Rocket Engine Rebalance

[Whitecold]

I had a closer look at the rocket engine options, and the ranges that are possible with them.

For speed I calculated it either a large Spacefarer+Nosecone+Battery combination as an example load, or a Solo Spacefarer as the smallest possible burden.

 

• The sugar engine is almost entirely useless. It is for all but the lightest cargoes slower than CO2, can carry barely more, and costs a lot of precious resources as fuel compared to a waste product. It really needs something like more range to give it a true advantage over CO2 to justify the expense of spending precious fertilizer.
• All engines except the most expensive ones (Radbolt, Large Petrol and Hydrogen) are hard capped to 10 range. This really stymies rocket exploration. Getting some variety there would be nice. The jump from small petrol to large one feels very odd. You can build either a rocket with the same range, but 50% more available height, or same available height and twice the range, with nothing in between. Both of these things could be helped with a small liquid fuel tank, instead of the inbuilt one, to start earlier being able to adapt the range to the mission, and having to balance payload vs fuel capacity instead of just having a hard cap.
• Either the small petrol engine is too good, or the large one too bad. I tend to the second. The fuel consumption increase is just so big, you need two tanks to get any range increase, at which point you may as well get a radbolt engine, and save yourself all the oil.
• The large solid oxidizer tank is completely useless, it is larger and more burdensome than 2 small ones. This should definitely be the other way around, with the large one being the more efficient storage option.