We need 29 Hydrogen engines to replace 1 large reactor....

For gameplay reasons i think hydrogen must be a real alternative to solar and wind energy.

When uranium is going to be removed from planets, we need another power source for ships and bases.

If a hydrogen engine could output ~10% of a large reactor it would be more attractive to use it.

I disagree

If H2 Engine efficiency is too good Engineers again will dig themselves deep underground and will never meet each other. H2 engine should not me an alternative to reactors. Solar and Wind does provide enough if you smart about it.

I started in space and couldn't use the engine because I couldn't keep enough ice and I needed ice for jetpack fuel and o2. So I stuck 2 solar panels on top of the ship and that greatly extended the range of the batteries. Just had to try and keep them facing the sun. After I got a reactor running, I saw the engine still tried to run using up ice, so I just turned it off.

I completly disagree with you. They did good thing puting uranium out of planet. There IS reasons to play on planets. There IS NOT much reasons to go to space if you have everything on site.

In old system what is the reason to go to space? Platinum? For what? Ion thrusters, tools and missiles? Tools T2 can do all the work and you don't need ion thrust on planets at all... One trip to space for platinum will suply your need in missile for weeks!

You like to run large multi-purpose aero-space crafts? Good! Build a small one and do ONE trip to space for 2-3 containers of uranium ore. Problem - solved.

Im with Darth here. uranium was way too easy to access which made solar (and now wind and hydrogen) useless forms of energy. solar panels are now super cheap to produce and provide enough energy with sufficient numbers. you new players said the same thing us veteran players said, "this will result in people staying in space (or planets when they were introduced) and avoiding the other!" embrace the change for the better.

however, i do think the ores should be toggle-able in an advanced world generation setting for some of the softer players (hint hint) who need to rely on uranium completely instead of nearly free alternative energy.

im sure there will be many modders who will create worlds or planets that contain original resources. its been done for platinum before. with that said, feel free to embrace the mods! cheers

Yep, I'm with you. I've always considered reactors to be the end-game of power solutions in this game, and I've played with uranium removed as well just to add some progression. I'm also a 1x enthusiast, so that's fun too :)

Hydrogen engines make no sense they should produce less energy than a H2/o2 generator consumes. Because H2/O2 generators produce h2 and o2 from water and hydrogen engines make water from h2 and o2. So.... be happy that they produce energy at all :) .

And on top of that the hydrogen engine is a combustion engine which is more inefficent than a fuel cell. Because they create heat and use the heat to convert it into motion and the motion is converted into electricity. Fuel cells create electricity from hydrogen like a battery, so direktly. Less steps mean less conversion losses.

I was laughing very much when I told my freind that SE now got a hydrogen combustion engine :)

My calculations are wrong but yes

i used Hydrogen (liquid) specific energy 142 MJ/Kg and its energy density 10 MJ/L

energy per unit mass--energy per unit volume

THey can already in real life get more energy than is needed converting water to 02/h2 using resonance sound waves.

@vorg :it's more like 18% efficiency

https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18661-crystals-sound-water-clean-hydrogen-fuel/

"Xu says that lab tests suggested the material can convert 18 per cent of the energy it absorbs from vibration into energy locked up in hydrogen gas, which can be released by burning."

Getting more energy that it take to break the molecule would change chemistry forever.

irl, Hydrogen is efficient as energy storage, converting solar or wind into hydrogen, from water, as always been a good idea to store lot of power, but is not use that much because of the multiple risk associated with storing Hydrogen.

just try to carry cargo containers full of ores, and you will know ;)

Btw. I totally agree that reactors are overpowered, but i think the output is ok but it should be harder to use them. Maybe a cooling sytem should be required or something else.

Batteries have a descent output when it comes to power ore ships ;)

But how you want to charge large grid batteries without a potent energy source?

Solar towers can be powerful if you use enough panels. And a script like Isy's Solar Alignment to get the maximum sunlight all day.

With the beta halved the cost of the solar panels, it will be even more profitable.

To charge 1 large battery with full speed you need (12MW max input / 0.1MW average solar output) = 120 solar panels. Better way is to build large grid hydrogen engines, but even for 1 battery you need 3 engines.

That's the point. You don't really need full charge for batteries, you only need to charge faster than you discharge. The 12MW of a battery output can power a little base for a while : one assembler, one refinery, one oxygen generator, just enough to build your first ship to travel to space and starting thinking bigger.

Of course, if you have 36 refineries and assemblers with 4 speed modules each, that would be short, but by then you should have access to reactors and uranium.

It all about progression, in fact.

Powering "little bases" is not the problem, please read my post about electric atmospheric ships.

Powering large grid atmospheric ship is not what I call "early game" :D

The point of solar / hydro / wind power IS the early game ;)

Perhaps if reactors explode like a warhead people will shy away from them a bit and or have to plan special armor/placement for them to prevent a reactor failure from blowing a hole in your ship so big that you would have more hole then ship:D

On a semi related note what if the hydrogen engines ran directly on ice instead of needing a hygrogen generator first? I like that the Engine needs a supporting device and that its not a block that you slap down and it does everything but it does have some issues because of that.

Such as:

1. Cant start up a unpowered grid with just a engine, needs power first to jump start it.

2. Sucks up all the hydrogen gas, starving hydrogen thrusters and can change based on the power use.

3. We dont have smaller tanks to help buffer this.

4. You cant fill the internal tank in the engine with hydrogen if its off unless you build many H2 Gens or have low power usage.

To name a couple.

irl: Fossil fuel car hare fuel station, electric car have charging station int he city, hydrogen car have fueling station...

Making a fueling station is kind of a requirement to recharge fast your vehicle. Have a good amount of battery at the location have array of solar or now wind turbine that keep it charge and come and suck the charge you need with your ship.

irl: You don't gain energy by splitting water and recombining (burning) it:)

But that argument has been done over and over again here so i will not restart that.

Yes it looks like it is intened, but it does not look like a good design decision.

Why add new blocks that are completely redundant as soon as you find your first uranium depot? Because after that you got so much uranium, that energy isnt a challenge anymore and there is no case to use the hydro engine again because of the ease of using nuclear power (Hydro engine + generators/tanks + battery vs 1x1x1 nuclear reactor)

I would really like to see hydrogen as an alternative way to power stuff even later on.

Both hydrogen and nuclear power both should have their individual use cases and pros and cons. Right now nuclear power as no cons once you obtain uranium, which isnt a good design.

I'd like to specify. I'm not against the use of hydrogen engine. I simply don't want people to accept that ice can be a source of energy. Even though it's a video game, it's also a video game that once pretended to be realistic.

that differemce has its logic, the hydrogen engine is designed for uses in things with little power requeriments. Instead a reactor is a much more advanced element, with more power ... a block that you can build as you grow, travel to other planets and get uranium .. Otherwise we end up getting a flat gameplay, without progress (playing in survival)

Progress is flat. You can get uranium from space fairly early on, assuming you're not already starting there. Depending on your luck you might struggle to get everything going for the first very few hours, but then, its back to the old state.

This update has some neat tweaks, but don't pretend it added any sort of long duration progression. Hydrogen engines turn next to worthless the moment you find uranium, niche applications aside. This is undesireable.

Yes, this definitely needs to be looked it - particularly the insane consumption of hydrogen tanks, as you say.

Keep in mind they already said they are making changes to the reactor system

Perhaps this could be fixed with a more-complex processing of Uranium. It makes perfect sense to require multiple steps and blocks to refine pitchblende into fissile material.

jUST USE BATTERIES ON YOUR PLANETARY SHIPS...

While I agree that you should use batteries... it does make the engine somewhat superfluous, no?

The engine can be used to charge the batteries ;)

But yes, batteries have a very good output, on small grids it's the way to go.

Hydrogen engines aren't meant to be a replacement for reactors. They're meant as part of a progression. Wind turbine/solar panel -> hydrogen engine/battery -> reactor. And yes this means that starting in space gives you the advantage of immediately going to reactors. But so what?

You don't charge batteries with hydrogen, you charge batteries with solar or wind.

As far as progression goes... the hydrogen engine is of questionable use even during the first few hours of play, and of next to no use shortly thereafter. In a sandbox game. Where people will spend _hundreds_ of hours.

I mean, I'm not even using hydrogen engines on _Europa_ of all places once I have a solar tower up and running. Its nice to have one for emergencies, and the fuel is basically free on Europa, but the sheer fact that I don't have to worry about wind and solar will always win out for general use.

Why can't you charge a battery with an engine ? If you are on a moon, without wind, and don't wan"t to build a rather large solar tower (it's long to build, even if now panels are cheaper) and you gave plenty of ice at hand, it a perfectly viable source of charge for your battery-powered vehicles.

Yes it's early game, but it's meant to be.

Starting rant mode.

This is exactly why I don't like the way the hydrogen engine is currently made. Now people think of plain cold ice as a fossil fuel. Which is simply inaccurate. There should not need discussions about that fact in an educated world.

Stopping rant mode...

Yes, as SE is a very accurate world, everybody knows that the sun is rotating around fixed planets.

:p

Exactly :p

But, let's not mix engine limitations and and game design choices.

An advanced question if anybody tried or knows:

What is more economical for space travel in the new test, to use H2O2 generator and hydrogen thrusters or hydrogen engines+ion thrusters? What does better milage per gallon lol, if you disregard ions are useless in atmosphere.

@Timotei: I'm so glad you said that. I was thinking the same thing. It takes energy to split hydrogen and oxygen in electrolysis (or any future method) and most of that energy is wasted (it is not an efficient process). Then when recombined you get some of the energy you initially invested back. The only real value, from an energy perspective, is being able to store the energy in a dense form (hydrogen) until you want to release it, potentially at a much faster rate than you created it (e.g. in the controlled explosion that is a rocket). And, of course, let's not ignore the other fly in the ointment. You need the oxygen to combust the hydrogen. Although I can kind of overlook that one since the O2/H2 generator doesn't seem to produce both at the same time (so the H2 could be considered to be both). But, it's all moot. This is a game and Keen is going for intuitive gameplay more than realistic gameplay. They always have. Otherwise, explain thrusters only providing linear acceleration regardless of location and gyroscopes that would tear themselves apart if they were actually spun fast enough to rotate a ship so large relative to themselves to say nothing of the energy that is lost because they only provide angular acceleration. So, yeah... the realism was always an illusion.

To the original topic: if the goal was realism nuclear reactors really should be much more powerful than hydrogen engines. The real problem with nuclear reactors is making the fuel. It takes some pretty significant infrastructure to produce the fuel for a nuclear reactor. I think that's why it feels unbalanced. Setting aside that hydrogen engines may need to be more powerful, I think the reason the reactors feel unbalanced has more to do with the ease of producing nuclear fuel than the difference in power between the two. A small vehicle running off of nuclear power should really need to have had its fuel produced in a large facility. So, yeah... its powerful. Yeah, it runs a long time. But you gotta have the infrastructure to do it first.

Also, for gameplay purposes, you should compare volume, not number of units. A hydrogen engine takes up 12 blocks so it produces about 0.042 MW per block. A large nuclear reactor takes up 27 and so it produces about 0.55 MW per block. That's about a 13.1 to 1 ratio, not 29.5. Is that still way too much? Not if we're being realistic, but for gameplay purposes, sure. At least, when they also happen to be easier to fuel and operate.

Of course you can charge batteries with a hydrogen engine. But why would you? Solar and wind are superior choices. Reactors are superior choices. Aside from keeping a single hydrogen engine as an emergency power option, there is very little actual use once you get through the first few hours.

If a block is only useful during the first few hours, its poor design. "Progression" is a farce as it is right now, because it stops before long, and then you're back to the sandbox. And in that sandbox, which is 99.98% of the game, hydrogen engines are next to useless.

Sandbox isn't "99.98% of the game". It depends of people. I've got 1200+h of SE and barely use the sandbox mode, survival all the way.

Sandbox is not creative. I was talking strictly about Survival.

@Cassin: Sandbox just refers to a game where you can freely build things and modify the environment, usually with the extra connotation (as here) that the game doesn't set any goals for you. It has nothing to do with whether or not you're playing in survival. In this case, he's saying that once you get passed the early challenges of a game in survival, there are no more game defined goals and you've gone beyond the point at which "progression" has any meaning. That happens really quickly in Space Engineers as compared to other sandbox games (e.g. Minecraft). But, like those games, once you've passed that point, progression has no meaning other than what you define.

And why is it bad ? ^^ I have hundred of hours of play in the X games serie, where you don't have defined goal too. You set your own goals, that the point.

Beside, if hydro engine don't suit your playstyle, well... don't use it ? It's as simple as that ^^

i like the hydrogen engine, but needs more balancing. fuel consumption is down a lot, but still needs to be slower. they are not a viable option for atmospheric small ships. they either need more power or uranium and reactors need to be an option on the planets.

I think it's easy to get lost in the debate. The value of hydrogen engines is not only in early game but that it allows ice to be used as a fuel at all. Yes, they hydrogen engines are weak but then they should be when compared to nuclear energy.

But while SE is based on real life and isn't real life itself there are times when you have to accept an amount of "suspense of disbelief" and accept that in a game world adjustments from real life need to be made to make the game enjoyable.

For record, I also primarily run my ships and bases off of batteries when the build can support it. In my view solar, wind, hydrogen, uranium are all just inputs to the power grid that is powered by batteries. Which input is producing is at a given moment is based on what resource(s) is(are) available. The bigger point being that it's just a matter of opinion and the whim of the build as to which is "best". All have their uses.

As for the progression, I think that's really for another topic but after trying it out for a few hours I turned it off. I like the new stone to *something* conversion and I like the inclusion of the hydrogen engine and the wind turbine but the progression itself I can do without. if I need more of a challenge then I can (and do) add in the modular encounters mod or similar. I don't need an overly progressive start to make the game more enjoyable. But again... that is as viewed by my eye, and as long as it is an OPTION and not mandated then there is something for everyone. perhaps put a slider in the settings to ramp up or down the hydrogen engines output (for reference this is something KEEN should think of when it comes to batteries... I have never ground down a battery just to weld it back for "free" power and never will but I do rearrange my ships and need to be able to move batteries but a handful of people very vocally complained that people on their servers were doing that so instead of putting in a tick box in the settings to have them return scrap instead of components, KEEN made all batteries return scrap. Now I don't play SE unless the recyclable batteries mod is installed).

hmm somehow stepped on part of my own comment...

Hydrogen doesn't come across as a main power source to me. But the real problem is not the output of hydrogen engines but rather arbitrarily removing uranium from planets. If KEEN does that then it just means that just as I would not play without the recyclable batteries mod, I would not play without a "put uranium back on planets" mod.

The problem with decisions like this is that they should be options and not mandatory. Put checkboxes into the settings to allow uranium on planets (where it would be a deep material and not near the surface) rather than remove it arbitrarily (just like they should have a checkbox that says "return battery components" rather than arbitrarily return scrap).

Its not a question on whether the Sandbox / lack of progression is bad, its a question of progression being irrelevant. You simply cannot argue that hydrogen engines are fine as they are because of 'progression' if said progression is only relevant for a minuscule amount of time.

Everything they do, other power sources do better. They even take more room than a battery or reactor would, each of which produce more power. - and thats assuming you don't need to carry a tank and/or generator as well, which would bring us to an even more massive space and mass disadvantage.

Hell, you even need a second power source to get a conveyor network going if the internal tank is empty...

@Cassin:

>> And why is it bad ? ^^ I have hundred of hours of play in the X games serie, where you don't have defined goal too. You set your own goals, that the point.

I don't know about Darkheyr, but I wasn't saying it was bad. Merely clarifying, placing it in context, and comparing SE's progression tree to other sandbox games with some form of progression. I could have also compared it to Empyrion, but Empyrion ties its technology progression to character progression (leveling) so that comparison is actually weaker than for Minecraft. But as Darkheyr noted, this topic isn't about the Progression Tree. There are other issues where that is being discussed.

I think that people have problems with the hydro engine just because, like Darkheyr said, it's less powerful that other sources. Well, mostly, because a solar panel is weaker. Yes, you can slap 128 panels in a solar tower and it will produce more thant one engine, of course, but as a single element, it produces less. Even a wind turbine produce less, and need more space to work.

But the fact is, WHY the engine should be better that, or at least equal, to the other sources ? Do people question the Survival Kit because it become useless once you have set a basic refinery and assembler ? (which happen very quickly too). No, and there should be the same with the engine. It's cheaper than a battery or a full array of solar panels, and that's the whole point. It's meant to be early game. You'll probably won't build wind turbines anymore when you'll have access to reactors, but people don't complain about turbines.

I just don't get it. All of the new blocks are here for early game and won't have a utility past a few hours, but it seems that only the hydro engine bother people ?

EDIT : I don't say that the whole hydrogen system doesn't need tweak, we really need smaller tanks and tweaks on the consumption, but the engine alone is still a good idea.

I build solar arrays well into late game. Its a no-maintenance power source. The same goes for wind turbines - those two power sources coupled with batteries definitely have their use. Even the survival kit and basic refinery / assembler have their niche, because of their compact size and mass compared to a full-sized refinery and assembler.

Hydrogen engines though? I guess I'll slap it on for emergencies here and there if I expect to have hydrogen around, and have the space. Because even as far as space go... Batteries and reactors are vastly superior for emergencies.

Here is probably my main issue with the Hydrogen engine, they basically serve no real purpose early on. Even if you have the progression system on, you can get batteries rather quickly, and just one of those can power a rover for hours. The hydrogen engine was supposed to make it easier to use rovers primarily, but when the option to make batteries is already a far superior choice then why even use them at all?

Everything about the engines is just meh, its power output is ludicrously low, the hydrogen consumption is off the charts, there's no good way to add extra fuel except for a ridiculously sized fuel tank, most of your time is spent mining Ice just to power one engine, and all other available options are just superior. Even resource wise the engine just doesn't make sense, I'd rather spend 1 extra minute mining rocks so I can build a battery, then having to constantly consume resources just to keep the engine running.

I tried making a small flying vessel with them, and I had to add 4 engines just to make it "fly" and it was at max power usage almost constantly. I could only use it to get to the ice field and back, and all the ice I mined went straight into the engines. When I added a tank it barely got off the ground at all, and still used the hydrogen so fast it might as well not of even been there.

Now I get that the engine wasn't made for flying vessels, but even in a rover you can at max get about 25 Km before you run out of fuel. Last time I checked a car can usually go that distant on not even a single gallon (3.8 L) these tanks hold 160000 L, and the engines hold 16000 L. It just seems off to me when i look at today's usage of fuel and the vast difference of how fast these consume fuel, and how little power we get out of them.

I don't really know how it would be done to fix these things, but it seems like a lot of people are already coming up with decent solutions, and keen is mostly ignoring them. I see no real reason for the engines at this point, if they remain as they are or don't have any vast changes to them between now and release, I can already say I'm not going to use them.

To be honest, I'd even say the reason why people are having so much issue with the engines, is because of the underlining issues from the hydrogen system itself. The engine just highlights everything wrong with it, which then leads people to look more closely at the engine itself. Also I think just because it is supposed to be used early on, that doesn't mean we still wouldn't want to use it for future builds, whats the point of a block if you never use it. Even the Wind turbine and Survival kit can be useful in the later game, where as the engine might as well not even exist past 10 minutes of play.

to all of the people claiming that "it would be unrealistic to increase the power level" , gasoline engines exist right now that produce more power than the small hydrogen engine. with a quick google search, you can find out that hydrogen has a higher energy density than gasoline.

This is actually kind of one my biggest issues with the thing. I wouldn't even really be asking for a fusion reactor at this point, just a normal combustion engine that actually runs as efficiently as one does today. That's part of why I made the suggestion that the required Ice should be drastically increase, so that we can easily justify increasing the fuel efficiency. If it takes 500k ice to fill a tank, then maybe it should last longer then 5 minutes?

Plus: other than With Ice theres no way to obtain / Farm For It.

Oxygen has O2 Farms why Not H2

Honestly I think it would be cool if there was a small recharge rate of hydrogen through a collector, IRL Hydrogen can be found floating around in stellar dust clouds. Also, it would give more use for a collector, and players could set up hydrogen collection outposts to slowly capture hydrogen for fueling small vehicles.