Small Grid Hydrogen Tanks

So, first post here, sadly its not the most positive topic i guess.

Ok so, i really like the hydrogen thrusters and the way they work with the conveyor system and also they seem kind of balanced with their thrust output as of now but what really bothers me is the utterly bad capacity the small grid hydrogen tanks have.

I designed a dropship for surface to orbit transition, it is a small grid ship and is designed to carry a rover from the orbit to the surface and whit the lack of thrust for the ion thrusters in atmosphere and the oversized atmospheric thrusters(and i really don't like how they look), i decided to go with hydrogen thrusters.

While this turned out nicely from a asthetic view and it works with the thrust output in creative, with 2 hydrogen tanks on the dropship, which are take almost 1/3 of the space of the ship itself, i can fire my thrusters for around 1 minute until i run out of fuel or reach an altitude of around 1000 meters and that is without the rover even attached.

There seems to be something really off here because as it is, there is no way you can create a small grid ship with hydrogen thrusters which isn't ridicoulusly oversized while having enough fuel to leave the gravity well.
This really bothers me since i designed that dropship as an asset for a large ship which would stay in orbit but as it is now, there is no way of making that work....wel except designing a large grid ship for the job but that defeats the purpose of have a smaller ship which fits inside a hangar.

This really did put me of from playing/designing again, i have to say, because it is so utterly frustrating.

 

I have used small grid hydrogen stuff maybe once or twice. I was not very impressed. This was on a new lone survivor map where I figured I could jump start the mining ship process by using hydrogen thrusters. I couldn't even get to the other side of my home asteroid before I ran out of fuel and started drifting. Mind you my initial experience was back when hydrogen thrusters were first introduced, so I don't know if it has been improved since then. I also don't remember how much ice I used to fill my tanks either. I might have stopped because I didn't want to go used up all my ice to produce hydrogen.

Let me get back to you on this. I'm designing another map to test hydrogen thrusters. My results on previous map was inconclusive since the numbers came out weird.

 

Well, if it was improved since then, then not much because flight time is still pretty low.
I had 2 fully filled hydrogen tanks on my ship and barely had it flying 1-2 minutes maximum and reached an altitude of 1000 meters before running out of fuel so yeah, still pretty lackluster and definatly not worth it at all.
And the only point why i bring this up is because this really destroys the usability of hydrogen on small grid ships if you don't want those ships to be as big as a large grid ship....and still perform worse.

 

Pack some ice and add a few o2 gens. Supplement thrust with ions and atmos.
It's not hard to build around, but I agree. Either the capacity needs a buff or the consumption should be reduced.
They also are HEAVY.

My only other complaint is the size, I wish there were a more compact option.

 

Actually there is a trick to use the hydrogen thrusters. They generally produce way more thrust than you need, so you need to artificially tune them down. Basically set thrust on the main thruster to like 240 kilo? Newton or so. You can further tune it down as you leave the gravity well.

You should also make sure only your main thruster is activated, so the intertia dampener doesn't waste fuel.

Otherwise you might want to get a mod that allows you a higher top speed. That also makes things a lot easier.

 

I didn't forget about you, but I wasn't in a rush to get the data either. I'm still crunching numbers but I found some startling results. Its seems that the large ship hydrogen tank has over 60 times the fuel capacity than the small ship hydrogen tank. At least I'm assuming that because it uses up over 60 times the ice to be filled. The large ship tank is 27 times the size of the small ship variety, so its over the twice fuel for space used. The large ship tank is also only about 2.5 times heavier than the small ship variety, so you only need a smaller fraction of the fuel capacity to lug it around. The large hydrogen thruster for the small ship burns over 70 seconds starting with a full tank, while the large hydrogen thruster for large ships can go for about 6 minutes starting with a full tank. Also bigger hydrogen thrusters get better N per kg ratios for ice than smaller hydrogen thrusters. Therefore large ships have a serious advantage over small ships when it comes to hydrogen thrusters.

 

Hey peeps, nice to see that this topic has some interest, not only here but also on the discord and all.

@AutoMcD
Well we tried several approaches(to be honest, a friend tried them, i was to frustrated) and even 6 oxygen generators+the 2 hydro tanks on full capacity where lackluster in their efficiency.
At the same time, the ions+atmos system is no option with this specific design sadly, since for the way i want to use it, there is a sizerestriction to it, dictated by the airtight hangardoors, thats why i came up with the current usage of hydrogen thrusters.

And yes, both size and weight of these tanks are a bit...well, an annoyance i would say.

@Beyogi
Thanks for that tip, i will try that the next days but i fear i can't do that too much since, as a dropship, it has to carrie a more or less heavy rover so there is not much room to adjust i believe.
But i will try that anyway, every little bit helps i think at this point.
And i generally try to stay vanilla with my builds, i prefer it that way

@DivineWrath
Thank you very much for that testing, i did't know that it was that bad
Hopefully we can get the devs to notice this because i doubt this is intentional at all.
I'm hopefull here though, until now, sooner or later the devs took action where it was needed so yeah.

 

On discord I heard a rumor that the small grid hydrogen tanks will get doubled to capacity to help balance

 

Agreed with the general vibe here.

Small grid H2 is simply not balanced to be viable as primary propulsion for that grid size. It's a big freaking system for a glorified afterburner.

 

Also why is the small hydrogen tank only marginally cheaper than the big tank despite being 27 times smaller? It should cost at most 1/9 as much as the big tank, since that's the difference in the outer wall surface area.

Although, not sure if expanded hydrogen tank capacity is really needed,
@Norton, I suspect you may not have been flying optimally. Would you mind posting your ship so I could take a look? I'll challenge myself to launch it into space.

Btw I just took this setup from the surface to space and back, hehehe

 

I agree, the weight is too much

 

However, the high integrity (relative to other grids) makes it pretty useful as non-conventional armor replacing conveyors if you've got the space for it.

 

I don't have too much of a problem regarding Hydrogen tanks. I do with they could have a smaller tank variant though. The trick is to pack a O2 gen as well. They are tiny and can slap straight onto the tank. An example of one of my designs was basically a tank with the ship built around it - the thing is very high performance and when the fuel runs out it still has enough from the O2 gen to keep it stable and move. It's assisted by Ions in space just because i was paranoid about the hydrogen thrusters but i later ditched the Ions.
This is the transport ship i use between Mars and it's moon:



EDIT:
I should mention that because of the speed cap you really have to tap the thrust on it. burning that engine while being capped at 100m/s is a great way to go nowhere fast. The tank is depleted in just 10 seconds of burn but it takes only about 3 seconds to hit 100m/s