What is the difference between TR1, TR2, TR3, etc., and is there much difference between those levels?asked by Prince Chips Trajan
TL;DRThruster ratings are power bands, not exact values: higher ratings generally exceed lower ones, but progression isn't linear and quality varies within a band.
TR1, TR2, TR3 and so on are what we're calling the thruster rating, and the thruster rating is really a power band. Not all TR1s are the same. Ones by a better manufacturer, ones that are overclocked, ones that are a slightly higher grade could probably put out more thrust than, say, a cheap low-end TR1. But you are pretty much guaranteed that a TR2 will be in a higher band than a TR1. So if you step up to a TR2, even the low end of that will put out more than the highest end of a TR1. And when you go from TR1 to TR2 to TR3, don't assume that it's a linear progression. Especially on some of the later thruster ratings, those can be geometric, where you're moving up to the capital ship sizes. A TR6 could be double what a TR5 is, for instance. So think of TR1, TR2, TR3 more like a car engine, where you have a V8, a V6, a four-cylinder, a V12. Obviously the ones with more cylinders probably put out more power, and they can easily put out more power than a four-cylinder. But a four-cylinder can still be fairly powerful, and obviously there's a lot of variety in the power that four-cylinder engines can put out. And that's kind of the idea with the thruster ratings: a TR1 represents a band of thrusters of a certain level, TR2 is the step up, and TR3 is beyond that.