Thruster balancing

mojo shared this feedback ago

Not Enough Votes

While building many ships in space engineers I have noticed that their weights are enourmous, and my designs are generally very slow :D

It is no suprise hydrogen thrusters are more powerful than both atmo and ion thrusters, but I have never realized just how much more powerful they are compared to their weight.

With some testing it appears an ion thruster weighs approx 43,000 KG with a power output of 4.3MN but on the other hand a hydorgen thruster (and a hydorgen tank along with it) weighs approx 15,000 KG with a power output of 7.2MN. (If my math is correct) the hydorgen thruster has a power to weight ratio that is 5 times greater than that of ion thrusters.

There are different pro's and cons to each thruster option, e.g hydrogen need ice, are bigger, and require a bit more pcu to run. Ions on the other hand, only require engergy to run, but alot of it, and with the enormous weight of reactors (approx 74,000kg) it doesn't seem like a a good choice.

This makes designing good hybrid ships that can fly in atmosphere very difficult.

I do not believe this is balanced properly, ions and atmos (approx 32,000 kg) weigh far too much for their power output. I think this really hurts the use of other thrusters over hydrogen. It is nice to have different options for moving the ships, pro's and con's are also good to have, but it should be balanced, and I do not believe this is.

Thank you :)

I like this feedback

Replies (1)

andersenman ●

"This makes designing good hybrid ships that can fly in atmosphere very difficult"

Congratulations, you have understood and comprehended what engineering is about. It's always a game of compromises.

Performance, cost, difficulty. Pick two.

Reply URL

VagsS ●

Even in normal ships in space there is no reason to use ion thrusters over hydrogen. Not only is hydrogen more powerful, but it is also significantly cheaper. Yeah the multiple tanks and o2/h2 generators require quite a bit of space but that's still not as big of an issue on larger ships, especially after the hydrogen re-balance update.

URL

andersenman ●

But you do get the benefit of not having to pipe and fuel an ion-only craft.

I'm not arguing for or against rebalancing or whether one must or mustn't like how things are currently. All I'm saying is that any engineering task is a challenge of optimization and specialization and that being good in two fields by necessity prevents you from being great in either one.

URL