Jetpack is too op

Hmmm... My jetpack won't let me fly faster than 20 m/s.

With Shift, I can go faster, yes, but then it quickly uses up all the hydrogen.

Or will there be a better jetpack later on? But then there's still the fact that you can only carry a very small payload.

Try to deactivate dampers pressing "z" than use "w" and "spacebar" to fly forward at max speed.

Can confirm above method, jetpack is busted you can bypass the boost entirely by disabling dampers saving hydrogen as if going slow.

Boost should work in all directions, and have no charge-up time. Providing greatly increased acceleration at the cost of hydrogen.

Also, you should need to use some hydrogen to fly on planets, since the suit uses ions now. Of course, it won't be running at full blast, so it will last a while when just hovering.

Actually, at this stage of the game, I am very happy with the jetpack the way it is. Sometimes you need to fly around real quick and have a good control about. E.g. when you strand very far away (e.g. ship crashed, lost energy/fuel) and the next base or mean of transportation is several kilometers away. That would be a pain i.t.a. to travel with a real-world-plausible speed.

If you don't want to be speedy, don't use the jetpack booster...

People have always been able to get up to max speed or even a little better in SE1 by getting to full speed, turning off dampers and just coasting, this is nothing new. Nothing is forcing you to do that if you hate it that much nor is anyone forcing you to use the booster. I'm not sure why now after 10+ years its suddenly an issue. The boost is just an optional thing you're not forced to use. If it bothers you that much you can limit stuff on your own servers. I fail to see why the game as a whole needs to be nerfed because of something that's existed for 10+ years with no issues. I swear sometimes I think some people would complain if Keen gave us all golden mini figures of ourselves because and some would say the figure looks nothing like them.

Ships can be made to accelerate far faster, and allow for far faster mining (and eventually will help with welding and grinding too), and allow you to carry far more resources per trip. So, they are not useless.

I think the jetpack is working correctly.

I recommend reading Newton's three laws of motion again.

When damping is turned on, the jetpack keeps the engineer in place and compensates for all forces acting on the engineer, including the force of their muscles during assembly work.

Therefore, you must learn how to use the inertia dampers correctly. Turn them on during work and short trips, turn them off during long trips, and turn them on just before "landing."

TThe error may be that when damping is activated, the engines continuously operate in the desired direction of movement, but at the same time also against the direction of movement required by the engineer, preventing the safe speed from being exceeded. They simply try to keep the engineer in place - and "work against each other," resulting in high fuel consumption.

So the problem lies in the control logic of the jetpack stabilization system. The system (game engine) should have more stabilization options and simple mode switching for jetpack stabilization.

On the other hand, how many times have you killed yourself by crashing at high speed when your jetpack didn't you slow down in time? Mostly because you turned on the damping too late or didn't turn it on at all...

After some small tests I have confirmed the jetpack damper acceleration is not a bug but indeed an imbalance.

To reiterate when you use the hydrogen boost it consumes a substantial amount of hydrogen, The Ion thruster consumes a small amount of energy for 20 m/s stable flight. When you disengage dampeners in space you can angle yourself at a 45 degree angle in one or two directions and achieve the same if not more thrust than the hydrogen boost. More important note is that energy consumption stays minimal if not the same as basic flying. On planets disengaging dampeners while pressing space allows you to glide around at a decent rate nothing crazy but when you accelerate you can use gravity and ion thrust to accelerate around as fast as hydrogen. Adding the angling trick can get closer to hydrogen boosting again with little impact of energy usage which I will admit there is an impact but its little to none.

The issue is these exploits make the hydrogen boost redundant and not make fundamental sense. on the planet delta v is so obviously overpowered with ion thrust that no calculations need to be made. On a planet ion can get you up to 300 m/s while only using 3% of the suits battery while having faster acceleration than the boost. Meanwhile hydrogen boost on the return trip leaves me with 15% remaining while not reaching 300 m/s before reaching the point I left from. This clearly indicates an imbalance in fuel usage and energy usage this makes the hydrogen boost redundant and extra.

The only things that I can think of that would mediate this is an increase to energy usage with ion while dampeners are off, increased fuel efficiency on the hydrogen boost, and/or lower the max thrust of all directions except upward thrust and forward thrust when dampeners are off. A thing though for planets, there should be air resistance, and when you fly faster you should accelerate slower because of it.

Thats it

P.S. Should I post this as its own topic because I feel its almost its own thing at this point? If so bug report or is this more of a feedback kind of thing cause I'm on the side of this being feedback.

I see what OP is saying about being able to reach max speed without using hydrogen. Never caught that with dampeners off you can achieve max speed.

I think fine tuning the acceleration and making it hard to change directions would be the balance needed to avoid the main issue of not making it easy to hydroman against ships. Though it does take a while to get up to speed with just the battery based boosters so most ships would likely be able to out-accelerate a character using just their energy boost.

Another option is to have the battery thrusters just consume energy a little bit more than they do now.

It is a worthy thing to point out. If the goal of using massive hydrogen to go fast is to help prevent hydromanning then having the ability to still achieve those speeds and use less energy than even jetpacks in SE1 could prove to be a counterproductive balance.

I dont find jetpack too OP . It is far less OP than in SE1 and it consumes hydrogen very quicly.

I also noticed an imbalance in the fact that you can fly anywhere using the backpack.

The backpack has to be OP. Otherwise, how would you build anything, especially in a gravity well (read planets)?

I know it is unrealistic to use ion thrusters to fly on planets. Countless jetpack-nerfing mods were made for SE1 because many of us wanted more realism and challenge.

That said, an OP jetpack is good for newbies, and we need to consider that as well. The default option may still remain as it is now.

Here is what I think can be reasonable to do.

You would start with a base suit, and then add modules such as a jetpack and a backpack (and possibly a helmet, though that is debatable).

With the base suit, you can walk around and avoid instant suffocating (assuming you have a helmet), but you would need to craft your basic backpack to gain a much larger inventory, a few slots for consumables, and, of course, the ability to backpack build. Later, you could upgrade to more advanced backpack model(s). Instead of the usual four-tier progression, there could be just a few distinct advanced backpacks: one with significantly more inventory space, another with slightly less inventory but more slots for consumables.

The same idea applies to the jetpack. You would first craft a basic jetpack in the Gearforge. This version would be barely usable in space, with no boosting at all, even if you have a hydrogen bottle. From there, you could upgrade to one of several advanced jetpack models. These would enable boosting and introduce meaningful trade-offs: one might be more energy-efficient, while another could give you a higher maximum speed before boosting is required (more than 20m/s).

There could be a few options available in the base game, while modders could provide countless interesting jetpacks and backpacks to further spice up survival gameplay and fine-tune the balance for different playstyles.

Importantly, spawning with no suit (or rather, only a very basic suit) could be made an option. This would be quite hardcore, if you ask me. By default, players could still spawn with a basic backpack and jetpack, or even an advanced jetpack, so new players would experience essentially the same easy start they currently have in SE2.

Another important QoL feature would be auto-equip on spawn. This should apply not only to suit modules, but also to consumables stored in the suit, as well as tools and weapons that were in your inventory.

Difficulty settings could control how this works:

• On the easiest setting, you respawn with everything restored for free. This is already how SE2 behaves right now, even if suit modules are not yet present — tools are preserved with the same tiers.
• On more hardcore settings, auto-equip would still happen, but only for items available in an inventory connected to the survival kit or medical room you respawn at. Your body could simply disappear (this could also be an option).

This approach avoids confusing new players with questions like “Where is my backpack?” or “Why can’t I use my welder anymore?” because its tier changed and does not match hotbar anymore. At the same time, it reinforces the idea that preparation should matter, without punishing players through unnecessary micromanagement or friction.