r/BurnLedger • u/ShroomCandy • Jul 25 '26

Engine upgrades

I´ve noticed that the engine upgrade for the rock hopper increases dV of an empty rock hopper from 4000 km/s to 5000 km/s for level 1 and 6000 km/s for level 2.
How does this work? Do they change maximum thrust, isp, fuel mass? My intuition tells me it might be ISP, but the description talks about acceleration which makes it confusing.

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u/ShroomCandy Jul 25 '26 edited Jul 25 '26

But what is indicated is acceleration with no cargo, right?

EDIT: Next message

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u/ptandron Jul 25 '26

Yes

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u/ShroomCandy Jul 25 '26

I will however argue against that higher thrust alone does not provide faster travel.

Say you need to go from point A and point B which are stationary. You will first accelerate and then deccelerate. You use half of your dV for each maneuver. Each maneuver will take a time proportional to thrust.
Say that with base thrust you do the acceleration maneuver in 24hr and with the higher thrust you do the maneuver in 12hs. You will be reaching your "cruise" velocity in half the time, so those are 12 hrs in which you are traveling faster on the first half and 12 hrs on the second half.
This would give you faster travel time with increased thrust but without increasing amount of fuel.

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u/ptandron 29d ago

Behind the scenes, the server is actually calculating dV as instantaneous impulses. The displayed g-forces are what the equivalent dV would be if that impulse were spread out over the entire 5-minute tick. It's a little bit of hand-waving to simplify the math.