modular thrusters

Copycat80 shared this feedback 5 years ago
Declined

Many ship designs in science fiction and in real life use only a few, very powerful engines. A similar system could be done in Space engineers where large thrusters could have points for the mounting of upgade modules that increase the thrust/power consuption, etc. The system already exists for refineries and I feel that it could be done easily enough in game for thrusters.

Replies (16)

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5

YES!Good idea!

Now we build huge space ship need to use mod thrusters, such as 'Titan Engine' mod thrusters.

But I like 'No Mod, Clean Game' ,so I don't want to use 'Titan Engine'.

Modular Thrusters is so good and many players in China and I like it.

Hope to Keen adopt this.

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1

Adding some large-sized thrusters will also be good since stacking ton of small (compare to the ship) thrusters on a huge ship looks pretty silly. You can build a giant fake thruster with blocks but its thruster flame still looks too small.

如果能加入一些大尺寸的推进器也很棒,在一条超大的飞船上堆一堆推进器看着太沙雕了,如果用方块做成巨大推进器造型的话推进器尾焰还是太小。

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2

That would be great! It also would fit perfectly with the engineering aspect of the game and into a potential techtree for survival.

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6

There is a KSH Mod for This. Keen Released it after they showed us the Upgrade Modules for Assembler und Refinery.


Its a bummer, that they are not implemented in the Game yet.

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Yeah, not sure if that mod is still supported though, the cannon was a nice mod by keen too!

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oh that would be great, maybe hydrogen thrusters that were more efficient

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IDEA: each thruster module will also act as effectivity/power module for whole directly-connected thruster array.

So 2 thruster modules directly attached to each other will have its total thrust power (slightly) higher than if they were to be separatered.

Possibly even create 'thruster module' variants - one increasing thrust power, other decreasing electricity (or hydrogen) usage, another without increases, just lighter ...

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2

I have a twist on the idea- how about thruster output scales with the amount of power the grid has?

Rather than needing new blocks to increase thruster power, and maybe having to redesign the thrusters so that the new blocks can attach to them ( like on assemblers and refineries ), simply re-code thrusters so that they output more thrust as you increase the number of reactors, batteries and solar panels, upto a pre-determined maximum thruster output ( I'd say maybe triple the current max output ).


It makes more sense since it doesn't require more blocks or redesigning existing ones ( though vanilla Ion thrusters are sinfully ugly... ), and it naturally balances itself since to get more thrust, you need more power = more resources. It never made sense that you could overload your ships power by placing too many thrusters- the thrusters should only output as much power as they are given, just like an electric motor or heater or LED etc etc.

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Actually the mod https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=916589542 has the Keen upgrade modules, and i can confirm, they're working fine. Tested for the vanilla ion thrusters (even they have no visual module slot indicators), modded thrusters (titan engine), gyroscopes and drills.

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I'm curious how the upgrade modules would be 'plumbed in' as such- having attachment points like Refineries and Assemblers would be one way, but that doesn't really work for Gyros ( not easily anyway ) or Thrusters since it requires additional space that might already be tight to begin with on the block the upgrade module is supposed to attach to. Adding them into the conveyor system to give a literal 'power boost' makes sense ( overclock the reactor that in turn boosts the output of the thrusters, if you get my drift ).

I'd prefer just stand-alone blocks that you simply just place on the grid and don't require a direct connection to the blocks in question in order to boost their output. A different boost module for each block- gyro and thruster, don't see any point boosting drills or grinders as they've been balanced to death over the years, gyros and thrusters never seem to get any love besides keen screwing with the damage radius and distance...

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4

Many times while building, usually a small grid aircraft, I used to think: "man i wish i could use just two, but very powerful, engines... that would make it look 100 times more sleek"

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It would be so cool if we could build more powerful engines connected to the thrusters, then having stuff like overheating / cooling gameplay related to the thusters, Engineering is the name of the game.... I want to Engineer stuff.

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People have been asking for vanilla tiered thrusters for ages- it's such an obvious way to add progression to the game and make survival much more approachable and enjoyable. Upgrade modules to increase power would serve the same function and be just as good, all it takes is to design a new block, decide on how much power each module adds, and code it into the thrusters output. Power and heat/cooling management has also been discussed in the past- it just seems like Keen went down the route of a more basic, arcade style approach to building and engineering, rather than delving into more advanced game-play mechanics ( such as heat/cooling, proper power distribution and management, guided weapons, aerodynamics, atmospheric effects, orbital mechanics etc etc etc- the term 'short-sighted' comes to mind... ). If you don't mind dealing with constantly broken mods, then you can certainly address many of the short-comings in the game, but not all, and at the expense of performance and compatibility across servers that run different mods ( if you use multiplayer, which isn't as fixed as we'd like to pretend ).

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I completely agree

* increase acceleration

* increase power

* add work on overheating

* add cooling

* add mains overload

* add resource generation, after which the engine must be repaired !!!!

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4

Hi guys, thank you for the feedback.

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Yes, please! Even the small ion engines can be too powerful for manoeuvering gently, like for docking, so either an adjustable thrust limiter on the existing engines or additional engine sizes would be nice to build a proper useful RCS for fine control. Thanks!

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Either more thrusters types (fusion, hall, vasimir) or modular would be great.

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I know the idea is to use less mods but...

In the mean time, if you wish that ship has a more dynamic thrust output, consider checking my mod out.

The idea being that thrust is not static but rather it's based on ship's mass. Essentially, you'll always have some 'optimal' thrust power with one engine regardless of the ship size and any thruster after the first in a give direction just results in faster acceleration/deceleration.

It will require some player sense however as to not make a super giant ship with only 1 thruster and behave same like a much smaller ship with same amount of thrusters. It just results into being silly but one can't have it all.

In mean time, I'm working on a threshold system where up to some mass amount is one thruster enough after which a larger-more powerful thruster would be needed or more thrusters to be added.

Mod link:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2223938253

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An easy way to implement a system of modular or tiered blocks like thrusters would be super build states. Much like the recent shelves that use build states to show their components, there could be multiple levels of functional build states for some blocks requiring more expensive or rare components for the higher tiers of performance. Perhaps something that must be purchased like zone chips.

This has the advantage of keeping PCU costs down per block and give a way to upgrade ships without fundamentally altering their design. This could also give incentives to engage with the economy system.

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Wait... I thought keen already did this... years ago. They made am example mod to upgrade small thrusters. Why can not someone take that mod and improve it?!


You place down the upgrade mod and then place the thrusters on it. It doubles the output and electrical cost of the ion thrusters. I don't see why someone can not just take that mod and use it to create thrusters that can take multiple upgrades.

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5

We're not talking about creating mods here, we're talking about implementing some form of tiered/upgradable thrusters as a VANILLA feature.

There are indeed several mods that do this already, and keen did create a demo mod- that's not what we're talking about though...

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4

I wished thrusters could be combined into one when placed next to each others. Perhaps like those windows with left, middle and right for thrusters to build a line of propulsion similar to the engine of the millenium falcon :>

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But for the engines strenght i am fine using this mod


https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1441891358

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a great mod lol

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honestly, I'd like to see more upgrade modules across the board. On things like thrusters and ore detectors, I feel like a lot of things on my wishlist could be alleviated with more upgrade modules. I like the limitations, but I'd also like latter game ways of working around them.

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I'm sci-fi we usually only see forward engines and make a couple vector control engines, I assume this is because there's a system on board that when near ground helps it hover or stay on the air, hover pads placed behind blocks would allow for easier take off and moving about

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Sounds pretty cool. What if the vanilla modules could just be slapped onto thrusters? We already have plenty of surface area for module ports.

Speed - faster acceleration, more power use

Energy efficiency - less resource use

Yield - makes a bigger flame, does little else

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I don't know why this is not in the game yet. Hopefully in SE 2.

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