[IDEA] Moddable/upgradable/tiered thrusters, more types of each category

Kamil Rutkowski shared this feedback 26 days ago
Not Enough Votes

I use a Tiered Engine Super Pack every time I play SE.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=642589539

In current version of the game, if we want to make a grid that is somewhat agile we choose from either having an exterior armor made entirely from thrusters, or we just hide them inside the ship (which is obviously unrealistic). Same goes to miners, they always end up looking as cubes of batteries with cockpit, drills and containers, wrapped around million thrusters.

I fell in love with the mod (and even more with its rebalancing overhaul) because I can actually make the ship look good and yet functional. I can put a stronger thruster supporting the cargo weight of the miner from the bottom and front and add regular ones for tilt/acceleration. But main advantage is that I dont need to hide the thrusters in the body of the ship if I focus on the visuals.

The way it could be balanced, to build such thrusters in survival, we would need hard to obtain materials and hard to produce components. To go even further, power-based thrusters will use up more power and will have bigger usage, and fuel based ones may use different kind of fuel (?). They can also weigh more.

Balancing isnt a problem since we can bump every thing up. Too op? More power/usage, weigh, harder to obtain etc.

If tiered thrusters ain't it, we could make them modifiable. Put something in the modifying slot and it increases thrust but decreases efficiency. Or makes it use different fuel. We could also have modifiers that increase efficiency. Very similar system that is currently used with refineries, assemblers and h2o generators.


Next topic I wanted to write about is more types of each thruster. Right now we only have one thruster for each category, not counting the reskins or sizes. Now we will also have water, where propellers might find use (or sails lol).

Atmospheric thrusters are quite literally jets, but what if we a new type of atmospheric ones that are more like jet engines (hopefully it makes sense). Such thrusters that require an intake and clearance for the air to come in, which creates an engineering challenge in return for a benefit.

Hydrogen thrusters would become as just a part of fuel thrusters where other ones are the thrusters that use different kind of fuel, as mentioned in previous topic. We might even dump the name of hydrogen thruster and let the fuel type specify it (that would mean there is one type of fuel thruster which is defined by its fuel). Different file could have a different flame color and shape.

Ion thrusters could be extended by some newer technology, maybe plasma thrusters? (that probably makes no sense). But you get the idea, it's just a universal endgame category of thrusters that work both in atmosphere and space. Better model - stronger thrust in exchange for efficiency. Different type could have a different flame color and shape.

If we added aerodynamics, air resistance etc we could add rotor blades and propellers or let us do our own by adding the physics behind the propellers into the game as a mechanic - put a blade on a rotor and make it spin fast.

Whole idea not only makes the thruster topic more practical (ships look nicer and no need to hide them anymore) but also adds nice progression to them in survival and a general depth into the game without making them an unbalanced feature.


if you agree with this submission, check more of mine and give them a bump

Replies (3)

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Would really like to see this in game. I always thought tons of thrusters, gyros, reactors etc was a bit much. I really think power scaling on all these type of blocks would make more sense.

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Hm, I see you have this idea in yours as well, but also a lot of random other good ideas. Would be nice if we would get at least some of them.


https://support.keenswh.com/spaceengineers2/pc/topic/46693-thruster-with-upgrade-modules

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that makes me think i don’t mind keen going forward with anything but mine idea, since most of them are similar haha

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I've always preferred to play on servers with tiered gear (thrusters, assemblers, gyros, reactors). In most servers you could build the first upgrade with just more resources then every tier after that usually introduces a more complex resource. Some which maybe you can refine, some which might require assembly using high quantities of resources, and sometimes it requires salvaging off of AI ships. Gives you an additional element to build to and more incentive for players to interact in hopes you can raid a base and take their high-tier goodies!

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yep, every feature that expands the game in this way is pure upgrade with no drawback imho, but hey, even if keen won’t listen to us, we always can mod ;)

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