SFS 1.6 What I believe they will add and what they should add.

Mr.Dude · Feb 9, 2023

We already know and hope astronauts will be added to the game and with a new texture update that would be very nice in my opinion.

I believe that the 1.6 updates will include other than what we know.

1. A Oxygen system I believe this would be great and would make a good challenge for others to overcome.
2. Upgraded Damage Physics I honestly don't like the Physics for Destruction in this game but I love the game in general/
3. A space vacuum would be a cool feature to add in this game even though a lot of players may rage over it I think it would be nice.
4. Upgraded Landing Physics when landing on the Moon I would love to see the Effects of the Exhaust that comes out of the thrusters.
5. Historical Missions for Career mode this would be a very nice feature to add so others can relive the great moments of success.

But these are just ideas to add unless the Creators would think this is a good idea to add.

Hermes · Feb 10, 2023

Mr.Dude said:

I wonder if they will add water. We have not heard anything about it in months and in the last sneak peek of it, we saw it looked almost done. Did you also notice how they removed the live development and beta channels from the discord? I think they are either very close to being finished or have had some major setbacks. I also saw Brioche playing a game called "SFS 2" on discord. Stef also put "Brioche" in the reactons for the latest sneak peek.

Cresign · Feb 10, 2023

Mr.Dude said:

1. There will be an oxygen system, infinite oxygen cheat is a thing in translations and planet files already feature a setting for air/no air.
2. I would honestly love the joins between parts to not be completely stiff, that would be a pain in the butt to add but would be amazing.
3. Tied to 1., but yeah there will be no oxygen on other planets, even ones with atmospheres.
4. Stef actually did mention once that he thought about adding some kind of dust particles when lifting off as a replacement for the plume reflection removed in 1.5.
5. Cool idea, but would probably require part packs to be purchased.

ILovespace3 · Feb 10, 2023

Aaaaaaaaaassssssssssttttttttttrrrrrrrrrroooooooooonnnnnnnnnnaaaaaaaaaauuuuuuuuuuttttttttttssssssssss!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Mr.Dude · Feb 10, 2023

YESSSS WE NEED ASTRONAUTS

ILovespace3 · Feb 10, 2023

SHΔRD Aerospace · Feb 10, 2023

Hermes said:

I wonder if they will add water. We have not heard anything about it in months and in the last sneak peek of it, we saw it looked almost done. Did you also notice how they removed the live development and beta channels from the discord? I think they are either very close to being finished or have had some major setbacks. I also saw Brioche playing a game called "SFS 2" on discord. Stef also put "Brioche" in the reactons for the latest sneak peek.

the SFS 2 thing was a shitpost

SHΔRD Aerospace · Feb 10, 2023

ILovespace3 said:

Mr.Dude said:

There is no need for these comments,

ILovespace3 said:

especially this one, which is just spam.

SHΔRD Aerospace · Feb 10, 2023

But this is a good idea.

Catalyst_Kh · Feb 12, 2023

I would love to see these changes also:

1. Ion engines remain with the same (or relatevely the same), weight, size, form and ISP, as they are now, but their thrust is made 3x times weaker, than it is now - 0.5 tons of thrust per engine.

2. Ion engine works only if it is attached directly to a working battery module. Like chemical engines must be directly attached to any fuel tank.

3. Battery module will not work, when solar panels are closed or absent at all.

4. If the battery module it currently not working - then ion engines are not working as well.

5. There might be some additional rule of how much batteries one solar panel can power up, but that is not necessary, since all previous changes will already fix thise huge game problem with ion drives bug/cheat.

That would be very nice improvement. It would still allow to save fuel on long interplanetary (or interstellar) maneuvers, but apart from that ion engines will not be any help as easy take-off from earth or easy lander to any moon or small planet.

For example, now this little guy in the picture below can land at any moon and come back with plenty of extra fuel - at Earth's Moon, at Ganymede, at Titan, and so on:

This little guy can do 11200 m/s of ΔV on its own. Do you realize how ridiculous this is? At full Realistic level of game difficulty or in IRIS game world - this module can go alone from Low Earth Orbit to Moon, land on the Moon, and then come back to Low Earth Orbit. Now imagine how much it can do at Normal game difficulty, where everything is 20 times closer to each other.

And if we improve it just a little like this:

Now it can easily land on Mars or Mercury with no problems, and take off from Mars or Mercury to get back to orbit. And both landing and coming back to orbit will require only half of the fuel in it!

And if we only add some gas canister to this little guy, like this:

Now it can do more than 30 000 m/s of ΔV combined! At Realistic (!!!) level of game difficulty (or IRIS game world) this "small rocket" can go from Earth Orbit to Mars, land on Mars itself, land on both Mar's Moons too, and then return to Earth's orbit.

And if we only add a second gas canister module - it can easily go from Earth and land on all moons of Jupiter and come back to Earth's orbit in one flight. It can do the same with all 8 Moons of Saturn too and come back to Earth's Orbit - in any custom game world with Saturn. And that is still at Realistic level of game difficulty!

And there are also things like this:

This hugely not optimized launcher still can bring near 1000 tons to Orbit at Realistic game difficulty or in IRIS game world. If we optimize stages better - we can bring even much more than 1000 tons easily.

Imagine how much tons it can upload at Normal game difficulty level.

In the form they are present in the game currently - ion engines are very big flaw of this game. It just obliterates the entire game idea and damages gameplay quality a lot.

And all of this nonsense can be so easily fixed in next version of the game!

I would like to tell that to game developer, please suggest me how to contact him.

Cresign · Feb 12, 2023

Catalyst_Kh said:

I would love to see these changes also:

1. Ion engines remain with the same (or relatevely the same), weight, size, form and ISP, as they are now, but their thrust is made 3x times weaker, than it is now - 0.5 tons of thrust per engine.

2. Ion engine works only if it is attached directly to a working battery module. Like chemical engines must be directly attached to any fuel tank.

3. Battery module will not work, when solar panels are closed or absent at all.

4. If the battery module it currently not working - then ion engines are not working as well.

5. There might be some additional rule of how much batteries one solar panel can power up, but that is not necessary, since all previous changes will already fix thise huge game problem with ion drives bug/cheat.

That would be very nice improvement. It would still allow to save fuel on long interplanetary (or interstellar) maneuvers, but apart from that ion engines will not be any help as easy take-off from earth or easy lander to any moon or small planet.

For example, now this little guy in the picture below can land at any moon and come back with plenty of extra fuel - at Earth's Moon, at Ganymede, at Titan, and so on:

View attachment 98615

This little guy can do 11200 m/s of ΔV on its own. Do you realize how ridiculous this is? At full Realistic level of game difficulty or in IRIS game world - this module can go alone from Low Earth Orbit to Moon, land on the Moon, and then come back to Low Earth Orbit. Now imagine how much it can do at Normal game difficulty, where everything is 20 times closer to each other.

And if we improve it just a little like this:

View attachment 98616

Now it can easily land on Mars or Mercury with no problems, and take off from Mars or Mercury to get back to orbit. And both landing and coming back to orbit will require only half of the fuel in it!

And if we only add some gas canister to this little guy, like this:

View attachment 98619

Now it can do more than 30 000 m/s of ΔV combined! At Realistic (!!!) level of game difficulty (or IRIS game world) this "small rocket" can go from Earth Orbit to Mars, land on Mars itself, land on both Mar's Moons too, and then return to Earth's orbit.

And if we only add a second gas canister module - it can easily go from Earth and land on all moons of Jupiter and come back to Earth's orbit in one flight. It can do the same with all 8 Moons of Saturn too and come back to Earth's Orbit - in any custom game world with Saturn. And that is still at Realistic level of game difficulty!

And there are also things like this:

View attachment 98617

This hugely not optimized launcher still can bring near 1000 tons to Orbit at Realistic game difficulty or in IRIS game world. If we optimize stages better - we can bring even much more than 1000 tons easily.

Imagine how much tons it can upload at Normal game difficulty level.

In the form they are present in the game currently - ion engines are very big flaw of this game. It just obliterates the entire game idea and damages gameplay quality a lot.

And all of this nonsense can be so easily fixed in next version of the game!

I would like to tell that to game developer, please suggest me how to contact him.

I think the old electricity system was perfect, except i think i remember that you couldnt recharge batteries (?), so if that was the case then that should be changed.

Altaïr · Feb 12, 2023

Catalyst_Kh said:

You nailed it, ion engines are totally overpowered. That's something we've noticed long ago, and Stef is aware about it.

Originally they were somewhat more balanced because they required energy, which came from solar panels or RTGs. RTGs were more compact but heavier for the same quantity of electricity produced, so generally players used solar panels. You needed a pair of small ones or a big one to power a single ion engine at full power. But of course this came with additional weight.

So if you tried to spam ion engines you also had to spam solar panels, which was very impractical and the additional mass degraded the overall performance.

There was even a challenge that consisted in flying as high as possible with only ion engines: Pure Ion Challenge
At that time it was not possible to go higher than 3-4000 meters. But even like that, ion engines were very powerful, already too much.

We already thought about how to balance them, but making some realistic ion engines would require to lower their thrust by a factor 1000, not 3! A typical ion engine has around 100 milliNewtons of thrust (approximately 10 grams of thrust - yes, grams!). The most advanced prototype I've heard of, the X3 prototype, claims 5.4N of thrust (550 grams - Yay!), for a supplied power of 100 kW. At Earth level, the Sun provides 1.36 kW/m² of power. With solar panels with 40% of efficiency (which is already very good), it would require 184 m² of solar panels to supply the X3 at full power

In short, making realistic ion engines would require to lower their thrust so much that the needed burn time would be totally prohibitive. Nobody will stay looking at his ion engines burning during hours and hours.

That's the main problem, if you lower their thrust you increase the burn time, and unless you stack many of them like crazy you can already spend a long time on your maneuvers. And if you increase the mass requirements (in the form of power supply) or lower the Isp then you gradually destroys what makes the ion engine good.

Until now we've not found the magical recipe to make them balance.

Cresign · Feb 12, 2023

Altaïr said:

You nailed it, ion engines are totally overpowered. That's something we've noticed long ago, and Stef is aware about it.

Originally they were somewhat more balanced because they required energy, which came from solar panels or RTGs. RTGs were more compact but heavier for the same quantity of electricity produced, so generally players used solar panels. You needed a pair of small ones or a big one to power a single ion engine at full power. But of course this came with additional weight.

So if you tried to spam ion engines you also had to spam solar panels, which was very impractical and the additional mass degraded the overall performance.

There was even a challenge that consisted in flying as high as possible with only ion engines: Pure Ion Challenge
At that time it was not possible to go higher than 3-4000 meters. But even like that, ion engines were very powerful, already too much.

We already thought about how to balance them, but making some realistic ion engines would require to lower their thrust by a factor 1000, not 3! A typical ion engine has around 100 milliNewtons of thrust (approximately 10 grams of thrust - yes, grams!). The most advanced prototype I've heard of, the X3 prototype, claims 5.4N of thrust (550 grams - Yay!), for a supplied power of 100 kW. At Earth level, the Sun provides 1.36 kW/m² of power. With solar panels with 40% of efficiency (which is already very good), it would require 184 m² of solar panels to supply the X3 at full power

In short, making realistic ion engines would require to lower their thrust so much that the needed burn time would be totally prohibitive. Nobody will stay looking at his ion engines burning during hours and hours.

That's the main problem, if you lower their thrust you increase the burn time, and unless you stack many of them like crazy you can already spend a long time on your maneuvers. And if you increase the mass requirements (in the form of power supply) or lower the Isp then you gradually destroys what makes the ion engine good.

Until now we've not found the magical recipe to make them balance.

As for the solar panels and weight, i can definetely see how people would take advantage of x and y setting in blueprint files to make them weigh much less.

Catalyst_Kh · Feb 12, 2023

Altaïr said:

I see no problems at all. I see just very easy solution, which can be implemented right immediately without any problems.

We can keep the thrust power as it is - but just make ion engines 3 times heavier. And that is all. There is no need to make it 100 or 1000 times weaker.

We don't need to make ion engines to be realistic - we only need to fix the flaw, which they create in the gameplay. And making thrust 3 times lower or instead engine's weight 3 times higher - that is totally enough to fix that huge flaw and the damage to the game.

Plus my idea is to use simple battery modules, which doesn't need any recharging at all - it simply works forever, there is no need to recharge. Battery module just works only when solar panel is open (and that panel can be anywhere in the rocket), and battery module doesn't work when solar panel is closed.

And that is it - very simple and very effective. And yet - it will fix all current problems with ion engines.

Developers can regulate the size and weight of each battery module to make it comfortable and playable. There can be even different module sizes and weights, like with fuel tanks.

And the strict necessity of any ion engines to be connected to one of battery modules directly easily eliminates any stacking of ion drives on each other or anywhere throughout the entire rocket, in each small crack of the rocket, which has some unused space.

Catalyst_Kh · Feb 12, 2023

With configuration above it will still be easy and comfortable to use some amount of ion drives (like 10 or 20) for interplanetary movement, it will work fine and amount of thrust will be enough to not wait too long for the needed acceleration.

But ion drives will become ineffective for landing modules and take off launchers.

Altaïr · Feb 12, 2023

I'm not sure to understand what your problem exactly is...

If it's about the huge ΔV generated (you seemed shocked that you could generate 30 km/s of ΔV in a previous post), it's not shocking at all, real ion engines allow to do that.

For example, the Bepi-Colombo spacecraft has four Qinetiq T6 ion engines, each one of them weighs 8.5 kgs, is 22 cm wide, and has a specific impulse of around 4120 seconds. The probe weighs 4.1 tons, which includes 580 kg of xenon, the ion engine propellant. And this is enough to give to the probe more than 5000 m/s of ΔV. A ship that would use such engines and of which half of the mass would be xenon would have 28 km/s of ΔV.

So that part is not unrealistic to me, it's REALLY that powerful.

If it's about their thrust-weight ratio then I agree. But simply dividing by 3 their thrust won't fix the problem. Lifting off from Earth would be more difficult for sure (still not necessarilly impossible), but lifting off from the Moon or Mars would still be easily doable, which is totally irrealistic. That's why I said that nerfing thrust by a factor 3 wouldn't fix the problem.

And multiplying by 3 the engine mass wouldn't help either, because it's only the engine mass that you rise, not the whole ship's mass, so the TWR is not divided by 3.

Also, I compared with a realistic ion engine because as far as I know Stef wants his game to be realistic. If you make a balanced engine that does not behave like an ion engine, then it shouldn't be called an ion engine. It's something else.

Also...

Catalyst_Kh said:

This is the part I don't understand. To be able to lift-off from a planet, you need a high enough thrust-weight ratio. But TWR is directly proportional to acceleration, so if you downgrade (no matter how) the TWR, you automatically downgrade the acceleration, which increases the burn time during interplanetary transfers. You can't change one without changing the other proportionally, that's the problem I descrived above.

Mr.Dude · Feb 12, 2023

what they should also add is nuclear engines due to all the radiation in space there should be engines that harvest the radiation and turn it into fuel.

and they should add a better launch pad same with a countdown and fix the space center and custom colors without a pass.

and they should add plated heat shields and other things more custom parts or a part-making studio were u can make ur own parts and how they work that would be cool except there are probably already mods for that.

Mr.Dude · Feb 12, 2023

they should also add custom Nations with their own rocket parts instead of having just one set of parts u can have more than one that are not the same and you can't access the other Nation parts

astromax24 · Feb 12, 2023

Mr.Dude said:

It would be cool, but it doubt it will be ever be added officially. It will probably stay in the mods

Catalyst_Kh · Feb 12, 2023

Altaïr said:

I like ion engines themselves, i only don't like that the game as it is now allows to use it so easily for taking-off launchers from Earth and for any landing modules, even on planets. This simply ruins the entire gameplay.

If it was a problem, which cannot be avoided - then okay. What can we do then?

But this problem can be fixed very easily - that is what i am talking about. There is a solution. You said yourself, that this solution changes the game only so little, that you don't see the point. The point is - that this little is fully enough to reach the goal.

We fix only this one particular flaw in the gameplay and keep all benefits remained, all upsides which you mentioned - it will remain, but the huge flaw in gameplay will disappear. It is easily done, it doesn't require a lot of changes or game code programming. Only tiny changes and the goal is successfully reached.

Altaïr said:

ΔV is good. I am shocked not by ΔV, but by the ways how (in which way) this ΔV is achieved. For example - if entire interplanetary mothership have this ΔV, then it is okay, but small single lander having this ΔV, which can land on the planet and take off from it - that is ridiculous. Mothership carrying a lander with chemical truster - that is totally normal. But that would require at least some size of the ship, not such a tiny lander on its own.

Altaïr said:

That is totally okay, i don't mind that at all. I would be happy to see such things in the game.

But, can this Bepi-Colombo land on Mars or Mercury and take off from it back to orbit? Or should he have the possibility to land and take off from such big celestial bodies, as Mars and Mercury? That is what i am talking about. In current state of SFS game it now can do that. That is what i propose to fix.

Altaïr said:

And that is good! If somebody wants to make it this way - let them have it. This possibility will be present and that only makes the game better. The more options in game the better. But that would be totally inefficient - now chemical engines would be more efficient for take-offs.

So this exactly simply fixes the problem. Just dividing by small number, it might be more than 3 or less than 3, it is not important to be exactly 3.

Altaïr said:

But your words exactly showing why it perfectly fixes this game flaw entirely.

And I do want it to be easily doable. So everyone can do it if they wish to - the more possibilities in game the better. I only want this perversion to use ion engine for landing modules to be no more effective, than using chemical engines for landing modules. And that is all - simple balance restoration.

Some single solar panel and only single battery module - that is not a problem for mothership, it is only tiny extra weight and hurts nothing, and that will allow to add many ion drives to mothership with no problems. But for the landing module +battery and +solar panel is a lot of extra weight, which will balance the efficiency and fixes this flaw in gameplay entirely.

Altaïr said:

Yes, i can. There will be no downgrade.

Each mothership from current design can just take x3 times more ion drives to gain the same total power of thrust.

And to not force people to change designs of their blueprints it is better then to simply increasing ion drives weight by x3 and keep the thrust at 1.5 tons. That is very good detail you dug up.

Cresign · Feb 12, 2023

Mr.Dude said:

I see you're taking things from Space Agency, i mean it is possible that there might be more part packs, but for now only Saturn V and Shuttle got leaked so idk.

brioche · Feb 13, 2023

Hermes said:

lol, both of those are just me shitposting. i created an "sfs 2" discord rich presence along with a "stef vs. goku story mode" description just to fuck with people, i also put my own name in the snek pek message because i thought it would be funny. nothing more to it

i am the ultimate shitposter

astromax24 · Feb 13, 2023

brioche said:

SFS 2 ?!?!!!??? OMGGSN EHEN WHEN REPASE DATE SFS 1.6 CANCELLED AND REPLACE WITH SFS 2 HOLY SHIRTS OMG R

Hermes · Feb 13, 2023

brioche said:

Very funny

astromax24 said:

Did you even read his message!?

Cresign · Feb 13, 2023

Hermes said:

Astromax was also joking

SFS 1.6 What I believe they will add and what they should add.

Mr.Dude

Hermes

Cresign

Spiller of the Milky Way • Rocket Gluer

ILovespace3

Mr.Dude

ILovespace3

SHΔRD Aerospace

SHΔRD Aerospace

SHΔRD Aerospace

Catalyst_Kh

Cresign

Spiller of the Milky Way • Rocket Gluer

Altaïr

Space Stig, Master of gravity

Cresign

Spiller of the Milky Way • Rocket Gluer

Catalyst_Kh

Catalyst_Kh

Altaïr

Space Stig, Master of gravity

Mr.Dude

Mr.Dude

astromax24

Catalyst_Kh

Cresign

Spiller of the Milky Way • Rocket Gluer

brioche

astromax24

Hermes

Cresign

Spiller of the Milky Way • Rocket Gluer