Tiered thruster technology for a sense of progression and a need to explore.

Verlepte Henk shared this feedback ago

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There's tiered hand tools, lets get some more tiered tech in there. Ideally locked behind exploration. Currently you start out in survival, you find some cobalt for hydrogen thrusters and are able to go anywhere you like as long as you have ice.

Having to start out with crappy thrusters on the starting planet that produce barely enough power for gravity escape would force engineers to be creative in how they're gonna get their materials into space. This would make it a much bigger step to get into space. Once in space, you can travel to other locations to find new material or technology to get to the next tier which would aid in your explorations elsewhere. Serving not just as a way to get progressively more advanced but to also be a tool to allow exploring new, perhaps dangerous, territories.

Different locations could have different resources that tie in to these tiers, like for example tritium being found on planets/moons without atmosphere or magnetic field.

In conclusion I think it would make the game more challenging in the space engineering aspect, but also provide a nice incentive to visit other planets/moons/belts.

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MERCURY ●

One reason Keen doesn't use tiered blocks is that most blocks are already as strong as they can be (from a balance standpoint). especially thrusters are a problem because you simply place a larger amount to compensate for the deficit. Also, Keen has some kind of "realism focus" and in reality, things aren't that far apart in terms of performance. Keen would need to develop a system to prevent the excessive use of turrets, thrusters, etc.

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P. Kerman ●

Honestly I don’t think that is true. A small grid large hydrogen thruster has a mass of 1222 kg and a thrust of 480 kN. The Merlin 1D Thruster (what Space X uses currently) has a mass of 470 Kg and a thrust of 854 kN at sea level and 981 kN in Vacuum, so it outperforms the space engineers thruster of the future by a factor of two while being almost a third of the weight. To add insult to injury the Merlin thrusters do not use hydrogen as fuel (which is the best chemical rocket fuel) but refined petroleum, which is less effective but cheaper, safer and easier to handle.

Also what do you mean with excessive turrets and thrusters? You can never have enough Dakka! Just like you can never have enough thrust! ;-)

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