What it does

Turns the Vector from a special-purpose engine that's great for (and pretty much limited to) space shuttle replicas, into a general-purpose upper-tier engine for 1.25m rocket stacks.

Specifically,

• It keeps the same TWR, but mass and thrust are both reduced to 45% of stock. (So it now has a bit more than twice the thrust of a Swivel.)
• Price is dropped by a lot, to 25% the original (which gives it the same cost per thrust as the Mammoth)
• Gimbal is reduced to be in line with other liquid-fuel rocket engines
• No longer surface-attachable

How to install

1. Make sure you have ModuleManager installed (it's required to for this mod to work, and is not included).
2. If you run any other mods at all, you almost certainly have ModuleManager already installed. Practically everything uses it.
3. Unzip this mod into your GameData folder, same as with any other mod.

## Why this mod? The Vector's stats are... extreme. It's clearly designed as a very specialized engine whose sole purpose is to enable space shuttle replicas.

Debate has raged in the forums about the engine, dividing roughly into two opposing camps: "it's a godsend, we really needed this" (these tend to be the spaceplane folks) and "it's an overpowered travesty" (non-spaceplane folks). One salient point that comes up is that it only seems "extreme" because there are no top-tier 1.25m engines to compete with the Reliant and Swivel, which are mediocre engines in the end game.

Point taken, but I find the Vector is still extreme. I'm a rocket guy, not a spaceplane guy, and three things about this engine bug me. First, the price is extreme, which makes it useless for anything but SSTOs (it's too expensive to throw away). Second, its "thrust density" (amount of thrust compared with the cross-sectional area of the engine) is way out of line with everything else in the game: more than double that of a Mammoth, nearly triple that of a Mainsail. Third, it's surface-attachable, which IMHO just opens it to abuse; no other engine does that.

I understand that there are cogent reasons for all of these things, but they all boil down to "because it's needed for space shuttles." As someone who doesn't fly shuttles, I find the engine to be of limited utility.

So in the interest of opening up this cool, interesting engine for people like me who prefer rockets to spaceplanes, I've tweaked it more into line with other engines. It still keeps the great TWR of the Mammoth, but now its thrust density lines up, too. The thrust is double that of the Reliant, high enough to be useful but not so high that it makes the Skipper and Mainsail look silly. And the price per thrust also lines up with the Mammoth, making it a bit expensive but feasible to use in a staged rocket.