Change to fuel consumption

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

Currently a ship, FAC or fighter will use an amount of fuel equal to its engine power every twenty-four hours (modified by fuel efficiency). I am changing this to an amount of fuel equal to its engine power every ten hours (still modified by fuel efficiency).

This has a few consequences. All ships, FAC and fighters will have their range reduced to approximately 42% of their current range for the same amount of fuel. So a FAC that might have had a 30 day endurance will now have approximately 13 days. One of the new v2.6 fighters with a 48 hour endurance would be down to 20 hours. Ships will also be affected but can compensate by allocating more mass to fuel storage. This isn't as easy to do for fighters and FACs as mass is very important for smaller ships. Finally, an Empire will have to produce 2.4 times as much fuel to accomplish the same amount of activity.

I have made this change to reduce the range of FACs and fighters and possibly missiles if I decide to implement much longer range missiles. It will also make the amount of fuel storage a much more important decision for ships and I hope to see more variety in the operational range of warships and support ships.

Steve

[sloanjh]

Finally, an Empire will have to produce 2.4 times as much fuel to accomplish the same amount of activity.

I have made this change to reduce the range of FACs and fighters and possibly missiles if I decide to implement much longer range missiles. It will also make the amount of fuel storage a much more important decision for ships and I hope to see more variety in the operational range of warships and support ships.

Have you considered doubling the amount of fuel produced per ton of Sorium refined as part of this change?  This would still give a 20% hit vs. current production rates, while having the same impact on range and fuel storage.  It seems like ship fuel is pretty well balanced right now (i.e. you have to be careful about it, without it being crippling) - my fear is that making fuel 2.4x more expensive in terms of Sorium and refineries would severely skew this balance.

John

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

Have you considered doubling the amount of fuel produced per ton of Sorium refined as part of this change?  This would still give a 20% hit vs. current production rates, while having the same impact on range and fuel storage.  It seems like ship fuel is pretty well balanced right now (i.e. you have to be careful about it, without it being crippling) - my fear is that making fuel 2.4x more expensive in terms of Sorium and refineries would severely skew this balance.

That's a good idea. The change is to affect the range of missiles, fighters and FACs and to make fuel storage a larger consideration for ships. The reduction in effective overall production is a side effect rather than an objective.

1000 litres water = 1 metric ton, which is where the original conversion came from. I could double the production rate of refineries and harvesters, which would use twice as much Sorium. Less of a problem for Harvesters because they usually are deployed at gas giants with millions on tons of Sorium but it becomes more of an issue for mining/refining. Or I could just create a mass for Sorium that allows a greater conversion rate. Some liquids have a different amount of litres per ton. For example Alcohol is about 780 litres per ton, Chloride is 1580 and Bromine is way up at 3120. So if I slip Sorium in at 2000 litres per ton, that neatly solves the problem

Steve

[sloanjh]

So if I slip Sorium in at 2000 litres per ton, that neatly solves the problem :-) , if you want no change in (effective) production rates.

John

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

So if I slip Sorium in at 2000 litres per ton, that neatly solves the problem :-) , if you want no change in (effective) production rates.

2000 is a nice round numbers for players to visualise. I might change it to 2400 though depending on playtesting, especially as ordnance construction will now require the fuel for the missiles you build.

Steve

[sloanjh]

2000 is a nice round numbers for players to visualise. I might change it to 2400 though depending on playtesting, especially as ordnance construction will now require the fuel for the missiles you build.

Steve

BTW, this reminds me - it would be nice to have a global (across all systems/ships, where "ships" actually means ships + FAC + fighter + missile) indication of values and changes to the following:

Total fuel stocks (planets + ships)
Total fuel tank capacity (ships)

either as a delta for a 5-day increment or as a delta over 5-day, 1-month, 3-month , 1-yr timescales (i.e. like wealth).

The reason for this is that I have a LOT of trouble tuning my refinement capacity, since I don't have a quantitative idea whether I'm refining fuel faster than I'm burning it.  The reason for total tank capacity is that it's actually a big sink for fuel - new construction needs to have its tanks filled up.

I realize this is probably a big, yuckky query, but I usually don't realize I'm getting into trouble with refining capacity until my homeworld stocks start falling rapidly (at which point it's too late).

Thanks,
John

PS - You might want to avoid tracking fuel in missiles and just assume that they're always filled up, i.e. either subtract the fuel when the missile is constructed or (and probably better, from a bookkeeping point of view) simply add a sorium cost for missile construction (or ignore the fuel completely ).  Or is that what you meant by your "ordnance construction" comment?

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

PS - You might want to avoid tracking fuel in missiles and just assume that they're always filled up, i.e. either subtract the fuel when the missile is constructed or (and probably better, from a bookkeeping point of view) simply add a sorium cost for missile construction (or ignore the fuel completely ).  Or is that what you meant by your "ordnance construction" comment?

When a missile is constructed, it takes fuel from the stockpile of the population. If there is not enough fuel you can't build the missile, just as if there were not enough Tritanium or Gallicite.

Steve

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

BTW, this reminds me - it would be nice to have a global (across all systems/ships, where "ships" actually means ships + FAC + fighter + missile) indication of values and changes

Sounds like a good idea. I'll get back to you on this once I get chance to look at it properly tomorrow.

Steve