Thrust "Reactors"?

[Edymnion]

Right now, thrusters are the single largest group of blocks that make up a ship, save for the hull itself. I checked a rather medium/small mining ship I built recently, out of 28k blocks, 5k of them were Thrusters. On larger ships, half or more of all blocks in your ship are thrusters.

In short, the biggest use of space in our ships right now are just massive amounts of thrusters. Odds are, if you're gap filling, you're gap filling with thrusters trying desperately to keep a decent thrust to mass ratio.

Since we're looking at redoing power to make it a more concentrated system, perhaps we should look at revamping thrusters to do the same? Perhaps move some of the thrust related chamber stuff (like jump drives) out of reactors and into thrusters?

Or maybe there will be chambers for the current reactor system that can increase the efficiency of thrusters so we don't need so damned many?

 

[Zekester81]

I'm sincerely hoping that the new chamber/power system will be able to reduce the amount of thruster blocks necessary as well, and I'm assuming that there will be chamber for this, as well as the power priority system tweaks, to help mitigate. Theoretically, all systems will take less space with the new system depending on what chambers are created and how they will be set up.

 

[Coyote27]

Uncoupling a ship's top speed from its thrust would be a big help here. The top speed for any ship, regardless of its thrust/weight ratio, should be the same unless it's upgraded with overdrive chambers. (Though I'm philosophically against any maximum top speed that isn't c, I can accept one for the sake of gameplay.) There are, as I recall, chambers that just boost acceleration, so that'd be what you would want on a heavy ship to make it maneuver better.

In general though, I think thrusters could do to have maybe 5x their current values in mass, thrust, power consumption, and cost, making more room for other things while still giving the same performance for a given mass, power, and resource expenditure.

 

[Dire Venom]

Intersting suggestion.
Personally, I would prefer to keep thrust separate, but beable to add enhancer effects via chambers.
We need something to fill our ships with lol XD

 

[GDPR 302420]

Right now, thrusters are the single largest group of blocks that make up a ship, save for the hull itself. I checked a rather medium/small mining ship I built recently, out of 28k blocks, 5k of them were Thrusters. On larger ships, half or more of all blocks in your ship are thrusters.

In short, the biggest use of space in our ships right now are just massive amounts of thrusters. Odds are, if you're gap filling, you're gap filling with thrusters trying desperately to keep a decent thrust to mass ratio.

Since we're looking at redoing power to make it a more concentrated system, perhaps we should look at revamping thrusters to do the same? Perhaps move some of the thrust related chamber stuff (like jump drives) out of reactors and into thrusters?

Or maybe there will be chambers for the current reactor system that can increase the efficiency of thrusters so we don't need so damned many?

The new chambers will give a lot more free space as a lot of systems are being compatmentalised into the new "chamber effects" system.

If you have not enough space to get your 2.5 thrust to mass ratio, then Systems 2.0 be more then sufficient to solve this problem for you..



Also, I am going to preemptively say that someone is going to argue "But thrust is underpowered"

My response is go tell that to kulbolen (Veilith)

Anyone who has a clue about meta design will tell you thrust does not need a buff in any aspect.

In fact thrust is powerful enough to where Veilith was called a cheater because (this probably isnt exact as my memory of this is fuzzy) "Turn fighting is blatantly overpowered and using it in battle is essentialy exploiting"

 

[DrTarDIS]

if server admins shifted thruster mass to zero or negative .01 i think it might be useful.

 

[Lancake]

With the new power system, you'll end up with more empty space and still achieve similar system statistics from before.
Less armor is needed too, as it's more preferable to protect the vital systems, instead of a part of the ship's skin.

Overall, ships are lighter than they used to be, and thrusters are quite a bit more effective too. Power usage is still a concern though, and chambers + power priority will help with both managing the power consumption of your thrust, and altering thrust itself even more.

Its balance heavily depends on how people will build their ships though. Some may still use a ton of armor at the front, some may just do "armor" belts around the relatively small group of system within the shell. Some may fill the remaining space with just basic hull.

Mass of a given ship is almost doubled in comparison of its lightest version which in turn greatly affects its thrust to mass ratio.
This is luckily, easy to analyze through spreadsheets as each ship has a given surface area and a volume that can be used. You can simply alter mass variations there and see its outcome.

 

[Dr. Whammy]

With the new power system, you'll end up with more empty space and still achieve similar system statistics from before.
Less armor is needed too, as it's more preferable to protect the vital systems, instead of a part of the ship's skin.

Overall, ships are lighter than they used to be, and thrusters are quite a bit more effective too. Power usage is still a concern though, and chambers + power priority will help with both managing the power consumption of your thrust, and altering thrust itself even more.

Its balance heavily depends on how people will build their ships though. Some may still use a ton of armor at the front, some may just do "armor" belts around the relatively small group of system within the shell. Some may fill the remaining space with just basic hull.

Mass of a given ship is almost doubled in comparison of its lightest version which in turn greatly affects its thrust to mass ratio.
This is luckily, easy to analyze through spreadsheets as each ship has a given surface area and a volume that can be used. You can simply alter mass variations there and see its outcome.

Provided you're at liberty to say... How soon do you think a preliminary version of the system will be available for us to test out?

 

[silverfoe]

With the new power system, you'll end up with more empty space and still achieve similar system statistics from before.
Less armor is needed too, as it's more preferable to protect the vital systems, instead of a part of the ship's skin.

Overall, ships are lighter than they used to be, and thrusters are quite a bit more effective too. Power usage is still a concern though, and chambers + power priority will help with both managing the power consumption of your thrust, and altering thrust itself even more.

Its balance heavily depends on how people will build their ships though. Some may still use a ton of armor at the front, some may just do "armor" belts around the relatively small group of system within the shell. Some may fill the remaining space with just basic hull.

Mass of a given ship is almost doubled in comparison of its lightest version which in turn greatly affects its thrust to mass ratio.
This is luckily, easy to analyze through spreadsheets as each ship has a given surface area and a volume that can be used. You can simply alter mass variations there and see its outcome.

So with the power update there will there be any change to thrust?

 

[Edymnion]

Its balance heavily depends on how people will build their ships though. Some may still use a ton of armor at the front, some may just do "armor" belts around the relatively small group of system within the shell. Some may fill the remaining space with just basic hull.

Well, I can only speak for myself here, but I use almost exclusively Standard Armor for the hulls of all of my ships because, frankly, I find the texture work on Hull and Advanced Armor to be ugly. Standard armor tiles seamlessly, Hull and Advanced Armor have those damned squares baked into the texture so that it always looks like lots of little individual plates.

As is, most of my ships are running Standard Armor hulls with internal Advanced Armor shells around important systems. Hull might as well not even exist.