Aurora 4x
VB6 Aurora => Aurora Suggestions => Topic started by: Drakale on November 06, 2012, 01:47:19 PM
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In my latest 6. 1 campaign I have hit a wall due to the new engine/fuel usage mechanics. I simply do not have enough fuel production to fuel my warship for any length of time and the closer gas giants are very poor in Sorium. I will admit it is my own fault for building a larger fleet than what my logistic could account for, but I feel some tweak would make the situation more manageable.
What I suggest is simply to improve the engine efficiency with lower ship speed. Of course this would not be as effective as a dedicated commercial engine, but it would allow fleets to move around at cruise speed and when needed the could accelerate at combat speed(max speed). A gas rich empire would have the luxury of zipping it's fleet around at max speed, while a gas poor one would move much more slowly while out of combat situation.
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You can actually lower the speed of your ships on the task groups tab.
I don't know if it's incorporated yet but it would be nice that ships at certain speeds would burn less fuel. For instance the engine of the car is burns less fuel at 90 km/h (56 mph) than at 50 km/h (31 mph).
Edit: Don't mind the first sentence I'm tired. :)
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Yeah it's precisely what I meant ;D Sorry if I wasn't more clear :)
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Lowering the speed does not change range. It decreases fuel consumption, but the range is solely determined by the fuel efficiency of the engine and the fuel fraction of the vessel.
I proposed something similar to this a month or so ago, and would definitely like to see some form of range scaling with speed. A strict fluid interpretation would have drag (and thus, probably, fuel consumption) scaling with the square of speed. I'm not sure that works terribly well, but some more complex function might be a good choice.
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Or ships could have secondary engines.
Let's say you could add a small but efficient engine to each of your vessels. It might only be able to drive it at a few 100km/s, but it would eat up much less fuel then your fancy 200% power fuel guzzlers - kind of like normal engines and afterburners on fighters.
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Or ships could have secondary engines.
Let's say you could add a small but efficient engine to each of your vessels. It might only be able to drive it at a few 100km/s, but it would eat up much less fuel then your fancy 200% power fuel guzzlers - kind of like normal engines and afterburners on fighters.
There is a reason this isn't very popular to do in reality (afterburner is just pumping more fuel into the same engine).
That's because carrying two separate engines would be a much bigger waste in terms off weight.
I like the original suggestion, doesn't have to be a monumental bonus in range when lowering speed, and certainly nowhere near what you would get if the engine was tuned for that Speed (EP).
But a bit on the way at least, most real ships have a cruise speed that's usually around 25 to 50% of their maximum speed and all have many times longer range at slower ships.
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We could also go in the other direction, and allow ship engines to be designed with a turbo mode that increases power output at a greater fuel cost than if it had been designed for that output, along with some risk of engine failure over extended use/repeated loading. Could be interesting tactically, and while it was a bit before my time I've gathered that Starfire had a similar overcharged drive burnout mechanic
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i find it easiest not to build any large ships except one hauler and one colony ship ( though do research engine tech and fuel efficency first) this is after my geo and wormhole explorer ships are out, military expansion is slowed a lot. So far there are some balancing issues. But getting sol mining and another fuel planet in a nearby system if youre lucky or in sol ( the civilian fuel harvestors are bugged they goto planet move to it at a snails pace but never get the fuel) the other option is sending youre own fuel ship to saturn or jupiter. Make sure its got lots of tanks and hope for some early sorium rich planets and also mining planets otherwise u will hit the crunch, u can always restart a new universe if youre inital seed is not so crash hot - part of the chalange though, other option is hope for an alien race and get trade
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I would like to see some mechanism for ships moving at 1/2 speed getting some increase in fuel efficiency. Something on the lines of 1/2 speed would save you 25% of fuel while 1/4 speed would give a 33% reduction.
Brian
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does mining BP technology affect sorium production rates, might be an idea to research that up early as well to get faster outputs from any sorium mining sites u have.
But yeah a fuel efficency technology for slower speed could be an option or some tweaking for 6.2 given steve said we were getting it last weekend but its still not up maybe some last minute changes could be useful
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does mining BP technology affect sorium production rates, might be an idea to research that up early as well to get faster outputs from any sorium mining sites u have.
But yeah a fuel efficency technology for slower speed could be an option or some tweaking for 6.2 given steve said we were getting it last weekend but its still not up maybe some last minute changes could be useful
Your mining rate determines the speed of fuel harvesters in gathering fuel. Think of them being a combination mine and refinery. It will mine sorium at your normal mining rate and then convert all of the raw sorium into fuel. Your fuel refinery rate does not apply at all to the harvesters.
Brian
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Your fuel refinery rate does not apply at all to the harvesters.
That would explain why my fuel harvesters have been so slow to fill their tanks when I've researched several levels into the fuel production techline.
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theres another idea a ship fuel refinery technology
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We could also go in the other direction, and allow ship engines to be designed with a turbo mode that increases power output at a greater fuel cost than if it had been designed for that output, along with some risk of engine failure over extended use/repeated loading. Could be interesting tactically, and while it was a bit before my time I've gathered that Starfire had a similar overcharged drive burnout mechanic
That's harder to balance combatwise though since all ships get new higher top speeds.
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I would like to see some mechanism for ships moving at 1/2 speed getting some increase in fuel efficiency. Something on the lines of 1/2 speed would save you 25% of fuel while 1/4 speed would give a 33% reduction.
Brian
Yes, it's embarrassing when you find out that one of your survey ships does not have enough fuel to return home. I doesn't matters how fast or slow it will go, it will only reach one point in space.
Each ship has an optimal cruising speed in reality, so we only need a chart to define that.
For instance:
100% power = 100l per hour
75% = 67l per hour
50%= 43l per hour
25% = 23l per hour
and so on...
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Yes, it's embarrassing when you find out that one of your survey ships does not have enough fuel to return home. I doesn't matters how fast or slow it will go, it will only reach one point in space.
Each ship has an optimal cruising speed in reality, so we only need a chart to define that.
Acutally a formula is what's needed since the game needs an answer for any manually input speed % of max.
I would suggest the simple one that range is increased by the same factor that speed is cut.
So at 50% speed a ship get twice the range (consumes 25% fuel)
If the ship instead had an engine tuned for that speed it would have a fuel efficiency much greater.
This solution would also allow your ships to almost always slowly hobble home at significantly reduced speeds paying in time (and maintaincence failures if military) for their lack of fuel.
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Looking through some stuff I have on naval architecture, it appears that scaling with the square of speed is correct, except that there are some confounding factors which go down at higher speeds. The best relationship I can work out based on the explanation Steve gave (ships operating in parallel-dimension fluid medium) is that drag will scale with velocity to the 1.5 power. This actually appears quite reasonable, as doubling speed will require a thrust increase of a factor of 2.828. Theoretically, power required is going to equal thrust (which must equal drag) times velocity. This in turn means that doubling speed will require that power increase by a factor of 5.657. A better option is simply to replace power with thrust in the documentation, and have fuel usage be proportional to thrust. This is basically how a jet engine works.
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While I think the new fuel model is a bit...over the top when it comes to fuel consumption, you already have the ability to build ships and engines with fuel efficiency in mind. Just don't expect your highly overpowered military engine to get great gas mileage. Research the appropriate tech and design engines accordingly. I use commercial engines in my survey ships so I can keep them out there for 3-4 years 200-300 billion km's of range. Also, you can't just send your massive battle fleet 4 sectors away, fight a battle, and return without refueling anymore. Bring fuel with you or setup a depot nearby. No big deal.
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Actually there is a way to move military ship in a fairly cheap manner - tugs. Create uber efficient engines, put them in a big civilian hull with a tractor beam. That ship will then be able to slowly tow your ships wherever you want. The only problem is that it's going to drive you mad with micro management.
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Looking through some stuff I have on naval architecture, it appears that scaling with the square of speed is correct, except that there are some confounding factors which go down at higher speeds. The best relationship I can work out based on the explanation Steve gave (ships operating in parallel-dimension fluid medium) is that drag will scale with velocity to the 1.5 power. This actually appears quite reasonable, as doubling speed will require a thrust increase of a factor of 2.828. Theoretically, power required is going to equal thrust (which must equal drag) times velocity. This in turn means that doubling speed will require that power increase by a factor of 5.657. A better option is simply to replace power with thrust in the documentation, and have fuel usage be proportional to thrust. This is basically how a jet engine works.
You don't want to have lower speeds reduce fuel consumption by the same factor a more efficient engine would do.
That would make engine design mostly irrelevant since an engine with maximum power can throttle down to be identically efficient with any other engine possible to design of the same size (and tech)!!!
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You don't want to have lower speeds reduce fuel consumption by the same factor a more efficient engine would do.
That would make engine design mostly irrelevant since an engine with maximum power can throttle down to be identically efficient with any other engine possible to design of the same size (and tech)!!!
Under my proposed model, the actual fuel efficiency (total range) goes up by a factor of two if you cut speed by a factor of four. This is because you're using half the power (thrust) per unit speed at 1/4 speed as you are at full speed. A ship designed for the 1/4th speed would need 1/8th the power/thrust of the faster ship. Assuming the engines are the same size, the slower vessel will have a fuel efficiency that is 181 times that of the faster vessel.
In other words, it's not even remotely like what you propose. An interesting side-effect is that speeds will tend to bunch closer together, as the marginal cost of speed goes up. This is not at all unrealistic when looking at real ships. One possible idea to implement alongside this is a "natural speed" technology which defines the point at which the new model crosses the old. Any ship below that speed will see its speed go up under the new model, while any above it will see a drop. The technology (something like "Trans-Newtonian Streamlining") would increase the natural speed, and allow higher-tech ships to go faster for the same power. This is mostly to counter the exponent in the formula, which would impose a serious limit on higher speeds otherwise.
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Ah okay then I just got confused when you started writing stuff about the fuel efficiency already in the game, especially this part:
"better option is simply to replace power with thrust in the documentation, and have fuel usage be proportional to thrust."
Why didn't you just write that you suggest the same thing I did one post above yours? ;) :P
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Ah okay then I just got confused when you started writing stuff about the fuel efficiency already in the game, especially this part:
"better option is simply to replace power with thrust in the documentation, and have fuel usage be proportional to thrust."
I'm an engineer. I was working it out as if we were dealing with real physics.
Why didn't you just write that you suggest the same thing I did one post above yours? ;) :P
Because I didn't. I suggested that we implement a specific formula, which is significantly different from "have fuel use scale with thrust fraction."
I'm now going to look a little more at my proposed model. All calculations are made on the basis that all ships have the same engine sizes and fractions, and the same fuel fraction.
One thing that would significantly enhance the model is to have fuel economy scale with (power modifier)^(5/3). This means that, for any ships traveling at the same speed, the relative ranges will be the same as they are in the current version of Aurora. Right now, a ship designed for a speed x will have 32 times the range of a ship designed for 4x. If we keep the same fuel model and implement my proposal, the relative ranges for both ships at speed x will be different by a factor of 181. If we alter the fuel model, the difference goes back to 32. On the other hand, under my model, the 4x ship at maximum speed will have a range that is 1/64th that of the x ship.
Alternatively, an exponent of 5/4 would give the x ship 32 times the range of the 4x ship at maximum speed for both, and 16 times the range at speed x. That actually sounds like a better plan, extending the range of faster ships at lower speeds instead of penalizing them at higher speeds relative to the current model.
There would probably need to be greater variance in the power modifiers to achieve similar results to the current system. The maximum a vessel can do is 3x what a non-modified vessel could do. To preserve this, the maximum power modifier would have to increase to 5.196, which can safely be rounded to 5.2.
The overall impact with these changes would be minimal, except for allowing cruising at lower speeds.
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I don't really see the point. You're always going to throttle up for combat and throttle down for cruising. And combat doesn't typically last long enough to make a difference to fuel levels. If the math is adjusted so that it doesn't make a difference to overall range (-->cruising speed range) than all you're doing is adding some additional micro to combat and slowing ships down overall. It's already hard enough to expand to other systems without cutting ship speeds. The first time a battlegroup gets stranded because I left it on combat speed, I'm going to be pissed. ^_^
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I don't really see the point. You're always going to throttle up for combat and throttle down for cruising. And combat doesn't typically last long enough to make a difference to fuel levels. If the math is adjusted so that it doesn't make a difference to overall range (-->cruising speed range) than all you're doing is adding some additional micro to combat and slowing ships down overall. It's already hard enough to expand to other systems without cutting ship speeds. The first time a battlegroup gets stranded because I left it on combat speed, I'm going to be pissed. ^_^
That's why I'm in favor of 5/4 as opposed to 5/3. Your combat speed range is the same and you gain in cruising speed range.
Of course, it gets more complicated when you go to different engine fractions. Then, the benefits are less dramatic.