A problem H2 and petroleum engine have

[sakura_sk]

I still find it weird that the large petroleum engine and the hydrogen engine don't have a build-in fuel tank like any other engine in the DLC. That difference makes a CO2 engine the most efficient comparing its height to any other engine. Not having a fuel tank, makes these two late game engines lack even more than the early sucrose engine.

I'm a fan of the CO2 engine and I don't see any reason to nerf it but I think petroleum and hydrogen engines could use a boost to make them more reasonable and worth of the investment.

Height efficiency: the amount of remaining workable height to add modules divided by the total height the engine provides

  

If the petroleum and the hydrogen engine got a build-in fuel tank, meaning 28 workable height tiles, they would have 80% of their height utilized, like the CO2 engine has.

[NeoDeusMachina]

2 hours ago, sakura_sk said:

Height efficiency: the amount of remaining workable height to add modules divided by the total height the engine provides

I think you should add a spacefarer module+nosecone to each rocket before doing the maths, you can't go anywhere without that. Suddenly, the CO2 engine doesn't have that many height left to work with, especially if using the large spacefarer module.

I am not sure the efficiency as you defined is the best indicator to compare the engines. There are things you just cannot do with the CO2 engine (same for the sucrose engine). For example, mining most of the space POI, sending long term colonization rockets with livable quarters for multiple dupes, add even more fuel for longer range, stack a lot of modules, etc.

There is a need to consider more than a single metric before rebalancing things I believe.

[sakura_sk]

10 minutes ago, NeoDeusMachina said:

There are things you just cannot do with the CO2 engine (same for the sucrose engine).

There are the other 3 engines that are better than petroleum or hydrogen though. I don't expect a CO2 engine to do everything but I think petroleum and hydrogen can do better than that. The only reason these two engines need to be this big is because they don't have that extra in-build fuel tank.

No, it's not only height, but it could fix several other aspects, like the speed of these engines. The renewable fuel resource for CO2, steam and radbolts make the other 4 engines (for me..) less desirable to use. Yes, sucrose, petroleum, hydrogen and oxylite/lox are also renewable but after you build the infrastructure for that. There is no problem building up to them but there should be more gain from that than just more modules to stack I think. 

(*some more info of the modules/speed)

[AndreyKl]

10 hours ago, sakura_sk said:

No, it's not only height, but it could fix several other aspects, like the speed of these engines.

I find the issue to be not in height (doesn't really matter to me besides convenience of placement), but in fuel/engine efficiency.

Basically if I want to transport couple dupes from one location to another, lets say 4 tiles away, a petroleum rocket will be way too expensive. CO2 rocket will use 100kg of CO2 - simple to set up bog standard CO2, steam rocket will use same mass (admittedly too slow as a dupe transport), but small petroleum one suddenly will require 300kg of fuel plus oxidizer.

While price of 300Kg renewable petroleum is negligible overall, it still requires infrastructure on top of that, needs oxidizer and is still slower that CO2, so converting petroleum to CO2 (300Kg to 75kg CO2 plus 112,5kg pwater, plus saving on oxidizer) is preferable most of the time for me when I don't need larger range or module count.

P.S. A 'tiny petroleum engine' if that's a copy of CO2 engine, plus a bit of range would be really nice.

[NeoDeusMachina]

51 minutes ago, AndreyKl said:

I find the issue to be not in height (doesn't really matter to me besides convenience of placement), but in fuel/engine efficiency.

Basically if I want to transport couple dupes from one location to another, lets say 4 tiles away, a petroleum rocket will be way too expensive. CO2 rocket will use 100kg of CO2 - simple to set up bog standard CO2, steam rocket will use same mass (admittedly too slow as a dupe transport), but small petroleum one suddenly will require 300kg of fuel plus oxidizer.

While price of 300Kg renewable petroleum is negligible overall, it still requires infrastructure on top of that, needs oxidizer and is still slower that CO2, so converting petroleum to CO2 (300Kg to 75kg CO2 plus 112,5kg pwater, plus saving on oxidizer) is preferable most of the time for me when I don't need larger range or module count.

P.S. A 'tiny petroleum engine' if that's a copy of CO2 engine, plus a bit of range would be really nice.

I actually enjoy the choices we can make that you have described here. If it is not efficient to use small petroleum engine on short distances, we have other options that are more efficient. If we don't mind the loss of efficiency, we have other options.

At the end of the day, we make choices based on our personal preferred playstyle or priorities.

To me it feels like if all engines offered the same efficiency in every aspect, it wouldn't be balanced at all. There wouldn't be any compromises or any choices/options. There would just be a lot of different skins for rocket engines. Am i going crazy or does this make sense to anyone? 

[sakura_sk]

On 9/7/2021 at 12:17 PM, NeoDeusMachina said:

To me it feels like if all engines offered the same efficiency in every aspect, it wouldn't be balanced at all. There wouldn't be any compromises or any choices/options. There would just be a lot of different skins for rocket engines. Am i going crazy or does this make sense to anyone? 

I don't think every engine should offer the same but I do think hydrogen and petroleum should be made more tempting to use in multiple aspects

*Updated stats

[NeoDeusMachina]

15 minutes ago, sakura_sk said:

I don't think every engine should offer the same but I do think hydrogen and petroleum should be made more tempting to use in multiple aspects

*Updated stats

That's some good data - how would you compare the engines now? 

Btw, radbolts (currently rardbolts), just a small typo.

Edit: steam engine burden 15? is this a typo or is it really 15? seems like an outlier :-/

Would be nice to show your overall updated table again for comparison, with power produced, total height, etc. (they increased steam from 20 to 25 height)

[sakura_sk]

44 minutes ago, NeoDeusMachina said:

Btw, radbolts (currently rardbolts), just a small typo.

 ...and it's in every table

45 minutes ago, NeoDeusMachina said:

steam engine burden 15? is this a typo or is it really 15? seems like an outlier

It's the new change. Because engine power changed (to something more reasonable..) burden of engine changed to keep speed close to it's previous levels I think...

48 minutes ago, NeoDeusMachina said:

Would be nice to show your overall updated table again for comparison, with power produced, total height, etc. (they increased steam from 20 to 25 height)

Soon... 

[sakura_sk]

Here @NeoDeusMachina (I hope I changed everything that changed....)

 

5 hours ago, NeoDeusMachina said:

how would you compare the engines now?

I will think about it over the weekend 

[AndreyKl]

On 9/9/2021 at 10:32 AM, NeoDeusMachina said:

Would be nice to show your overall updated table again for comparison, with power produced, total height, etc. (they increased steam from 20 to 25 height)

That makes steam engine very very tempting for me. Instead of making multiple trips with carbon one, it will be one long trip, but with multiple liquid/gas cargos, for a fuel price lower than small petroleum engine. And if the table to be believed, it's now faster as well, which opens some more options - more than a tile per cycle means that steam rocket is now good enough for short range (1-2 tiles) transportation without bothering about food, which in turn means that it's easy to automate for short trips, a 'heavy burden' competition for carbon and radbolt rockets. And probably very good for some drilling.

Looks like carbon rocket also got a boost, which is nice, more effective mass-passenger transport for short range. Radbolt became more tempting as well, but personally I probably won't bother for a while, steam and CO2 ones win in setup speed and have enough of a range for most needs.

I see no significant uses for petroleum ones sans some very long range exploration (every planetoid seems to be in 10 tile range of one other planetoid), carbon rocket might need a small range downgrade to make small petroleum rocket more competitive.

P.S. Still no error-free option to pack food of sufficient freshness and calories before trip and steam rocket is the most sensitive to that.

 

On 9/9/2021 at 3:43 PM, sakura_sk said:

(I hope I changed everything that changed....)

There is no liftoff price, is it identical to travel price?

[sakura_sk]

29 minutes ago, AndreyKl said:

There is no liftoff price, is it identical to travel price?

I think so.... Now you count every hex for a trip, no free launch-land anymore. But I haven't tested extensively every engine to be 100% sure yet.

And yes, steam engine seems better now. It doesn't crawl to a 0.1-0.2 speed anymore. 

[AndreyKl]

On 9/10/2021 at 12:07 AM, sakura_sk said:

And yes, steam engine seems better now. It doesn't crawl to a 0.1-0.2 speed anymore.

Tried it, steam rocket is a decent 'telescope' explorer. Engine, battery, gas cargo (O2), spacefarer (with telescope inside) and nosecone, travels at 1 tile per cycle and that's enough for some longer range scanning. 0.9 cycles per tile if I add another dedicated cargo for steam (to not bother setting up steam production at other asteroids). Seems perfect to me, or at least much simpler than doing the same with CO2 rocket and with more range.

Sadly not as good as I hoped for short range transportation. A steam cargo rocket with 2 large cargos ended up with 0.8 tiles of speed, roughly passable. But at 1 tile range CO2 rocket with a large cargo module rules and dominates with 2.3 tiles of speed, no need for food, atmosphere or even toilet, just a launch signal in the morning. And I simply don't have anything to transport that will require more than one cargo module. However 0.8 tiles is good enough for longer ranges.

 

P.S. New toilets plus liquid intakes are perfect!

Edit: apparently dedicated steam tank is not necessary, steam seems to share space with oxygen just fine with no visible temperature exchange.

[AndreyKl]

On 9/6/2021 at 10:25 PM, sakura_sk said:

Not having a fuel tank, makes these two late game engines lack even more than the early sucrose engine.

I can add that steam and CO2 engines have a massive advantage in ease of refueling that translates into range extender, same should be true for sucrose rocket (since sucrose's speed ended up identical to steam one with similar loadout, I did not bother using it). I just pumped ~550kg of steam into gas tank, sent my steam rocket to another asteroid, set up unloader+loader there as a way to refuel and then scanned 3 separate directions, each 5 tiles deep, without needing to set up dedicated fuel production, then returned to initial planetoid to refuel and repeat in a different direction.

This makes petroleum's engine's range advantage much less of a factor.

I feel like CO2 and steam engines (and probably sucrose) need their range reduced a bit, otherwise there is simply no point to petroleum engine's massive range. Sadly Nisila needs a 6-tile range CO2 rockets for initial supply/rover drops for colonization (in case of no-teleporters map). Or ranges between asteroids need to be increased in general.

Longer range petroleum engine does have some merit for recovering artifacts from multiple POIs in a single trip.

[NeoDeusMachina]

37 minutes ago, AndreyKl said:

I can add that steam and CO2 engines have a massive advantage in ease of refueling that translates into range extender, same should be true for sucrose rocket (since sucrose's speed ended up identical to steam one with similar loadout, I did not bother using it). I just pumped ~550kg of steam into gas tank, sent my steam rocket to another asteroid, set up unloader+loader there as a way to refuel and then scanned 3 separate directions, each 5 tiles deep, without needing to set up dedicated fuel production, then returned to initial planetoid to refuel and repeat in a different direction.

This makes petroleum's engine's range advantage much less of a factor.

I feel like CO2 and steam engines (and probably sucrose) need their range reduced a bit, otherwise there is simply no point to petroleum engine's massive range. Sadly Nisila needs a 6-tile range CO2 rockets for initial supply/rover drops for colonization (in case of no-teleporters map). Or ranges between asteroids need to be increased in general.

Longer range petroleum engine does have some merit for recovering artifacts from multiple POIs in a single trip.

The thing is, there is not always a planetoid to land on and self-refuel on the way. The starmap is randomly generated. Yes, it is possible to get very lucky and get things aligned in a nice way so that we can set up some infrastructure and "extend" the range of early game engines by landing as you suggested, but this is not always the case. Also, while that may be doable for hopping between planetoids, it is not necessarily the case for space mining. Due to where the POIs are placed, it is often very inconvenient or not possible to land and refuel on the way. Even if it is, it makes the mining trip only that much more "micro-managy".

I can't imagine myself launching a steam rocket, landing, refueling, launching again to go further away to maybe reach a space POI I want to mine, go back, land, refuel, launch, and finally get back to my point of origin. At that point, I might as well set up forward mining outpost and ship the cargo back home with the interplanetary launcher or another cargo rocket. I don't believe if it is possible to do that with CO2 and sucrose engine due to height limitation.

I really don't think further reducing the range of the CO2 and sucrose engine is needed. They can currently barely reach the 2 closest planetoids and are not viable options for space mining, let alone late game long range transport between planetoids.

Btw, we could also bring petroleum+oxylite and refuel our petroleum rockets on the way to extend its range. Rocket liquid tanks carry a lot more than liquid fuel tanks, and we can even fit 5t in a liquid tank inside the spacefarer module if we wanted. Basically, we can bring fuel for every engine type except the radbolt engine. Based on that, I also don't believe it is required to reduce the range of the steam engine. Generating steam and dealing with the heat issues, insulation during transport of steam, etc., has its own set of challenges. I am worried the steam engine might end up never being used for anything if it is "nerfed", it currently sits in a really awkward, delicate spot imo.

 

 

[AndreyKl]

 

2 hours ago, NeoDeusMachina said:

The starmap is randomly generated. Yes, it is possible to get very lucky and get things aligned in a nice way so that we can set up some infrastructure and "extend" the range of early game engines by landing as you suggested, but this is not always the case.

The map is only 12 tiles in radius, minus one tile for starting planetoid, assuming that planetoids can't spawn right at the edge (due to orbit), every planetoid ends up within 10 fuel-tiles of main planetoid, and every planetoid is colonizable by a steam rocket as a result. I don't think a steam rocket should be capable of that.

Abato and Moomolin are the furthest for me, 8 tiles from Reekista, not enough for a return trip on a steam rocket, but close enough to colonize using steam rocket without a need for a return trip. So far I can colonize every planetoid I found using steam engine alone without needing to refuel on the way (but will need to refuel there). And I don't think there are any more planetoids out there and even if there are, they are likely reachable by a steam rocket.

Such refueling for me allowed multiple trips while being closer to destination and made a trip to a planetoid 8 tiles away returnable.

2 hours ago, NeoDeusMachina said:

I really don't think further reducing the range of the CO2 and sucrose engine is needed. They can currently barely reach the 2 closest planetoids and are not viable options for space mining, let alone late game long range transport between planetoids.

How far away are they in your case? For me they are within half a range. Nisila (oil) is 4 tiles (fuel use tiles) and Barkiel (irradiated) is 3 tiles. Easily within reach. Less than a cycle both.

On my map Yuckola is only 5 tiles away from my starting planetoid (Reekista), within reach of CO2 engine for landing. Watila is 6 tiles away from starting planetoid, again within reach. That makes 4 planetoids directly reachable by CO2 engines from starting planetoid. Technically they are even possible to colonize using CO2. With a refuel, even more planetoids are in range.

2 hours ago, NeoDeusMachina said:

Due to where the POIs are placed, it is often very inconvenient or not possible to land and refuel on the way.  Even if it is, it makes the mining trip only that much more "micro-managy"

That's a bit different of a topic, obviously automating mining is different, but so far every field and '?' I found are within 5 tiles of other planetoids (and very little unexplored space left). Even if there were fields not within 5 tiles, I think I'm more likely to try setting up a mining rad-rocket on closest planetoid.

2 hours ago, NeoDeusMachina said:

Btw, we could also bring petroleum+oxylite and refuel our petroleum rockets on the way to extend its range.

Personally I find oxylite problematic to handle due to ofgassing and tendency of dupes to drop it (it is possible to keep command module at sufficient pressure, but incidents happen), and petroleum is often hot and needs either precooling to store in already limited interior or liquid module, which is one additional module to slow the rocket down. However steam self-refueling I automated fully without adding any additional tanks. But there is also little point to extend range of petroleum engine even further, all planetoids are already within 10 tiles of starting planetoid so rocket can return without issues and in case of mining something easier to automate is needed.

[sakura_sk]

5 minutes ago, AndreyKl said:

How far away are they in your case? For me they are within half a range. Nisila is 4 tiles (fuel use tiles) and barkiel is 3 tiles. Easily within reach. Less then a cycle both.

On my map Yuckola is only 5 tiles away from my starting planetoid (Reekista), within reach of CO2 engine for landing. Watila is 6 tiles away from starting planetoid, again within reach.

 List of planetoids so we can understand each other:

• Starting
• Oil / Teleporter(SO)
• Irradiated / Teleporter(Classic)
• Water
• Moo
• Mush - Tree
• Superconductive
• Frozen
• Regolith

Maybe a "fuel tank extender" could fix the ...problem H2 and petroleum engines have? It could also be a smaller height fuel tank but then small petroleum engine will become a monster 

[NeoDeusMachina]

To make our discussion easier, here's my current starmap:

Spoiler

  

1 hour ago, AndreyKl said:

The map is only 12 tiles in radius, minus one tile for starting planetoid, assuming that planetoids can't spawn right at the edge (due to orbit), every planetoid ends up within 10 fuel-tiles of main planetoid, and every planetoid is colonizable by a steam rocket as a result. I don't think a steam rocket should be capable of that.

Abato and Moomolin are the furthest for me, 8 tiles from Reekista, not enough for a return trip on a steam rocket, but close enough to colonize using steam rocket without a need for a return trip. So far I can colonize every planetoid I found using steam engine alone without needing to refuel on the way (but will need to refuel there). And I don't think there are any more planetoids out there and even if there are, they are likely reachable by a steam rocket.

Such refueling for me allowed multiple trips while being closer to destination and made a trip to a planetoid 8 tiles away returnable.

It is the same on my current starmap - the furthest planetoids are 10 tiles in range including take off and landing. Therefore, they can be colonized via a 1-way trip from the steam engine and refueled on site for the trip back. Whether this is an issue or not, I honestly don't know. I think I personally like that there are different options to colonize other planetoids instead of always having to use the same engines to reach a certain distance. It makes the progression of the game less repetitive. For example, in my current playthrough, I have used CO2 and radbolt engines only (no teleporters). I am glad I did not "have" to use petroleum engines, I didn't even visit the oil planetoid yet and I might never.

 

1 hour ago, AndreyKl said:

How far away are they in your case? For me they are within half a range. Nisila is 4 tiles (fuel use tiles) and barkiel is 3 tiles. Easily within reach. Less than a cycle both.

On my map Yuckola is only 5 tiles away from my starting planetoid (Reekista), within reach of CO2 engine for landing. Watila is 6 tiles away from starting planetoid, again within reach. That makes 4 planetoids directly reachable by CO2 engines from starting planetoid. Technically they are even possible to colonize using CO2.

I can reach 3 planetoids directly with a CO2 engine (mush is within 5 tiles, in previous playthroughs that planet was within 6 tiles and still in range of the CO2/sucrose engines). As you can see on my starmap, CO2/sucrose engines can either do a 2-way trip to the irradiated planetoid, or a 1-way trip to the 2nd and 3rd closest planetoids. There, they need to refuel if they want to come back. I play without teleporters, so I did not have access to the oil planetoid via teleporters, but I assume anyone who does typically gets there before launching a rocket. If we lower their range down to 5, they lose their 2-way trips to the closest planetoid and in some cases, they lose access to the mush planetoid and such (they can spawn within 6 tiles instead of 5). Down to 4, they cannot even reach the oil planetoid in this case, which means we are forced to go for steam or radbolt engines to get there if not playing with teleporters.

The lowest I can see their range get lowered would be 5, and it would be rather annoying to not be able to travel even to the closest planetoid without needing to refuel there. That is some crappy space exploration technology XD 

 

1 hour ago, AndreyKl said:

That's a bit different of a topic, obviously automating mining is different, but so far every field and '?' I found are within 5 tiles of other planetoids (and very little unexplored space left).

It is, but it is also quite relevant, as rockets are used both for colonization/transportation and also space mining. See below:

Spoiler

  There are some POIs that are further than 5 tiles from any planetoids, some of which are unique on my starmap. For example, the "radioactive asteroid field" (only 1), the "oily asteroid field" (only 1), a "radioactive gas cloud" (more than 1), and the very important "russell's teapot". The radioactive asteroid field is not even on the outermost ring of the starmap. Those are just examples from a single starmap.

In my opinion, if you go through the hassle of setting a forward space mining outpost with all the necessary infrastructure, life support, etc., and are using steam engines to mine instead of other more advanced techs, then there is nothing wrong with that. You are using your resources perhaps more efficiently once set up, the mining trips will faster, but will also have other things to worry about, like do you have a renewable source of water on that mining outpost to produce your steam or do you need to ship that from somewhere else? Shipping diamond or producing it locally? life support for duplicants?

If you look at my starmap, the two very important POIs containing fullerene and tungsten are by the moo planet. The only thing there is a chlorine gas vent, which is going to make it quite challenging if I wanted to setup a mining outpost there and have duplicants live there. Maybe I'll do that as my next project now that I mention it..!

1 hour ago, AndreyKl said:

Personally I find oxylite problematic to handle due to ofgassing and tendency of dupes to drop it, and petroleum is often hot and needs either precooling to store in already limited interior or liquid module, which is one additional module to slow the rocket down. However steam self-refueling I automated fully without adding any additional tanks.

There are challenges, granted, but it is doable. Liquids in tanks standing on insulated tiles tend to exchange very little heat with their environment and if the cabin is pressurized to 2kg using normal vents, nothing should off gas during transport. If you are worried about the random drifting CO2 tile, store it in a conveyor loader at the top of the cabin. But yeah, it is a lot of trouble I agree  I tend not to produce oxilite either and go from fertilizer to liquid O2 instead.

So, I don't know where this leaves me after writing this long post, I think I am still not convinced things need to be changed.

[AndreyKl]

On 9/24/2021 at 8:33 PM, sakura_sk said:

Maybe a "fuel tank extender" could fix the ...problem H2 and petroleum engines have? It could also be a smaller height fuel tank but then small petroleum engine will become a monster

As it is, small petroleum engine loses in speed to rad and CO2 rockets, in range to rad rocket, in cargo capacity to steam rocket and is harder and more expensive to refuel than steam or rad rocket. Jack of all trades, master of none. I don't think having smaller additional tank (range) will harm it all that much, what will it use that range for? All planetoids are within 10 tiles distance of center, artifacts are not that hard to get everywhere, so at most it will be more useful for return trips from colonization.

At minimum small petroleum engine needs a small LOX tank and a bit more speed, to be 'small and nimble'. 

Another disadvantage (mostly disadvantage) of petroleum engines - heat, on starter, oil or irradiated planetoids it's fine, there is space, but at least two other planetoids landing the rocket without some additional space between surface and rocket can result in incidents. And rocket platforms need to be made from something like steel or cobalt.

On 9/24/2021 at 9:26 PM, NeoDeusMachina said:

That is some crappy space exploration technology XD

Speed alone is a saving grace in this case, but I think first rocket is supposed to be crappy.

On 9/24/2021 at 9:26 PM, NeoDeusMachina said:

There are some POIs that are further than 5 tiles from any planetoids, some of which are unique on my starmap.

That is going to need additional tanks and fuel, a lot of fuel, personally I would try using rad engine as a mining vessel in this case (not sure if it's possible).

On 9/24/2021 at 9:26 PM, NeoDeusMachina said:

I am glad I did not "have" to use petroleum engines, I didn't even visit the oil planetoid yet and I might never.

That's roughly my point, it's so much hustle, that I was avoiding it as well. It's fine to have options, not fine when those options are getting intentionally avoided instead of considered.

Setting up my first small petroleum engine took over 20 cycles, and then some more to remake the platform, because starting it even once melts the wires and blows up pipes. small engine appears to be very very niche and too much trouble settings up. Oddly enough platform itself did not heat up, but loaders did.

P.S. An 'ethanol' fuel variants feels more and more appealing as a suggestion.  

[NeoDeusMachina]

7 hours ago, AndreyKl said:

That is going to need additional tanks and fuel, a lot of fuel, personally I would try using rad engine as a mining vessel in this case (not sure if it's possible).

I agree! I was mostly pointing those out as examples to situations where steam engine alone would not work and other technologies are required. Space mining changes things in that we cannot refuel in space, so we might be in situations where we simply cannot use CO2, sucrose, or steam engines for that, even if we could do some refueling shenanigan to colonize and improve their range. I think balancing engines is a rather complex task, because they can be used in many contexts: colonization, space exploration, space mining, and also playthroughs without teleporters (mostly affects colonization of the closest planetoids, so early space era).

7 hours ago, AndreyKl said:

That's roughly my point, it's so much hustle, that I was avoiding it as well. It's fine to have options, not fine when those options are getting intentionally avoided instead of considered.

Setting up my first small petroleum engine took over 20 cycles, and then some more to remake the platform, because starting it even once melts the wires and blows up pipes. small engine appears to be very very niche and too much trouble settings up.

P.S. An 'ethanol' fuel variants feels more and more appealing.  

I might not have been clear in my previous post. I did not mean that I was glad I did not have to because it is complex or tedious to set up. I meant that I was glad I could do things differently this time because I had already used petroleum engines a lot in my previous playthroughs. It was just refreshing. I will definitely have other playthroughs where I will use petroleum again  

7 hours ago, AndreyKl said:

P.S. An 'ethanol' fuel variants feels more and more appealing.  

It does! Provided it is well balanced (ethanol can be found "for free" in decent amounts in the rust biome), it would be nice to set up some different infrastructure for those engines!

[JaxckLl]

On 9/24/2021 at 7:30 AM, AndreyKl said:

I can add that steam and CO2 engines have a massive advantage in ease of refueling that translates into range extender, same should be true for sucrose rocket (since sucrose's speed ended up identical to steam one with similar loadout, I did not bother using it). I just pumped ~550kg of steam into gas tank, sent my steam rocket to another asteroid, set up unloader+loader there as a way to refuel and then scanned 3 separate directions, each 5 tiles deep, without needing to set up dedicated fuel production, then returned to initial planetoid to refuel and repeat in a different direction.

This makes petroleum's engine's range advantage much less of a factor.

I feel like CO2 and steam engines (and probably sucrose) need their range reduced a bit, otherwise there is simply no point to petroleum engine's massive range. Sadly Nisila needs a 6-tile range CO2 rockets for initial supply/rover drops for colonization (in case of no-teleporters map). Or ranges between asteroids need to be increased in general.

Longer range petroleum engine does have some merit for recovering artifacts from multiple POIs in a single trip.

Please don't suggest nerfs to rockets, they're in a really good place now. As your experience shows, every rocket type has a valuable purpose. The upgraded rocket types are just that, upgrades. No longer is it essential to have Petrol infrastructure to explore the map & ferry between asteroids.

[KonfigSys]

If Klei may improve big petroleum and Hydrogen with a better range (without a need for extra tanks)

These two are good for mining. Space POIs could be far away from the oil / hydrogen setup unless you want to duplicate the setup on every asteroid to reach all POIs. 

I would prefer to have one hydrogen set-up to reach every corner of the map and come back for mining purposes. No - no extra tanks as it will eat up all benefits of hauling mined cargo.

CO2 is great to shuttle between asteroids to move specialists and some small things like seeds, eggs, etc.

Usually one asteroid is beyond CO2 range and hence radbolt or steam engine to colonize/support.

[AndreyKl]

8 hours ago, JaxckLl said:

As your experience shows, every rocket type has a valuable purpose.

My experience shown no valuable purpose for small petroleum engine. Too generalized, jack of all trades, and as result it loses to every other rocket in their 'specialization'.

I now have two small petroleum rockets just to try them, but they are mostly doing nothing or flying to single planetoid in 5 tiles from starter planetoid (because it's easy to return from and safish to land with a hot engine) yet I'm sending most resources and crew to/from that 5 tiles-away planetoid using single use CO2 rockets. Petroleum rocket most of the time just sits on that planetoid, acts like a home with an oxygen tank while dupes are setting up infrastructure.

By this point I built a landing platform on every planetoid sans a superconductive one (just didn't need to) using a steam rocket. Petroleum one won't be able to return as easily so it ended up confined to 5 tile radius. I can eventually set up all those planetoids to handle and refuel petroleum rockets, but so far there is little to no reason to (and definitely not before I exploit ether iron or tungsten volcanoes).

Not sure about large petroleum engine, I suspect that I will need to bolster my steel production by an order of magnitude and remake every landing site on most planetoids from steel just to not burn cables. And I don't have a use for them either (I do plan to try eventually, probably for mining once I have a lot more steel).  

1 hour ago, KonfigSys said:

If Klei may improve big petroleum and Hydrogen with a better range (without a need for extra tanks)

Personally I would prefer if map grew a bit. Right now almost everything is within 10 tiles from starter planetoid, withing reach of every rocket sans CO2 one. If distances to POIs will increase hydrogen and petroleum would get definite purpose.

[JaxckLl]

What you're describing AndreyKI is an issue with Oil processing & Petroleum, not an issue with the rocket that uses those resources. It's critically important that for the space DLC, space is accessible. That means Asteroids need to be reachable with Steam/CO2, in the same way it is possible to survive longterm without building a Petrol Boiler or a Nuclear generator.

If I were to change the Petrol Engine, I might give it a "gasping" function whereby it can switch to running much slower when fuel is low, but massively extending range. Essentially it gets a spike in fuel efficiency to extend it's effective range dramatically and make strandings much harder.

Also, how does the Petrol Engine handle Ethanol?

[NeoDeusMachina]

14 hours ago, AndreyKl said:

My experience shown no valuable purpose for small petroleum engine. Too generalized, jack of all trades, and as result it loses to every other rocket in their 'specialization'.

I now have two small petroleum rockets just to try them, but they are mostly doing nothing or flying to single planetoid in 5 tiles from starter planetoid (because it's easy to return from and safish to land with a hot engine) yet I'm sending most resources and crew to/from that 5 tiles-away planetoid using single use CO2 rockets. Petroleum rocket most of the time just sits on that planetoid, acts like a home with an oxygen tank while dupes are setting up infrastructure.

By this point I built a landing platform on every planetoid sans a superconductive one (just didn't need to) using a steam rocket. Petroleum one won't be able to return as easily so it ended up confined to 5 tile radius. I can eventually set up all those planetoids to handle and refuel petroleum rockets, but so far there is little to no reason to (and definitely not before I exploit ether iron or tungsten volcanoes).

Not sure about large petroleum engine, I suspect that I will need to bolster my steel production by an order of magnitude and remake every landing site on most planetoids from steel just to not burn cables. And I don't have a use for them either (I do plan to try eventually, probably for mining once I have a lot more steel).  

Personally I would prefer if map grew a bit. Right now almost everything is within 10 tiles from starter planetoid, withing reach of every rocket sans CO2 one. If distances to POIs will increase hydrogen and petroleum would get definite purpose.

I think one thing that confuses me in that post and other posts above is this whole "purpose" thing. All rocket engines without exception currently have and serve a purpose: they give our colony access to space and other planetoids, including their resources. All engines achieve that with various degree of success and by using different resources.

I think what you would like (and please correct me if I am wrong here) is not that all engines have a purpose, but that they all have something that they each do better, some sort of exclusivity, and that is different than saying "X engine has no purpose". 

Then I am wondering "why"? Why would each of them absolutely need to have something that they outclass other engines at doing? Why would some resource or some space POI be so far that it would always be locked behind a specific engine (hydrogen for example)? To me, this kills creativity. All those work arounds, rocket range extension, etc., they are people being creative. Not everyone will think about it, not everyone will do it for various reasons - and I think this is fine. Why is it wrong that it comes down to personal preference? Perhaps someone doesn't feel like colonizing everything with steam or CO2? I certainly don't, I get rid of CO2 engines as soon as I can. I don't care if they are faster or easy to refuel, I have had one sitting on a landing pad for over a thousand cycles and haven't used it. They just don't fit my playstyle and don't answer my needs later on in the game. I really don't mind that other people use it a lot for all sorts of things, I am glad they do!

You have mentioned that the small petroleum engine has no "purpose" and isn't better than any other rocket engine at anything, and while that may be true for some metrics you have used to make that judgment, I disagree. In playthroughs I have petroleum infrastructure set up, all the piping is in place, etc., I tend to use those a lot for short range transportation between planetoids. I don't always have sweetle ranches up and as I have mentioned before, I also stop using CO2 engines as soon as I can. It has the same range as the large petroleum engine (1 fuel tank) but requires way less fuel to operate, which makes it much more efficient. In my eyes, they are not useless.

Then there is the case of the hydrogen rocket which offers the longest range possible after recent changes. I am still glad and sincerely hope nothing becomes gated behind the hydrogen engine. I have set up liquid O2/H2 many times and I really don't feel like setting it up in every single playthrough. Again, I favor creativity and variability in my playthroughs over being forces to build the same stuff the same way every time - that is when the game becomes boring to me.

 

 

[AndreyKl]

1 hour ago, JaxckLl said:

What you're describing AndreyKI is an issue with Oil processing & Petroleum, not an issue with the rocket that uses those resources

Partially true. Hot exhaust melting pipes and tiles is an issue that restricts use of the rocket, the location you need to land at has to be preconfigured (steel and obsidian, good distance from pressurized environment) to land petroleum rocket in quite a few cases which is an issue early on. Same for speed being to low in comparison to radbolts and CO2.

Also fuel efficiency for petroleum rocket is terrible in comparison to any other rocket.

1 hour ago, JaxckLl said:

If I were to change the Petrol Engine, I might give it a "gasping" function whereby it can switch to running much slower when fuel is low, but massively extending range.

I think a dynamic speed increase might be more interesting. Like: the longer it flies, the faster it goes, then starts to slow down after passing 50% of the route. But not sure if either is good idea or not.

1 hour ago, JaxckLl said:

Also, how does the Petrol Engine handle Ethanol?

It does not yet, but there is a suggestion topic for that.

1 hour ago, NeoDeusMachina said:

Why would some resource or some space POI be so far that it would always be locked behind a specific engine (hydrogen for example)?

In no way I suggest that something should be locked behind a specific engine. Ex: Increasing map size a bit won't lock POIs to one specific rocket, it will make some harder to reach with early rockets, but not lock it. Or in case of decreasing range of steam and CO2, it won't prohibit player from using a radbolt/petroleum/hydrogen rockets.

1 hour ago, NeoDeusMachina said:

Why would each of them absolutely need to have something that they outclass other engines at doing?

1. Because having something a rocket outclasses others with adds more options to player's arsenal.
2. Because when technology gets built it gets built for a purpose, it's both reasonable and realistic for each engine to have some unique advantages and downsides
3. Because game progression is supposed to open more options and capabilities
4. Game description claim that it's for mid-range exploration.

Petroleum engine technically has an advantage - ability to add additional tanks to extend range while being easier to set up than Hydrogen one, but from my point of view it gets counteracted by other issues. the fact that there are no small LOX and fuel tanks does not help.

1 hour ago, NeoDeusMachina said:

It has the same range as the large petroleum engine (1 fuel tank) but requires way less fuel to operate, which makes it much more efficient.

Small Petroleum engine costs 450kg of petroleum, plus 225kg oxidizer, plus ~300kg of oxygen for pilot. 450kg of petroleum can be turned into 168kg of pwater plus 112kg of CO2. Or ~270kg of water to get that petroleum if you are not oil-boiling, even more CO2. I think that's a bit expensive in comparison to earlier engines.