Honestly, if weight as a game concept is to mean anything, then the heaviest ships in the game should turn a little slowly. There are a lot of items now with reduced sizes and weights if you look for them. I'm not after Engineers in particular, but pre-balance, the Rhino Charge was completely out of proportion to everything else. There are also already 18 new tech 21 engines already designed with maybe more on the way.

Also, I didn't realize that turning was so much more popular than thrust. I'll crank up the turn/thrust ratio on some of the tech 21 engines, but, exactly, how far should i take it? Rhino Charge is pretty much the highest turn/thrust engine in the game, you guys want one that has an even higher ratio than that?

Where are the Stealth engines that make Sniper useable? Why add a monstrous amount of vis on a large variety of engines that the vast majority of Snipers use?

Instead of a Second post I'll edit this one. saves the spam.

While i agree with most of the changes this brings forth all i see when looking at all the engines is nerf nerf nerf to Snipers unless you somehow beefed the FT Qua Vazuk to be somewhat relatively useful as that is the only stealth engine which might be vaguely used by Snipers considering your point that FT engines got beefs. if so thanks for telling us now, and here's to hoping that the FT Qua Vazuk didn't get 300 vis tacked on for the lulz.

Crunched some stats. Here are some engines i commonly use as Sniper along with assorted engines.
If Vis or stats are not displayed it was decent.
Non stealth but useable engines
Grape- 690 vis
Titan Engine- 729 vis
Zebra Muscle- 690 vis
Unholy Lion Thruster- 909 vis

Stealth Engines.
Qua Vazuk- Same stats as before but 50 vis. WTF
Bule Abadi Darkness- 4100 thrust and 1176 turning. You NERFED the turning ratio on this? It wasn't bad enough already?
Urqa Qi Vazuk- 4300 Thrust 1715 turning and 13 vis. Well......you totally fucked that engine up didn't you.

But that wouldn't have the +17% speed...

For example, why is the giga fission thrust 30k thrust and 3.3k turning? Nobody will EVER use that because nobody like turning like they're carrying a crate of bricks.


Still, it would be nice.

also;



This^

/Hugs his huge stock of Ace in the Pill crates.


Thrust anyone?

3:1 on LFs
2:1 Freighters
3:1 HFs
I have no idea on Capships....
Thats my 2cents.

I don't have the test client installed now, and I can't really be bothered but if the Merc Ramjet is bigger now than before.. I'd going to be even less into it than before. I built it for my SD, it's 15 size bigger than the venu motor it's built out of and I'm much better off with a trans/forcefull vmotor than the Ramjet. I can't see the stats on say.. panther engine, but can we get something decent that's actually smaller than t19 engines?

Also, the stealth engine issue really sucks. The Juju is waaay too heavy for any of the current stealth engines. You have decent LF/scout engines that are small and stealthy, but they're underpowered. The solution is ez.. make something with decent stats and make it too big for a panther or a wing4. I'd gladly give 300 hull on my juju for a fission thrust with <10 vis. T20 of course. And I'm sure others like Beelze and Cyg have more to say than I.

/me respecs his seer because there are no more stealth engines...
also, i love the stats on Emp prop. its probably the best balanced engine in the game for size, thrust, and turning... Merc Ramjet should have similar stats. Its far more expensive than any other engine out there besides its own FT version, why shouldnt it be the 2nd best LF-aimed engine in game?
also im curious, what are the stats on FT grape influence now? and since my PRC doesnt exist on test ( ), can someone tell me new stats on primal rhino charge?

just for kicks i opened up my storages on test and live side by side and compared some stats, i like the over-all trends but i notice that Grape Influence is now nearly as good as emp prop makes me wonder what the hell merc ramjet stats are like. One thing that worries me is that Rhino Charge and Lion Thruster both lost ~15-20% stats. i should say that you shouldnt break all our shiny shit just so your new shit looks especially awesome
i'd have to see primal lion thruster stats to know for sure, but it seems we've got nothing really good for big HF engines. LT was the best there was and that lost 15% as i've mentioned, when fully geared lions were already turning like bricks.... next step, test turning on lion....

OK, I'm going to look at all stealth engines again. Instead of trying to do it with a "stealth factor" like I did, I'll make a table and label engines as somewhat stealthy, stealthy, and very stealthy, and give them 100, 10, and 1 visibility and 0.75, 0.5, and 0.25 normal stats respectively. This should be a huge beef to all stealth engines, which I'm OK with.

ok seen the PRC stats on test now and im dissapointed... its got like the same stats as regular rhino charge on live has... which gives me grave misgivings about the possibilities for primal lion thruster... so the question i hinted at before must be asked: WTF ARE WE SUPPOSED TO USE? have you SEEN how these engines work on real ships in real setups?

Ok, YES rhino charge was like 50% better than its closest competitor... but thats because Rhino Charge was well balanced to deal with high weight rhino gear, whilst everything else was NOT. IMO you should use unaltered LT, RC, and Emp Prop stats as the baseline of an ADEQUATE T20 engine. Ok emp prop is awesome not adequate but the point being that with the stats i've seen on test LF style engines are being beefed majorly to fit their use, while the ONLY high power engines in game were nerfed to better fit with the CRAP we dont use on live beause it SUCKS MAJOR ASS.

As a principle, shouldn't the best T20 engine available be good enough to work with a top of the line T20 setup? or do you really want us to be hobbled until we get t21?


edit: sorry, dont mean to bitch but im convinced this would be a disaster for HFs and Freighters. i would test to be absolutely sure of it, but my lion got spaceshipped cuz i died in olympus and left it for weeks thinking it would get reset before i bothered to log back on

If we balance all other engines after the current Rhino Charge it will be impossible to control low tech ships, they will spin so fast that you wont know which way is forward

heh, not quite what i meant. Its hard to talk about this because we dont have a developed language to classify engines into separate categories.
For example, there are huge high powered hull locked engines, small lower powered engines, stealthy engines with shit power.... but no language to communicate these besides ridiculously long descriptors. One of the reasons we dont have this language is that for the most part, there is only one useful engine (if that) for each class at T20, with maybe two or three lower tech options for those lower levels.

Now that being clarified, ill repeat myself. I think Rhino Charge's original stats were exactly what they needed to be for a huge high power freighter locked engine. Engineers get hull weights in 10's of millions with all their drones and shit, so they NEED a powerful engine. at present the ONLY engine that fits their needs is rhino charge, and that only barely. Same for loot-laden shms. Similar predicament for weapon-heavy Zerkers or HF gunners.

So what i suggest is that we need to better define the categories of engines and fill those categories with appropriate gear that fufills our T20 needs with T20 gear, then balance those categories using, for example, Rhino charge as the 100% baseline for Adequate T20 heavy lifting freighter engine. So then Primal Rhino Charge we'd say should be 10% above baseline for 110%, IID should be 105% (and T20, lets be honest?), and whatever lower engines would fall into place as im sure you can figure out. Was gonna enumerate it all but you're smart people.

hope that clarifies things and is helpful. i know it makes me feel better to have said it, even if it goes totally unnoticed like usual

Oh god i dont even want to know what you did to the cap engine i think...

Meh. So maybe for Freighter Engines, Give a scale. T20 are 100's, T0's are 5's. T1's 10, etc...Of the power of a RC or something, so noob engines are in line with RCs and RCs dont get boned?

Keep prc like it is, and beef other engines up to it instead of nerfing it down to the others

thats essentially what i meant but im long-winded and take a long time to say anything of substance.

I know i've got like 4 posts on this page already so ill keep this one brief: rhino charge is slightly overpowered for its rarity, but you CANNOT take away the chief engine of engineers shms and transports without giving a replacement. Goloagay Vazaha T20 engine for shms maybe? and lower the size on Anni thruster to ~1.5k so it can fit in transport ships for actual use? pretty sure it wouldnt even fit in my SD DF as it is now