Engine Thrust Limiters?

[700NitroXpress]

So when you right click on an engine in the VAB it says Thrust Limiter 100. What does this mean and what would lowering it do?

Edited February 24, 2014 by 700NitroXpress

[Rhomphaia]

It limits the thrust of the engine.

If you lowered it to 50, then the engine would have half the thrust at full throttle.

[Capt Snuggler]

just like Rhomphaia says. limits the max thrust of that engine. can be useful for balancing your center of thrust to line up with your center of mass giving you better control.

also can be useful to lower the thrust of solid rocket boosters to get a longer duration burn. (can make things more efficient)

[700NitroXpress]

Interesting, thanks guys.

[SiliconPyro]

also can be useful to lower the thrust of solid rocket boosters to get a longer duration burn. (can make things more efficient)

Not just longer, but cooler. Less fear of overheating when you dial back their thrust. They're also less prone to tearing your rocket apart.

[m4rt14n]

Mosly used for VTOL to find and fix the hover point of the vertical engine. Also if you have asymmetrical engine, you can set limit to 0 to check the center of thrust.

[Claw]

I also use the thrust limiter when calculating dV for space planes using plugins like MechJeb or Engineer. Plugins often assume you are using all engines that are activated in that stage, which isn't always the case for space planes.

[Streetwind]

I used this for my first time landing on Minmus, with the same lander I went to the Mun with. The gravity there is so low that, especially as a beginner, you constantly overthrottle and end up launching yourself back up instead of just slowing down. But with liquid engines, you can still set the throttle limiter in-flight by rightclicking, just like in the VAB. So I set all my engines to 40% right before the final descent, and had much better fine-control that allowed me to pull off a near-perfect touchdown.

Will be even more important on Gilly, I suppose!

[Red Iron Crown]

Useful for fine tuning interplanetary transfers, too, when you want to make very small adjustments to your velocity.

[SiliconPyro]

I used this for my first time landing on Minmus, with the same lander I went to the Mun with. The gravity there is so low that, especially as a beginner, you constantly overthrottle and end up launching yourself back up instead of just slowing down. But with liquid engines, you can still set the throttle limiter in-flight by rightclicking, just like in the VAB. So I set all my engines to 40% right before the final descent, and had much better fine-control that allowed me to pull off a near-perfect touchdown.

Will be even more important on Gilly, I suppose!

This is probably what excited me most about this feature. You get much more fine control over throttle for that nice, gentle touchdown.

Gilly is more like docking with a huge rock than landing. You can do it with RCS, but yeah, if you're using engines turning down the throttle is a MUST.