A new type of timewarp for very long burns

[dewin]

First of all, I am not a physicist (much less a real-life rocket scientist), so the math here is likely wrong -- but I'm hoping the premise is solid even if the math itself needs some adjusting.

It's frequently useful to launch spacecraft that have stages with extremely low TWR (< 0.10), particularly when doing interplanetary travel where fuel efficiency becomes king. Unfortunately, this frequently results in burns that are 20+ minutes long -- which can only be reduced to 5 minutes (at best) by applying 4x physwarp.

My usual fix for this is to add extra engines -- but of course this is inefficient, as it means I'm trading dV for TWR, weight, and cost.

What if, as an alternative to physics warp (or extension to it passed 4x), there was a level of "time dilation" that essentially did:

rate X (normally 1) => increase effective thrust and rate of resource consumption of all engines by X; scale current velocity and gravitational effects on physics-loaded objects by X; time for objects on rails (including bodies) advances at a rate of X seconds per 1 second of time in the local reference frame

(Essentially, if all of the math was corrected -- temporarily multiply the current vessel's thrust, but alter the world so that the thrust multiplier doesn't gain any advantage other than real-life time savings).

This could happen as an extension of physics warp -- 6x could be 4x physwarp * 1.5x time dilation, 8x would be 4x * 2x, etc.