Just telling a little about the upcoming update:
As mentioned earlier, the game will feature ⛽fuel for the ship's reactive engines. This fuel will be used for takeoff/landing on planets, as well as for suborbital flights between different locations on the planet.
The features:
The ships in the game use electric rocket engines⚡. I wrote about them and their integration into the game in the article (theory):
View game page
The convenience of electric rockets engines is that they can run on single-component fuels (gases), such as argon, hydrogen, helium, nitrogen, and even oxygen. Liquid rocket engines often run on fuel pair such as hydrogen-oxygen, kerosene-oxygen, methane-oxygen, etc.
The main parameter that determines whether your ship can take off/land is the so-called Δv (delta-v, also known as "change in velocity") - This is the change in the spacecraft's velocity required to perform a maneuver. It's a kind of "currency" of space travel. In real life, each spacecraft maneuver costs a certain amount of delta-v, and the entire flight is planned based on a budget of these velocity changes: entering planetary orbit, trajectory corrections, docking with the ISS, and returning to Earth.🌍
For example, the average Δv for takeoff from the Earth's surface to low Earth orbit is about 9.4 km/s, of which 7.8 km/s is the speed that must be directly reached to enter orbit and another 1.6 km/s is gravitational losses.
The higher the gravity loss, the slower our rocket takes off (if it has low thrust), every second of being in the gravitational field of our planet is an additional gravitational loss. Therefore, it is important that our engine produces maximum thrust🚀, and preferably, with the minimum weight of the ship🧱
Therefore, in the game we will need to look for more high-thrust fuel: for example, hydrogen is the worst fuel for takeoff from the planet, its thrust coefficient is only 1, helium has 2, nitrogen has 4, and argon has as much as 6! By the way, hydrogen also takes up a lot of space (volume, m3).
If necessary, if our fuel does not allow us to gain the required Δv, there will be only one way out - to dump needless cargo from the ship's hold, or to look for additional fuel. The larger and heavier the ship, the more fuel it will have to burn to gain the required Δv.
By the way, in the game, Δv is calculated (some simplified) according to the famous Tsiolkovsky formula:
Δv = v_exh × ln(m0 / m1).
v_exh - is the exhaust speed of fuel flow from the engine, m/s
m0 - initial mass of the ship (fuel + ship structure)
m1 - the final mass of the ship (after fuel consume)
ln — is the natural logarithm
It is also taken into account:
- How "strong gravity" the planet has - that is, its gravitational acceleration (for example, the Earth has 9.81 m/s2). The higher it is, the greater the gravity loss, and therefore the fuel consumption.
- Does the planet have an atmosphere, and what is its density. The denser the atmosphere, the greater the lift generated by the ship's movement (according to the game's lore, ships take off slightly hollow, almost airplane-like, rather than vertically like rockets). The higher the atmospheric density, the lower the fuel costs. And on planets without an atmosphere, fuel consumption is maximum (wings won't help here, only the pure jet thrust of our truly powerful electric rockets engine).
- Aerodynamic efficiency of the ship. It works like this: the more "airplane-like" a ship is, the greater the aerodynamics. The more "brick" a ship is, the less aerodynamics it has. Greater aerodynamics helps during takeoff (and especially during landing), it helps the ship develop lift, and thus reduces additional fuel costs.
- The amount of fuel for landing is often spent several times less than for takeoff. Especially if there is an atmosphere on the planet - it works as a brake (aerodynamic braking)
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Perhaps many who have mastered👏 the text up to here will find that the game is very complicated: there are many formulas📰 and factors. But I want to assure you that the game is not a pure simulator, and everything is much simpler than it sounds.
✅In fact, you just need to remember: you need to look for better fuel and not overload the ship. Especially on planets with strong gravity. And planets with denser atmospheres make it easier to takeoff and land.
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As many might have guessed, there are considerable chances in the game to land on a planet, having spent almost all the fuel, and there is no way to return to space :)
Of course, the player will be able to find fuel at the locations in most cases. But for the most fatal situations😬, a new mechanic will be introduced - a call for help (SOS signal).
When the SOS signal is activated, a friendly trader will fly to the player and offer to buy some fuel from him (and if you have no money, he will help you free, like a brother👍).
However, there is a chance that the enemy will arrive at the SOS signal! The more dangerous the sector, the more likely it will be the enemy.
The search for reactive fuel will become the main activity of the player, it is the basis of space travel, even in the future.
In addition to reactive fuel, the player will also need fuel for a thermonuclear reactor (ship energy), as well as warp fuel to fly through the star system on a warp engine.
But it is reactive fuel that will be the most "consumed consumable", since it is spent in much larger quantities (tons) and it is needed every time during takeoff / landing / suborbital flight.
