Notification About Upcoming Patch: Major balance update on thruster resource consumption and rail cannon power usage

[ElluFB]

Notification About Upcoming Patch: Major balance update on thruster resource consumption and rail cannon power usage

In an upcoming patch, there will be some major updates to the thruster resource consumption and rail cannon power usage. It is recommended that you check all your ship designs to see if they will be functional after these changes, and leave some buffer for electricity production.

Updated values:

Thrusters

Box Thruster

• Electricity Consumption from 140 to 210
• Propellant Consumption from 23,3 to 49,54

Triangle Thruster

• Electricity Consumption from 17,5 to 123
• Propellant Consumption from 35 to 41,28

Maneuver Thruster

• Electricity Consumption from 5 to 40
• Propellant Consumption from 11,7 to 23,3
• Thrust Power from 50,000 to 40,000

Weapons

Rail Cannon

• Charge up maintenance cost from 505 to 1501

Ships available in the ship shops should be checked and updated if necessary to adapt to the updated values. More information about the patch will be released later with the patch notes!

 

[Mr. Extinct]

OH DEAR GOD THESE NERFS

 

[Okim]

OMG... Okay.

So, box thruster is now completelly useless? It loses it's only advantage of consuming less propellant...

 

[SomeoneLucas]

I'll just put the resource consumption per 10k thrust here:

Box Thruster

• Electricity Consumption from 2.8 to 4.2
• Propellant Consumption from 0.466 to 0.9908

Triangle Thruster

• Electricity Consumption from 0.5833 to 4.1
• Propellant Consumption from 1.1666 to 1.376

Maneuver Thruster

• Electricity Consumption from 1 to 10
• Propellant Consumption from 2.34 to 5.825

 

[Cavilier210]

I guess I don't understand why. Like the RC I can get, but the thrusters?

 

[Mutleyx]

Urgh... It would be really cool if these changes were also offset by scaling the resource usage by activity - so that if a thruster is only at 20% thrust, it only consumes 20% resource. It is quite common for the FCU to be firing all thrusters at once to balance the ship, and having them all using full power use feels... unfair.

 

[CalenLoki]

I guess I don't understand why. Like the RC I can get, but the thrusters?

To slowly shift the bulk of stuff that pushes your ship forward from rear surface (thrusters) to interior (gens, fuel rods and tanks).
That helps large ships.

Also to make ship flight range more of a concern for designers.
Also to boost the importance of static infrastructure (refueling stations)

 

[FatFly]

Now, all exploration plans and missions are busted... Less speed, less range. I can understand if this is just temporary solution to limit players in smaller area to test combat, weapons, PvP in general, but considering that safe zone is quite huge, I see no point.

 

[kiiyo]

Railguns now eat like 11k, if you shoot them right after charging

Guess I'll have to tweak my fighter to only have like 6 of them :c. Rip railguns number 7 through 10 I guess.

 

[Geronimo553]

oh joy "even more" generator spam is required now. joy oh joy.... -_-

 

[MyrddinE]

I know everyone is lamenting the power consumption gains, but I know 'better power generation' is on the menu, so I'm not terribly worried. We'll have a few months of nerfed exploration, but I think it'll balance out in the end.

 

[FatFly]

Fair enough. Nerfing actual thrusters to emphasize the benefits of new thrusters or generators coming soon is totally oke. Still, propellant tanks are just too big already to validate that change. Imo it is mainly to limit the range of vessels, which I find strange. What would be the benefit? More dense PvP area? Sure, works too, but then shrink the safe zones to encompass only the stations, so traveling around becomes more challenging.

 

[Meboy1000]

man, this is lame, I can barely get anything with more than a few hours flight time, laaaaaame

 

[FatFly]

Box Thruster

• Electricity Consumption from 2.8 to 4.2
• Propellant Consumption from 0.466 to 0.9908

Triangle Thruster

• Electricity Consumption from 0.5833 to 4.1
• Propellant Consumption from 1.1666 to 1.376

I see no balance here. Can't find the logic behind it

 

[Cavilier210]

To slowly shift the bulk of stuff that pushes your ship forward from rear surface (thrusters) to interior (gens, fuel rods and tanks).
That helps large ships.

Also to make ship flight range more of a concern for designers.
Also to boost the importance of static infrastructure (refueling stations)

I can understand that. Though a thrust increase would have been nice in that case lol. I have a standard generator pack that spits out 18000 eps at max. Its served well so far. It actually a lot more than I need, so I guess it only affects me in fuel. Which prop use did need an increase to be fair

To those worried about too many thrusters on unnecessarily, you can change that with YOLOL.

 

[XenoCow]

I think that in the context of the current ships all small compared to the future scale, this makes sense. I'm going to wait and see how this actually pans out.

 

[CalenLoki]

I'll just put the resource consumption per 10k thrust here:

Box Thruster

• Electricity Consumption from 2.8 to 4.2
• Propellant Consumption from 0.466 to 0.9908

Triangle Thruster

• Electricity Consumption from 0.5833 to 4.1
• Propellant Consumption from 1.1666 to 1.376

Maneuver Thruster

• Electricity Consumption from 1 to 10
• Propellant Consumption from 2.34 to 5.825

I think that's showing the changes better than raw numbers. Even better, if you add mass to the equation (per 10k thrust)

Box 389
Triangle 393
Manoeuvring 257

As you can see triangle is 2x more mass efficient than box. So despite using 40% more propellant. That's a massive advantage for triangle for short range ships.

Manoeuvring thrusters feel much weaker than I though. I through it was lighter, but after checking in game they aren't.

I made a mistake in the editor, causing triangles to show 2x lighter than they were.
Ok, tris are officially shit

 

[[QS] Combustible]

Urgh... It would be really cool if these changes were also offset by scaling the resource usage by activity - so that if a thruster is only at 20% thrust, it only consumes 20% resource. It is quite common for the FCU to be firing all thrusters at once to balance the ship, and having them all using full power use feels... unfair.

Absolutely, this needs to be added

 

[Senkii]

Noice, I like

And yea, Mutley's suggestion is kinda true, having thrusters not use (nearly?) full resources at basically no thrust would be pretty neat ^^

 

[ElluFB]

We have decided to do the changes more gradually to give the community a bit more time to adapt, so the changes in the thruster resource consumption values mentioned in the post will not come with the next patch. So while the patch will bring minor differences at decimal levels due to gas/power converters doing their job and resource usage rates working as intended, the values are not going to change as drastically as noted before. The thruster configurations have been refactored to support the upcoming Plasma thruster.

The changes in values noted in the post are coming at later date, but the exact values will still be fine tuned for the actual patch. Sorry for to confusion this has caused. We will provide more information again once the patches and changes are due to arrive.