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?
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.