The problem with rockets....

[Arctic_fox]

So i dont normally try to write stuff like this as it can be....controversial at best and im sure at least one person will point out something i overlooked in their useage. However i really dont see much talking about rockets in general, and i would like to at least open the discussion. More to the point how bad in general rockets are.

 

I will post a <TLDR> at the bottom for those who dont want to slog through my wall-o-text.

 

Now dont misunderstand me. Rockets can be and are useful in many cases. However these cases are virtually all situational and limited and would have been better served in other ways. The main problems with them are that they are underpowered, overpriced and far too inefficient for what they offer. Now before i go on i want to preface this by saying i only have experince with L rockets and will thus be talking with them as my primary example for the sake of clarity.

 

First and formost lets discuss the fact i call them overpriced. What i mean by this is they are entirely invalidated by other elements such as AGGs and the fact you can just add more wings and engines to get a better effect. For example a L rocket will give about as much thrust as a single XL space engine and will do so for all of 15 seconds while using a very expensive fuel that uses TWO T2 materials from diffrent planets and requireing many times the amount of other engine options. I.E 12k for L space tanks or 24k for L atmo tanks vs 50k for L rocket tanks

 

This means you will easily burn several million worth of materials for about 15 seconds of thrust. Meanwhile that XL space engine will run off of a tank of space fuel for as much as an hour, more if you use a more efficent engine and/or have skills. Now i know you cant normally compare XL and L parts. However i use the XL engine to compare to a L rocket for a reason. Namely the material and time costs to build both are pretty compareable.

 

Even if you consider boosting out of the atmosphere with rockets instead of atmo engines. This doesnt matter when a few extra wings and an engine or two will get a very similar effect to a single L rocket and for far cheaper and for a far longer time.

 

Next is the fact rockets are for their cost to run highly underpowered. As i said before they directly compare to an XL engine in terms of resources and this even carries across to atmos and wings to a lesser extent (not individually but collectivly to be clear) Combined with the expensive fuel and the fact AGGs are a thing....rockets are very bad at what they do. Even on small light constructs they at best can kick your direction over a bit at lower speeds and are only good for a few small bursts at best.

 

Even in pvp while they can give you an edge to either close with or outrun an enemy. In most cases it wont make a huge diffrence in the end as ships can simply warp away or if they are at max speed avoid most raiders to begin with. And if your so heavy you need multiple rockets to push, in most cases more engines would serve you better.

 

This is because no matter how you slice it, more engines will give you a similar level of power for less cost. About the only place rockets truely shine in this equation is that there is zero warmup for this power boost and their weight-thrust ratios. Though even that is mitigated by T2 engines and skills to a large degree.

 

Lastly is the inefficiency comment. Yes i know, rockets by their very nature are never going to be efficent. However when you get seconds of thrust from a rocket and that thrust is at best only a tiny bit better then a normal engine that can run for hours and ruinously expensive ontop of that....well it all adds up to a very grim picture for rockets in general.

 

For sure they do have their place in the game but in most cases that place is directly outshined by much better alternitives save in a few nich cases. This has lead to rockets being fairly uncommon and likely to get even rarer as people learn they can get better results for less effort and cost elsewhere. Even with the upcoming AGG and element nerfs i cant see rockets being any better with the state they currently are in.

 

<TLDR> Rockets are ruinously expensive, have too little thrust for that cost, and not enough burn time for the stupidly high amount of fuel they use. This makes them an inferior choice to just adding more/bigger normal engines and wings or even an AGG.

 

Now to fix this one of three things or some combination thereof needs to happen.

 

Option 1: Thrust needs to be boosted by a huge amount. Having rockets feel like ROCKETS and having massive boosts of power for short bursts would go a long way towards fixing them.

 

Option 2: Much longer burn times. Having a rocket able to burn for minutes at a time instead of seconds would help offset the frankly insane fuel cost to thrust ratio and make rockets more usable.

 

Option 3: Make fuel much cheaper. There are many ways to do this but making the fuel about on par with nitron or perhaps even cheaper to produce would make rockets viable as is. If the fuel is affordable then you can either add more rockets or burn them more often which makes them an attractive useable option.

 

As i said any one or combination of the above will help make them vastly more viable and useable. As they are now i would say they need a LOT of help. But im also sure i overlooked something and now look the fool, so feel free to correct me before you point then laugh. Or to add to the discussion if you happen to agree.

[Musclethorpe]

I wholeheartedly disagree with your assessment. The three medium rockets I run on my small core shuttle allow me to minimize the amount of engines and wings I need to incorporate into my design, as I don't want to have to build an abomination of those two elements (we've all seen them). For what I interpret as their intended purpose, they work perfectly. They give me that extra boost to break atmo when my ship is at or near load capacity, and for emergency maneuvers in either atmo or space. I would venture to say that they were never designed for regular use.

 

Now that I am a grade 4 rocket scientist across the board, they have become an even more effective ace-in-the-hole.

[Emptiness]

6 hours ago, Arctic_fox said:

15 seconds

A large rocket connected to a full large tank will fire for 84s with default skills. M rocket with M tank, 65s, and S rocket with S tank, 30s. Rocket engines can be connected to dissimilar tank sizes, too.

 

With even level 3 rocket fuel/booster skills, this changes to 99s for a large rocket + large tank, and with maxed skills (booster fuel tank handling and rocket fuel efficiency), one gets 168s of large rocket burn time.

 

Not sure where you got 15 seconds.

[Daphne Jones]

I've suggested before that NQ should add T1 "solid fuel" rockets that are very cheap and even less controllable than the existing T3 rockets. That would allow them to require rockets for getting to space - for example, if space engines had to be in vacuum to operate at all, transitioning from atmos directly to space would be too hard for most pilots. You would use T1 rockets to get out of atmo until you could afford T3 rockets.

 

But if T3 rockets are required, space flight would be too limited.

 

BTW, AGG is T4 compared to rockets at T3. Of course it has different and to some extent better capabilities. 

[Musclethorpe]

37 minutes ago, Daphne Jones said:

BTW, AGG is T4 compared to rockets at T3. Of course it has different and to some extent better capabilities. 

While both rockets and the AGG can be used to accomplish one type of goal, they don't do the same thing. Rockets can provide thrust in any direction, in any environment.

[Daphne Jones]

Just now, Musclethorpe said:

While both rockets and the AGG can be used to accomplish one type of goal, they don't do the same thing. Rockets can provide thrust in any direction, in any environment.

That's why "different" is first and unqualified in my statement.

[Haunty]

I think rockets are intended to be a niche item, they can help in min-maxing a ship build, I think people just don't know how or when to use them properly. They are an adjunct, not primary propulsion. I don't think comparing to XL space engine makes much sense, when rockets also work in atmo and are not a substitute for space propulsion.

 

I use rockets on cargo ships for emergency power (it has saved me from crashing a couple times), and aiding atmo to space transition with a heavy load. I don't add more atmo engines or airfoils because that would add mass and make my ship less efficient for the rest of the 95% of the time I am flying the ship. When I do fire my rocket to get out of atmo I only need to use 5-10% of the fuel tank capacity, depending on how overweight my ship is. And the rocket talents do make a difference when you combine them.
I have a 250t M core ship with 1 medium rocket engine, 1 large space engine and 2 large atmo engines, I recently used it to get off Thades with 900t additional cargo. I burned maybe 30,000 quanta worth of rocket fuel at market prices, or 10,000 ore value plus labor of crafting my own. Seemed worth it to me.

[HellToupe]

i use rockets for a warp shuttle to make it atmo capable for minimum weight works well, even with the bugspace engines don't work at all untill you are fully in space when you have no atmo elements, say for alioth you have to get to 6300ish meters before space engines activate.

[Musclethorpe]

21 hours ago, HellToupe said:

i use rockets for a warp shuttle to make it atmo capable for minimum weight works well, even with the bugspace engines don't work at all untill you are fully in space when you have no atmo elements, say for alioth you have to get to 6300ish meters before space engines activate.

Couldn't you just sneak in one XS atmo engine somewhere and circumvent this bug?

[GraXXoR]

Concrete is also T2. I’ve given up trying to reconcile all the ... stuff... chemistry that NQ come up with in this game. 
 

I’ve said from the outset that 

 

hover T1

atmo T1

rocket T2

space T3

 

Kergon type fuels (let’s call them K1-K4) should have been rocket fuel not space fuel and  X1-4 or even 8 or whatever Should have been Xeron and come in various tiers.  
 

that would make rockets more usable and much much cheaper and space engines more pricey to operate. 

[HellToupee]

On 11/18/2020 at 7:03 PM, Musclethorpe said:

Couldn't you just sneak in one XS atmo engine somewhere and circumvent this bug?

Yes, but stripped it off since even with bug it gets out of atmo easiy so stripped it off but guy called hdparm has apparntly found a way to fix it in lua which i have now but havnt tried. 

 

First time i counted it was in my space only M core when i got too close to planet and all my engines stopped despite being at 0% atmo, was panicking for a while untill i found attaching any atmo engine and tank enabled me to escape

[CptLoRes]

Rockets in NQ is the engine equivalent of cement being T2 while carbon and iron materials are T1.

 

The basic principle for a rocket egnine is orders of magnitude simpler then for example a jet engine, and orders of orders magnitude simpler then the fictional space engines in DU.

[GraXXoR]

On 11/19/2020 at 8:54 PM, CptLoRes said:

Rockets in NQ is the engine equivalent of cement being T2 while carbon and iron materials are T1.

 

The basic principle for a rocket egnine is orders of magnitude simpler then for example a jet engine, and orders of orders magnitude simpler then the fictional space engines in DU.

My thoughts exactly.