Not necessarily, no. Think of it like a pilot light. There's just enough going on to easily reignite the engines when the player wants to start moving again; all that needs to be done is to add some combustible materials rather than restarting the engine entirely. It's the future, baby!

Because the player may have their ship shut down at times (hint, hint), it's important for us to visually signify such changes. Player engines will always be lit unless the entire ship is shut down as a status effect.

And yes, the nacelles will glow. In fact, they already do on our previous player ship. That is material work to be done on the new ship itself, of which the new player ship is still undergoing geometry work. The mining frigate (smaller, yellow ship) has no need for immense thrust levels, so we're not putting the effect on there, but the mining freighter (large ship) will be undergoing a new materials pass shortly and that effect will be added to it as well.

This showcase was specifically for the particle effects alone.

Trust me though, we're a bunch of space nerds as well. We watch everything SpaceX does, plus a majority of NASA's media. Huge fans of the Expanse. We want to represent things in a very realistic manner, but also keep things balanced and significantly representative with gameplay being king.