compact efficient thruster component

Lafiel

Aside from crew, weapons, and shots I believe thrusters to be another major contributor to slowing down the game. The number of thrusters grows proportionally with the size of a ship and depending on its target thrust-ratio. In this case there's not much that can be one about the numbers needed except increasing thruster size and power which we've discussed for a long time in the past. So my suggestion is more for the multi-directional cases. Fighters and similarly modded vernier/rcs thrusters often require multiple thruster components to cover a number of directions. Naturally these small ships are used en masses. So I've been wondering if it would be possible to create a more efficient component which would allow the game not to lag as much. The new RotationalInertiaFactor is more of a cheating solution and won't really solve the problem as it won't change the number of thrusters build.

Walt

Lafiel I believe thrusters to be another major contributor to slowing down the game

This is much less of an issue than you'd think, at least in vanilla.

Lafiel So I've been wondering if it would be possible to create a more efficient component which would allow the game not to lag as much.

You mean an omni-directional thruster? I'll have to think about it, not sure if it would actually help. It's possible that the algorithm for omni-directional thrusters would be so much more expensive that it'd worse than offset the reduced number of thrusters needed.

Lafiel

Yes.
Yeah, I was not certain whether it would be better either.
In any case, I do think Cosmoteer still needs to be 3 to 5 times faster even to allow for example escort missions to be challenging, complex and more lasting.