Cosmoteer Official Forum

SpaceCat Gravitation exists everywhere, but weight does not. Weight requires both an attractive and repulsive force. For example, passengers on an airplane in free fall experience "weightlessness" even though they're very near earth. The passengers are pulled down by gravity, but nothing pushes them up, so they don't feel weight.

This is using a specific definition of weight. "Weight" is not a precise term and has several disputed definitions among the scientific community

nop Probably something to do with time dialation

ClassicJam Who says it's vacuum? Maybe that's why ships have "drag" - it's actually air. ***illuminati music***

ClassicJam Yeah be happy with it!

Let's take the "definition of gravity" discussion to Off-Topic and leave this thread for 0.14.0 feedback, thanks!

Dalas120 How are you testing power usage? That power usage for the small thruster should not be that low. I'm curious if there's a bug.

When I originally made the 3 original thrusters, cost and size were really the only way I could create tradeoffs between the different thruster sizes, which is why larger thrusters are less cost-efficient but more space-efficient than smaller thrusters. But now we have the ramp-up time, which creates a much more interesting trade-off. I'm thinking that maybe, at the very least, thruster cost should be directly proportional to thrust, making the tradeoff between surface area and ramp-up time? (Or if that's not enough, making larger thrusters more cost efficient.)

Which begs the question: Are small thrusters too cheap, or are standard-and-larger thrusters too expensive?

Another tradeoff I can make is in power consumption, making larger thrusters more power-efficient than smaller thrusters. (Right now power usage is supposed to be directly proportional to thrust, though @Dalas120's testing seems to indicate there might be a problem with the small thruster in that regard.)

Walt

Thrusters used to have a balance of:
- Surface area
- Cost
- Thrust

Where higher thrust:surface came at higher cost:thrust and thrust:power was 1:1.

Now ramp-up time is a fourth attribute. The existing balance of thrust:surface:cost still exists but ramp-up time just cripples the larger thrusters.

You're suggesting making a 1:1 relationship between thrust and cost, effectively factoring them out, such that the only balance is between surface:ramp-up. On paper that's fine, but currently ramp-up scaling is more exponential while surface scaling is more logarithmic.

And those aren't the only four attributes of thrusters. Thrusters also have an exclusion zone behind them, making larger thrusters harder to internalize and protect (especially when paired with engine rooms). Small thrusters have a "grid-ability" advantage that can not be ignored. This attribute can not be factored out -- it wouldn't make sense for all thrusters to have the same exclusion zone. Width is more valuable than height, but height is not free. You save so much height by stacking small thrusters that you can fit an extra row compared to larger thrusters.

Small thrusters still having lateral thrust gives them yet another attribute unaccounted. Normalizing lateral thrust for all thrusters factors that out.

A more complete list of attributes to balance, for reference:
- Cost
- Thrust
- Power
- Width
- Height/Exclusion
- Lateral
- Ramp-up
- Engine Room Potential

Walt

I used this module to calculate small thruster power usage. There are 40 thrusters, and they can stay active forever on only 1 reactor. Since 1 reactor generates 1515 power, each thruster must consume approximately 38 power.

Walt Which begs the question: Are small thrusters too cheap, or are standard-and-larger thrusters too expensive?

Personally, I like seeing fast and maneuverable ships, so I think that standard+ thrusters are too expensive/too weak. Slow, long-range ships will be getting buffs with the addition of new missiles, railguns, and ion prisms, and fighters/swarmers will be nerfed by the tractor beam. Nerfing engines as well could make fast ships unuseable.

Walt Or if that's not enough, making larger thrusters more cost efficient.

I would be in favor of this. It's a realistic change, and would make sense from a balance perspective. IMO doing this by increasing thrust is better than decreasing cost.

I also agree with NOP that lateral thrust should be normalized, either by removing lateral thrust from small thrusters (my personal preference) or adding 10% lateral to all thrusters.

nop Small thrusters have a "grid-ability" advantage that can not be ignored. This attribute can not be factored out -- it wouldn't make sense for all thrusters to have the same exclusion zone. Width is more valuable than height, but height is not free.

I disagree with this. Small thrusters are a lot harder to supply power to because of how sprawling they get when building inward-facing thrust boxes. They are also less space-efficient than all other thrusters (even counting exclusions zones).

Walt Great, looking forward to the next RC!

Hope you can track down that small thrusters bug

Walt Maybe consider toning down the buffs to large and huge thrusters if small thrusters are getting their power consumption nearly doubled (or keep the small thruster power consumption low).

Edit: on second thought, maybe not. It's still early