[Release] Surjectors OXP

[Astrobe]

When you use injectors with weapons toggled off, injectors burn fuel at 1/25th the normal rate. But your shields power supply is turned off so they go down very fast.

Few people know, but modern injector coils use a much more efficient alloy which can sustain higher electrical current values. Fuel can therefore be ejected at higher speeds, which means that one can use less mass (fuel) to achieve the same ship speed. One could achieve higher speeds for the same mass, but fuel is limited and therefore considered more precious than higher speed. Furthermore, accelerations stronger than foreseen by the manufacturer may strain the ship's structure and even void your ship's warranty.
However one needs much more energy to get a higher current. Shields are the number one current eater on a ship (it is function of the square of their size); turning off everything else wouldn't provide enough extra current to make a difference with regard to injectors burn rate, and it would be much more problematic.

This modification is often nicknamed "surjectors", which is a portemanteau word for "super injectors". Some people call it "diefastors".

This hack is perfect to overtake slow convoys in safe situations. Of course, if you misjudge the safety of the situation or if something unexpected happen, you can put yourself in serious trouble. No risk, no gain.

It should be compatible with OXPs that change the injectors fuel burning rate, like for instance Ship Configuration.

[Runghold]

Interesting concept. I tested it last days with my new commander on my Cobra Mk 3 without shielding or energy unit upgrade.
Using it (injecting with offline weapons), shields and energy drained (as expected).
But the really funny thing is: I have the Military Injector Upgrade fitted on my ship. The way it works (every some seconds it gives back some fuel to the tank just to use it up alomost instantly again) together with surjectors results in filling the fuel tank (really) slowly when using injectors with offline weapons - even a little bit faster as the Fuel Collector does.

[Astrobe]

Indeed your energy banks may or may not deplete depending on your equipment. For those wondering, you can continue to use surjectors even after your energy banks run dry, you won't explode.

I think Military Injectors work by "refunding" part of the fuel you've burned. It guess it was done before the scripting API allowed to change the fuel burn rate of injectors, so it could perhaps use an update to make it work more elegantly (I remember one could see the fuel in the gauge "bump" - or was it Fuel collector).

But yeah, those OXPs are kind of informally mutual-exclusive, unless you think infinite fuel is fair .

[Astrobe]

Updated to version 1.1. Changes:

- Surjectors burn even less fuel,
- shields are 10 times slower to deplete,
- shields recharge are blocked when using the surjectors so they won't drain your energy banks anymore. However, when you go back to normal cruise shields still need to recharge.

This new feature manipulates the shield recharge rates in flight so it might conflict with other OXPs that do the same (Shields Equalizers maybe?).

[Astrobe]

Updated to version 1.2.0

Energy regeneration is now blocked when surjectors are in use. This is to be consistent with the original idea that all your energy generation goes to the thrusters. From the gameplay perspective, it introduce an extra "tactical" decision factor (should I wait for my energy banks to be full before engaging surjectors again?), which makes them a tiny bit more risky to use.