My Delta V is in the red, but I can fly around without issues still

[tonechild]

I understand this is the change in velocity my ship can do with full propellant load - but seeing as how I have no problems flying around, why is this in the red? I would think it would be in the red if I was unable to fly around or something.

[Buffinator]

Red is critical, if it falls to zero your ship will stop responding and will call for help. It will keep moving with it's inertia at the time, which may result in it flying into debris before you are found and possibly exploding.

[Koder]

Basically it means you will be of of propellant soon.

[tonechild]

Ok, but here's the thing, it fell into the red and I was in the ring for 30 minutes longer - I feel like the warning is way too aggressive. It was at red once it was around 4km/s , I basically mined for 30 more minutes and then left when it was around 1km/s

I think that red should mean something is critical, but in this case, and for the 30+ hours I've played the game (awesome game btw) - I've basically ignored DV the entire time.

I think that if something is red, I shouldn't be ignoring it - but in this case I'm conditioned to ignore the DV warnings because they're basically false alarms.

EDIT TO ADD: PAying attention to the Propellant sensor is more important than looking at the DV, I think the DV should still matter but the warning is way too aggressive.

[Puppet #7]

Thing about delta V is its not a "miles per gallon" type of thing- yeah you made it back to station but if you had happened to look at the dates before and after plotting a course it probably took your ship 20 - 50, or more even, times longer than if you'd left with an appropriate amount of fuel.

[Uriel]

Delta V is a strange data if you're not VERY familiar with actual spaceship flight dynamics. The unit is meters per second, but it's not a speed. It is is a measure of the impulse per unit of spacecraft mass that is needed to perform a maneuver such as launching from or landing on a planet or moon, or an in-space orbital maneuver.

When flying a well optimised Elon fusion craft, you may very well start with a Delta V that is well over the million. That's because Delta V is proportional to the thrust per unit mass and the burn time, and the fusio nengines use very little fuel to generate massive thrust.

Basically, in the game, it's a measure of the impulse per unit of mass that will actually let you go home. It depends on many factors : amount of propellant, mass of the ship, distance from base, current velocity (it should decrease if you're steadily travelling away from base, even without burning your torch), passive consumption (what your reactor uses to generate electricity), and of course fuel efficiency of your thrusters.

According to those factors, it will always decrease, but may do so more or less rapidly depending on what you are doing. If you're burning your torch towards the inner rings, it will decrease rapidly because it factors the distance increasing AND the fact you will need to burn fuel to actually stop going that way before starting to go the other way. Few things may reverse the Delta V to bring it back up, like having an ore processor cargo bay that also remass your fuel (and that's if your ship is very fuel efficient, else it only mitigates de decrease) or jettisoning your whole cargo bay (less dead mass means more fuel relative to the global mass, thus a higher Delta V).

So when it turns red, it's not telling you you are runing out of fuel. It's thelling you that according to what you are doing right now and how heavy you are, you may have trouble going home if you don't anticipate. It may be a little bit agressive, but if your Delta V reaches 0 and you have no way to bring it back up, no matter how much fuel you may still have, you're stranded. It could happen if you become very heavy, very far from home, for instance.

[tonechild]

Yeah I totally understand all of the things y'all are listing here. I know what ΔV is.. I just don't think it should be in the red if I'm a far cry of actually being in any kind of trouble. Thing is, I've been getting by just ignoring it. Most often the thing that sends me home is getting low on popellant. I've also left for home because yeah, I was getting really heavy (which ofc affects the ΔV)

I'm just sayin - can you either tone it down, make the alert less aggressive, or let us players set custom alerts or different thresholds? It shouldn't be in the red if I can easily go home after tons of more mining!

[Uriel]

Originally posted by tonechild:

Yeah I totally understand all of the things y'all are listing here. I know what ΔV is..

My bad then. This is pretty counter-intuitive data, so I thought it was safer to explain it (hopefully) properly :)

Originally posted by tonechild:

It shouldn't be in the red if I can easily go home after tons of more mining!

Can't disagree with that. I'd wager it's a measure of safety for players, so we have margin to act, but it seems a bit too easily red indeed.

[Koder]

Your ΔV should turn red below 4000m/s - and that's the ΔV needed to get back to Enceladus using your normal drives. If you are below that, you are getting back on xenon ions, which have a minuscule thrust, and your transit takes much longer.

In fact, there is a "transit time" readout on your HUD that shows you exactly that - how fast you can get back to the base assuming you plot a course right now.