Thruster Damage Distance!

Alright everyone! After extensive testing, I have discovered how far you must space your engines!

For small ship small engines: Thrusters will cease to damage to blocks after four small block-lengths.

For small ship large engines: Thrusters will cease to damage to blocks after seven small block-lengths.

For large ship small engines: Thrusters will cease to damage to blocks after four large block-lengths.

For large ship large engines: Thrusters will cease to damage to blocks after seven large block-lengths.

 

I will be posting pictures of my experiments shortly. The wifi on my main computer (the one with the screenshots) is out right now. I should have the images posted by eight tonight.

To conduct my tests I lined up a thruster facing a block. I fired the engine, and then placed a block one square closer to the engine. When the thruster began to damage my most recently placed block, I deleted it and then assumed that the last block before that one was safe. I then ran the thruster for several minutes. If there was still no damage (there never was), I assumed that a particular type of thruster would be unable to damage blocks past the distance between the block and the thruster. I discovered that, if ?> is the thruster and I is a block,

?> I I I I I I I I < this block would be safe from the large thruster, and


?> I I I I I < this block would be safe from the small thruster.


These results lead to some interesting speculation: If we were to create a box, 15x15x15, and place a large thruster (or several) on each side), we could have internal thrusters. Now all those dummies whining about "no more internal thrusters" will still be able to have their silly designs. I will be uploading photos of my tests and a prototype of what I am calling the "Daystar Cavity" in a little bit.

 

https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198043364315/screenshots/

There we go! Four pictures demonstrating how many blocks is necessary.

 

did you also test when using inertial dampeners? because the thrusts will use maximum power, creating a much larger flame - I have experienced damage from small ship large thrusters up to 8 blocks away...

 

No, I did not. I will have to get on that! Thank you, kind sir!

 

Also...from what I've seen, small ship small thrusters do not do damage to Large ship light armor blocks...at least not when moving around on a deck.


WRONG...just checked it out...small ship thrusters DO damage large light armor blocks even with simply and quickly trying to 'lift off'.

 

And, as I questioned elsewhere...

What about armor blocks "around" the engine's flame instead of directly in the path of it?

<As I create a new world to test this part myself.>

 

With my testings the engines destroyed themself when there was too little room. I hope that doesnt cause an issue for your own fighter when flying close to a burnable structure ...

 

As long as nothing is blocking the thruster, no armor blocks around the flame will be harmed, as you can see at link I posted.

 

I've run into this so I can say a bit on it. Angled armor blocks appear to deflect some of the thruster damage at 90 degrees relative to the angle of impact. This is a huge problem for the very squishy small ship light armor blocks and small ship weapons in particular.

 

You might want to add to your initial post that blocks directly to the sides of the flame can be damaged in a 1-block radius around the flame, because of swaying of the flame while turning a ship.

Tested this with a friend on his server. Fast connections used (100 Mbit fibrewire for server).

 

From my testing:

1. As people have stated, keeping blocks out of the direct path of the thruster jet keeps them from being harmed.
2. (Large engines) You can block the engine's flame output on the "upper" and "lower" 1x2 parts of the block, while leaving the middle 1x2 (where the nozzle is) free.

If the engine is oriented as follows:

XX
XX
XX

You can cover it as follows:

<Armor><Armor>
---X-------X----
<Armor><Armor>

This includes situations where you are maneuvering quickly.

(Warning: I am against the thruster change... at least until another solution to the "block of engines" problem is made.) So, we can, at least, make somewhat visually appeasing designs without having a block of engine thrusters visible on the back of the ship. IE: The easy target for all fighters in almost every sci-fi genre.

 

Really? I MUST DO MOAR TESTS! Thanks for bringing this up!

 

Interesting that I couldn't get my ships, just locally hosted, to do it. I believe your situation could be "multiplayer lag," despite the fast connection speed.

 

Thanks for the advice, Moonshadow! I will definitely use this on my ships.

To protect your ships from fighters, construct a Daystar Cavity! If <, >, ^, and v are thrusters,, _ is space, and X is armor, construct a room that looks like this:

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
XXvvvvvvvvvvvvvvXX
X>______________<X
X>______________<X
X>______________<X
X>______________<X
X>______________<X
X>______________<X
XX^^^^^^^^^^XX
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

This can be either a top-down, side, or front-to-back cross section, i. e. it is mirrored along all lines of symmetry. The Daystar Cavity, if built with small thrusters and 64 thrusters per wall (for a total of 384 thrusters) is guaranteed to never damage your ship. Also, the exterior of the cube is only 12x12x12, perfect for a medium large or small ship!

 

Doesn't change the fact that it's good for people to know about it.

 

<laughs>

You are trademarking the Daystar Cavity, aren't you?

Anyway, this would work quite well on "large" large ships. However, ... for smaller ones, there isn't enough room for this. From a system standpoint, this breaks the point that many posters are wanting... "realism."

Until the hot fix is put in to disable it (tomorrow), and until a different thruster is available, I will either stick with small ships only... or disable thruster damage on my worlds. If I only wanted to build Star Wars Star Destroyers, BSG Battlestars, etc... it would be ok. But, many aesthetically shaped designs are impossible now without obvious vulnerabilities that also break their aesthetics.

 

This is awesome! now I get to remake ALL of my ships that had thrusters hidden for style and efficiency... Right on!

 

My view on it is it doesnt make any sense at all from an engineering view atm,heres my opinion why

The meltingpoint off metal is 1535°c i never seen an engine that produces that much heat like in se right now its like they producing a heatsignature that instantly melt vanish or explode blocks even when ya have ventingspace,i should do it like this: so long ya have ventingspace there shouldnt be a problem i can imagin closing the enginevent by placing a block directly in front of it can cause problems but with one block of space i shouldnt cause problems because ya have ventingspace so the heat can escape,and to the peeps saying what about the flame produced,wel that flame will only cause the decoloring of blocks like in the real world when ya heat metal i will become transparant blue or burnished black but that is another type of flame that cause that effect

kind regards

 

Source:
https://quest.nasa.gov/qna/questions/FAQ_Shuttle_Launch.htm

2700 deg celcius. Seems hot enough to melt metal to me.

I'm giving this thread 5 stars!

 

How fast does the shuttle go when launched at max speed is it 7400m/s? In space engineers we already are in space and flying at the max of 104m/s anywayz true that rocketengines produce higher temperatures "inside that engine" outgoing temperature (heatsignature) is arround 1200°c not enough to melt metal

kind regards

 

About engines, we are not talking solid rocket engines, nor liquid fuel rocket engines. No, we are talking about the more exotic type of engines. There is no fuel line going in these thrusters, nor do they run out of fuel. They are connected to the electrical power circuit of your ship. We, in SE, are having ion thrusters instead.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ion_thruster

I know that these are also producing heat, but I couldn't quickly find how much. But taking solid/liquid fuel rocket engine temperatures here is just a shot in the dark.

 

My point was to debunk a baseless "fact".

You say ion engines. That's reasonable. Lets examine the facts:

" Ion thrusters' exhaust velocity are often in the range of 15–50 kilometres per second (1,500–5,100 s)"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ion_thruster

So, perhaps we need to stop thinking in terms of heat and instead thinking in terms of exhaust velocity (not aiming this comment at Nutter)

 

That's the correct answer to the 5point question.

Kinetics!

 

So, perhaps we need to stop thinking in terms of heat and instead thinking in terms of exhaust velocity (not aiming this comment at Nutter)

Sry but this doesn't make any sense, antithrustpads at LC-39 don't fly away nor explode once hitted with heat or like you say with exhaust velocity

 

LC-39? Help me, what is that?

And it is not 'getting hit by velocity' but 'getting hit by ions which have velocity'. Even given the fact 'an ion' is really light, if you give it enough velocity, it will impact with great force. Again: kinetics.

I also have never heard of anti-thrust pads. I know that Newton states that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. In the light of that, how do you propose pads would make anti-thrust? AFAIK, pads can redirect thrust at best.

Which brings me to the following point: IMO there is space in the block catalogue for a certain angled block that redirects the thruster exhaust, which has implications for the efficiency and direction that thruster works in. But pads for thrust vectoring are not that needed in SE, though they would be nice to have.

 

Angled heavy armour perhaps? A small extension of currently available blocks. I don't know if the game engine is that clever to deflect exhaust.

 

Kinetics! do you mean kinetic energy? only parts that are loose will be affected like your bodyinternals,parts that are bolted,welded ect shouldnt be

 

No sense, your post make. The lack of punctuation makes it hard to filter out your point.
Kinetics, or the whole energy and mass story that Newtonian physics has to offer, does not only work on losse parts. But remember that the thrust 'flame' consists out of billions upon billions of tiny particles which together have a mass, and are ejected with incredible speed. F = m * a will give you an idea.

These particles, even when hitting a welded down part, will interact with it according to proper mechanics: the particle and the surface it hits are two separate 'bodies' in this context. If the force exerted by the particles exceeds the yield strength of the material the surface is made of, the surface will bend, and possibly break.

I.e.: thruster flames + kinetics = YES, the affected blocks will crumble.

 

LC-39 is a launchpad used by nasa antithrustpad is actualy like a big box made of concrete and metal filled with water to prevent the flames to expand and to dim the sound created by liftoff you always have a lot of white clouds but that is just the water vaperizing in the air. about ions hitting your armor i can agree on that but still... atm the thrusters in se just cause too much damage imo heavy armor should do fine so long ya have 1 or 2 block of space between them, that was my point, atm its overkill and sry for drifting off with my examples lol