Feedback/ideas on Rocketry Upgrade

[storm6436]

 Great job with the gas/liquid tanks -- totally did not see that coming and they're stupidly useful; however:

 1. Are they supposed to be subject to solid storage anti-microbial gas mechanics?  ie. if the canisters are  submerged in chlorine, you can purge food poisoning/slimelung just as one does with the solid storage in a chlorine room.  If not this needs fixed.  Regardless of if that's a bug or not, some means to automate them would be fantastic.  A smart battery like "If full (or % full), set automation signal to active" bit would be nice.  Similarly, I was pleased to find out that disabling the building disabled the outlet, but doing so is a manual only, hence the ability to be automated would be great.   My only other complaint is how far down the tech tree you have to go for a non-automated solution.  Any chance the ones we have now could be moved down to something like tier 3 while the automated ones get put at the current tier?

2. Similarly, in terms of rocket tech...  I am, unfortunately, a physicist... but I'm also a big fan of real life rocketry (and Kerbal Space Program) to the point I've probably spent more time than is healthy learning astrodynamics and orbital mechanics... and all the other stuff that goes with ships.  Now, all that said, I know a lot of things in this game are stand-ins.  Strict joule/watt calculations don't work, polluted water is polluted water whether it comes from a toilet or not, etc... but it would be kinda nice to see some additional rocketry stuff based on relatively realistic tech (while remaining inside the theme you've established, of course... The theme is freaking great!)   So I'd love to see the rocketry tech expanded on, where the current implementation is just the initial baseline.  

 I don't know the limits you guys are working in, like how many entries for unique substances you can run without hitting significant performance loss, so this might not be workable... but a good example of what I'm talking about for rocketry tech:  RP-1 is one of the more common rocket fuels in use today, depending on mission profile, etc.  It's basically super-kerosene that gets burnt by liquid O2.  We can kinda sorta make liquid O2 now, so new rocket tech that requires LOX and either petroleum (which is a good thematic stand-in) or an actual refined petrol (Petrol-> Rocket fuel) would be awesome.  Similarly, if you guys do implement radioactives before launch, a nuclear rocket motor using only hydrogen and refined/enriched radioactives would be excellent as well, given how much more efficient nuclear propulsion is compared to conventional for orbital maneuvering, primarily in terms of the mass fraction and thrust giving so much more delta-v.

 Now, that said, we still need better ways of handling extreme temperatures.  The steam turbine was a great idea with less than stellar implementation. As currently implemented, the only reasonable way to get them to run "efficiently" is basically an exploit (ie. covering all the fans but one) and some go so far as using hot neutronium to trick the temp sensors.  Myself?  I don't play sandbox or dev mode,at least when it comes to building new stuff.  Much thanks to whoever made the prebuilt tiles in the artifacts deconstructable, my dev mode usage was primarily spent deleting those.  Of note, the light bulb is still not deconstructable, can y'all change that?  Anyways, to the original topic, the constraints on the steam generator is simply unrealistic.  The output doesn't scale on # of fans, so the block-all-but-one bit is the smart move.  Similarly, the lack of high-temp machinery means only passive (or using automated doors) pumping/compression is possible for both the pre-generator and post-generator steam... which further limits the utility.  Most of the designs I've seen are either borderline exploity or outright exploity.  That needs fixed.  I'd suggest some linear combination of the below: reducing the amount of steam required per fan duct, allowing power gen on a per-fan basis, thus allowing scaling and throttling of the generator, and addition of high-temp operating machinery to allow useful approaches to using steam, both in terms of recycling used steam and in generating new steam..

 To that end, addition of the following would be useful::

 i. a 1x1 automatable vent hatch (vice the 2x1 doors we currently have) .Whether it passes everything while open or just gasses or whatnot doesn't really matter so long as steam can pass.  With high-temp sensors, this can automate the output scaling of a revised steam gen if set up properly.
ii. High-volume air compressors (ie. 1kg/tile output instead of 500g like the normal pumps)
iii. New thermal sources (ie. a dialable automated nuclear pile) to heat the steam.
iv. Better automation sensors -  The range on our heat sensors now is too limited
v. new models of the machinery and sensors capable of high operating temperatures (or new materials for the old models that allow increased temp thresholds)

 

 Thanks for listening,

-Jason

Edit to add:
 Almost forgot, some machinery have multiple outputs, like the petrol gen or the fertilizer synth -- A later higher-tech model that has connectable outputs for both (or a post construction module we can add later) that adds an additional output for this would be much appreciated.  Leaking liquids, while annoying, can be planned around.  Leaking gasses on the other hand, are pretty damn annoying and I have a hard time seeing any engineer working on a design being happy with making a machine that could be designed to vent these byproducts leave the design at "Just let it blow all over the place" for no reason.  Yes, the SR-71's gas tanks leak like a sieve while it's landed... but the physics behind how the plane is put together demands that for it to be able to do what it does in the air.   There's no reason to not add a condensing muffler to a generator that can constraint the various outputs and allow them to be dealt with without just dumping them everywhere.