Utility of small ship hydrogen engin?

[Loues.S.Cat]

It seems it has no internal storage for itself but instead draws up to 100l of fuel as it is needed. so 1l at minimum usage and 100l at maximum usage. the problem with this is to fuel it you need a hydrogen tank. o2 generators can only fuel it up to 1l each, so at maximum output you would need 100 o2 generators to power it without a tank XD
Lugging around a small ship hydrogen tank is a bit tricky for a practical small ship design though I can imagine some rather amusing tanker truck designs. So what is anyone using these for?

[cptsavarus]

I've been thinking about that too. Haven't finished downloading the beta yet but I'm seeing Hydrogen Engines as something I'd mainly only use in wheeled vehicles - just because that's where I'd most expect to find one in reality.
A spaceship doesn't seem a very likely place for a combustion engine to live, though it'd certainly allow for some interesting designs.

In my imagination I picture spaceships with hydrogen engines to be old things - like something that might've been cobbled together by junkers out of scrap parts or built in an age gone by. They'd still be useful & there'd be lots left over in service but they wouldn't have tons of advanced systems - they'd be gritty, low-tech ships. The "Newer" / more advanced ship designs wouldn't use Hydrogen Engines at all.

Also I love the idea of spacecraft that feel like ocean-going ships on the inside. For large-grid ships I envisage building backup engine rooms with several engines in them. Not sure if I'd ever use one in a small ship but It'll certainly be fun to throw some ideas around.

All my ideas are visual so far though, as I've not tested the engines in practice yet. Just throwing some potential inspiration out there for what it's worth.

[Loues.S.Cat]

Yeah.. wheeled vehicles do have the advantage that size isnt too much of an issue... but that huge tank is going to push your height up a bit and centerof gravity is a problem.
So not exactly likely to be a high speed vehicle

[cptsavarus]

Agreed!
There needs to be several different sizes of Hydrogen Tank (both large and small grid) so we can choose what best fits our designs & the look we want.

The small-grid Hydrogen Tank has always been a bugbear of mine, as it makes it impossible to keep the conveyor system of a uniform size.

O2/H2 Generator, Oxygen Tank, Large Conveyor Hub, Medium Cargo Container, cockpit & battery are all 3x3 which keeps the internals easy to organise & restructure - then you come to add a Hydrogen Tank and the whole design has to work around it. Same with the Large Cargo Container - though that has a good reason for being bigger.

I'll be adding this to my feedback in the survey. There have been suggestions made on the feedback portal but not sure if they're being considered.

As for speed / centre-gravity of ground vehicles, I kind of see the Hydrogen Engine as being something I'd put in slow, heavy industrial vehicles more than speedsters, as it'd take a bigger vehicle like a truck to carry the extra equipment, whereas for a fast scout car you'd want to keep the weight down, so a battery would be more appropriate.

[cptsavarus]

Woohoo! My download just completed!
Now I can get to properly figuring out what Hydrogen Engines are good for!

[Loues.S.Cat]

Yeah, a maxed out hydrogen tank seems to be able to fuel a single hydrogen engine for about 2.5 minutes with two o2 generators running at full pelt on a small grid.
This seems like an emergency power system more than a primary power system ^.^;
Since the engine doesn't seem to auto recharge batteries unless the batteries are set specificity to recharge this might work out.... though that just raises the question is it worth lugging about this extra weight if t is only useful in an emergency.

Ahh well. at least the big ones are..... also only useful as a last chance backup... ohh well. the weight sacrifice on a large ship is proportionally smaller ^.^;
I'll more than happily sacrifice two small reactors for a hydrogen engine.

[cptsavarus]

Well I just converted my Little T.A.R.T rover to run on a Hydrogen Engine (I'm calling the Hydrogen version the "Little Hydrogen F.A.R.T"!) - mainly to see how involved it'd be & whether there'd be any worthwhile practical purpose to it.

Previously it ran on a single battery, which would take forever to charge; and 1 solar panel. It's use was limited to what the battery's charge state was.

The new version has 6 small batteries, a single Hydrogen Engine and 1 O2/H2 Generator (no Hydrogen Tank). It seems to go through ice comparably to how my (real life) 6L diesel truck goes through derv, with the only noticeable difference being the max range (IE how much ice can fit in an H2/O2 Gen compared to how much derv my truck carries in the tank).
So I'd say the small-grid engine is fairly well balanced as a rover engine, if probably a bit inefficient for something that's supposed to be 58 years in the future.

Usefulness-wise, that rover is now far more practical, as the Hydrogen Engine has given it options, both for normal running and for charging batteries. With multiple batteries, they can also be cycled singularly, meaning it has potentially 8 power sources - so a ton of redundancy.

For large ships, Hydrogen Engine to Small Reactor power output is 3:1 - plus you also need an H2/O2 Gen and Hydrogen Tank... so you're using up 35 blocks for Hydrogen Engines to 1 block for a small reactor. Space-wise it's hard to see that as a worthwhile emergency backup, since that much infrastructure would need a bigger ship than 1 Small Reactor could realistically run.

On a ship that was already big & had plenty of empty space inside, it'd probably be worth having the Hydrogen Engines as a backup, though on a ship that big it'd be questionable whether Hydrogen Engines would be able to power all the thrusters / keep the ship flying.
For emergency life-support purposes it'd be perfect.

Best use for Large-grid Hydrogen Engines that I can see so far is in ground bases near Ice lakes - especially during nighttime hours when solar is down.

All told, I think it comes down to what the thing you build is actually required to do. There are a lot of pros & cons to be weighed up, which to me just makes the design aspect more interesting.
I love designing things to be balanced & the engines will definitely give more options for that.

[Loues.S.Cat]

I'm not sure I want to convert the Pretty Pnik ♥♥♥♥♥ to gas power...

All my ships run on solars.
The reactors were litteraly there as backup when I started burning power. 99% of the time the only occasion they would ever kick in was during ascent to space.
Which does kind of kill the usefulness of the hydrogen engin again as the hydrogen stickpile on my ship is used for ascent too so.... yeah. I can't really afford to be burning it for power and thrust... Still... if I wanted my ship to sit in the dark for..... 15 years... I have WAY too much uranium... maybe I can start loading that into my grav guns.
Dang it. I don't think I have a real use for the hydrogen engins. I mean unless I park my giant pink hulk on a lake or something.

Edit: ohh come on. it sensors another word for cat? This is about as daft as sensoring ass or another word for Donkey... insert comment about my kitty rising my donkey but using the sensored words here.

[cptsavarus]

Haha! I had to use the quote button to see what was hidden behind the hearts!
I like that Steam doesn't seem to care that we can do that but cares enough to put the hearts in on the actual posts!
It sensored one of my screenshots for having the term "bar on" in the caption if you can believe that.
The world has gone stark raving crackers!

No though, If I had a Pretty Pink ♥♥♥♥♥ I wouldn't want it to be gas powered either. Could get kind of embarassing that! Not to mention, I know what it's like to to be on the recieving end of a blow-out when you're on the vinegar stroke. Wouldn't wish that on my worst enemy!
My ass on the other hand... well that needs to be gas powered or it simply wouldn't work!

But moving swiftly on...

Yeah, nearly all my ships have solar panels for backups too. I tend not to make exclusively solar-powered ones, since the sails need to be huge & unwieldy to get a decent charge.
With the new small battery blocks though I can see small-grid solar sails being really practical.

You're right about not wanting to use Hydrogen Engines for atmospheric exits though. That could get crashy if you forgot they were turned on & ran out of ice in the dead zone of a planet with a stupid-thin atmosphere.

I think I can find plenty of uses for Hydrgoen Engines but I'll have to think carefully about how to balance the designs I put them in.

Tried a couple of multi-engine configurations using the small-grid engines. If you have 2 rows of 3 - one above the other & facing the opposite way, then 2 more rows of 3 sideways on to those on either side (to form a square), you end up with an engine block that takes up roughly the same space as 2 large-grid small reactors and outputs 12MW - so a fairly serious small grid engine.
You're also left with a 1x3x8 slot in the centre of the engines which is perfect for filling with small battery blocks... and the whole thing looks cool as hell!

[Loues.S.Cat]

I'm half tempted to rip out my control pillar and mount an o2 generator on the advanced rotor and use that to adapt the large connector to a small one so I can stick in an engine on top of that. The pillar isnt plumbed in in it's current position though so I'll have to rework the interior of my ship a bit.
Annoying. and even with the o2 generator on there it will be dependant on the ships hydrogen supply anyway because there is no way in heck I am fitting a hydrogen tank into my pillar.

[cptsavarus]

I think you're on to something with that.
Small grid "power packs" could easily be jammed into a lot of existing large-grid designs.
As an emergency power supply for life support & battery charging that could work really well.
Also, if the power pack was kept separate from the main ships' conveyor system it could be perfectly self-contained - maybe even made modular so it can be installed into a variety of different ship designs.
Large ships could even carry a bay full of spare engines for other vehicles. Add a cool mechanical arm to pick them & swap them out... nice!

I once came up with a design for interchangeable small-grid battery packs. The packs would slide in & out of a small slot on the end of a piston & could be removed & popped into a different ship.
I had a whole fleet of ships rotating on just 2 battery packs - one on charge, the other in use.
Could do a similar thing with Hydrogen Engines. The trick then would be coming up with pack designs that had distinctive & useful roles.

[Malkuth]

Don’t forget to mention this information in the survey. This is the time to fix these issues.

Keen ideas never seem to go well with players, so now time to change it.

Just remember it can’t be better than a reactor. So still needs balance.

[cptsavarus]

@Malkuth... not sure I'd say anything needs fixing exactly - just that the input / output balance needs to be got right so as to give us incentives to build the right type of power source for the job, rather than just defaulting to sticking a reactor on it.
Things like these tend to get re-balanced several times before they're considered to be "just right". I expect we'll see a few tweaks made to engines before the end.

Will certainly be leaving some feedback in the survey though.

[Loues.S.Cat]

Well I did ask for small grid veriant of the windmill
and a smaller version of the hydrogen tank to make use of hydrogen engins as a power source more practical.
Beyond that I am currently poking at the scripts. One of the interfaces seems to have been broken in the beta.

[cptsavarus]

Yeah, I spotted a couple of new bugs in it too. Cargo Ships were despawning only 1 or 2 seconds after spawning.

On the whole it actually felt more stable than usual but I might have just imagined that. Will be playing a few more hours at least though before it closes.
Would really like to keep Steam in offline mode & hang on to the beta for longer but kind of want to stick around for updates & interesting topics right now.

Did you post your ideas as suggestions on the feedback portal @Loues? If not you should - I'll up-vote them!
I'm on there now - can't see any topics for small grid windmills. There needs to be one!

[Loues.S.Cat]

Stable... it kind of is.
If I try to load a scave game after starting it up it will crash once the world finishes loading, but if I start a new game, quit and then load a save game it will work fine... so.. yeah. stable XD
And no. not on the support portal.