Engine upgrade equipment has very little effect since the rebalance

[bszlrd]

Observed behaviour

Switched reluctance reported on reddit that engine upgrades have no effect. Since the rebalance #4970 they indeed have very little noticeable effect. The acceleration caps limit ship speed to a certain level, but a lot of ships could accelerate much more when empty. So the thruster upgrades only increase acceleration, when the loaded ship weighs enough to put the acceleration under the acceleration cap.

Possible solutions:

I see several ways to fix it:

• Remove the equipment (I don't think we want that though)
• Make it increase exhaust velocity instead of thrust to provide more efficient engines (seems like the simplest)
• Make it increase acceleration cap too (Not sure about it, because ship structural strength is the reasoning behind the caps)
• Likely it would be better to have separate thruster upgrade and structure upgrade then, which would give you better overall acceleration in tandem. This is a more complex way I'm guessing, but would provide the more organic solution and more choice for the player:
  • Thruster upgrade - Adds muscle to your engines. You could buy this to be able to land/takeoff on higher G planets or with larger loads for example
  • Structural reinforcement - Would raise acceleration cap. I suspect it would be good if its mass would tie into ship mass even. Could even affect ship HP.

[impaktor]

I think this is the current code, I could find (just posting it here for contemplation):

	unsigned int thruster_power_cap = 0;
	p.Get("thruster_power_cap", thruster_power_cap);
	const double power_mul = m_type->thrusterUpgrades[Clamp(thruster_power_cap, 0U, 3U)];
	GetPropulsion()->SetThrustPowerMult(power_mul, m_type->linThrust, m_type->angThrust);

[syonfox]

Ill add my 2 cents.

	for (int it = 0; it < 4; it++)
		thrusterUpgrades[it] = 1.0 + (double(it) / 10.0);

aka 1+1/10 ... 1.1 1.2 1.3

So

void Propulsion::SetThrustPowerMult(double p, const float lin_Thrust[], const float ang_Thrust)
{
	// Init of Propulsion:
	for (int i = 0; i < Thruster::THRUSTER_MAX; i++)
		m_linThrust[i] = lin_Thrust[i] * p;
	m_angThrust = ang_Thrust * p;
}

gets the multipliers.

I think an important note is that this will not help you max acceleration unless fully loaded but it will help your rotation speed to be more responsive which help when aiming especially on a sluggish ship. this will help with tracking targets in combat.

[syonfox]

One idea is thrust efficiency.

Modified, enhanced, bespoke

thrusters .. does this power thing

efficiency .. does exhaust velocity (fuel system?)

combat air-frame .. does max acceleration cap and adds a multiplier to rotation