Ion engines OP?

[Naten]

Isp of 4100 or so.

Thrust of 500 mN. (0.5 kN)

...

...

D:

2fast2stronk

I've done research, and... ion engines... really... aren't that efficient... hardly ever past 3500 seconds in Isp...

Also, dat thrust. It's... ewwww!

It's so powerful! D:

To sum this up, to make the engine accurate, name it this:

xX1337h4x0rC0DG0D360nOxxzZzc00p3zXx [MLG]

Or something along that lines.

Well, what does everyone else think?

[TheCanadianVendingMachine]

Yea, they are to their real counter parts. The Devs had said that

[Matticus88]

I think they are powerful as they are for gameplay reasons. Just as is the scale of the planets and such, for gameplay reasons.

[Felsmak]

Would you enjoy a realistic ion engine?

[maccollo]

Well, when real ion based probes thrust they often do so over the course of several years as they spiral into their target orbit.

How would you feel about burning for 50 days at full timewarp =P?

[Comrade Jenkens]

If you want you can edit the config to give them 0.01N of thrust of whatever the real life version is. Though you can expect the burns to take a few months.

[Naten]

60 mN FTW, guise.

you get cookies IRL for using those things if they're nerfed, but that's nerfing a Nerf gun, as they're already pretty bad for gameplay reasons.

Well, since I'm a Gilly enthusiast, they suit me quite well.

(I'm actually, in career mode, launching my mothership Armstrong to Gilly, followed by a Skylab-style (and of course, inspired ) space station called Gillylab, and probably a Kethane miner, I need that mod and the mining parts in the tech tree... But since Gilly and Bop, even Pol or Minmus... are... them, ion engines are better there. )

[Psycix]

Because we can't timewarp with engines on, Ions have a lot more thrust than IRL for gameplay reasons.

There are Ion thrusters that go up to 20,000 ISP, so the ISP in KSP isn't an odd number at all.

The ion thruster is not the only engine that has been tweaked for gameplay reasons.

In real life the NERVA has way more thrust. It is basically a T30 with an ISP up to 900. Of course this would be extremely overpowered, so they nerfed the thrust.

Note that they are actually "overpowered" in real life, but aren't used because people are scared of nuclear things.

[Themohawkninja]

The ISP of an Ion thruster appears to be able to go between 1,500 and 8,000 seconds, so the ISP isn't OP, and the only thing that is OP relative to real life standards is the thrust, however that is for pure gameplay reasons as a realistic thrust would mean hours of continuous thrusting to do anything.

[Tank Buddy]

Note that they are actually "overpowered" in real life, but aren't used because people are scared of nuclear things.

3 Mile Island... They would be great too. I think they had a thrust of ~330 Kn and an Isp upwards of 800.

[fireflower]

It's annoying enough to have to wait half an hour to make a single burn with the nuclear rocket. I don't want to have to wait four months to make a burn using an electric rocket. Being able to warp through these burns would at least be something.

3 Mile Island... They would be great too. I think they had a thrust of ~330 Kn and an Isp upwards of 800.

Solid- or liquid-core nuclear thermal rockets are so efficient with such high thrust they can be used to build a SSTO that delivers massive amounts of payload to orbit. The problem is not physics or engineering. These are not the hard part of rocket science or nuclear physics. The hard part is paperwork, management, economics. After the 20th century, it is hard to ask people to trust their government with high technology. Edited February 4, 2014 by fireflower

[DJEN]

Isp of 4100 or so.

Thrust of 500 mN. (0.5 kN)

...

...

D:

2fast2stronk

...And there are people who think they're underpowered.

[WhiteWeasel]

...And there are people who think they're underpowered.

Most people don't even touch the ion engine because it's too weak. To the people that actually use Ion engines at all, the OP for saying it's too strong and if he legitimately wanted to nerf it, would be met with this by them:

I love ion engines but sometimes my patience is a little strained even with 4x physwarp, nerfing it would make it unusable to anyone that does not have the patience of a monk. Some people actually have been proposing to buff it.

Edited February 5, 2014 by WhiteWeasel

[kinnison]

I hate the fact that you need a lot of solar panels or reactors just to power the damn engines at full throttle.

Rather use a solar sail

[Tripzter]

Because we can't timewarp with engines on

Hold alt and use the "increase timewarp" button whatever you have it set at. Mines custom so i have no idea what it is stock. You know how in the atmosphere you can increase timewarp to 4? Well you can do that out as well, just gotta hold alt.

[lammatt]

old news is so exciting.

[Madrias]

I modified my Ion engines to push their thrust up, but as I increased it by a multiplier of 5, I took a multiplier of 10 out of the ISP. Made it more fair and balanced in my eyes.

[fireflower]

Hold alt and use the "increase timewarp" button whatever you have it set at. Mines custom so i have no idea what it is stock. You know how in the atmosphere you can increase timewarp to 4? Well you can do that out as well, just gotta hold alt.

my quality of life has significantly increased

[Streetwind]

Thrust of 500 mN. (0.5 kN)

Nitpick:

500 mN =/= 0.5 kN

500 mN = 0.5 N = 0.0005 kN

You want to use newton, not millinewton. This is physics, you can't just use a unit that's three orders of magnitude off!

[Red Iron Crown]

After playing around with ion engines I found them to be painful to use due to the extremely long burn times. Nukes are bad enough for this and ions seem to be an order of magnitude worse. Sometimes the efficiency with which I use real life time is more important than using the most efficient propulsion. Plus I hate that they turn the ship into a solar power plant.

[Spartwo]

I'm willing to use them as is but I'd like the thrust to be bumped to 2kN bringing the ISP down by ~1000(I made a new part just like this).

[Tank Buddy]

In terms of real life, not too OP.

In terms of the game, Under powered?

They're so un-practical that the only quasi-practical use I've found for them is on Gilly and Pol. Even then, chemical rockets would work nearly as well, with just a shorter operating life. But there is no way in Jool that I could ever use all of the Xenon.

I'm sure people can and have, but I have no interest in long burn times. Zip. I'd rather spend time exploring a planetary system than watching the DV counter go 2334.4, 2334.3, 2334.2, etc.

[CleverClothe]

In terms of real life, not too OP.

In terms of the game, Under powered?

The PB-ION is the definition of over powered. It is over 2,000 times more powerful than NEXT (comparable ion engine). And about 500 times more powerful than the VASIMR that will be tested on the ISS (which needs capacitors just to run the thing).

[Odiseus]

Ion engines would need custom warp times and a specific Navigation tool that hold the correct pitch and roll during very long burns.

[Merinsan]

I don't believe you have actually used them. Anyone who has tried using them knows they are so underpowered as far as the game goes.

OP in terms of real life, but we aren't playing real life.