Used on long distance craft like Pioneer and Voyager
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Dev AndrewGarrison
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I really want to be able to add a customizable/procedural nuclear thermoelectric generator power-plant to my crafts, this is a fantastic suggestion! One reason the game needs this is to properly power larger or multiple ion engines for long-distance interplanetary flights.
Right now the only way to power ion engines is using a MASSIVE battery fuel tank (which is extremely heavy) and adding TONS of solar panels to the outside of the craft.
Even when my rockets fly closer to the sun, and have large Xenon fuel tanks, and gargantuan battery packs recharged by numerous max-sized solar panel arrays, they're incapable of providing sufficient electricity to provide continuous power for my craft's ion thrusters, even when I only have a small ion thruster or an array of a few small ion engines. Ion engines are supposed to produce a small amount of thrust, but the lightweight fuel is ejected out of the ion thruster at extreme speeds over very long periods of time, resulting in a gradual acceleration. I've still never discovered a way to get my ion thrusters of any size or arrangement, on any sized rocket, with any size of batteries or solar panels, to be continuously powered and providing any amount of thrust for longer than a few minutes of in-game time.
But, if I could add a lightweight thermoelectric nuclear power generator to my craft, as several real-world NASA space probes and Mars rovers have used to great success in real-life, then I could actually use those ion engines properly (i.e. have them actually providing enough continuous power to allow the ion engines to have decent thrust for a long period of time).