(suggestion) Ion engines require gas to function
Ion engines in their current se1 (and arguably se2) state are pretty much direct energy to propulsion converters.
what i suggest is implementing a ion engine fuel system where non explosive nitrogen gas tanks (or any gas commonly used in modern ion propulsion) are required for operating ion engines.
ion engines wouldn't need to be connected to these gas tanks via conveyers but would still require a gas tank with nitrogen inside be on the same grid, these gas tanks however would still have a conveyer connection to allow refilling from other grids storage or production facilities.
nitrogen (or otherwise) gas would be produced by refineries as a optional byproduct that if a nitrogen gas storage tank is present on the same (or a connected) grid would fill it slowly with time. alternatively nitrogen could be harvested from a planets atmosphere via an air vent which would fill any empty nitrogen tanks on its conveyer network.
Ion engines would very slowly use nitrogen gas as "fuel" at a rate much lower than that of a hydrogen engine while still consuming electricity.
my thoughts with this are to make ion engines less "cheaty" feeling and to introduce a small but still present sense of needing to monitor your "fuel" levels that are present with hydrogen engines. on top of this the need to have nitrogen gas tanks (whether small volume or large volume) would incentivize ship design to shield nitrogen gas storage or in combat to target an opponents nitrogen gas tanks to disable a ships movement capabilities without having to take out every battery or other power generator. this would both work to make hydrogen engines even more viable as a pure in space propulsion method as well as to introduce new design constrains without the same level of complexity seen with hydrogen engine conveyer networks.
I like this feedback
Current real life Ion engines use Xenon as fuel so it would be realistic, however, I'm sure that they will be adding Hydrogen engines eventually and I personally don't want to have to deal with fuel production and tanks for more than one thruster type. especially given how greedy the Hydo thrusters became in SE1, I see them doing the same thing to the ion engines in SE2 in the interests of "Ballance" if fuel is required for them.
Current real life Ion engines use Xenon as fuel so it would be realistic, however, I'm sure that they will be adding Hydrogen engines eventually and I personally don't want to have to deal with fuel production and tanks for more than one thruster type. especially given how greedy the Hydo thrusters became in SE1, I see them doing the same thing to the ion engines in SE2 in the interests of "Ballance" if fuel is required for them.
*Looks at the 20+ small h2 tanks on an h2-fighter*
...
Fuel tanks for Ions wont really allow you that much more ease in disabling a target, they'll just be adding complexity for its own sake, and not having to plumb those tanks up would just be silly. I'm normally for that extra touch of realism, but I think the game needs at least 1 type of newb-friendly space-thruster. If they want to add more thruster types that use different amounts of fuel and power for different levels of thrust and efficiency then I'm all for it, but they should leave ions as fuel-free because the game needs a simple power-for-thrust space-thruster for new players to use while they get the hang of things.
*Looks at the 20+ small h2 tanks on an h2-fighter*
...
Fuel tanks for Ions wont really allow you that much more ease in disabling a target, they'll just be adding complexity for its own sake, and not having to plumb those tanks up would just be silly. I'm normally for that extra touch of realism, but I think the game needs at least 1 type of newb-friendly space-thruster. If they want to add more thruster types that use different amounts of fuel and power for different levels of thrust and efficiency then I'm all for it, but they should leave ions as fuel-free because the game needs a simple power-for-thrust space-thruster for new players to use while they get the hang of things.
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