Better Ion thrusters
So I am a pretty new player, but got far enough to get my hands on some Ion thrusters and tried them out, made a mining ship and immediately got dissapointed by how absolutely awful they are
I even asked in the surrounding Discord server if this was normal and got told that they indeed would welcome a rework
they lose a lot of power with any additional weight and just obliterate your batteries
for how rare the materials are and how expensive they are to build I was expecting them to be a lot more useful
I would really love to see them being worth getting and using over Hydrogen (at least in space)
I also don't think they would need a complete overhaul, personally I feel like even a 5% performance increase would already be very noticable in a good way
thank you all in advance!
I like this feedback
Good suggestion. Something needs to be done to the ion thrusters to make them more usable in the game. They can still be used for small drones and fighters, or as emergency propulsion when you run out of h2. But yeah, they are way too expensive and technologically advanced. By the time you reach the point when you can afford to build them, you probably won't bother using them anyway. On top of that, they also add a significant mass to the ship, requiring even more thrusters to move around effectively.
They require you to advance in technology, find rare resources and wait for a long time to refine them. They need to compete with hydrogen thrusters at least. Yet it feels unrealistic if we make them more powerful. I think we might just slightly decrease their mass and make them consume less energy.
We need to look at this from the overall balancing perspective of having 3 types of propulsion in the game. I think hydrogen thrusters are just way better everywhere, on planets and in space. Yes, they require fuel and tanks needs to be protected, but it is not as significant of a drawback compared to how powerful and versatile they are. Reducing their power is not a solution either. We already have countless ships built around their power and changing that will be a frustrating change for many players and will make fuel mechanics less appealing to the point that we might just decide not to bother with h2 anymore.
But there is another option. H2 thrusters can have a slight delay before they reach full thrust. Also, turning them on can require some more time, while leaving them idle can still make them consume a significant amount of fuel. This way, they are still as powerful as they are now (or we could make them even more powerful at this point) yet they will now have significant drawbacks.
The drawback from delays has an impact on both combat and atmospheric flight.
Let's start with combat. Dodging enemy fire will now be much harder. After you press the button and the ship starts accelerating at its max, there is a significant delay now. The Ion and atmo thrusters are less powerful but give you nearly instant max acceleration. H2 thrusters will still be good for all sorts of applications. Accelerating to max speed and effective breaking. Lifting from gravity wells. Moving big ships effectively. In fact, we can even reduce fuel consumption to make those applications even more attractive. But when it comes to combat, using ONLY h2 thrusters might be suboptimal.
Now atmo flight. There is a reason we use reactive propulsion not for everything. Doing precise maneuvering with only h2 thrusters will be much more difficult. Rockets are more for lifting off or simple horizontal flight rather than doing precise docking or scouting.
So, yeah. making ion thrusters slightly better will help, but what we really need is to give each propulsion type distinct drawbacks, while improving their advantages for the applications they are better used for.
Good suggestion. Something needs to be done to the ion thrusters to make them more usable in the game. They can still be used for small drones and fighters, or as emergency propulsion when you run out of h2. But yeah, they are way too expensive and technologically advanced. By the time you reach the point when you can afford to build them, you probably won't bother using them anyway. On top of that, they also add a significant mass to the ship, requiring even more thrusters to move around effectively.
They require you to advance in technology, find rare resources and wait for a long time to refine them. They need to compete with hydrogen thrusters at least. Yet it feels unrealistic if we make them more powerful. I think we might just slightly decrease their mass and make them consume less energy.
We need to look at this from the overall balancing perspective of having 3 types of propulsion in the game. I think hydrogen thrusters are just way better everywhere, on planets and in space. Yes, they require fuel and tanks needs to be protected, but it is not as significant of a drawback compared to how powerful and versatile they are. Reducing their power is not a solution either. We already have countless ships built around their power and changing that will be a frustrating change for many players and will make fuel mechanics less appealing to the point that we might just decide not to bother with h2 anymore.
But there is another option. H2 thrusters can have a slight delay before they reach full thrust. Also, turning them on can require some more time, while leaving them idle can still make them consume a significant amount of fuel. This way, they are still as powerful as they are now (or we could make them even more powerful at this point) yet they will now have significant drawbacks.
The drawback from delays has an impact on both combat and atmospheric flight.
Let's start with combat. Dodging enemy fire will now be much harder. After you press the button and the ship starts accelerating at its max, there is a significant delay now. The Ion and atmo thrusters are less powerful but give you nearly instant max acceleration. H2 thrusters will still be good for all sorts of applications. Accelerating to max speed and effective breaking. Lifting from gravity wells. Moving big ships effectively. In fact, we can even reduce fuel consumption to make those applications even more attractive. But when it comes to combat, using ONLY h2 thrusters might be suboptimal.
Now atmo flight. There is a reason we use reactive propulsion not for everything. Doing precise maneuvering with only h2 thrusters will be much more difficult. Rockets are more for lifting off or simple horizontal flight rather than doing precise docking or scouting.
So, yeah. making ion thrusters slightly better will help, but what we really need is to give each propulsion type distinct drawbacks, while improving their advantages for the applications they are better used for.
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