Thrusters wasting too much energy (H2) when fighting the 100m/s speed limit

Tim Gunderson ●

This almost argues that the speed limit is the bug, and I kind of agree with that. When I'm trying to escape gravity I use the + or - passive thrust options on my main engine to keep it limited to <= 10% thrust when I need that little to maintain 100m/s.

It would be useful if there was a better way to regulate thrust consumption while fighting gravity than + or - auto/passive/keyless thrust.

Reply URL

1

Vorg ●

There are a couple of scripts for going to space to save fuel by regulating engines. At least one claims to be able to use mixed engine types where they work best. But yea, if there is going to be a speed limit, then all thruster types should reduce their level as needed to maintain if you are holding the thrust button in a given direction

Reply URL

2

Malware ●

This is what the thruster override is for, no need for scripts. Just make a group with the appropriate thrusters and add the increase and decrease thrust override commands on your toolbar and adjust manually.

Reply URL

2

Kezat ●

Strongly disagree with this, we need more challenges and things to engineer around not more hand holding and simplistic flying.

I have always loved this mechanic as it adds a extra challenge to leaving planets and thruster management for normal flying too. Such as powering down reverse thrusters when flying level and dampeners still enabled.

If i have a ship that does everything for me i want it to do so because i designed and engineered it that way not because it's baked in to the game.

Reply URL

1

Menos Wansis ●

While I agree that the arbitrary speed limit is unrealistic, this is also not much of an issue because you simply need to disable dampeners.

Reply URL

1

Björn Eberhardt ●

My thoughts about dampeners and playing around with thrusters...

If you are playing on a lagging server, disabling dampeners in the atmosphere is very suicidal, although server restarts are very predictable.
Turning off thrusters and alike requires you to click around a lot in the menus or prepare your buttons for these scenarios. Here's the reminder that the thruster's direction only appears for group setups if you are seated in a command pod.
Sometimes you want to use thrust override very carefully or multi-tap the space bar.
Sometimes you want to disable the reverse engine to avoid it being used for dampening, but still use it if you press that direction.
Sometimes you want to fight gravity while going fast sideways and keep that in balance. For the latter, it might already be very inefficient to just fight the vector, because the way you do you either reduce speed or fight too much speed to keep it above horizon.
In old survival scenarios, I often turned off all thrusters but the two large downward-pointing ones and then pitch forward, and it feels like I could save about 50% of the energy compared to staying upright and pressing down forward.
Then I have seen server-side mods that increased the maximum speed to 343.2 m/s, an invention they made that was later adopted by mother nature as the speed of sound.
I've died countless times because I hadn't figured out and forgot whether I accidentally turned off my Jetpack mid-air or disabled Dampeners and plummeted into ground. Yes, there are indicators in the interface, but it takes a second or two to realize you aren't actually decelerating.
Sub-Grids on Motors behave differently (they have angular momentum, but still a maximum speed). They can also be influenced by thrusters, but the same capping applies here, although the maximum cap might not be as obvious here.
In many atmospheric situations I prefer the dampeners to keep me level while I can control the horizontal speed, or the exact opposite: it should stop me from going sideways while letting me control the descent speed (very useful when carrying 98% max load and deorbiting!!! or: the 9 minutes of terror while getting from 10 m/s to 0 m/s equals a 500 meters altitude difference)
When building drones in space with just one thruster and gyro, you actually need to spin around a lot to make the thrusters kill all your speed. If that Gyro knew to turn towards prograde or retrograde automatically (like kerbals always do), that would be much easier...

My thoughts about dampeners and playing around with thrusters...

If you are playing on a lagging server, disabling dampeners in the atmosphere is very suicidal, although server restarts are very predictable.
Turning off thrusters and alike requires you to click around a lot in the menus or prepare your buttons for these scenarios. Here's the reminder that the thruster's direction only appears for group setups if you are seated in a command pod.
Sometimes you want to use thrust override very carefully or multi-tap the space bar.
Sometimes you want to disable the reverse engine to avoid it being used for dampening, but still use it if you press that direction.
Sometimes you want to fight gravity while going fast sideways and keep that in balance. For the latter, it might already be very inefficient to just fight the vector, because the way you do you either reduce speed or fight too much speed to keep it above horizon.
In old survival scenarios, I often turned off all thrusters but the two large downward-pointing ones and then pitch forward, and it feels like I could save about 50% of the energy compared to staying upright and pressing down forward.
Then I have seen server-side mods that increased the maximum speed to 343.2 m/s, an invention they made that was later adopted by mother nature as the speed of sound.
I've died countless times because I hadn't figured out and forgot whether I accidentally turned off my Jetpack mid-air or disabled Dampeners and plummeted into ground. Yes, there are indicators in the interface, but it takes a second or two to realize you aren't actually decelerating.
Sub-Grids on Motors behave differently (they have angular momentum, but still a maximum speed). They can also be influenced by thrusters, but the same capping applies here, although the maximum cap might not be as obvious here.
In many atmospheric situations I prefer the dampeners to keep me level while I can control the horizontal speed, or the exact opposite: it should stop me from going sideways while letting me control the descent speed (very useful when carrying 98% max load and deorbiting!!! or: the 9 minutes of terror while getting from 10 m/s to 0 m/s equals a 500 meters altitude difference)
When building drones in space with just one thruster and gyro, you actually need to spin around a lot to make the thrusters kill all your speed. If that Gyro knew to turn towards prograde or retrograde automatically (like kerbals always do), that would be much easier...

Reply URL

2

Björn Eberhardt ●

Would be cool to set specific values on a single button instead of have to reduce and increase values. Maybe even set a group of actions on a single button. And no, I'm not talking about groups of blocks, I am talking about an action group such as "G+4 turns on all interior lights, enables forward thrust, sets the force to exactly 34.6 kN and disables gyro", similar to activating a timer or reaching a GPS destination. But that one can't set your RPM to a specific constant ;)
As thrusters can only perpendicular (we have grids, remember?), if you want to strafe diagonally, you use twice the energy for two thrusters running while only getting sqrt(2) of the power out of it. As the physics are a bit complicated here, it would be cool if the engine cheats a bit for us and reduces the power consumption to account for the efficiency loss.

URL

2

Menos Wansis ●

If disabling dampeners or setting up a thruster group is too complicated for you, then this is probably not your game.

If writing a program to counter the effect of gravity by adjusting thrust override, while placing several sensors around your ship to monitor objects coming to close to make your ship automatically avoid them is your thing, then this is the right game for you.

Engineers require challenges to have fun.

URL

2

gorgofdoom ●

Would be cool to set specific values on a single button instead of have to reduce and increase values. Maybe even set a group of actions on a single button. And no, I'm not talking about groups of blocks, I am talking about an action group such as "G+4 turns on all interior lights, enables forward thrust, sets the force to exactly 34.6 kN and disables gyro", similar to activating a timer or reaching a GPS destination. But that one can't set your RPM to a specific constant ;)

This!

being able to set a bunch of parameters with a single button press would save a lot of shuffling around in the menus. Maybe i want my piston attached tools to extend at one speed, and retract much faster with two buttons instead of 3-- without having to write a custom script just for that grid (which i dont know how to do, but i imagine is possible)

This would open up a lot of simple automation features for layman players.

URL

1

Björn Eberhardt ●

Menos, some servers disable scripts, so they are not always the best option. Also read my first bullet point again ;)

URL

1

Menos Wansis ●

You don't need scripts to sometimes push the space button.

Also if you are flying away from a planet lag won't kill you, because there is nothing in the way. And if you are landing you don't even need to accelerate at all, the dampeners with the (front) breaking thrusters disabled will allow you to fly the ship like a helicopter, where the (down) hovering thrusters keep you above ground just fine. That way you can fly the (current) planetary lander i.E. in any direction at any speed and accelerate and decelerate as much as you want just by simply rotating it using the mouse and Q/E.

The problem I see here is that you run into an obstacle and don't even consider thinking about how to solve that problem yourself and instead immediately ask the devs to make the game easier so you don't have to think. But then thinking to solve problems on your own is the very core aspect of this game. That is why I conclude that this might just not be the game for you, if you already give up when confronted with such a minor challenge.

URL

1

Keen Support ●

Hello, Engineer!

Thank you for your feedback! Yourtopic has been added between considered issues.

Please keep voting for the issue asit will help us to identify the most serious bugs.

We really appreciate your patience.

Kind Regards

Keen Software House: QA Department

Reply URL

Thrusters wasting too much energy (H2) when fighting the 100m/s speed limit

Replies (7)