Space only vessel and no adjustors?

[Verliezer]

Is it possible to create a space only ship and use maneuver engines to control the vessel (turn, etc).  Or is it that adjustors are the only way to control the vessel?

[Haunty]

Normal engines do have a setting to enable torque but I've never played with it, so maybe?

[Msoul]

Engines can produce both torque (used to rotate your construct) and force (used to move your construct), whereas adjustors exclusively produce torque. Thus it is currently possible to create a ship that utilizes engines in place of adjustors. This is sometimes used on bigger ships since they need large amounts of torque and we do not currently have an XL adjustor. With that said, please keep in mind the following points.

1. Engines have significant fuel costs while adjustors are cost free.
2. Engines have a warmup-time which causes a delay before activating (increases with engine size).
3. Since engines produce force, you need to ensure that you balance your rotational engines to cancel out translational forces. Failure to do this will cause your construct to also move while rotating, which makes flying really complicated. Adjustors are not sensitive to this and any imbalance just means you spend more time turning one way than the other.
4. Engines are auto-configured for directional movement control using the keys W, Alt+A, S, Alt+D, space and C corresponding to forward, left, backward, right, up, and down respectively. In order to utilize an engine for rotation you will need to first right click it (while in buildmode) and enable torque. Then modify the engine tags to mirror adjustors (with the appropriate lateral/vertical/longitudinal tag based on orientation). This should allow you to use the standard controls but you can also create your own control scheme by giving the engine a custom tag and then activating it using "unit.setEngineThrust(tag, power)" in the lua code.