Ion Engines on the moon

[GamerForFun]

I'm curious about how effective ion engines are on the moon, On space engineers wiki it gives you this formula:
e = effectiveness of Ion Thruster as a percentage
r = current altitude/distance from the core of the planet in meters
R = radius of the moon in meters
A = 'LimitAltitude' effectively defining the height of the atmosphere.
H = The 'Hills' Parameter - it's found in the planet's sbc file,
it loosely correlates to the maximum height of any mountain/hill as a ratio.
Typically this is exactly '0.12'.

(r - R)
e = ( ------------ ) x 0.7 + 0.3
(R x H x A)
But i can't seem to get the equation to add up. Can someone help me figure out how effective they are please? I'm in a standard solar system, haven't done any advanced options on any planet.

Thank you in advance

[ShadedMJ]

Simple answer : Try. Start up a new creative game on easy start moon, slap together a ship, see how it moves or look at the provided ships, get comfortable with the changes, and go.

[Fitzy]

Ions are all you need on the moon, it's .25g

Last I landed a ship on it two large grid large ions pointing down were easy enough to hold a little over 1 mil in weight to land and leave any moons, was a couple of months back but don't think they've changed in that time.

There were enough to hold the ship at about .5g to give you a rough idea.

Totally possible to leave a planet only using atmo and ions IF weight is kept to minimum.

I mean ions technically work in atmosphere its just that they give minimal force and no lift in such, they do still give some though, as evidenced with that same ship turning off the ions too soon would cause it to slip while being held by atmo's.

[Spaceman Spiff]

The "Moon" is the only place where ion thrusters are really effective and atmospheric thrusters are not. When on a planet or moon with an atmosphere (that's all of the vanilla planets except the Moon), ion thrusters are 30% effective. You can fly with atmospheric thrusters on all the other planets and moons.

[Buzzard]

Ion thrusters are fouled by ATMOSPHERE, not gravity. Your ship will work just fine on the Earthlike moon, which has NO atmosphere of any kind. The Mars moon, as well as the Alien moon, have an atmosphere of sorts, which will enable atmospheric thrusters, and nerf ions.

Still, make sure you've got enough ions pointed down for lift, as it'd be just a little embarassing to crash/get stuck there. (I've had to go rescue a few people who didn't plan ahead much)