Larger Thruster Sizes or Modular Thruster System

I'm personally not a fan of the tiered thruster mod, but thruster buffing modules, or preferably full on customizable engines would be really cool.

Thruster ramp-up time is an interesting idea... not entirely sure how the speed-based thrusters would work though. Obviously only in atmosphere as that makes absolutely no sense in space, but... hmm. I think it would probably work best with modules that add specialization to something similar to the standard atmospheric thrusters, similar to refinery/assembler modules.

I wouldn't worry about the making sense part all that much at this point, i think it's a good game mechanic, it's not hard to come up with a plausible sci-fi answer later. And also, we have jump drives, gravity generators 'n such.

It wouldn't be hard to make up some kind of explanation about specific thrust nozzle for ion drive that is extra-efficient, but would build up a harmful static charge if used at speeds below a certain threshold, or hydrogen truster nuzzle that shapes it's exhaust in a specific way where it has a venturi suction-like effect, but only up to a certain velocity where the vacuum behind the ship makes it ineffective.

Either way, personally, i'd rather see this as visually distinct thruster types, so that a player could have an idea by looking at a ship of it's likely performances, and be able to plan according to if they could likely outrun or outmanoeuvre them.

hmmm...

-Things don't instantly heat, an ion-thruster should logically take a moment to warm up if not kept constantly hot, would make sense for an "efficient ion thruster".

-Arbitrary-size thrusters could be difficult... but if you re-skinned the thrusters a few times to look like different sections of a larger thruster such that setting them together made a bank of several thrusters look like one big one, you'd both be able to replicate the appearance of huge thrusters and give people the option to put them together in other ways to make unusually shaped thrusters (squares, lines, triangles, ect...). Toss in some adjustment-sliders for the flame like you have with SE1's lights and you'd be golden.

-Upgrade-modules akin to SE1's refinery and assembler might be a good way to produce different properties akin to variant-thrusters, and if some of those modules could be stacked repeatedly then you could emulate a thruster being physically longer without having to write in a longer thruster. If you pair it with the section-thrusters it could result in effectively emulating arbitrarily large thrusters with less hassle .

@Pyxaron Dragon umm... what!? I'm sorry, how are you supposed to come up with an explanation where thrusters have different effect depending on their relative velocity in space? I'm sorry but that's just not how space works, that makes no sense at all. And that would be a terrible game mechanic for space too, since it would take away the feeling of all motion being relative. You'd really feel your "speed" in the game a lot more, which would ruin the experience in space imo. I'm sorry but I am vehemently against that idea.