Talk:Thruster

Thruster values have changed. Based on the data, my hunch is that the reason is to effect a cost/benefit tradeoff between large and small thrusters. In the past, there was no noticeable difference between the two... so the choice was purely aesthetic aside from the ease of positioning numerous smaller thrusters. Since large thrusters cost a significant amount of additional resources as compared to small thrusters, and take up more space... it only makes sense that they should provide a more desirable thrust/weight ratio. Since the changes were made, that is now true... so even given the large size, awkwardness of placing them, and additional resources... for a ship looking to make every kg count, large thrusters are the way to go. I've completed a number of tests and calculations for large-ship thrusters, and will be changing the numbers accordingly. I will try to upload my data at some point, in case anyone wants to verify my numbers. -impyre

Also worth mentioning: I haven't been able to pin down a formula or good estimate for dampening thrusters, still working on it. Also, dampening thrusters provide variable force below a certain velocity AND their force seems to be affected by the number of thrusters or ship mass. More experimentation is need to determine the nature of the relationship, although the data I have suggests that adding more thrusters reduces the force provided by each, but the reduction doesn't scale linearly with the number of thrusters or change in weight. -impyre —The preceeding unsigned comment was added by User:impyre (talk • contribs).

I went by the numbers in the .sbc files. So if the values changed you can compare this Small Thruster and Large Thruster to the cubeblocks.sbc file itself. Also, sign your additions on talk pages with four tilde's (~). --Draygo (talk) 00:38, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

I added info on thruster damage distances. The small ship/small thruster distance of 5 is from my testing with dampeners. All other numbers from this thread. -fungol

XYZ Plane

^^ Not a thing Epic Wink (talk) 04:44, 3 October 2014 (UTC)

Yeah, I was coming here to ask about that... what is "in a direction parallel to the XYZ plane" supposed to mean? It makes it sound like ramming into another ship takes you out of three-dimensional space, or something. --timrem (talk) 22:29, 30 January 2015 (UTC)

Gravity, thrust and equations

So I've corrected the lift vs engine thrust equations after the graph. The numbers should now all line up.

As for the graph, I'm very interested to know where the data comes from. Are they modelling gravity as constant until you hit 20 km and then it falls off linearly? Is there some data we can quote to support this? Normally gravity will fall off the farther away from the surface you are, according to F=Gmm/r^2. I also have no idea where the data from "Force Available" comes from. Jarod997 (talk) 17:33, 28 January 2016 (UTC)

Ok, I see, the Force Available curve is a summary on each of the three Thruster "curves". Jarod997 (talk) 18:11, 28 January 2016 (UTC)

The graph comes from the user AlchemicalAgent. "The graph by itself is misleading since it's based off calculations for a particular ship. As is, it needs a link to the spreadsheet to actually mean anything. I can produce a standalone graph for each thruster type sometime tomorrow but won't have time today." - Is the last conversation I had with the user. I haven't had time to double check the numbers, if they're still off, the graph may need to be replaced at some point with slightly more accuracy, or a model that can be presented here on the wiki. --Sapphire (talk) 03:33, 29 January 2016 (UTC)

Did anything come with producing another graph? I had used this graph last year to get a general idea of where how the thrusters performed (disregarding the extraneous bits), and was wondering where it went and wanted to bring it back. Hence an undo and another undo of my own undo after reading this bit here. I actually have a graph I spit out in gsheets after copy/pasting the table within the wiki so I could get a visualization, though it's just the raw data in graph form and not the extrapolated info. --Vinadir (talk) 07:13, 21 July 2017 (UTC)

Thrust, Fuel and Efficiency values

When talking about Thrust kN is probably the best unit to use. And in terms of electricity usage, kW is again likely the best. But if we're talking hydrogen thrusters, then kl is probably preferable to keep our units in line. Otherwise we end up talking about kilonewtons per litre of hydrogen, which while it's correct in its use of units has a more difficult time in it's comparison between kilowatts.

As an example, Small Ship - Small Hydrogen Thruster has a value (on the page) of 0.0597 kN/H. If we convert this to kN/kl then the number becomes ... oh hold on. The title of the column says "Fuel to Thrust" and then the ratio is given in thrust to fuel. THAT's why the numbers look screwed up. Ya, the the number becomes 0.000 059 7 (if we group the digits in 3's). Which SEEMS worse, but if you flip it the right way around, so fuel is on top, we get 16,750 kN/kl. I'm going to clean up the table a bit, but for the moment, I'll leave values as-is (no converting to kl). If there's some consensus, the I'll change the numbers to use kl.

BTW, I'm assuming that "H" stands for some volumetric measurement of gaseous Hydrogen - which again I'm assuming is in litres. Jarod997 (talk) 18:34, 12 February 2016 (UTC)

After some looking and figuring, I've discovered the following:

• "H" is litres of Hydrogen
• Mass to Thrust title is/was backwards
• Size to Thrust title is/was backwards (also changed to volume, as "size" is a little ambiguous)
• Fuel to Thrust units and numbers are inverted - they're currently displaying Thrust to Fuel
• Kilolitres while being "metrically" correct doesn't make sense much in the game as volumes are measured in litres
• Fuel consumption for Hydrogen shows litres per hour, not litres per second

Fuel Consumption, imho, would be better represented by kg/m and l/m (minutes), then everything is on a more level playing field. Jarod997 (talk) 21:58, 12 February 2016 (UTC)

As far as what "h" stands for it always was ambiguous, it should be litres but oxygen/hydrogen mechanics have always been somewhat strange. It's the reason why it remains "h", simply put you get 9 H from every 1 kg of Ice which simply made no sense to a lot of people - so it remained a mysterious "H". The titles are yes all backwards, since the table was made in a spreadsheet and the labels were added on the fly. The reason why it's size is because the object itself doesn't take up all of the space it occupies - and it's not measuring the actual volume of an 'engine' merely it's placement box, perhaps an asterisk explaining that size refers to placement box should be included? On the fuel consumption being over an hour, I know the sbc file says 'MWh/litres' but it's wrong - test it out yourself, the same reason why people are confused about the whole H=litres thing. The reason why Fuel consumption is as it is, was because simply it makes stuff to calculate like full tanks of hydrogen vs engine size easy to figure out (for eg: Small Hydro tank capacity / small ship large hydro thruster fuel consumption at full thrust == 40000 / 514.1 == 77.80 seconds). People tend to work with the "h" anyway instead of simply seconds/minutes/hours, although that definitely is better for readablity as really this was entirely lifted from a spreadsheet that is being used to design ships. Thanks for spotting those titles (i'll change that right now actually >.< ) and the litres thing, atm idk how to actually translate the 'gas units' into real world equivalents even litres doesn't really make sense and I never liked using "O"/"O2" and "H" - feel free to ask any more questions though Westeastnorth (talk) 18:03, 13 February 2016 (UTC)

Hydrogen Thruster

The information on this page contradicts itself: the graph under "Effectiveness In Natural Gravity" shows that hydrogen thrusters don't work at all on planets, while the text states that "Their effectiveness is entirely unaffected by the presence of planetary atmospheres, being equally effective everywhere.". So, what's true? Either the graph or the text should be changed. --Master Lenman (talk) 18:57, 10 April 2016 (UTC)

Thruster Damage

The table shows that the damage large blocks is 5 however I count there to be a 6 block gap between he end of the thruster and the green zone. Would like someone to confirm which is correct. Lovebird1238 (talk) 15:18, 25 February 2018 (UTC)

Consolidation

I was trying to clean up the links to all the different thrusters, and noticed for each thruster type there are two articles (one large and one small) with mostly identical content. Will anyone complain if I create a single article with subsections for size? (i.e. "Ion Thrusters" with "Large Thruster" and "Small Thruster") --Tyroney (talk) 18:13, 9 July 2018 (UTC)

Ok, I've spent more time looking over all the related pages, and most of my confusion came from the single redirect from Atmospheric thruster leading to the Thruster page, while other generic links I found pointed to their respective small thruster page. So eventually I'll probably collect all of those and edit them to point to Thruster:subsection, and leave the separate large/small pages alone. --Tyroney (talk) 19:37, 16 July 2018 (UTC)