Continuous boost mechanic. Replacement required. (New type of thrusters)

borS

Lafiel Yes, i propose a diferent technology based thrusters. And i would like to see them in vanila, because that type of thrusters was already implemented by community, by the way of creating a continuous boost builds (It has already been in vanila, in the form of continuous boost). And... Then... It was destroyed... By the nerf...

Lafiel

borS Your best bet is for thruster to get time limited burst mode. Which would help maneuvering but not speeding.

borS

Lafiel about speeding, thrust and maneuvering...

It must not give more thrust for the same money!!!

The point is to make engine modules, based on these thrusters, noticeably more expensive, but also noticeably lighter than conventional ones, with equal thrust.

In the other words:
You get less thrust by the equal amount of credits, but also you get weight reduction together with that.

Thereby add a different way of increasing speed and maneuverability by the engine weight reduction .

The efficiency of this method directly depends on the current ratio of thrust to the weight of the ship.

So, i'm not asking you to make imba, that is stronger and cheaper, i am asking the exact opposite, to make an expensive and weak (for its cost of maintenance) engine, but which will be very small and light, thereby having the best thrust to weight ratio.

If the engine become lighter, but save it's thrust, it increase the potential speed limit. But to reaching this limit it will take a lot of money.
Thereby decreasing credits left for the weaponary and protection of the build, using such type of engine.

This relation between cost, mass and thrust of the engine module could be implemented by the power inefficiency, that will lead to the need of having a larger number of (EXPENSIVE) reactors to maintain equal amount of thrust, and as a result significantly increase the price.
But at the same time the weight gain caused by such a design is noticably less, because of high thrust of each one thruster and small number of the heavy parts (every thruster have it's own weight, concentrating all thrust in one thruster allow to reduce it.).

So...
Engine modules based on proposed engine anyway would be more expensive than conventional ones, having equal amount of thrust, but also they would be noticably lighter.

This is the main concept of continuous boost.

If you don't thrust me - just pick up a calculator, and check, how many credits will you spend, achieving same amounts of thrust by the conventional and continuos boost (if it would be still possible) implaementanions. An then, check their weight.
Ensure, that i'm explained diferencies of continuous boost absolutely correctly.

It never get's cheaper than conventional thrust. It' always noticably more expensive .
But it's noticably lighter (if implemented correctly).

Now, watch at the boost thruster.
This one, continuosly staying in the boost mode was the perfect implementation of the thruster, requred for this type of engine.

So...

It has already been implemented in the game.
It has already been working.
It has already been in demand by the players like me.

And i'm asking you to bring back this idea, that i enjoyed so much.
I hope it will be done.
And i hope, it will be done, by the way of introducing new thruster, officialy based on this idea. Not occasionally, how it happen to the boost thruster.

Lafiel

borS Weight itself doesn't matter because it goes into the Thrust-to-Weight(t2w) ratio which final stats depends on the area of the part and relation to existing t2w. The same goes for cost as per cost-efficiency plus a small exponential increase per size class. Taking all that into account the actual size or stats doesn't really matter as long as these rules apply.
Anyhow, I don't think it's appropriate for less than medium size thrusters to have burst. Higher thrust is mainly aimed for larger ships and different races.

Nordwolf

The permanent boost mechanic was removed not because "they were not supposed to do that" but because it created huge balance problems with really fast ships having a very easy access to huge amounts of instant thrust. Namely such ships are named "orbiters" and utilize mainly only one directional thrust to ram or orbit their opponent while dealing damage with non-projectile weapons like ions or fast projectile weapons like railguns. In addition to the huge power, it allows for these ships to have a very small footprint and area needed to defend, allowing for fantastic defenses.

The closest replacement to the permaboost right now are standard thrusters, which only have 1 second of ramp-up time which is pretty good for any direct controlled ship.

Here's an example of such ship:

Because power of permaboost is instant, it allows for incredibly precise and fast maneuvers that are not too hard to perform and render any slow ship incapable of defending properly or dealing continuous damage.

If you can solve this issue, something like this can perhaps be added to the game, but I don't see any reasonable solutions beyond just using standard thrusters.

borS

Nordwolf It could be simply solved by adding small (probably 1-2 seconds) ramp up time to the proposed thruster.
The point of having this thruster is to replace heavy thruster array, with the increaese of maintanance cost (making it more expensive but lighter, like it could be implemented by using continuous boost). If it would have same ramp up time, like every thruster in this array, it will be ballanced.

And, i know what orbiters are. I even made efficient ways of avoiding them. (Using continuous boost engine modules, that had much more cost and thrust efficienty, than common orbiter had)

And loosing these modules is one more reason, why i'm disapointed by the boost thruster nerf. I spent to much time, fighting for each percent of their efficiency. 🙁

borS

Lafiel
It does matter at extremely light designs, havig high t2w realtion, allowing them to break speed limit of the conventional thruster.
That was prooved at one of my nuke-rusher designs, having extremely light weight. Changing it's engines to continuous boost greatly increased it's speed, by the great weight reduction. It's t2w relation increased by over ~20%. (used C.B. engine had the equal to the conventional one cost)
P.S. here was used my own implementation of continuous boost, it has more thrust efficiency than regular... It should be noticed.
Also these engines were smaller than convencional ones, that allowed to reduce volume (and weight) of armor used, without reducing protection.

borS

Lafiel also i got another idea, about thrust and efficiency.
The opportunity to manage engine maximum thrust, with changing efficiency.
For example large thruster maximum power would be able to be cahnged in range 400-1600 kilnewtons, (0.5-2 of normal), making it less power efficient at higher limit and vice versa.
It's power consumption would be 0.6 e.p.s. at 1600 kilonewtons and 0.07 e.p.s. at 400.
In the other words, increasing engine thrust by 2 times will lead to 3 times more power consumption and 1.5 times less power efficiency. And same, with decreasing thrust limit it will increase it's efficiency by the maximum of 1.5 times.
But it's ramp-up time must be always the same.

Lafiel

borS That's what Abh booster did before; vanilla is more cheaty / efficient. The current system for all boosters is somewhat constant consumption in boost mode.

borS

Lafiel
Then, could the additional modes for the thrusters be implemented in the vanila? Which will add small constant energy consumption and increase thrust a bit. And could be set during the assembly of the ship, or in the window of the ship orders, when choosing these parts.
Like boost mode, but noticably weaker, with possibility of refuelling and without decreasing ramp-up time (or doing that by a small amount, not more than ~25%). Also without switching these modes to normal at discharging.

Lafiel

borS It's not supported so not really. Due to restrictions and game bugs at least two layers of workarounds for each mode is needed plus a bunch of logic and control storage elements. It would be very complex and probably won't work well due to game bugs. So it's not worth the effort. A number of support features are need to make this easy or possible. There's no ramp down for thrusters so this is impossible to do.

borS

Lafiel
It upsets... 🙁
I hope, possibility of engine costumization will be implemented in the game at some day.
Like it was possible with continuous boost thrusters, allowing to costumize mass, thrust and cost of engine modules.
It was also interesting because of the open space for improvements.
For example:
I made a complicated engine type, making continuous boost thrusters work with engine room buff. At the edge of their and crew possibilities. The main problem was that stupid crew never feed these thrusters fast enough directly from multiple reactors to prevent discharge. But it was solved by complicated crew management, combined with double directional boost thrust idea (that allowed to decrease power consumption by 33%, without decreasing sum of thrust) and diagonal placement (that allowed to increase thrust by additional ~44%, by the way of using 2 engine modules, placed at the angle of 90 degrees, which normally would not work together), it made this engine type the most efficient and powerfull continuous boost one.
It allowed my normal ships to overcome orbiters at maneuverability. Yes, they still have less forward thrust, but a sum of their thrust for all 4 directions was greatly more, allowing them to "dance" with the orbiters, without taking significant amount of damage.

That's the history of my "cyclone" engine, used as an example of what you can reach, if you have a brain and an open space for improvements. And... That space is gone.

I did that right before the nerf, loosing that to fast, and that's one more reason, why i want returning of that space for costumization and improvements by a some way. Or at least returning of the continuous boost mechanic in some form, probably greatly reworked.

Lafiel

borS Well, this is just design arrangement advantages/disadvantage which is universal. It would work out the same with any type of thrusters. Only the consumption management or stats would be different.

That said perma-boost is not going to come back. But Walt might add better thrusters later when the game needs to expand on parts later. And maybe new tech could revive it in some form. That's all you can hope for right now.