Hydrogen Engine Balance

Will Smith shared this feedback 5 years ago
Submitted

Engines Are greatly welcomed. They have been fun testing, but at this point I find them more troublesome then they are worth.

Here are my thoughts on the mechanic:

1-Reduce engine capacity (1/10 of the massive tank is not even close to realistic)10,000L is sufficient, with a usage of maybe 5/10% of original (that makes worse efficiency from O2/H2 generator per power unit per kg ice, but makes it easier to use and manage)

ii-i: you could add a small H2 tank instead. tiny 1x1 or 2x2. The exact size/capacity is 3,200L per block (small blocks) , but taking into consideration realism in miniaturization, i'd say 2,500L for a 1x1 and 20,000L for a 2x2?

ii-ii: For the large, 277,777.77L/block so make a 1x1 @ 250,000?


2-Play with consumption. 1000L/s is insane. (large block, ALTHOUGH BOTH SIZES TESTED)

i: Its insane to have to use two O2/H2 generators as well to keep up effciency

ii: This kills use on nimble small ships

3-add O2 consumption (vent ability on planet, needs O2 in space)


4- Allow Engine to fill whilst offline

Replies (13)

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6

I can agree with this. I've been playing for a few hours now this weekend. I can't get as technical as or friend here has gotten. but a smaller size hydrogen tank would be greatly welcomed on rover type builds. Trying to operate with just have an o2/h2 generator feed directly into a hydrogen engine does not work very well. Only being limit to the .. VERY large tanks makes building certain types of crafts more complex than they should be.

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I would also add that requiring energy for starting engine should be lowered to match output of small battery output. I can see very many race cars/buggies, transport vehicles happening with that setup.

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Engines are nice. Push us to be creative with uranium rarification.

But, need an option to turn on and off energy production without turning off the block (and allowing tank filling) (n°4). This could be nice for small ship/rover to wander off and come back to fill at main base.


Also need an option to prioritize source power : like use battery and automatic shift to engine when power needed. I read that proposotion somewhere and think thats a good idea, That would greatly improve the use of the engines.


And last, need to twik power output in order to not "waste" h2 ressource for small ship and last longer 😉 (n°2)

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"Hello, Engineers.


We have decided to increase Hydrogen Engine internal capacity, so the new block is no longer needed.


Cheers!"

Did you see this yet? Almost feels like nothing we say here matters. Especially since they basically did the exact opposite of my suggestion after the last test (unless someone suggested nerfing the old battery and I didn't see it.)

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Exactly what my impression is and what I commented on some other topic. So many players are talking about the current implementation of the hydro engine and taking their time to give very detailed and valid feedback. Like you said, one could get the impression it doesnt matter what the players want or say.

It feels like only the feedback that matches what they like is listend to and feedback they dont like is just being ignored.

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Literally the only feedback I've seen addressed is stuff various youtubers/streamers said. Everyone on the actual feedback page may as well be talking to their cat.

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It's not an accident that they pay more attention to those people. They bring more attention to the game.

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True, LSG is the reason I bought SE in the first place. But, those people aren't necessarily representative of the average player. The only indication we get that they even look at this board are copy-pasta responses and even that isn't very encouraging.

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I've played around with the hydrogen engine in space and on the earth-like. I haven't found it useful to run ion thrusters on a large ship or on a small rover because it goes through fuel far too quickly.

I'm ok with the power output, because I can use batteries to make up the difference. But when the engine's fuel reserves are full and that doesn't even recharge one battery, it just doesn't seem that useful. More batteries are far more convenient to add then a massive fuel tank or storage for ice plus a h2 generator. And it's not like batteries are harder to build than engines plus it's support blocks.

Now I like the idea of a hydrogen engine, with the sound and having a fuel source alternative to nuclear. I'd like keep stores of hydrogen fuel at a base to fill up a small rover and have that rover drive for a few hours without a refuel or at least make it to the next ice field. However I can't.

I guess I see no benefit over the complete use of batteries and recharging bases even at early game, unless I'm missing something.

At the very least just tweak the fuel consumption so it's a viable block.

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IMO it would need 10x the power output and 1/10 the fuel consumption to be useful for anything. The small battery is so heavily nerfed (less so after the 2nd test, since they nerfed the old battery) it's redundant from the moment it's available. The only useful new block is the wind turbine. This update is a bitter disappointment after how excited I was for it. "Yay! New blocks! Oh, what? They're useless." < My reaction.

I managed to get a sustainable solar setup within a few hours in my testing of the moon start. Unless they removed the power cell requirement (for H2 engine) and I didn't notice, you need a power source for your basic assembler to make a block thats only useful before that. I didn't even bother looking at it in test 3, after I saw them cut the power output in HALF for test 2.

Keen seems really determined to waste their time designing blocks that don't have a purpose. Oh, but small hydrogen tanks aren't needed, right? Either it's one of the surprises in the update, or they have it in their head that the engine has to be so astronomically bad that even small tanks wouldn't save it. I'm pretty sure I've met balloons that generate more energy when you let them go.

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I think one of the major issues with the Hydrogen Engine is that the alternatives are so much cheaper and more reliable. The wind turbine generates around 380 kW for free, solar panels generate 160 kW, and once you have a reactor setup you essentially have unlimited energy forever. At no point in between I feel like mining incredible amounts of ice for some tiny amount of energy, especially if I first have to setup a different power generation just to get the O2/H2 generator up and running. And then there are all the other issues like the O2/H2 generator not running if it can't dump the O2 and the requirement of a battery to actually make use of that thing.

I would suggest to make it a smaller block overall, like reduce the cost, consumption rate and power generator by a factor of 1/5 the original. In addition give the device a small internal battery of 50 kWh that can input/output at 1 MW (that is somewhat charged on built). In that form it can power the O2/H2 generator by itself, the build cost is cheap enough to make it a viable early game engine, it beats the "free" power generators with it's higher output (but requires resources obviously), it works as a tiny power-bank for small bases, and it can be used to power first space-ships as an alternative to solar powered ships until you get Uranium for the reactor. All-in-all that would make it a good alternate choice to get started (or to be used as backup power) without shadowing any other block.

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I like the model, they did a really great job on the art work. I don't really think theres a need for the smaller one. I predict it will be used primarily for aesthetic, followed by people who use it just for the sake of using it.

In my save I went from the moon rover > sustainable solar > Nuclear powered cargo ship w ion thrusters, in the course of several hours. Free energy sources are really the way to go, just based on the time savings from not having to mine/refine uranium. I would build infinity solar panels to avoid mining more than absolutely necessary XD

It really needs a significant buff. They should try to balance it for mid-game, it simply doesn't fit in the early game as-is.

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O2 Consumption makes allot of sense, but then wouldn't they have to do the same with hydro thrusters? I would think so.

Hydro engines are way to hydro hungry. I shouldn't need 200k of ice just to run the large block one for 45 mins.

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as it sits, to run one large hydro engine for a night cycle, I have to mine 200k of ice every day, and it take 1 O2 gen a whole day cycle to fill one large tank, which then empties in one night cycle to run the engine. Lather rinse and repeat. Its too much.

I could go to space, find uranium, and have enough to run my base for an ingame week with the same effort as one days worth of hydro engine power.

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I would say word of advice for hydrogen engine its a very WEAK power generator and meant primarially as a STARTING block. Ergo It's consumption should be maybe the quarter of the output capacity of a H2/02 generator but right now even after a supposed balance it still exceeds the H2 production capacity of the block that is supposed to supply it with fuel also assuming that your only going to be using these on starter ships they should be quite efficient and stingy and not burn through all the players ICE in a matter of minutes their primary balance is their weak output 5mw they don't need to be overbalanced by being fuel hogs as well

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I agree the Hydrogen on planets needs some work since I tried to build a small ship and hydrogen runs out very quickly indeed, I can get about 3 minutes from a full tank of Hydrogen and even then it is not enough trust to carry a full load of ore:

https://youtu.be/OIPvQLtqc3A


I think that a solution might be to make a larger hydrogen generator and run atmospheric thrusters but a smaller tank would allow for a more reasonable shaped small ship too. (you have my vote)

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A large grid large cargo miner with one small hydro thruster in each direction for space uses ~12% of its fuel for one mining trip. So hydros feel quite fuel efficient there albeit not producing a lot of thrust. The only thruster that is efficient in fighting planetary gravity close to the ground (except on Moon) is the atmospheric thruster and that makes ship designs for space different from those for planets, which is good for the drama...

In Battlestar Galactica there was an episode with a search and rescue mission conducted with space fighter craft in dense atmosphere, wasting a lot of the precious fuel. In Space Engineers someone in a hydrogen powered ship once saved me from griefers on Earth and burned through so much fuel that he then had to find some ice to lift off again.

Earth's realistic gravitational acceleration is quite insane - if you will: 10 seconds to max speed. It takes a lot of thrust to accelerate a heavy object at that rate. On Moon (in SE) you'd get away with 1/4 of the thrusters.

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There is also the artificially limited speed which makes it take a very long time to clear planetary gravity and requires wasting of alot of fuel even if you are throttling the engines properly they need to burn for longer than they should have to

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H2/O2 generator as in real life is physically impossible to be sustained by the H2 generated with any machine.

H2 should to be a way to "store energy" and not a "fuel", so the META should be build a base with wind generator to separate H2O into H2 and store for fast refueling and efficiently store power for vehicles.

  • H2 generation should to be reduced
  • Hydrogen engine consumption need to be greatly reduced

Please do not think H2 is like Petroleum. For separate H2O you spend X and burning H2 and O you earn X, the same.

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Yeah The problem alot of people are having is that the H2 engine is an internal combustion generator where as thrusters are rockets. So you have a massive disparity between consumption a tank of H2 could run an engine for hours whereas only supplying minutes at most to a rocket.

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