's unlocked.

Cavity Drive -
Continues the grand tradition of Gas Core drive underperforming molten and solid core drives. Terrible drive.

Advanced Cavity Drive -
Almost on par with the advanced pulsar drive...almost

Quarts Drive -
Nothing you would want to use when you unlock it. low thrust, low fuel efficiency, somewhat light on power use, okay core efficiency.

Lightbulb Drive -
Weaker and less fuel efficient than the molten core drives, but finally getting to about par with them, still arguably worse then the Kronos Liquid Rocket (lol)

Pharos Drive -
Marginally better than lightbulb, but still worse than the molten core drives.

Fission Frag Drive -
Another useless gas core drive, but this one uses pure uranium for propellent making it ultra expensive to run too!

Dusty Plasma Drive -
Somehow even worse than the Fission Frag Drive that proceeds it. Insanely fuel efficient but so weak that even with six drives it doesn't matter. Caps out at 3 milligee cruise acceleration (extreme slowness) with the lightest possible (utterly useless) design and an antimatter spiker. Drops to 2.5 with the lightest nose weapon. (497 tons total wet mass)

Burner Drive -
I remember this drive somewhat fondly, but upon technical review I discovered it's actually worse than the advanced pulsar drive. Leads to some premium interception drives though.

Z-Pinch Microfusion Drive -
The entire 'explosive' line is kind of like rockets that are much more fuel efficient and have very strong instantaneous power and weak sustained power. Some of them may be useful if unlocked early, but because of the requirement of loading their fuel tanks with fissles, inability to support drive enhancement utility modules (spikers or hydrogen containments) and unexpectedly weak cruise acceleration, most people will find the majority of explosive based drives to be underwhelming for most use cases. This is the worst of them.

Neutronium Microfission Drive -
Efficient, but heavy and low powered microfusion drive that can't be stacked. Better than some of the other drives in this category but tech intensity virtually ensures obsolescence when unlocked.

Antimatter Microfission Drive -
You won't have access to antimatter while this drive is still useful. Shares limitations of other microfission drives, plus uses antimatter!

Had to break this up due to character limits.

Lithium Fusion Lantern -
It's on par with or worse than the advanced pulsar drive and requires it's own otherwise useless line of reactors.

Hybrid Fusion Drive -
Low power and fuel efficiency drive that should be researched as soon as possible because it leads directly to the Icarus Drive

Triton Torus Drive -
A not that good drive that requires a late game power core. Decent fuel efficiency means it might be okay on a smallish ship if you still don't have anything better, but it requires a tokamak reactor, so how do you not have anything better? Still marginally better than advanced pulsar.

Helion Torus Drive -
Limited utility (low power high efficiency) drive that unlocks too late and has too many prerequisites to seriously consider putting in a ship at it's performance level.

Triton Hope Inertial Drive -
Very weak drive that requires an inertial confinement fusion reactor. Not sure when you would ever use this in practice.

Triton Vista Inertial Drive -
Dead end tech that has underwhelming performance for when you are likely to unlock it, but low power and light so may find use in smaller ships or heavier in system interceptors in the case that your global tech tree plays out in a way that supports an early game unlock for this drive. Supports spiker but not hydrogen containment.

Helion Inertial Drive -
MUST RESEARCH THIS. Not that great drive - you wouldn't put it into any space faring vessel that you had performance expectations for, however this serves as the sole prerequisite for the best drive in the game - the daedalus torch. Learn this drive but skip the install.

Boron Inertial Drive -
Low performance precursor to one of the least exciting torch drives.

Boron Inertial Torch -
If it's your only torch, go for it I guess, but it's the efficiency drive version of the torches, and ultimately lacks sufficient thrust to support large ships in or out of battle, which is the primary use case of torch drives. Could be okay if you are going for a small/light ship meta or lack the offworld supplies to keep ships refueled since this drive is INSANELY fuel efficient, but ironically this advantage is somewhat kneecapped by lack of hydrogen utility compatibility (which further limits it to smaller vessel use cases)

Antimatter Pulsed Plasma Core Drive -
a decent drive performance drive with moderate fuel efficiency by volume that requires antimatter to run making it one of the most expensive drives in the universe to operate.

Pion Torch -
A high performance drive that uses so much antimatter for fuel that one round trip to Mars would consume all the antimatter I produced by in-game year 2060. Selling a single tank worth of antimatter will yield you 225k cash (varies by faction projects completed) which you could apply to direct investments. Instead of using it to tool around space in a capable but nothing special for end game torch drive. I can't imagine ever using this drive