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Do rockets still have a major purpose?


Jinxed

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With the advent of Rare Engines that can double the power to weight ratio of engines while halving fuel consumption, I realised that I can pretty much get about the same additional space thrust "permanently" for any specific weight compared to adding a rocket engine with anything other than a trivial supply of fuel.

For example while a 500kN small rocket is fairly light, with a medium tank of fuel to give it a few minutes of thrust you're adding 4T for the tank and 3T for the fuel.

A 500kN Rare Freight Medium engine weighs only 2T, though, so you could pack FOUR of them in for about the same weight.

You could go for a much cheaper Advanced freight engine and still come in under 2.5T per engine (so get 3 of them) and still use 40% less fuel than a regular space engine which comes in at less than 1% of the fuel consumption of a rocket!

Admittedly the weight disappears when fuel is consumed but the tank itself still weighs 4T and is not discardable and anyway, if you're using rockets to power heavy vehicles, then losing a few tonnes doesn't make much difference.


Even the case for rear cross section doesn't really bode well since the nozzles of rockets are quite large anyway and we can no longer stack them and rocket tanks take up a lot of volume compared to regular fuel tanks for the same number of L especially if you have skilled up since rocket fuel tanks' level-up capacity bonuses are crippled compared to regular tanks' bonuses (half the bonus for significantly higher XP cost).
 

Besides dragsters and a bit of fun or other edge cases, is there anyone here who uses rockets on a regular basis?

personally, I use them with light warp shuttles to boost away from the planet as quickly as possible, but I could likely get much the same effect with a single extra medium freight engine.

 

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Rockets need some love imo. Probably need dbl the current thrust, and half the consumption rate.  But tbh I think it would have been WAY better if space engines didn't turn on until you actually out in space, not the 3.5km above surface area. If would lead to more interesting gameplay.  And a usefulness to Rockets. Either use a slow AGG or use Rockets to punch up into space to turn your space engines on. Missed opportunity by NQ.

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I would love to use rockets on my ships for a boost between atmospheric engines and space engines but they made burning up too sensitive during exit and re-entry you pretty much have to risk breaking something during these transitions no matter how careful you are. Another big issue with them is the fuel is heavy and expensive and the duration is way too short. They would also be good to use as a rapid way of slowing down but the performance is short and weight makes it not worth it in my opinion. 

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Rockets are still nice for instant power. Lots of fun and can be used in emergency situations. Also you can design a hauler that has rockets to get it out of alioth if overloaded. This keeps weight down vs adding more engines you don't usually need.

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Ran some tests today adding 2 L rockets (connected to 2 L tanks) to a space only ship.  Timing 0-29,999 km/hr was only a couple seconds faster with the rockets, so yeah, needs some attention, completely worthless (at least in space).

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Just look at the laughable DELTA-V in the ship design tab.

2 x L Engines with 2 x M fuel tanks Delta V 315 km/s

2 x M Rockets with 2 x M fuel tanks Delta V 900 m/s

So basically; without rockets total Delta V = 315.0 kps

WITH rockets, total Delta V = 315.9 kps

AND you have to carry the weight of all that rocket fuel, those heavy tanks and the two rocket engines along with you unless you want to use them immediately on takeoff at which point you're "only" left with the tanks and engines themselves.

 

So Ironically if you remove the two rockets and their tanks, the Delta V goes up to 317! You can go further without rockets than with. LOL.


I used to add them to all my ships in the early days of warping because they got you out of planetary warp lock about 30 seconds (from Madis/Thades) or a minute (from Alioth/Sanc) quicker than without them and you could lift off and reach your warp engines' jump point destination within about 60 seconds if you really pushed the envelope out of atmosphere.
So reducing 2 minutes to 1 minute is a decent 50% time saving..,


But now, with the PVP murder-hobo placating requirements for a complete stop, followed by the "15 degrees an hour" (thanks Bob!) slow-as-a-Flat-Earther turn towards the destination culminating in a 15 second "spool up" and the super slowdown of the warp engine travel itself, it takes 4 or 5 minutes to reach a destination from lift off, making shaving a mere 30 seconds almost pointless.

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