Author Topic: Civilian Ships with infinite fuel?  (Read 1219 times)

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Offline Trueknight (OP)

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Civilian Ships with infinite fuel?
« on: February 06, 2010, 08:06:36 AM »
In my current game a CMC it's appeared on Charon short after it's survey. That was a great news for me, since Charon had the only sizeable amount of Neutronium in the entire Solar System.
Sadly i hadn't designed yet a cargo ship with enough fuel to reach it and come back, so i was glad that civvies did the job for me.

The first strange thing is that i've no idea about how those civilian mines got there, anyway, since it didn't exist any ship capable of bring them there. I've read a few post about CMC being quite new to the game...i'd suggest that before a Civilian mining complex it's created, the game should check if it's available a civilian ship capable to do the trip from the nearest developed colony. Even better, it would be great if we could see some real civilian ships that transport the mining complex, like a normal civ shipping contract.

Anyway, after the creation of the CMC, i've designed a cargo ship able of reach it , and i also created a civ shipping contract for a few automated mines to be delivered on Charon, hoping that the Civ Shipping Lines would then acquire a few of the new ships, and make the deliver.
The civvies, instead, sent their old cargo ships to Charon, after loading my automines. Despite this ship class hadn't enough fuel to make the trip, all my mines have been delivered with no problems, and cargos returned to Earth.

Just to be sure it wasn't a my error, i sent a ship of that same class, under my direct control, to Charon. It finished its fuel before getting to Uranus orbit...

 I'm not sure if it's a bug or a feature, but to me looks like civilians can move without fuel costraints, unlike the players....is it correct?
 

Offline sloanjh

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Re: Civilian Ships with infinite fuel?
« Reply #1 on: February 06, 2010, 09:49:42 AM »
Quote from: "Trueknight"
I'm not sure if it's a bug or a feature, but to me looks like civilians can move without fuel costraints, unlike the players....is it correct?

Yes, you're correct.  It would be too much of an AI nightmare for Steve to code up "time to get fuel" behaviors into the civies, so he abstracted fuel away.  At present, the same is true for the placement of Civie Mining Complexes - it's the magic stealthed cargo ships that are run by elves that come in the night and place them :-)

John
 

Offline Steve Walmsley

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Re: Civilian Ships with infinite fuel?
« Reply #2 on: February 06, 2010, 10:30:50 AM »
Quote from: "sloanjh"
Quote from: "Trueknight"
I'm not sure if it's a bug or a feature, but to me looks like civilians can move without fuel costraints, unlike the players....is it correct?
Yes, you're correct.  It would be too much of an AI nightmare for Steve to code up "time to get fuel" behaviors into the civies, so he abstracted fuel away.  At present, the same is true for the placement of Civie Mining Complexes - it's the magic stealthed cargo ships that are run by elves that come in the night and place them :). As you buy minerals, the mining companies will buy more mines. I will probably add this post v5.0 though. I may even add civilian shipbuilders to handle to building of civilian ships as that is another area run by the Aurora Elves.

Steve
 

Offline Trueknight (OP)

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Re: Civilian Ships with infinite fuel?
« Reply #3 on: February 06, 2010, 11:19:53 AM »
Great! Thansk Steve, i'm looking forward to it. The infinite fuel thing isn't much of an issue, after all it isn't a common situation to have such short-legged ships has i had in the game. Later in the game they become quite useless, so it's probably something you don't see often.

BTW Does shipping companies replace older ships, when time goes on?