INFO & FEEDBACK [A11] Thrusters: Progression Rebalancing

Discussion in 'FAQ & Feedback' started by Hummel-o-War, Oct 23, 2019.

  1. Hummel-o-War

    Hummel-o-War Administrator Staff Member Community Manager

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    Goal: bring ALL thrusters into a consistent progression. A larger thruster should not only put out more thrust, but also be more effiecient than a summary of its smaller pendants in the same block-amount.

    Example: If you stack two S Thrusters you should not get more Thrust than using a single M Thruster.

    Of course this has a few other tradeoffs, but in general, with the current updated balancing, any larger thruster or one of a higher tier is more efficient in thrust per..
    - block
    - mass
    - PU
    ..and others (see overviews below)

    This is especially true for the SV JET thrusters, which were totally the other way round for too long.

    Note: The goal was to bring all the thrusters in a PROGRESSION LINE. The goal or question to answer has NOT YET been, if the thrusters are too strong, too heavy or such! Especially the SV Jets have gained a lot of additional Thrust...but also got heavier, cost more PU and CPU (which relate to the thrust power)

    > The question if a Thruster is too strong, heavy, whatever..will be hopefully be one of the topics you might want to discuss in this thread, as we hear a lot that the Thrusters themselves are way too overpowered in terms of even the S-Thrusters have too strong lifiting powers.

    But also note: if we change any performance parameter of a thruster now, this will affect ALL the other thrusters. Otherwise we would break the newly created progression again. (Alternatives is of course to add more thruster tiers)

    Said that, please have a look at the A10.5 (old), A11 (new) and Comparison charts.

    Looking forward to your thoughts! :)

    - Christoph / Hummel
     
    #1
    Last edited: Nov 17, 2019
  2. Hummel-o-War

    Hummel-o-War Administrator Staff Member Community Manager

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    A 10.5 values (old) [Disregard the CPU values as until A11 they did not have had any meaning]
    Thrusters_v105.jpg

    A11 values (new)
    Thrusters_v106.jpg

    Comparison
    Thrusters_Comparison.jpg
     
    #2
    Last edited: Nov 17, 2019
  3. Myrmidon

    Myrmidon Rear Admiral

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    So players can build ships with external blocks for armor intarnal blocks all in carbon blocks that are lighter, or all blocks in carbon blocks and rely on shilds to compensate incoming damage.

    Example :
    Player uses console commands to change the block type from combat steel to carbon composite blocks, for example and bingo, vessel is super light and ammount of thrusters and rest functional blocks remain cpu limit friendly. But total number of polygons remain the same and thus performance/lag on multiplayer games. Extra : Artificial mass blocks now useless (mostly).

    I guess when you talk about performance you refer to game performance in general and not vessel performance agility, weight lift etc.

    Finally I like the idea that thrusters get proper rework towards balance.
     
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  4. Porter21

    Porter21 Ensign

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    Possibly a dumb question, but just want to make sure my assumption is correct: In your second chart, the two numbers in the CPU column below the HV, SV and CV sections represent the max amount of CPU per vessel type at minimum and maximum tier?

    I'm asking because if the second number is not the upgradable max, you'd have a couple of thrusters exceeding the CPU limit :)

    Either way, rebalancing the HV and SV thrusters to have a meaningful progression is certainly a welcome change :) The larger SV thrusters especially were rather underpowered compared to their size.
     
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  5. Taelyn

    Taelyn Guest

    The first number is Tier 1 (the first tier) the second number is Tier 4 (the last tier)
     
    #5
  6. dpburke2

    dpburke2 Captain

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    If I read that right, looks like we may be getting a tier 2 version of the M thrusters for SV as well as perhaps getting a SV equivalent of the L thrusters from HV as well, both tier 1 and 2 versions.
     
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  7. Hummel-o-War

    Hummel-o-War Administrator Staff Member Community Manager

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    Finally someone noticed it. Congratz! :D
     
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  8. StyleBBQ

    StyleBBQ Captain

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    Nice to see this thread.

    Not trying to be a Debbie downer, but. Until variable thrust is implemented there will still be a huge incentive to use many smaller thrusters vs. larger ones.

    Especially for any CV/SVs that are designed to haul significant mass.
    Last SV I built wound up with 14 Thruster Jets for lift, 6e other 5 dirs. But only ran 3 lift and 1 dir of them when empty. Huge fuel savings.

    Bit I'm curious about is power to thrust. I've thought for a quite a while that you guys were interested in more power sinks, so fuel would be more important overall. Just my assumption of course, but if that is the case then curious why not use this balance pass to adhere to what a Newton means?
    1 Newton moves 1 kilogram at 1 meter per second and consumes 1 Watt doing so.

    And since, at least in rl, we can't get perfect conversion, thrust should likely be constrained to something like 60% to 93% efficiency per Watt.

    Ideally, at least imho, thrusters would have an efficiency curve, so a large thruster might have only 60% efficiency when running at 20% capacity (ship is empty), but ramp up to >80% efficiency as it approached capacity (max thrust).

    That would wind up supporting use of 'smallest possible' thrusters as they would be running closer to capacity and thus more efficient.
    This is based on an assumption, I haven't run the math, but from the charts it looks like, ignoring material cost, larger thrusters are always better.

    Honestly not intending to be a pain here, but this looks a lot like the beginning of Mass & Volume. And I really believe that normalizing & rationalizing the system as a whole, right out of the gate, will be very useful down the road.
     
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  9. idx64

    idx64 Lieutenant

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    Just wait and try. My current SV looks like a Christmas tree with 24 M thrusters, to load 5 tons. I hope to consider in the future incorporate rotary thrusters. Regards.-
     
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  10. Kassonnade

    Kassonnade Rear Admiral

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    Want it or not, I hardly see how we can explore/ repair/ maintain anything without spending our time hauling "significant mass".

    I wouldn't want to replace the crazy eating schedule we had some time ago (eat 3 dinos to live 4 hours) for a crazy fuel consumption that would force players to spend half their game time searching, mining and refining promethium.
     
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  11. StyleBBQ

    StyleBBQ Captain

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    1) meant the difference between say a light scout SV and an SV that can haul a few hundred tons.

    2) Me either @Kassonnade :)

    It ties into the current issue with wacky masses. Not just masss from thin air, but also how much _should_ things weigh?
    Since Newtons tie Mass to Power (or at least they do in the rw), getting rid of magic efficiencies could help normalize masses.
    Get them all working together in a coherent manner and a 'scout SV' won't guzzle fuel, nor would an unladen 'hauler'. But a fully loaded CV Hauler would be a heavy consumer going to and from a gravity well, yet in space fuel consumption wouldn't really be an issue.

    I guess, basically, I'm just harping on about getting a fully rational, and consistent system -first-, then if/as needed, allow for special cases to fully support fun gameplay. HV hover engines come to mind; I'd rather not see those adhere to 1W per Newton. Likewise Prom & Pentax; those are fictional so even if they may be more powerful than uranium (can't recall), at least they're not dylithium crystals, heh.
     
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  12. Kassonnade

    Kassonnade Rear Admiral

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    Exactly. As long as devices and blocks masses are not properly set, the CPU system "adjustments" will need another pass if/ when masses are fixed. It's not a big deal though.
     
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  13. Safeara

    Safeara Ensign

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    So if I understand the above the Jet-L on 10.6 has a CPU value of 4,681. But I thought there was going to be a max CPU value of 7500 per vessel. Is there any expectations on CPU limits for all tiers? I just don't see how any larger builds will make these CPU limits. The above CPU for 1 engine is already well over half of the CPU cap.

    For US peeps overseas use period (.) instead of a comma ( ,) for the 000 divider. So 4.681 is 4,681 four thousand six hundred and eighty one.
     
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  14. @Safeara, according to the charts above and the post from Taelyn, SV T1 is 6,000 max CPU and T4 max CPU is 48,000.
    You still have room to use them. I'm also sure we are going to see a lot of adjustment going on to the numbers as this plays out.

    I do see some issues in the numbers though, but have to wait to see the whole package before making any kind of determination.

    For example,
    The largest CV thruster is 533,600 CPU for one thruster. The max CPU for a T4 CV core is 1,600,000 CPU.
    So if you use just one of these XL thrusters you are using up almost 1/3rd of the whole CPU of a T4 core. After adding the other smaller thrusters and RCS, is there even any CPU left for other devices like constructors and storage?
    As I said, I need to see the whole package before I can make determinations.
    It looks like there might need to be changes to a some of the numbers though.
     
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    Last edited by a moderator: Oct 24, 2019
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  15. Safeara

    Safeara Ensign

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    Thanks Krazzykidd2006 for clarifying.
    Out of the gate I think the numbers need to come up or make it optional for servers like they do with class size.
     
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  16. Taelyn

    Taelyn Guest

    In the Public build CPU can be turned off :)

    Just not in the EXP
     
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  17. Combat Wombat

    Combat Wombat Captain

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    IMO SV thrusters are already overpowered. There shouldn't be SVs the size of CVs possible it eliminates any reason for one or the other to exist.

    Lets pick a max size for a SV and talk about how thrusters should be balanced from there. Until then its a meaningless discussion because we have nothing to balance them against as a goal. Everyones always going to have their own idea what a reasonable SV is and the thread is just gonna be a shitshow of peoples feelings.

    Something I have never been able to figure out. What is the purpose to the jet thrusters? Clearly they were intended to be mechanically different from the block thrusters but until what that is supposed to be is revealed its hard to say whether there is proper balance there or not.
     
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  18. Ian Einman

    Ian Einman Captain

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    Unless I misinterpreted what I saw, the recent video that showed the new 10.6 stuff had variable thrust in it. So I think by the time this is released the problem is solved.

    I think this is the best change in 10.6, I always hated having to design everything using lots of the small thruster jets. I have some designs where I have larger ones but they were just for looks, they were not actually the main source of the thrust.

    This was a sorely needed overhaul. But please tell us you did not forget about the RCS. I built an SV, of the "walk in" kind, once that had 300 RCS in it. Clearly that will be impossible now due to CPU. But we really need a T2 RCS for SV!
     
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  19. Jodah175

    Jodah175 Ensign

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    Does no one look at these numbers and see the problem? 2 XL thrusters = max cpu. before adding in generators, fuel tanks, rcs, and other ancillary equipment. plus block cpu. Who looked at these numbers and said "yeah, these should work". They're not even remotely close.

    Please, sit down. actually BUILD a few ships, and then see where you end up. It seems as though you're not remotely looking at the whole picture of what a ship is, and what most people want in a ship.

    I await seeing what you folks come up with, but right now, this cpu thing is a fire and you continually add gas to it.
     
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  20. dpburke2

    dpburke2 Captain

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    Interesting. Just realized this evening that the Jet-L puts out just 1 MN less than the CV ThrusterMSDirectional and yet almost 1/10th the mass of the CV thruster, if I am reading that correctly. The Jet-XL and XXL actually put out more newtons it seems that the small CV thruster. Looks like the large Jets might actually make great lifters for SVs built to carry cargo / HVs.

    [edit]

    With how power hungry those L - XXL jets are, my wishlist will be a T2 fuel tank for SV.
     
    #20
    Last edited: Oct 26, 2019
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