Fuel

[utilae]

We certainly ain't gonna be distributing fuel between ships. So, abastract will be good, but it probably should be as simple as it is in Moo2. Your ships can travel to planets if they can get back (unless you turn safety mode off). How far away you can travel is based on how your supply is able to be refueled, eg stopping at a resupply station, a colony a planet to scoop fuel from the atmosphere, do some mining at an asteroid field. Such things would be simple. Having extra fuel reserves in the fleet only extends your range.

In the end it is all calculated under the hood, so that the player only has to know that they can make it to where they want to go and they can get back (safety mode on). Or they can make it to where they want to go and they cannot get back (safety mode off).

[ewh02b]

We certainly ain't gonna be distributing fuel between ships. So, abastract will be good, but it probably should be as simple as it is in Moo2. Your ships can travel to planets if they can get back (unless you turn safety mode off). How far away you can travel is based on how your supply is able to be refueled, eg stopping at a resupply station, a colony a planet to scoop fuel from the atmosphere, do some mining at an asteroid field. Such things would be simple. Having extra fuel reserves in the fleet only extends your range.

In the end it is all calculated under the hood, so that the player only has to know that they can make it to where they want to go and they can get back (safety mode on). Or they can make it to where they want to go and they cannot get back (safety mode off).

one problem: wouldn't the player simply make an outpost ship, turn safety mode off on it, and send it out as far as possible? Then make another outpost ship, send it past the first one, etc? If outposts can overcome the "safety switch", which already doubles the ship range, then...it would be pretty easy for a player to make a dozen outposts and have free reign of the map.

[utilae]

You could do that on Moo2. Maybe we can have some kind of limit. Like high maintenance fees for having resupply outposts so far out. The people that work there will need supplies and fuel even needs to be brought there. So, maybe there are huge costs involved.

[marhawkman]

one problem: wouldn't the player simply make an outpost ship, turn safety mode off on it, and send it out as far as possible? Then make another outpost ship, send it past the first one, etc? If outposts can overcome the "safety switch", which already doubles the ship range, then...it would be pretty easy for a player to make a dozen outposts and have free reign of the map.

That was the entire point of having outposts in MoO2. I'm thinking you're talking about colonies though. Which can easily be settled by adding resupply polints to the game.

[ewh02b]

You could do that on Moo2. Maybe we can have some kind of limit. Like high maintenance fees for having resupply outposts so far out. The people that work there will need supplies and fuel even needs to be brought there. So, maybe there are huge costs involved.

yeah, or we could simply give outposts a short range...they're only designed to make a one-way trip anyway, so we could disable the safety switch on them, so they have a specific, fixed range.

I think it would be a good idea to have a cost for outposts, too.

[Impaler]

I find the Stars! fuel system to be very user friendly most of the time. I do ocasionaly run out of fuel but its usaualy on a scout that I have desided to Suicide (just keep it moving intill it runs out). And I have had some trouble with the way Stars! dose not automaticaly refuel when a convoy is set up.

Basicaly the only thing I would realy change about stars! system is the variable rate of fuel consumption with speed. I think our system should simple give every ship a Fuel per unit of Distance traveled number which is based on its Engine and Size (Maximum speed would also be derived from Engine and Size). The speed a ship moves at will not change this in any way so it becomes much simpler to see what a fleets range is going to be , you can combine fast and slow ships without worrying about ranges being skewed in odd ways. The other advantage is that for any particular destination or series of way-points you can always tell if you have sufficient fuel to reach it.

When fleets are split Stars! automaticaly sets each fleets Fuel tank to the same % of Fill (which ofcorse matched the Parent fleets % of fill on its collective tank). But under this range based system the logical alternative is to equalize range to the greatest extent possible. It the fleets are given destination their can also be some quick buttons (possibly a little marker on the fuel slider) that sets a fleet to adsactly what is needed to reach a destination.

Lastly if we go with Geoff's Fuel = movment, Amo/Suppy = Firepower then we need to figure out a way for Fighters to not suck the Carrier Dry. The simplest solution might be for Fighter Fuel to be considered a form of Amo. The Carrier fleet could run out of Amo and be unable to launch its fighters but could still run away. Otherwise the player will end up in situations ware they are under attack but cant use their Fighters and ample Amo for fear of stranding the fleet. Another solution, Fighters could have such tiny fuel tanks that their very very unliky to make a dent in the whole fleets range.

[Zpock]

Basicaly the only thing I would realy change about stars! system is the variable rate of fuel consumption with speed.

The whole point of the stars! fuel system is the ability to change the speed for varying fuel consumption so you can overdrive the engines and make quick short range jumps. Removing this would take away what makes the system worthwile and cool and change it into a micromanagment nuisance.

[Impaler]

That could simply be replaced with having the ships take damage when going into "Over Drive". It would still give much the same strategic effect.

[Zpock]

That could simply be replaced with having the ships take damage when going into "Over Drive". It would still give much the same strategic effect.

This was in stars! as when you tried to go at maximum speed without advanced engines you got damage to your ship in addition to using lots of fuel.

It dosn't make sense to implement the stars! fuel system without the varying speeds and fuel usage. It opens up so much deep strategy with range vs speed decisions. The different speeds also interacted perfectly with minefields and allowed more variety in engines and ship design. Micromanagment was also seemingly very effectively avoided in stars! since the game calculated fuel usage for you very effectively. For example, if you set waypoints it can be automatically calculated the optimal speed to get to the next refueling station on the route. A colony ship would automatically go at the maximum speed it can to still reach the target since it will be scrapped anyway.

A fuel system that simply lets you go at 1 speed as long as you dont run out and then when your out of fuel your stuck is boring uninteractive and it would be more fun just to scrap it altogether. Actually I don't think FO is really suited to using fuel anyway. There will not be any freighters or minefields and movement is restricted to starlanes. There simply won't be a lot of moving arnound, you will have a bunch of warships going through some starlane to an enemy system to fight in and that will pretty much be it. So I don't see much point in range restrictions at all.

Even having the speed of ships on the strategic map vary a lot dosn't make sense. It's just annoying if it takes 10 years to cross a starlane in the begining when you are colonizing and scouting. Then when you get to the late game it's changed to 1 turn and all the concept of detecting ships in the middle of the starlane approacing your system goes down the drain. It may be a mainstay feature in all the 4x games with researching better and better engines, I still think some serious thought about this is needed. Note that for example in civilization you don't get that much of a speed boost from the early game to the end game, you get airplanes and faster ships, but the infantry still goes at one square/turn and tanks are roughly the same speed as horsemen, 3 vs 2. More notable is the railroads, solving the groving micromanagment hassles of rallying troops inside your empire. This would be matched by introducing stargates for instant travel between your own planets of course.

To sum that up, I think the speed of your fleets should stay roughly the same over the course of the game, only improving to maybe 0-50% better then what you have in the beginning. Fighters/small ships should be much faster then the capitals so you can have a quick light strike force and a slow brute force one no matter what point of the game it is. No range restrictions should be needed.

[utilae]

I think anykind of transfer of fuel between or to ships should not be allowed by the player. This should only be done automatically, eg if the ship is in it's own star system.

[ewh02b]

I think anykind of transfer of fuel between or to ships should not be allowed by the player. This should only be done automatically, eg if the ship is in it's own star system.

Or, we could require them to research a fuel transfer tech and use ship points (space or whatever) to be able to do so. We could also have 3 fuel transfer techs, so that transfer with the first tech level is slow (limited to a certain number of units) and dangerous (20% chance of a failure, 30% chance of damage to each ship if there's a failure). The level 2 would only have a 10% chance of failure and 10% chance of damage, and double the fuel transfer rate. Level 3 would be 0% chance of failure and double the level 2 fuel transfer rate.

Just a thought, I'm not attached to it or anything.

[marhawkman]

I think anykind of transfer of fuel between or to ships should not be allowed by the player. This should only be done automatically, eg if the ship is in it's own star system.

Or, we could require them to research a fuel transfer tech and use ship points (space or whatever) to be able to do so. We could also have 3 fuel transfer techs, so that transfer with the first tech level is slow (limited to a certain number of units) and dangerous (20% chance of a failure, 30% chance of damage to each ship if there's a failure). The level 2 would only have a 10% chance of failure and 10% chance of damage, and double the fuel transfer rate. Level 3 would be 0% chance of failure and double the level 2 fuel transfer rate.

Just a thought, I'm not attached to it or anything.

That's even worse.... Automated fuel transfer does seem like a nice idea though. SE4 does that with Supplies. You can (sort of) refuel a fleet by merging a ship with lots of supplies into it.

[Impaler]

Removing player control over such a critical feature would be a terrible idea. Its fine to have a default spliting so the player dosn't need to explicity enter in how they want it done every single time. They will quickly learn how the default function and IF they want something different they should be able to easily do so.

[utilae]

It's not critical for the player to decide how much fuel to put in a ship. In Stars! it is not very good. I kept building ships, then telling them to go somewhere only to find that I had to fill them up with fuel. This annoying micromanagement feature was nicely removed in Moo2.

[marhawkman]

It's not critical for the player to decide how much fuel to put in a ship. In Stars! it is not very good. I kept building ships, then telling them to go somewhere only to find that I had to fill them up with fuel. This annoying micromanagement feature was nicely removed in Moo2.

Erm.... I never noticed that issue. Ships are automatically filled with fuel when built.