Author Topic: How far can a ship travel?  (Read 2383 times)

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Offline Paul M (OP)

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How far can a ship travel?
« on: November 19, 2012, 04:08:12 AM »
This question is a bit more complex...when a ship has less than a full tank of fuel how can I find out what its current range is?  The game gives me the range number all over the place but the numbers are worthless.  When I  have a ship with 5% fuel left I can't find anything in the game that tells me how far it can get on that 5%.

Is this information anywhere in the game?  If so where?  (looked under the ship itself, and in the fuel page neither gives range values that make sense).
 

Offline vonduus

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Re: How far can a ship travel?
« Reply #1 on: November 19, 2012, 05:35:12 AM »
You can check the full range (100%) in the ships screen, then apply the math to get 5%.

The full range is noted in connection with the engines in the class view tab.
 

Offline Paul M (OP)

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Re: How far can a ship travel?
« Reply #2 on: November 19, 2012, 06:31:26 AM »
ah the answer then is it doesn't.  Yes as you say I'll have to do the mental math.  It is just rather frustrating since both the ship display and the fuel panels have range boxes, only the numbers stated in either are simply unrelated to the reality of the situation.  I've hit a serious fuel crunch and had to get ships back to Earth arriving with vapour in the tanks....2 arrived with <2% fuel remaining.

It is even more complex when ships with different speeds are in a formation as the fuel is expended at the full rate even if the ship is moving at half the velocity.  I'm not sure why Steve doesn't included a "Velocity_Current/Velocity_max" term in the fuel use formula and simply things.

Regardless, thank you I can stop looking for what isn't there.
 

Offline metalax

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Re: How far can a ship travel?
« Reply #3 on: November 19, 2012, 07:22:54 AM »
It is even more complex when ships with different speeds are in a formation as the fuel is expended at the full rate even if the ship is moving at half the velocity.  I'm not sure why Steve doesn't included a "Velocity_Current/Velocity_max" term in the fuel use formula and simply things.

Ships moving at less than their maximum speed do already burn fuel slower. Not more efficiently however, the maximum distance that can be travelled by the ship remains the same. If you are not having this happen in taskgroups with mixed speeds you may have found a bug, although as far as I can remeber it does function properly.
 

Offline Paul M (OP)

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Re: How far can a ship travel?
« Reply #4 on: November 19, 2012, 09:04:18 AM »
I'll take note how fast the fuel is consumed and find out if there is a bug or not.  I have 2 Bauxites with the Colussus in two groups, as one group is getting fueled up I'll check the max range of the Bauxite's and see if they make it the right distance for the fuel they have.  They are throttled back to 2/3  max speed.

I'm fairly sure I also should have designed new engines before starting my military builds...ah well depending on what goes on I may update the designs to a slightly more fuel efficient lower signature version.

I need better engine technolog though.  320 days travel and 6 weeks R&R are a real killer for settling something...and that is only one way.

 

Offline Silfir

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Re: How far can a ship travel?
« Reply #5 on: November 19, 2012, 09:39:55 AM »
Mental math? I'm not weird for keeping the Windows calculator open while I play, right?
 

Offline vonduus

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Re: How far can a ship travel?
« Reply #6 on: November 19, 2012, 01:34:33 PM »
Mental math? I'm not weird for keeping the Windows calculator open while I play, right?

lol

I don't remember if I ever used the Windows calculator. But now I do. It sits right there, on my desktop next to Aurora  :)
 

Offline Paul.B

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Re: How far can a ship travel?
« Reply #7 on: November 19, 2012, 01:34:53 PM »
If playing with calculator open is weird, then I dare not think of what it means about me, playing with Excel open. 
 

Offline draanyk

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Re: How far can a ship travel?
« Reply #8 on: November 19, 2012, 01:55:14 PM »
If playing with calculator open is weird, then I dare not think of what it means about me, playing with Excel open. 

Me too! And, we're not weird, we're efficient.  ;D
 

Offline Erik L

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Re: How far can a ship travel?
« Reply #9 on: November 19, 2012, 03:36:56 PM »
If playing with calculator open is weird, then I dare not think of what it means about me, playing with Excel open. 

I play MMOs with Excel. Does that count?

Offline vonduus

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Re: How far can a ship travel?
« Reply #10 on: November 19, 2012, 05:08:16 PM »
There is actually a screen that tells you the range of ships, I just found it, it is called the Fuel situation Screen (F12).
 

Offline Nathan_

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Re: How far can a ship travel?
« Reply #11 on: November 19, 2012, 08:10:50 PM »
I try to give my civ ships all 100B ranges so that I can tell at a glance how much range they have left.
 

Offline Paul M (OP)

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Re: How far can a ship travel?
« Reply #12 on: November 20, 2012, 04:22:29 AM »
The fuel screen does not give you accurate values.  I don't know what range it shows there but it has nothing to do with the remaining fuel of the ship so far as I recall.  I could be wrong, and I wish the damn thing did not bother to list civillian owned ships since they seem to have no fuel use anyway.  I'll look again tonight, but it seems odd that you can't get somewhere a straightforward value for remaining distance on existing fuel and the fuel page would be the ideal place for it.
 

Offline vonduus

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Re: How far can a ship travel?
« Reply #13 on: November 20, 2012, 05:37:22 AM »
Yes, there are too many civilian ships for this screen to be useful. So math it is.