Space Engineers Tutorial: How many thrusters? (tips, testing and tutorials for survival)

This tutorial is all about working out how many thrusters you need for your survival builds in Space Engineers.
The numbers that I list here are all derived from actual ships that would fly - and stay flying after a reload. There were many situations where bizarre behaviour was observed when nearing the limit of the lifting thrusters while on a planet. Sometimes the ship would hold an enormous amount more than expected and at other times the same ship would come crashing down. That's why I thought to use more visual examples with the use of the light armour blocks.
MacGabhann very kindly pointed out to me that there is a website that can do all the mathematical calculations based on values from 01.116, which will work as long as you give yourself a reasonable amount of safety room.
Here's the link: www.ratuska.fi/se/thruster.php
And here are the values I got in my tests (again these are estimates with a built in safety margin, rounding errors etc):
Atmospheric Thrusters:
Large Ship Large: 800blocks or 450,000kg Small: 75blocks or 37,000kg
Small Ship Large: 1400blocks or 37,000kg Small: 330blocks or 7,000kg
Ion Thrusters:
Large Ship Large: 160blocks or 130,000kg Small: 10,000kg
Small Ship Large: 70blocks or 5,000kg Small: 900kg
Hydrogen Thrusters:
Large Ship Large: 1225blocks or 600,000kg Small: 170blocks or 90,000kg
Small Ship Large: 1600+blocks or 40,000kg Small: 400blocks or 8,000kg
And there you have it! If you've got any tips of your own about how you would estimate your thruster requirements I'd love to hear about them. If there are enough for another video I'll make a pair for this one that includes all of the most helpful tips :)
Here's the link to the workshop page: steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles...
As always, don't forget to enjoy this awesome (if at times buggy) game!
For those of you kind enough to want to support me in making more videos: / splitsie
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www.spaceengineersgame.com
Space Engineers is used pursuant to the terms laid out in their video policy, found at www.keenswh.com/press.html
Music and Sound Effects by:
Space Engineers
Extra music::
Kevin Macleod: incompetech.com/
Audionautix: audionautix.com/

[@XevianLight]

When making cargo ships, keep in mind that components and ores DO in fact add to the weight of your ship.

[@Snoogen11]

It's also worth noting, every ore weighs 1kg per 0.37 litres. So convert your ships total litre storage, into kilograms, then work out how heavy your ship would be, if totally stuffed with ore. Then create more thrusters to bring your thrust power to the required level. If your ship is empty, you'll have too much thrust (which can be tolerated and negated, with thruster controls), and if your ship is fully loaded you'll have sufficient thrust, which will stop you from having to replace your ship.... again... and again.

[@shidiwen1407]

There are thrust calculators for this sort of stuff nowadays

[@saureco]

Dynamically, too. If you have a rover with a medium cargo container at the rear, the more you fill the container the more you shift the center of gravity to the rear.

[@daniellohe12]

Honestly, If not you, this game would be refunded a long time ago. Thanks for tutorials, they really helps. Keep it up!

[@Splitsie]

Wow! Thanks :) It's sad that SE doesn't teach itself very well, but I'm very happy I've been able to help more people enjoy this game (it's my highest played game on steam after all)

[@BlazingTiger786]

I bought this game a few days ago and this comment rings soo true. So thanks so much for making these tutorials.

[@CALiiGeddonTwo]

I used them when I first started as well. Now I am using mods that make survival far more difficult.

[@anisnej10]

sad that people are so helpless and incapable of figuring out these things themselves. Like, you buy a game about problem solving and engineering, and you don’t take it upon yourselves to test stuff out and see what works and what doesnt?

[@hibacilacle2609]

anisnej10 while I understand your point of view, tutorials like these provide a baseline of knowledge that is necessary to solve these problems , which will also make the game far more enjoyable for people who want to focus on different aspects of the game

[@DiamondPanda207]

in case it wasnt clear to anyone: ion and atmospheric thrusters will have there performance affected by where in a planets atmosphere the ship is, the closer to the ground you are the better thrust the atmospheric thrusters will give, with ion thrusters its the other way around, giving max performance in space hydrogen thrust is an all around work horse, if you can afford to keep a sustainable amount of hydrogen in your tanks that is

[@Splitsie]

All very true :)

[@ptdafool3372]

I guess affordability depends on your ability to mine ice, and convert it to hydrogen - be that for immediate use, or storage. And your patience levels (i.e. how long it's going to take to fill that hydrogen tank array lol)

[@uberneint3297]

0:53 When you're trying to ich your nose, but your helmet is on.

[@Splitsie]

lol :D

[@darkomatterus309]

This looks like it took a long while, especially with all the bugs. Thank you so much for -wasting- investing your time for us :D You definitely seem to want to make things easy for people that are less into theoretical thinking and more into visual.

[@Splitsie]

Thanks Darko! Those people are also known as people like me! :D

[@darkomatterus309]

I am all for theory, but in practice there are ALWAYS things that prove the theory was flawed. Definitely nothing better though that a visual example!

[@macgabhann1108]

good visual of how many blocks each thruster can lift

[@Splitsie]

Thanks, and big thanks for that link as well :)

[@macgabhann1108]

I figured it would be of some help.

[@brandond5441]

Would this not just be calculated by weight of all blocks by what is required by certain gravitation? That could be another tutorial..do blocks weight and cargo weigh the same?

[@leonidashd1165]

Your tutorials are the best! Continue uploading more SE please

[@Splitsie]

Awww, thanks! Just finished the design for my next video today, I'm hoping I'll get the video done by Wednesday night Sydney time with more to follow soon after :)

[@Arbiter1223]

These tutorials are phenomenal! Really helpful! :D I would like to also point out something I discovered about the power Hydrogen thrusters on large grids (I haven't tested this on small grids, so keep that in mind). One large hydrogen thruster is *less* powerful than *seven* small hydrogen thrusters. I tested this in zero-g by placing a large hydrogen thruster on the left side of a test ship and nine small hydrogen thrusters on the right and setting them all to max burn override. The ship moved to the left, indicating that the thrust on the right side with the smaller thrusters was greater than the thrust on the left with the large thruster. After removing a couple of smaller thrusters, I found that one large hydrogen thruster is less powerful than seven small hydrogen thrusters but more powerful than six small hydrogen thrusters. So in terms of propulsion power, using a cluster of small hydrogen thrusters is better than using a large hydrogen thruster. It is also advantageous in terms of space considering even nine small hydrogen thrusters in a 3x3 pattern, along with the 3x3 conveyor junctions behind them, only take up a 3x3x2 space versus the 3x3x3 large hydrogen thruster. The danger zone of the flames is also smaller, making the cluster of small hydrogen thrusters safer. In terms of number of actual blocks/PCU, however, a 3x3 cluster of small hydrogen thrusters, along with nine conveyors, results in 18 blocks/225 PCU versus the single-block large hydrogen thruster at just 15 PCU. The only time this *might* be a problem, however, would be if you're having to deal with an upper block count limit or something or if you have a LOT of clusters for a capital ship perhaps. In terms of fuel consumption, I'm not sure which is more fuel efficient, and I'm not sure which is cheaper in terms of component count. (Might make a good tutorial video here!) But if you're looking for which offers more powerful propulsion, a cluster of at least seven small hydrogen thrusters beats one large hydrogen thruster. I hope this information is half as helpful as these video tutorials are. :)

[@Splitsie]

Thanks :) There's a few situations where you can get more thrust from small thrusters than you can from a large, but at least in the case of small atmos (on small ships) vs the large ones, the large atmo can generate its thrust with less power usage so is more energy efficient but not more space efficient. I haven't checked but it wouldn't surprise me if that holds true for the large hydrogen thrusters too

[@cagstix]

2019 here, I've been playing since 2015, however, I still find I miscalculate this. Extremely helpful. I would LOVE to see you re-do this video.

[@Splitsie]

I really should, hopefully I'll find time as that's been the main limiter to me remaking these in the current version :/

[@cagstix]

@@Splitsie yea, that seems to be the main issue with games like these haha. Looking fwd to your future content!

[@RockahD91]

@@Splitsie Also, you've been doing this test with light blocks only? but what about heavy blocks? me and a friend made a huge ship almost entirely out of heavy blocks, but the thing is we made it on earth, not in space ;') we wonder how much hydro thrusters we need to get in space before we try anything, we have 10 large hydro thrusters now and plan on doubling that anyway. Edit: Holy hell, just took a look at the weight, its nearing 45 MILLION Kilos (almost 19.000 blocks) and nowhere near finished.. Yikes

[@thenativemartian5169]

00:06 when I saw what lay on that icy lake.... .... I knew this guy had had a bad day

[@brandonroberts7881]

These tutorials are fantastic and have help me and my friends more then you would know. Without you I would have been pissed i bought this. But with you I'm glad I did. Keep up the work and we will keep watching!!!!!

[@CalebSalstrom]

I've watched so many of your tutorials; thank you so much for making them Splitsie. Can't believe you don't have more views/subs.

[@Splitsie]

Thanks! I'm pretty happy with how things have gone so far but do have my fingers crossed for more growth in the future :)

[@ptdafool3372]

This has got to be one of THE most useful tutorials out there. It's very frustrating when you build a ship (say mining, for example), clad it with all the bells and whistles, then realise you can't even lift with the weight of a single full drill, or that extra cargo container. I've made that mistake more than once. Keep in mind that the extra thrusters you add, also contribute to the ship's weight, which in turn contributes to the amount of fuel you burn (whether that's in the form of hydrogen, Uranium, or battery power), so balance between handling and power consumption is a consideration too. Watching videos like this has been SO helpful in the design of my mining ships (so far - haven't gotten the balls to get into combat just yet :P) Yes, 3 years on, but I still watch things like this a few times over having just gotten into the game in the last month or so. Helps fill in the gaps in what I already do know :) Nice work Splitsie. Not just on this one but your series upon series. Not only is it good information, but it's well presented too! Fun, Engaging, and you show your mistakes too which I think is SO important. I've gotten a lot further in this game, and retained (if not grown) my interest a lot more than I thought I would because of your videos, primarily.

[@nxterminator5796]

Hoping this is still valid. I haven't known KSH to change their thruster values though. Thank you so much, this was exactly what I was looking for

[@pupsratte3308]

Splitsie, this is so useful! Thank you for making these videos!

[@Splitsie]

Thanks Robin! I hope it helps save a few rebuilds here and there :)

[@TheKingjames57]

Have I ever played SE? No. Will I continue watching Splitsie's tutorials and testing videos? ABSOLUTELY!

[@awonderingoneil206]

Whenever I'm stuck I know you've got a video to help me out 👍🏻

[@Aethelbeorn]

Big fan of your work! Subscribed.

[@Splitsie]

Thanks! :)

[@Chickenstrips2847]

Thank you this really helped. I am making cruisers and was paranoid about if I would have enough thrust.

[@goombasquaddie6118]

This video is so much appreciated! You are _the_ space engineers man ^^

[@Splitsie]

Thanks :)

[@jlrounds2008]

Thank you this was totally Valuable content!! I appreciate your efforts immensely!!

[@Splitsie]

You're very welcome :)

[@stripedcollar335]

Splitsie, you are my favorite gaming youtuber. You have skills mate, especially your SE vids. Keep up the good work. You are a rockstar Engineer.

[@Splitsie]

Thank you so much, that's far too kind :)

[@lunaeek9130]

Really useful stuff mate

[@mattcorey2784]

Actually the small ship info was much needed, thanks

[@Splitsie]

Awesome, glad it was helpful :)

[@nanookdan]

Great test! I'd like more videos like this!

[@Splitsie]

I've got quite a few planned, the next one should be up on wednesday :)

[@jocnacio]

In my attempts to make my very own ships fly more efficiently I had to know how to handle weight and how much thrusters can lift. That’s why I’m here and I have to say you are doing a great job showing visually how many blocks every thruster can lift approximately. However, it would be also useful that you could have showed ion thrusters on space, and see how those work in their “natural environment” as well. I see that it’s been a little while since you uploaded this video, so I don’t know if by that time there was already a formula in order to know how much weight a thruster can lift, however I gave a little watch to the SE wiki and I found this. Keep in mind that this formula works ideally for atmospherical thrusters (since you have to deal with gravity), but it could help for the others thrusters as long as you do the required adjustments: Lift [kg] = engine force [N] * effectivity [unitless] / acceleration due to gravity [m/s²] Where N is the force a single thrust provides into a small or large ship (given at the wiki for every thruster), effectivity equals to 90% as a maximum for atmospherical thrusters (value = 0.9) and gravity is 9.81 m/s2 always in earth like planets. Also keep in mind every block in this game has it’s own weight value, so you can get a better idea on how many thrusters you need and what kind in order to fly a specific ship. So maybe you might be interested on making an improved version of this video for beginners, I don’t know, but it would be good for everybody to know this and would make things easier (by applying a little math). I’ve been playing this game for a week and I have to say it’s brilliant. You can apply basic physics formulas in order to have fun and yeah, we can do a little bit of engineering. My major concern right know it’s how to manage power to fuel my thrusters since there is very little info on the SE wiki about uranium ores (needed for the reactors), but hey, this is what is all about in a videogame isn’t it? Having fun and discover stuff ;)

[@Splitsie]

I'm absolutely going to need to remake this video sometime soon as the thrust generated has changed slightly with the release patch. One thing to note about Uranium that's oddly not easy to find for new players is that it's no longer on planets, with vanilla ore distribution it's now only in asteroids so reactors are unlikely to be your power source unless you're in space. I'm going to be doing a new tutorial video on the basics of power systems this week and plan to cover a lot of that info there :)

[@nocturnality1307]

Great video

[@Pecomica]

Very Informative. Turns out I used way to many thrusters to get my platform of the planet. 4 large hydrogen and 4 large athospheric trusters to get my fully decked out mining platform. It contained several refineries, assemblers, large cargo containers and 2 large hydrogen tanks along with several oxygen tanks as well. Got into space quite fast I must say and with fuel to spare, but I am sure I could have made it with half the thrusters.

[@Splitsie]

Thanks! Another way to look at all those thrusters is that too many is never enough! Also nice work getting something that big into space.

[@DmytroBogdan]

I really need to make a spreadsheet with your collected data, nice experiment.

[@Splitsie]

I really should re-do this test, I suspect there are some small changes that have happened with it since I made this

[@DmytroBogdan]

@@Splitsie well, Keen constantly tweaking the game so this test is good enough. I found strange that underpowered ships crash after relogging. I wonder have they fixed this bug?

[@Luxxicon]

Super useful video

[@Splitsie]

Thanks :)

[@thisguy5635]

I dont count howmany blocks my ship has... i want how many Kg can those thrusters lift

[@Splitsie]

That info is easily obtainable with the various calculators out there, before I made this video I had a number of people saying they were having difficulties with using those figures so thought I'd help out with a more practical approach. This sort of visual representation is roughly the way things go in my brain, having played the game for a huge number of hours I just have a feel for how many thrusters I need which is based on my messing about with adding armor and blocks to ships and having them work (or not). If you're looking for a calculator that gives those values the one I like most is: se-speed.ga/en/

[@satamoto6488]

600,000 kg = 6MN= EXACLY 1 LARGE HYdrogen thruster found that my self

[@pomcsi]

Divide the thrusters output by the acceleration of the gravity field.

[@ptdafool3372]

@@satamoto6488 At 1g I'm assuming? Keep in mind the maths changes when you're on different planets/environments. That is one reason I find a visual representation - like what Splitsie did - very useful. You can see at a glance exactly what works and what doesn't (whether you use creative for a quick example, or build in Survival and watch your hard work explode apart).

[@ptdafool3372]

@@Splitsie I use a combination of the two. I like looking at the numbers as I find them interesting, but I don't exclusively use that. My brain works better with visuals too, and while explosions are fun to show how something won't work, the visual representation you did, particularly with the way you coloured sections and whatnot, is great :)

[@darthtempest4722]

Thanks for the information

[@darthtempest4722]

Wait what is the thrust for the ion in space?

[@DavidBrendan7799]

So, I just got this game.. it's fun and painful and creative and frustrating, to say the very least. But, I managed to build a pretty impressive building / ship and am on the verge of fully equipping it to take off into orbit, for the first time. It's the best recreation I could do of the Home Office / Ship in my Web Series. But, I'm terrified to even try to take off!

[@Idlepit2]

one thing to remember is that dampeners can get more out of thrusters than u can so sometimes a ship will hover with dampeners on and start dropping if u try to lift up higher one way I found a use for this is to let dampeners hold the ship up and then tilt so ur pointing up about 20-30° and then use forward movement to climb it's not Ideal but can save u needing to dump half it's cargo to get it miner back to base just be very careful when descending as it will take a few seconds to stop from even 1m/s

[@Splitsie]

I thought they'd changed that behaviour (or at least there was a patch that was supposed to change it). The dampeners used to be able to get what felt like about 10-20% more than you could get manually, but you're right it does seem to still have some ability to get a little more juice. High risk to fly that way though - at least if you're a gumby like me :P

[@johndejong2638]

Great visual, m8. Why did it look like the landing gear were floating when locked? I noticed it last night when I landed a miner in a vessel.

[@Splitsie]

Thanks :) I've never been able to get my landing gear to sit perfectly flush on a surface, I wonder if the collision box extends beyond the visual model...

[@michaelbewick6047]

LCS. Thankyou for the vid :)

[@yeahnick4260]

n = ( M * (a+g) ) / ( F - m*(a+g) ) Use this equation in excel, makes it kinda simple n - Number of Thrusters to add, M - Mass of Ship (without Thrusters) m - Mass of chosen Thruster-type (small H2 thruster for example) F - Force of chosen Thruster-type g - 9,81 m/s² a - acceleration of your choice IF in space, g = 0, IF only float on earth, a = 0

[@jacoblansman8147]

Good guide, wish I'd found this like 2 months ago. 1 thing I'd like to know though that you don't show in this video (except on like 3 occasions and all with the Hydrogen Thrusters) is how much weight can each thruster type and size lift? Maybe a more in-depth video where the weight is cargo containers filled with ore? I don't know about others but I would find that very useful when building mining ships - my last mining ship could only just lift itself with 6 small hydrogen thrusters and 12 small atmospheric thrusters (it had 2 large cargo containers, as a Small Grid ship)

[@Splitsie]

I've often thought about going back to redo this one as some of the thrusters have increased output compared to back then, sadly I keep failing on the whole finding time to do it side of things :P Fingers crossed I'll work out my time management at some point :)

[@olivialambert4124]

So to explain the "quirky effects" you're seeing as far as thrusters and gyrosocopes go. The problem here is you are often placing the thrusters away from the center of mass. That means, in this game's logic, that the thruster is adding a turning moment and the gyroscope must use its turning moment to counteract that and fight the thrusters. When you put the large atmospheric thrusters on the side you are seeing about 10.5 times the thrust rather than the 5.1 times you (apparently) should be seeing. As for the exact numbers, spaceengineerswiki has them. However as you noted having the thrust and gyros in the wrong places reduces their power so the important thing to remember is that the large thrusters are about 5 times the power, 6 for the ion thrusters. As a side note, loving your series along with the large ship design one. I've always built ships solely for their function which usually means bricks, its done a lot to help me start to bring out some aesthetic appeal too.

[@Splitsie]

Thanks! Glad you're enjoying it and adding some aesthetics to your designs - it's time consuming but I think it adds more fun to things :) As far as I understood things in SE, thrusters don't apply any rotational force at all. Their placement is irrelevant whether you have a gyroscope or not - you can see this in my large ship design when I forget the gyros my ship still moves perfectly up and down. What I think may be happening though is that the physics system isn't updating the ship when new blocks are added... but only sometimes. I could be wrong here but that's why I ignored the placement of the thrusters. Despite all this, the mass that I calculated for the lift of the thrusters is pretty close to the example used in the wiki - which is surprising and weird as I didn't look at the wiki until just now There is a mod out there that makes thruster position matter, but when I want that sort of challenge I tend to turn to Kerbal Space Program for my ship shenanigans

[@BankruptGreek]

Hey splitsie, so using the equations in the wiki was inconsistent for you? it worked fine for me I don't know :/

[@Splitsie]

Yeah, I found numerous situations where it didn't work out as per those equations. Mostly at points close to the crossover of where things should and shouldn't work or simply where the physics system seemed to fail to update in some way.

[@technicolorskies5432]

I'm pretty sure thrusters provide linear thrust to the grid regardless of placement. A ship with offset thrusters and no gyroscope should still fly straight.

[@ph11p3540]

I use Space Engineers Calculator. Easy to use and it is pretty accurate. Just compute for the down ward firing engines only

[@AceClown]

Good tutorial man, would it not be easier though to add a set number of artificial mass blocks and increase the mass slowly till the ship crashes?

[@Splitsie]

In terms of knowing the mass you can lift, you're absolutely right but I also could have used a calculator to get that level. When I made this my idea was to give myself an approximate visual representation of all that mass. I normally build the core of my ships first, then clad them in armour. This means I can find out how much excess thrust I've got and using this approximation, I'll know how many armor blocks I can use for styling :) At the time I had been asked how I know the number of thrusters to build and for me it has always just been trial and error, this seemed like a reasonable shortcut to some of the many hours of experience I'd built up where I just had a feel for it :P

[@ermagain]

Thank you!

[@Splitsie]

You're very welcome :)

[@MaktheMad]

Have you thought about doing a version of this in deep space? I'm trying to figure out if Hydrogen or Ion thrusters are better for pushing cargo around between asteroids, etc. Basically which is better at getting to top speed, and "braking" faster with load.

[@xrecus6978]

I would say ion is better if you are using cargo under 1M kgs but over I would use hydrogen

[@talienakaru]

i know this is old but new people may come here, one of the things i do is i use merge blocks.. and i will put on my hydro thrusters via merge block, then get to space dock at my local station in orbit.. toss my hydro core off and go back to my inhouse ions, it's a quick and dirty way to have some hydro for landing and taking off when you don't want to do a lot of changes to your space faring vehicals..

[@tauIrrydah]

I'm just in a survival server right now and although I escaped atmosphere in my cargo/mining/base ship, I have in fact, been unable to return since I only had one large hydrogen thruster and one large atmos thruster on it. Now I'm pretty sure I need 2-3 Larges to make coming and going from atmosphere possible, and maybe another hydrogen tank as well.

[@saureco]

Ions are practical for space-only applications. Ditto for atmo thrusters on planets, *but only on planets with atmosphere.* Hydros are a catch-all, but rely on fuel.

[@Blockinstaller12]

So, in conclusion, we can say that the large hydrogen thruster does, indeed, lift. Jokes aside, this is fairly comprehensive and easy to understand, good work. Although I tend to avoid using Hydrogen thrusters due to their intense fuel consumption.

[@Splitsie]

Thanks, there have been a few changes since I made this, so it's one of a few videos I hope to get around to updating soon :)

[@btiny101]

The entire video = Do you Even Lift Bro?! jk great video, i have learned lots.

[@Splitsie]

Glad it was helpful :)

[@GaMeOvErRules]

How did you have the large atmosphere thrusters and small thrusters on the same ship?

[@uxsvent1]

if you wanted kg you could add storage and fill them up until it cant lift anymore even if multi crates are used to find out the limit it should be a good general weight to build your ships per thruster of that type.

[@Splitsie]

I wanted something more visual than a kg readout, especially since the weight readout of ships locked to the ground were terribly inaccurate back then and are still frequently inaccurate now :/

[@pokeface119]

You can count the number of blocks by counting all of the thrusters, then copy/paste the ship and it will tell you the overall block count. Thrusters - Overall block count = # of light armor blocks

[@Splitsie]

Yep, if I worked out all the other bits too I could do that, didn't think of that at the time though, possibly could have been quicker :P

[@equitime77]

I can work out lifting thrust, now how about directional thrust, ie getting enough power to get it moving and then stopping in a decent time? Is there a calculator/way of working this out fairly easily?

[@BsrlinMAZ]

Thank you very much for taking the time to work all this out -- just bought/installed the game 01-25-2019, so I have barely begun learning/discovering what is available, and this visual explanation helps a lot. I will get into all the mathematical stuff later as I advance, as explained in the Wiki: spaceengineerswiki.com/Thruster#Effectiveness_In_Natural_Gravity; but for now doing all those computations was more than I wanted to mess with in a 'game'. Thank you for your time and assistance.

[@Splitsie]

I'm glad someone else found the visual guide useful (and that you found your way to this video before I managed to reply to your other comment) :)

[@melsilva9158]

Hey Splitsie. I came back to review this video again after losing a ship in survival at the transition from surface to space on Mars. Ugh. Long story short there's an odd situation when trying to ferry cargo into space from the surface. I built a small grid ship with atmo and hydro thrusters to do this job. It's based around a large cargo container, a hydrogen tank, an O2/H2 converter, a couple of batteries and a cockpit. The thing is that a large cargo container filled with 421,875L of ingots, ores and components should have a mass proportional to the contents, but I think the SE maths use Lead (Pb) as the default mass value. If you wanted to do some more Clangbusting, this might be a good follow up video. Cargo containers and what is costs to lift them to orbit. Does it vary with content? Is it a constant value? As Space Engineers, we need answers to these questions. Thanks for all the content you provide.

[@Splitsie]

Good thought, could be a nice way to approach this from a new angle when I remake it :)

[@luckylmj]

I refunded the game when I got it like a year ago, looks like I'll have to get the game again, looks amazing

[@uberium2004]

this is cool

[@Splitsie]

Thanks :) I've got some more tests like this coming up soon

[@MoonLiteNite]

For all the armor blocks, multiply by 1.2 for all his numbers. As of release thrusters got a 20% buff

[@Splitsie]

I'm looking forward to doing some sort of testing like this again, I have some fun ideas to make the tests more entertaining this time around :)

[@HyperK7]

Well done but one issue. Each thruster is special in a certain environment. Ions work best in space but are reduced up to 30% in atmosphere. Hydrogen are all around and Atmospheric are mainly focused in atmosphere. You have to conduct tests in both space, and in a planets atmosphere. Otherwise this was very useful for the average atmosphere!

[@katherinewilliams5549]

Hyperkid7 but in space 1 small ion can move anything with enough time

[@Nozerone]

This could also help you figure out how much weight your mining craft can handle. Figure out the weight of a full block, then multiply that by how many blocks 1 of your thrusters can lift, then multiply again by the amount of thrusters. Do that for each direction, and you will find out what the max weight your mining craft can handle. That way you can watch the weight and stop before your overloaded, instead of stopping sooner and going back when you could have gathered a bit more. If the thrusters can handle a max of 150k, then 75-100k would be a safe place to stop mining instead of maybe the 50 or 60k you were stopping at. Or push it to 135-145k if you're on the planet, and won't have to worry about coming down from high up.

[@Splitsie]

I'm planning on redoing this video at some point, and was thinking of focusing a little more on cargo when I do it :)

[@Nozerone]

@@Splitsie Dude, you are a legend. Great content, and reply to comments on videos nearly 2 years old. Replying to my comment on such an old video, easily into one of my favorite youtubers now. =P Btw, something I thought of after I made that comment. If you're focusing on cargo/weight than block count on your next one. Then you could also do the same for gyros. How much weight does it take before gyros barely work and you need to add one. Could also do a similar video on the most popular thruster mods too maybe.

[@EvelynH-tj1qt]

The 3rd one is 500 4th is 1000(2x first) unless those blocks sticking off are counted, it adds 50 extra

[@one_slow_b0at]

I really wish in atmosphere there were proper flight physics or at least wings can give lift and turn with flaps

[@shahbazfawbush]

Kerbal space program does this.

[@zackhiggins5135]

Look up the drag and reentry mod. You can have thrust facing the rear and make functional planes.

[@Todiros]

What about in space? Is the Ion more efficient there? Or hydrogen is again the king?

[@Splitsie]

Hydrogen is still more powerful (at least in the testing I've done) but ion has the advantage of being powered by reactors so fuel is much, much easier to deal with :)

[@Todiros]

Yeah, that's what I thought. Thanks!

[@user-pu7hd3vt2s]

A little trick I found out...as a newbie to Space Engineers and survival... if I activated the moderate meteor settings. I seem to have a decent amount of rate ore, platinum, gold, silver and uranium...

[@JohnDoe-hc7jf]

Did you take into account the decreasing power reg. high/density of the athmosphere? I bet just pasting them 10km higher will have them sink a lot faster than anticipated. ;)

[@Splitsie]

At 10km the atmo ships will drop like a stone, the others will be fine though, the ions should perform significantly better. I chose to test at 'sea level' to see how effective each thruster was at that altitude as for ion thrusters if they can lift there they can lift anywhere, and it's a little easier to adjust for atmospherics as you'll often be building in atmosphere if you're using them at least the way I build :P

[@z6n387]

I only watched the video 2 mins in until you activate the first thruster but this all comes down to ship weight and mass the more weight and mass means more thrusters needed it differs depending on ship ship maps and weight

[@stephankuebler762]

Do the "Ion" behave same way in a "Non-Atmos" (Moon) gravity enviorment?

[@ValosarX]

I know this is an old video but could you maybe explain how efficient engines are? I'm interested in how many small engines it would take to match one large engine and how they compare in energy usage. Do all the extra batteries and hydrogen tanks required for large engines weight the ship down to the point that they are useless or do the out produce small engines to the degree that the extra batteries and such are only an issue if you're low on resources and energy production? I'm sure all of us have had that moment when they feel like the ship is flying great then you try and slow down and the ship just falls out of the air like a rock because you were just on the boarder line of not enough thrust or power output to keep the now projectile aloft.

[@Splitsie]

I did fiddle with those sorts of things when I built the Butterball - testing to ensure that it had enough power output from its batteries for the number of thrusters on board. But never came up with generic numbers. Might be worth going through properly as I think it might have changed since w4stedspace went through it way back in the early days of planets From memory though, on small grid, small atmos thrusters are more component efficient per unit of thrust, but large are more power efficient. I believe that for large grid the advantages are both on the side of the large thruster. That's dredging the depths of memory so it could well be wrong

[@ValosarX]

@@Splitsie thank you!!

[@ValosarX]

Would be interested to see if you've had any tests where you see how many thrusters each battery/reactor type can support to see which is the best combo in survival. Basically minimum number of power supply blocks per thruster. I've been having a fun time finding out I don't have enough power output at the last second when my ship drops like a rock into the surface of Mars

[@juleklO]

You can see the amount of blocks in a grib in it's info tab

[@Splitsie]

It is now, it wasn't back then

[@Labolas2Glasya]

this helped me out alot so thank you for that, but i have the problem that im in space and have build a large ship, according to your video do i have enough thrust (ion/hydrogen). but it doesnt move at all. and when i enter the cockpit it doesnt show any weight, it just says "station" where it shows you the weight of the ship. i removed the landing gear and the ship is now floating, still no movement. and there is no block connection whatsoever. what am i doing wrong? please help.

[@Splitsie]

It sounds like the game is still treating the grid as a station, which means it's a static grid. To convert a station to a ship you can go into the control panel and jump to the info tab. There should be a button that says convert to ship in there which will allow you to get your ship moving :)

[@Labolas2Glasya]

@@Splitsie yeah i got it now, found the solution in a steam forum but also thanks to you, for your response, you're good SE teacher

[@Maktumekal_Ilzrei]

Were you to redo this style of testing, while it may not be quite as visual, using cargo boxes full of, say, iron or iron ore may prove a better way to go about it. Allows you a more granular addition of weight, and you could add the weight until you get roughly the same rate of acceleration with each thruster, showing off a more accurate weight lifting ability of each. And it is a little more practical use with say, cargo ships.

[@Splitsie]

Yeah, I'm thinking of going that way next time, especially as it's primarily mining vessels where people really run into trouble with their thrust so it'll be more applicable

[@gmlviper]

No dislikes yet. May your channel flourish like a hydrogen thruster :)

[@Splitsie]

Thanks Viper :)

[@terminater729570]

Been noticing a common problem in the community: thrusters stop working... this happens to me when I build a new ship and use a connector to dock with a another grid... what's happening is the thrusters set themselves to overdrive 5.**.... to fix I have to go through each thruster and disable the overdrive, they work normally after

[@rachels587]

Could you do a test of thruster damage range to blocks. Can't seen to find even an forum where people agree

[@Splitsie]

That actually sounds like a great idea, I've even already thought of a rig to test out the range of the damage effect across different grid types. Is there anything other than range you think would be useful to test?

[@rachels587]

Splitsie maybe a test for how fast u need to be going towards an object for it to harm your craft on Impact, or if something like that is affected by mass I feel like the bigger ships start to get crushed by themselves when you crash but I'm not sure

[@Splitsie]

Ah crash tests, now you're talking interesting testing :) That one might take a bit more doing to make it useful, but the thruster one I should be able to put together sooner

[@rachels587]

Splitsie wow thanks great quality video can't wait to see how you go about the testing :)

[@lasinthas4152]

I go by the Kerbal space program method. If one or two isn’t even, just go with a solid dozen

[@Splitsie]

And then add some SRBs on the bottom of each ;)

[@xXGeneralEliteXx]

suppose im a bit late for the vid xD but according to this i can lift my ship (1.100.000 tons) with 4 big atmospheric thrusters. but it only lifts about 10m above the ground and not more. and when i release space it dropps. any tips?

[@Splitsie]

That's one of the downsides of atmospheric thrusters, they seem to immediately start losing thrust once they're above sea level. The numbers of thrusters required to lift the ships I built in this should be the absolute bare minimum, I'd always plan for a reasonable number more than what's shown here, but at least looking at the numbers you can get an idea of what the minimum will be. My only recommendation for you is add more thrusters as you're probably not able to lift the ship in air that is less dense than what's available above sea level - not the best advice, but it's all I've got :P

[@lightingboy1001]

is there an exact number though like 3 up 3 down 3 right 3 left 3 forward and 3 back?

[@Splitsie]

Nope, depends on the craft and the type of thrusters, how you fly and a bunch of other variables, this was just to give a rough visual guide on how much armour you could get away with for lift

[@santiagosenoran1217]

Now every time I make a ship designed to go to space I just assign a button pannel to slowly increase thruster override, and I decrease it as I leave the gravity field. That way I use less than a half the hydrogen I would use by pressing W with just one large hydrogen thruster

[@Splitsie]

Yep, it's definitely the best way to go. It's one of the things I'll be changing when I redo my tutorials now that the game's out of early access :)

[@santiagosenoran1217]

@@Splitsie nice :D

[@abroamg]

Just look at the wiki, see how manny Kn of thrust an engine can put out, do the calculation for flight requirements and add the required amount... Since the weight is displayed, you can calculate the needed thrust to for example counteract the 1.00g on earth or how fast you want to accelerate

[@Splitsie]

Not entirely true, the weight readout in space engineers isn't always reliable, especially when locked to a static grid or videos. Also, this was for people who wanted a more visual guide on what they could strap to their ship and still be able to lift off, without having to get out a calculator :)

[@mouthforwar17]

How many small blocks does one big block weigh?

[@thewootpanda]

so I have been trouble lately and have just realised you can increase the power of thrusters. it was crazy annoying I built a mining ship, put two saves so I can revert to everything being cool in case anything went wrong. and yeah I needed 20 odd thrusters for a tiny mining ship. gonna be trying that out sometime

[@Splitsie]

Do you mean using the thrust override?

[@thewootpanda]

exactly.the time I have played the game has been focused on Base building. I built one and it went boop with components on board. kinda pointless having a mining ship which can't actually carry anything. I was thinking about modded turrets. now I know about the override I might find thrusters useful again.

[@Splitsie]

The way thruster override works won't help you carry more mass, it just forces the thruster to generate force at that level regardless of your control input. It doesn't increase the maximum output, so it would make flying incredibly difficult to control without any gain

[@thewootpanda]

well going from empyrion to space engineers I can say space engineers has useless thrusters. man I am going into creative and checking out other people's designs.

[@skylerjr2648]

All of my exploration ships are atmos and ion combos. All of my space ships are hydrogen or have ion as the main thrust and h2 when in combat. It's just too hard to give up the simplicity of a build with atmos and ion when reactors/ batteries exist.

[@NoobieLandCity]

Now I started a game in survival, built a small ship flying ship, a wheel ship for ore detecting and an other ship with wheel to grab stuff with landing gear.. I went on a mine that I discover resources on earth with small flying ship.. forgot about weight ship wouldn't not life up so I was wondering what was going on... I then proceed to successfully crash my ship as I was too attach to my precious ore. The fun begin, I get my ship to grab my ship then I succeed to get it home with some fire in both ship.. OK I tell myself I need some mats now to repair.. Grab my ore detecting ship, in halfway to destination I did manage to broke my two front wheel.. I did manage to grind part of the wheel/motor but.. can't build them at the block are touching the floor and can't build wheel.. I did a soft rage quit that day. I didn't mention the "I forgot a med-bay before dying and had to respawn" before all that happen RESPAWN WHERE.. I tried on earth with the pod.. I was around 100km far from my base but 100km without counting the curvature on the planet.. So I used that ship and tried to go to destination with no gyroscope... turn all throttle to max and fly around the ship and bump on it to make a trajectory.. used a bottle of hydrogen to stay flying longer and put it in the O2/h re-generator to fill it and take it back then I dunno what I tried but I know I was trying to build something on the ship while flying and was grinding part of the ship mid air until I found out it would take too long to reach my base... So I spawn on the moon with the moon pod.. took around 20min to go back to base flying upside down the whole "adventure" ps: I literally had time to make myself some toast and comeback without problem. Fun adventure.

[@Splitsie]

I know that adventure might not have been all that fun at times, but that sounds amazing to me, what an epic story - I never would have thought to bump my ship with my engineer to steer it, that's awesome :)

[@NoobieLandCity]

@@Splitsie never thought someone would actually read all of this haha, yeah when I think about it, it's kind of funny When I brought my flying ship home, I just imagine it like a piece of junk with everything falling off and telling myself "Nah it'll be fine"

[@dansmale2144]

Can you do one of these for how quickly you'll burn fuel ( whether that be battery power, hydrogen or uranium) ?

[@Splitsie]

I'd like to but not sure how soon something like that would get done :( My rate of content is likely to go down in the next month or two as my day job is in healthcare :/

[@goombasquaddie6118]

Ehm, Im still not quit finished being a noob. When I build with small blocks, why am I only allowed to place the tiniest atmospheric thruster and not the "small ship large" one?

[@Splitsie]

You need to use the scroll wheel on your mouse to change to the other size of block within that grid size. if you press the hot bar button for that block you change grid size instead of changing block type :)

[@Noruzenchi86]

right, i just came to this as a quick guide but it doesn't explain cargo mechanics very well. IE i have a small ship with x3 inventory medium and large cargo, and I need 4 large atmospheric thrusters to lift it at a 100 ton maximum. is there a ton or kg rating for each thruster under 1 gravity?

[@Splitsie]

The reason I didn't go into cargo weights is that they depend on your inventory setting in an odd way. The amount of cargo weight is divided by the inventory multiplier before the thrust is applied to the ship, so that the same number of thrusters is required to lift the same ship just with more inventory on the higher multipliers. This means there is no easy way to define the amount of cargo that can be lifted when the physics engine won't behave in a predictable manner around the limits of an engine sadly. If you look in the description of the video I've laid out an approximate maximum weight that each thruster can lift under 1G with all inventories empty. This still may not be useful as the amount of cargo you could lift would be the maximum thrust minus the weight of your ship, with that number then multiplied by the inventory multiplier. That doesn't seem like the easiest calculation to do on the fly - for me anyway

[@brianmartin7964]

How much hydro do i need to get a ship that size in to space? You have 6 hydro tanks. Do I really need that much?

[@Splitsie]

Nope, I think I've managed to get a ship that size to space with very efficient launch and only a single tank - couldn't do much when I got there though

[@lyr4nx931]

8:26 - L.A. Beast Theme

[@zeanomourph1]

Ohhhh, so you're telling me that the 42 hydrogen thrusters on my little 2 drill, 1 container small mining ship might be overkill? Let me tell you a little something about running from pirates in survival PvP lol

[@henktaljaard4550]

Please redo this one Splitsie since the new update dropped and thrusters have more thrust now...

[@Splitsie]

It's one of the tests I look forward to doing again, as I might have some more visually exciting ways to approach such things now :)

[@jbroad8194]

Creative and survival thruster distances and power are slightly different.

[@Splitsie]

There should be no difference at all, I've never seen any evidence that there is either. But there are differences now to what I did back then because the thrusters have had their outputs adjusted with the survival update.

[@blame7121]

People should also remember to take into account their cargo. Your thrusters may be enough to lift your full armored ship, but what about full cargo? Keep those extra thrusters handy.

[@Splitsie]

Agreed, have been thinking about remaking this one but instead of giant cubes of blocks using cargo containers full of ore since mining ships tend to be the most common source of people having issues with mass :)

[@kuzeysensoy8313]

The more the better

[@Splitsie]

That's certainly one way to look at it :D

[@callofdaniel9397]

Watched this video to figure out why my thrusters weren’t working turns out I had them upside down

[@Splitsie]

lol I think most of us have been there once or twice ;)

[@Drirton]

What's the song at 8:29?

[@Splitsie]

It's eternal hope by Kevin Macleod :)

[@bananaandmango4616]

Please update this video. A lot of people came back to the game after release. eg. my large ship is at 2M kg and i have problems moving it around. Was going with this video and found out that the numbers changed. Would be nice to have a pro give his opinion.

[@Splitsie]

Since the update released I've been working through the beginner tutorials first (with the 3rd tutorial coming out this weekend), then I'll be moving onto test videos like this one. My plan is to update and expand the library of tutorials I previously made, it'll just take a bit of time as I don't like to do these things by half :)

[@themidnightbanshee5927]

wow im gonna need a lot of thrusters on my 441 ton ship considering im mostly using small ion for the looks hey what does override do

[@Splitsie]

If you're using small ions you'll almost definitely need something else as well unless you're making a thruster ball :P

[@themidnightbanshee5927]

i know and about the override function what does it do i have 441 tons to lift afterall

[@Splitsie]

Override just does the same power as your normal controls except it'll hold them in that until you change the value - useful when using hydrogen to escape a planet's gravity as you can slowly adjust it to keep yourself just under the speed cap and not waste fuel

[@themidnightbanshee5927]

I see so it's a thrust out put limiter

[@tassie7325]

That is a great visual demonstration. But it is sad that it still comes down to guestimation, given that the basics for mathematically gaining the information do exist but are not fully functional ie: 1. the Grid Mass you showed at the 13:44 mark, is only of value if you build the ship away from any other structure, as the Grid Mass includes all items attached to the Grid on which the ship stands. 2. you will also notice that the Grid Mass in this instance is 278,753 in 1G gravity, and yet your HUD shows a weight of 229,690. At 1G, they should both be the same. 3. I don't know if it is just because you showed the demo in Creative mode, but on my computer in Survival mode the HUD weight cannot be read until the ship is detached from the base ie no construction scaffold attached and landing gear unlocked (which can sadly be to late). If the developers could fix it so that the Mass of a ship was separated from the platform mass and/or the weight could be read from the HUD throughout the construction, the mathematical formula could be applied and all problems would be solved.

[@Splitsie]

Thanks, after our talk the other day I was really trying to come up with something that would be helpful despite the limitations that we're stuck with in terms of the wonky behaviours of the havok physics engine. I was hopeful that a demonstration like this would be a useful band-aid/duct tape type solution so there was less frustration, knowing full well that it wouldn't be a complete solution. The difference in the grid mass is seems to be due to the mass of items in the cargo - the ships with empty cargo it matched in all the tests I did (I tested it because you pointed this out before and I'd never noticed it myself), but I may not have tested widely enough since SE physics are weird at times :P I don't think you'll ever get a grid mass while that grid is still part of a station, the game just doesn't have a way to define that at the moment. The only way to deal with that is to build in a way that allows for extra thruster additions after you disconnect from your parent grid. Which sadly will limit creativity somewhat.

[@tassie7325]

It is apparent that anything on a grid that has landing gear is identified as being separate to the grid (ie the different colours of stuff in the menu for the grid to those on a ship) for everything except the mass of the ship. I would have thought that it would not be a giant leap to separate the mass information. I found a band-aid way around the problem by building a construction platform next to, but not connected to, my main base. I then add a control button to the construction base and use it to get the start mass of the construction grid, which I can then subtract from the total mass as the build progresses. Its not ideal but it is better than nothing. Having the construction base adjacent to the main base means that I can place a cargo container, which is piped to my main systems, at a positions that is accessible from the construction base without actually being on it. But you are dead right about the fact that function taking priority over form does take away a lot of the creativity.

[@Splitsie]

Oh right, sorry I misunderstood. You should be able to get the grids to calculate separately by completing the landing gear and unlocking them. When they're locked they behave as a single grid - i think they made this change because everything used to explode when you'd move two connected grids. So if you unlock it the game **should** deal with them seperately again. That's a good idea with the container though, probably saves a lot of time and hydrogen flying back and forth, not to mention those times when you're hurrying and end up with a splattered astronaut.

[@tassie7325]

Yes, I understand that the grids become separate once the landing gear is unlocked, but that can prove to be disastrous if the vessel turns out to not have enough thrust and/or is imbalanced. That is a bit like the real life engineer driving a truck over a newly constructed bridge to see if it can take the weight. The quest is to find a reliable means to calculate the required thrust before having to disconnect.

[@tassie7325]

Yeh! Even when building out in the middle of an ice lake, it is worth the time and effort to run a pipeline and cargo container out to the construction site. All of the resource can be reclaimed once the build is completed.

[@Fiifufu]

How much thrust would a thruster thrust if a thruster could thrust

[@Splitsie]

Never enough and too much at the same time :P

[@dansmale2144]

I have 37 minutes of power on full burn is that good

[@Splitsie]

Depends on the use case, for a miner, that'll get you a couple of loads to deposits a few km away, but for a long distance traveller you're likely to want more

[@RogueShadowTCN]

And then there's trying to life a small grid large cargo container on a driller. And still be able to maneuver somewhat safely and comfortably. Maybe add 50% more thrusters than you think you need, then triple it. Then double that.

[@Splitsie]

Something around that :P