Thruster Balancing

[PandaPants200]

I am posting this here instead of on the discord because I feel it would be better to have longer responses.

My main reason for posting this is one question. Why have thrusters been reworked? At least right now I feel that this change has broken a lot of ships and it will be a hard thing to move on from after months of the old thrusters. I liked that box thrusters and triangle thrusters provided a simple trade-off between power and propellant consumption while maneuver thrusters mostly consumed propellant.

Im probably not the only one who is a little confused about where these changes came from/why a rebalance was required so I was hoping for some more information.

 

[CalenLoki]

I could see several reasons for the balance pass:
1. Make supply routes more important
2. Make ship prop storage more important part of ship design. Before prop/rods were too small parts to be even considered as balance factors
3. Make manoeuvring thrusters less OP. They used to have 2x better thrust to mass ratio than other thrusters. And only after ~10h the mass of prop and rods would balance them out with others. Now they level with others after only 2h.
4. To bring more of thrust-related mass inside. Which naturally promote bigger ships, as they have higher volume to surface ratio.
5. To bring thrusters power usage closer to other ship devices (weapons/tools).

Also some math to back up my words.
Bright green is thrust to mass over time compared to box thruster (including mass of used prop tanks and fuel rods)
Higher % -> better
Dark green is the cost of 1000 thrust compared to box thruster
Lower % -> better

Fact that some of current ships stopped working is absolutely irrelevant. Alpha is mean for such rapid balance passes, so they aren't needed when public get their hands on the game.
I wish that in the future balance passes will never change more than 10% of value each time.

 

[PandaPants200]

So this was done all at once because the plasma thrusters make big ships more viable anyway?

 

[Cavilier210]

Sort of. I think the main issue was to make sure there was a reason to have more mass and fuel space needed. Which then slows down those fighters that are driving a lot of us now. As well as making them bigger.

 

[PandaPants200]

More strategic use of light fighters because they can't have as much dakka.

 

[Verbatos]

I think it would be good to limit small, heavy fighters a little, from what I can tell they can be pretty dominant.