A Potential Minimal-Grind Fuel Mechanic.

[Jake_Lancia]

This suggestion is co-written by me, crazyf22raptor , therimmer96 , and Nauvran .
WARNING: Wall of text inbound.

Large ships need a maintenance cost of sorts for combat to be properly viable and to create a better economy and additional gameplay opportunities. Our suggestion is simple; larger ships will require fuel to run properly.

Before I go any further, I want to say this now: Fuel does not necessarily mean grind. Fuel instead, presents new opportunities and automation, as our wall of text down below will prove. I was originally heavily against fuel, but after hearing these guys’ ideas I realized that fuel might not be a bad thing after all. Some of our ideas may require the upcoming universe update to work properly however.

The idea.

Ships generate fuel with movement but just a tiny bit less that what they need for their reactors to be infinite power. (to clarify; power blocks work like they do now; however this requires the fuel to run like this.) In RP terms this might be something like Star Trek’s Bussard collectors that collect interstellar hydrogen to use as fuel. The fuel efficiency decreases by some mathematical curve thing as the ship size increases.

200k blocks and over starts to see a fairly large decrease in fuel efficiency generation when moving. The larger the ship is (more blocks on the ship not mass) the less efficient it gets with fuel generation making a need to stop at stations with fuel refineries.

This should work regardless of what power system or rework may be put in place in future, as it's not directly tied to power blocks.

Alternatively fuel could instead be used only to power the ON state of Auxiliary Reactors which might not require as many changes to the power system but would produce essentially the same effect.

This should a config option; fuel could be entirely turned off on servers like creative servers if needed, and fuel usage/production could be scaled with block configs (or perhaps just a multiplier on server config).

This also acts as an indirect softcap on ship sizes - which can mean smaller, more advanced ships, and better server performance in most cases.

Spoiler: Fuel Refineries

• Refines usable fuel from raw fuel resource on a large scale and stores it. Basically a capsule refinery but for raw fuel.
• Ships will need to dock or be in a 1000m range of station to receive fuel. (fuel bar will recharge so there will be a short wait time, works faster if docked)
• Larger factions can assign NPC fleets to transport fuel to certain sectors or can be purchased from the shop modules you place on stations. (provided you have storage for it on your station)
• They can’t be placed on home-based stations, therefore necessitating well-defended stations outside the homebase for fuel refining.
• Can have factory enhancers slaved to it for faster refining rates at the cost of more power used, like current factories.
• Fuel uses standard storage blocks to store.

Spoiler: Getting the fuel

• Getting the fuel should not be a grind - NPC fleets should primarily be managing this task.
• NPC ships with salvage modules on/have the Mining role can be sent to a sector within a nebula or a sector with a gas giant in (more on these below) to harvest fuel. ALTERNATIVE: The stations themselves harvest AND refine the fuel, but only work inside a nebula.
• This should ideally be done while the sector is unloaded.
• These fuel harvesting and carrying fleets can be raided by players to steal their fuel cargo. They show up on the Nav marker when near as carrying fuel loads, making them a more tempting target for player raiders and pirates.
• Refined fuel can also be bought directly from TG stations and shops at a high default price, and can be traded via the trade network.

Spoiler: Nebulae (PLANNED)

• Large, brightly-coloured clouds of gases and dust that can range from as small as a single sector, to encompassing several systems.
• Could come with a fog-like visual effect or something when flying through one.
• All nebulae should have a base fuel harvest rate that can be affected by the type of nebula it is as well as other environmental factors.
• Nebulae should be basically infinite sources of fuel - the type of nebula as well as how powerful the harvesting ships are should determine how much fuel is bought back from each harvesting trip.
• Nebulae shouldn’t just be a source of fuel - different types of nebula could, as well as providing pretty new backgrounds and effects, affect ships and stations within it in different ways. For example, one type of nebula might have double fuel harvesting rate, and another type might reduce shield recharge rate by 50% of ships and stations inside it, and another might halve sensor range. And still others might buff or nerf shields or sensors or armour absorption or other random things. (not power or thrust though - that might be a little weird.) The possibilities are basically endless.
• Nebulae should be somewhat rare, and would be incredibly valuable for those factions who need fuel, perhaps 10-15 per galaxy. System-sized nebulae should be even rarer, perhaps two or three per galaxy. This would encourage conflict or alliances with nebulae-holding factions, not only for the obvious fuel resource but for the other strategic values or bonuses they might provide.
• Only the faction who has claimed the star system the nebula is in (or systems in the case of supermassive multi-system nebulae) can mine the raw fuel resource from the nebula. This further encourages conflict between factions to control the rare fuel resources.
• Any system with a nebula in cannot have a home base in it.
• Visible in the galactic map if the system has been scanned - otherwise invisible like all other objects in an undiscovered system.
• Can only spawn in planetary systems.
• Planets, asteroids and abandoned/pirate stations can also spawn inside it if needed.

Spoiler: Gas Giants (PLANNED?)

• Big spherical balls of gaseous and liquid (inner-layers) elements.
• Basically provides fuel like a nebula but at a greatly reduced rate.
• Would be useful for a smaller faction, but massively inefficient for a large/established faction.
• Would be quite rare to find, but still more common than nebulae, perhaps one per 4-5 systems as opposed to the incredibly rare (10-15 per galaxy) nebula spawn rate.
• Can spawn in planet orbital sectors like the current/future planets.
• Refinery bases can be established on their moons (also apparently planned) for quick refining of harvested raw fuel.
• Flying into one would be basically suicide as the pressure would slowly crush your ship (simulated with the older-style gradual sun damage, not the missile-like current sun damage)

Spoiler: A Rundown of how it works

Ships can generate fuel slowly. It can get this fuel by moving (and only moving), but it can only collect a fraction less of what it’s reactors need to be a infinite power source. On smaller ships this would be almost non existent but when you get past the 200k block count, the collection of the fuel will start to become less efficient, requiring larger ships to either carry large amounts of fuel, or stop and refuel often. Fuel usage per second/arbitrary unit of time should be very low across all ships, so refuel stops are not overly common, but usage should still be fast enough to make fuel usage a legitimate worry on larger ships.

Tl;dr power generation requires fuel, moving generates fuel, big ships need more than can be made via moving, requiring additional fuel from refinery stations. Alternative option of only having Aux reactors’ ON state need fuel.

So yeah, comment below what you think is good, bad or outright terrible and what can be added or changed to this.

EDIT1: Something's seriously wrong with the spoilers, sorry.

 

[Deserea]

Explain to me how my 3 million + block count ship the Avelos would move anywhere?(and thats discounting docked entities)(and i have 3 finished ships in the million plus block range, and four more being built) how would they function with this system, without making it such a frustrating chore that i would rage quit?

If thrust was more powerful(and i mean how it used to be or even more so, where the ravens call could be what i built it as, a battlecruiser 100M/s baby *SOOOOOO* much thrust...well it used to have so much thrust ), maybe *maybe* i would argue slightly but only slightly, in favor of fuel, because as it is, moving a large ship, at any thing not using jump drives, is painful, really, really, really painful. Even jump drives *can* be painful to use on large ships. All this would do is make large ships nothing more than for show or just not even built, i fear using mine as it is because if it gets damaged i have to repair *all* the damage by hand(jump driving into a sun on accident once made me brain melt too), because we dont have a system in place that allows for ships to repair missing blocks.

Maintenance costs i would like to see, but fuel i will never think is the way to go, especially in starmade.

Edit: and yes i realize this is a config option, but i think its a bad idea.

 

[Jake_Lancia]

Explain to me how my 3 million + block count ship the Avelos would move anywhere?(and thats discounting docked entities)(and i have 3 finished ships in the million plus block range, and four more being built) how would they function with this system, without making it such a frustrating chore that i would rage quit?

If thrust was more powerful(and i mean how it used to be or even more so, where the ravens call could be what i built it as, a battlecruiser 100M/s baby *SOOOOOO* much thrust...well it used to have so much thrust ), maybe *maybe* i would argue slightly but only slightly, in favor of fuel, because as it is, moving a large ship, at any thing not using jump drives, is painful, really, really, really painful. Even jump drives *can* be painful to use on large ships. All this would do is make large ships nothing more than for show or just not even built, i fear using mine as it is because if it gets damaged i have to repair *all* the damage by hand(jump driving into a sun on accident once made me brain melt too), because we dont have a system in place that allows for ships to repair missing blocks.

Maintenance costs i would like to see, but fuel i will never think is the way to go, especially in starmade.

Edit: and yes i realize this is a config option, but i think its a bad idea.

Thrust is another problem entirely, kindly do not use the problems of a separate mechanic to put this idea down.

Now, back to fuel, ideally there would be some form of cap on how fast fuel would be used by ship systems, so even supermassive ships would stand a chance of being used in some form. Also, if these ships have any storage inside them, they can probably carry enough fuel for extended operations anyway without major modification.

Besides, it's not like you would have to manually mine the stuff... I get the impression you didn't completely read the suggestion.

 

[Calhoun]

To be honest it seems like a good idea, but it's written by Jake and Rimmer so it can't be.

 

[therimmer96]

To be honest it seems like a good idea, but it's written by Jake and Rimmer so it can't be.

That's fair.

 

[Deserea]

Thrust is another problem entirely, kindly do not use the problems of a separate mechanic to put this idea down.

Now, back to fuel, ideally there would be some form of cap on how fast fuel would be used by ship systems, so even supermassive ships would stand a chance of being used in some form. Also, if these ships have any storage inside them, they can probably carry enough fuel for extended operations anyway without major modification.

Besides, it's not like you would have to manually mine the stuff... I get the impression you didn't completely read the suggestion.

The two mechanics are actually tied together, very very closely together. Fuel is used for power, power is used for thrust, accelerating uses power, which in turn uses fuel to restore the power used for the thrust, however because larger ships need so much fuel and dont restore the fuel they used via moving, it would burn through power quickly, especially in combat. I feel that the thrust mechanism needs much more work/balancing before something like this gets added *ontop* of the thrust mechanism.

Taking the Avelos as an example. Currently it uses 2.2 million e/sec to accelerate or turn. Its got 5 Million e/sec, but if i want to use *any* of its sub systems of which it has very few, or even the many turrets it has, turning becomes a massive problem with this system, in the current system it drains quite a bit of my power to turn, under yours, it would burn through the fuel it has, and then what? Because i can pretty much guarantee you that the amount of fuel the Avelos can hold, with its small storage bay, would be drained pretty quick in combat.

the cap you mention would have to be spread out and the curve would have to be a very very slow one. The other thing is, Not everyone agrees on ship scale in this game, and how it should be judged, or even whats large or small, and enforcing a set idea of scale has its own set of drawbacks.

I did also read the entire thing, twice before responding.

As for the manually mining. I would have to(Unless the station idea was implemented, in that case though, id simply cease playing as i do, and just build things, because raiding anything would be a chore, and building that initial station would kill me) Because fleets, and drones, frustrate the crap out of me to build/make. Id also have to make them entirely out of skyforgers, which would use most of the fuel they mined(at least until i made a smaller one).

To be honest, this system is maybe decent for factions of small(five or more people) because they can spread the work out among the other players, but for the solo player, who either spends most of their time by themselves in single player(which wouldnt surprise me if most of the players of this game where doing), or when in multiplayer, spends their time alone, as i do, it simply adds more grind on top of what they do to play the game, if they dont use creative mode.

You also wanted thoughts on your suggestion. I think its a terrible idea, with how the mechanisms in game work already. Those would have to be fixed, before i would think about supporting this idea. Im sorry if that upsets you at all, but thats my opinion.

 

[Calhoun]

snip snip.

Power is not just used for thrust. Thrust is only as related to fuel/power as every other sub-system is.

 

[Deserea]

Power is not just used for thrust. Thrust is only as related to fuel/power as every other sub-system is.

I am aware. I even mentioned that in that long post, about how much of a negative effect it would have for large/supermassive ships, when used in tandem with other subsystems.

 

[Lecic]

Can spawn in void sectors/systems as well as planetary systems.

Good suggestion, except for this. It'll already be a huge pain finding the nebula sectors/systems with them just confined the stellar systems, let alone void ones. Besides that, nebula almost always have protostars and are usually formed from the remains of a star after it goes supernova, so it would likely have white dwarfs or a black hole in it as well.

 

[The Judge]

I kinda like the idea of a ship being too big to efficiently move.
Solves Titanmade temporarily at least.

 

[Jake_Lancia]

Good suggestion, except for this. It'll already be a huge pain finding the nebula sectors/systems with them just confined the stellar systems, let alone void ones. Besides that, nebula almost always have protostars and are usually formed from the remains of a star after it goes supernova, so it would likely have white dwarfs or a black hole in it as well.

That's pretty reasonable. I'll remove the mentions of void systems then.

Taking the Avelos as an example. Currently it uses 2.2 million e/sec to accelerate or turn. Its got 5 Million e/sec, but if i want to use *any* of its sub systems of which it has very few, or even the many turrets it has, turning becomes a massive problem with this system, in the current system it drains quite a bit of my power to turn, under yours, it would burn through the fuel it has, and then what? Because i can pretty much guarantee you that the amount of fuel the Avelos can hold, with its small storage bay, would be drained pretty quick in combat.

the cap you mention would have to be spread out and the curve would have to be a very very slow one. The other thing is, Not everyone agrees on ship scale in this game, and how it should be judged, or even whats large or small, and enforcing a set idea of scale has its own set of drawbacks.

I did also read the entire thing, twice before responding.

As for the manually mining. I would have to(Unless the station idea was implemented, in that case though, id simply cease playing as i do, and just build things, because raiding anything would be a chore, and building that initial station would kill me) Because fleets, and drones, frustrate the crap out of me to build/make. Id also have to make them entirely out of skyforgers, which would use most of the fuel they mined(at least until i made a smaller one).

To be honest, this system is maybe decent for factions of small(five or more people) because they can spread the work out among the other players, but for the solo player, who either spends most of their time by themselves in single player(which wouldnt surprise me if most of the players of this game where doing), or when in multiplayer, spends their time alone, as i do, it simply adds more grind on top of what they do to play the game, if they dont use creative mode.

You also wanted thoughts on your suggestion. I think its a terrible idea, with how the mechanisms in game work already. Those would have to be fixed, before i would think about supporting this idea. Im sorry if that upsets you at all, but thats my opinion.

Apologies for my earlier rude tone at the beginning of the thread.

However, the point is it's meant to restrict the use of large ships like yours, and create additional opportunities for trading and other gameplay mechanics along the way.

StarMade has an inherent gigantism problem which many, many players have been complaining about for years, with servers being stressed, PCs being bought to the brink during faction battles, people quitting due to lag caused by huge ships, etc. Introducing a fuel mechanic is a step towards eliminating that problem while not crippling the entire playerbase and their large ships; the only refit most 200k block ships and over will require is just a more expansive cargo bay.

It also introduces extensive automation possibilities. NPC fleets would ideally be mining the fuel, and they'd likely be unloaded, so you'd never have to manually mine fuel unless you were just starting to gather fuel for the very first time in mid-game.

There are also new gameplay and faction battle opportunities; factions can raid refinery stations and fuel convoys to both steal their fuel for themselves and to cripple the use of large ships for the attacked faction. This potentially can help level the playing field between large and smaller factions on servers.

If people want to continue using their cruisers/titans/large ships the way they are, they will have to make a significant, sustained investment under this system. Under the current system once someone has a cruiser/titan/large ship then it'll be flown around willy-nilly without a care in the world, disrupting people's lives and the server's performance. This has to stop, for the sake of servers, players and factions alike.

 

[Deserea]

That's pretty reasonable. I'll remove the mentions of void systems then.

If people want to continue using their cruisers/titans/large ships the way they are, they will have to make a significant, sustained investment under this system. Under the current system once someone has a cruiser/titan/large ship then it'll be flown around willy-nilly without a care in the world, disrupting people's lives and the server's performance. This has to stop, for the sake of servers, players and factions alike.

I dont know about most players, but when it comes to my massive ships, im to afraid to use them in combat due to possibly losing them, and the lag they cause myself is insane. I agree with restricting them. I just dont, and will not ever think fuel of any kind is the way to do it. There are other ways(such as allowing server creators the option to limit build size by either dimensions, or block count, or maybe both), and there have been suggestions for them that ive agreed with ^^

 

[spaceEngineer]

I like the idea of some form of fuel, however fuel seems to be the most controvertial of mechanics and if implemented it will need to strike the balance perfectly to work. If it is implemented there will need to be some why to automate it to some degree. (biomass fuel farms?)(energy condensers?) which would be a really slow method of gathering fuel without messing with nebula/gas giants. and then you have the other methods gas giants/nebula. Also what if refineries took any kind of block capsule:cinnibar, larimar, dolom, etc but not shards or metal. cinnabar can really start to buld up in storage.

The hard cap methods I am not a fan of generally they break immersion IMO, but if it works out that way I hope there is some game mechanic that does it rather than getting a message like this.

hah youve built on block to much or to long in one direction servers can't handle it.

 

[Deserea]

I like the idea of some form of fuel, however fuel seems to be the most controvertial of mechanics and if implemented it will need to strike the balance perfectly to work. If it is implemented there will need to be some why to automate it to some degree. (biomass fuel farms?)(energy condensers?) which would be a really slow method of gathering fuel without messing with nebula/gas giants. and then you have the other methods gas giants/nebula. Also what if refineries took any kind of block capsule:cinnibar, larimar, dolom, etc but not shards or metal. cinnabar can really start to buld up in storage.

The hard cap methods I am not a fan of generally they break immersion IMO, but if it works out that way I hope there is some game mechanic that does it rather than getting a message like this.

hah youve built on block to much or to long in one direction servers can't handle it.

Well i guess my other reply didnt actually post!

Fuel is to this game as Mounts are to GW2.

This would rid this suggestion of one my concerns. The micro managing portion, and the need to have AI fleets, and stations. As someone who plays mostly by themselves(not by choice either), those are huge things to have to worry about in a single player survival game.
If i could get fuel by refining the for now useless dirt materials im already gaining by mining into fuel, it would be a bit easier to take on. It still leaves my other concern however.

as for the hard caps yes it would pop a message, but generally i would hope at least, that players would already know they cant build past a certain amount of blocks or size. Because the server would have that in their settings page.

 

[Lecic]

Explain to me how my 3 million + block count ship the Avelos

Currently it uses 2.2 million e/sec to accelerate or turn. Its got 5 Million e/sec

Slightly off topic, but I think your ship may be a bit lacking in power generation. You've got a 3mil+ block ship and you've only got ~30-45k of that dedicated to aux and regular power gen? That's only 1-1.5% of the ship being composed of power gen, which is far under what you need for a ship of that size.

 

[Deserea]

Slightly off topic, but I think your ship may be a bit lacking in power generation. You've got a 3mil+ block ship and you've only got ~30-45k of that dedicated to aux and regular power gen? That's only 1-1.5% of the ship being composed of power gen, which is far under what you need for a ship of that size.

ive got.. nearly 300k power blocks, and about 115k in regen blocks, maybe still small for a ship that size..., but they are probably terrible inefficient too, power systems arent my greatest strength.
Aux comes in at..82k blocks, ran out of room, but im looking into upgrading that to around 150k here soon with the upgrades its getting.

Id love to have someone look at it, but i cant get into multiplayer servers to do so :/

 

[Lecic]

ive got.. nearly 300k power blocks, and about 115k in regen blocks, maybe still small for a ship that size..., but they are probably terrible inefficient too, power systems arent my greatest strength.
Aux comes in at..82k blocks, ran out of room, but im looking into upgrading that to around 150k here soon with the upgrades its getting.

Id love to have someone look at it, but i cant get into multiplayer servers to do so :/

It sounds like you've got some major inefficiencies in your power gen then... The optimal block count for a single aux group is about 10k (9890? something like that) which should generate right around 2mil e/s. Even with a 1:1 armor to aux ratio in the reactor, that's still only about 40k blocks. And for the base ~2.2-2.4 mil power, that shouldn't be more than a few thousand (2-3k) blocks at most.

 

[Deserea]

It sounds like you've got some major inefficiencies in your power gen then... The optimal block count for a single aux group is about 10k (9890? something like that) which should generate right around 2mil e/s. Even with a 1:1 armor to aux ratio in the reactor, that's still only about 40k blocks. And for the base ~2.2-2.4 mil power, that shouldn't be more than a few thousand (2-3k) blocks at most.

Sounds like horrible efficiency.
I didnt know about the 9.8k optimal limit for aux until *after* i had finished the ship.
Base power though, seems like i need to work on that, alot.

I wish i could get some help with that, but until i can get online...ick >.>

 

[lupoCani]

If I may address the point of fuel acquisition not being a manual chore-

That's correct, but I really think it needs to be taken farther. The mechanic proposed seem to primarily revolve around using NPCs and fleets. If you think about it, this doesn't make it a non-grind mechanic. It only makes it a grind, with the expectation that there will be yet another mechanic to do your grinding for you.

Were it up to me, the primary means of fuel gathering should be intrinsically grind-free. The suggestion does include mechanics for this, but while I support mining/refinery stations as prized resources to fight over, I cannot support them as necessities for lone players.

I would suggest looking into mechanics that allow ships, of any size, to be entirely self-sufficient of fuel, at the cost of sacrificing some portion of systems to fuel generation. The vast majority of fuel-gathering mechanics, large- and small scale, should revolve around infrastructure blocks passively doing their jobs, not players/npcs doing things. Finally, as I find myself repeating in all these fuel threads, please consider fuel stations placed between binary stars, seeping fuel from the mass transfer between them.

 

[Lord_Greyscale]

Finally, as I find myself repeating in all these fuel threads, please consider fuel stations placed between binary stars, seeping fuel from the mass transfer between them.

Hmm, most servers I've been on (and singleplayer by default) have Star Damage turned on. (because they didn't know they could change it from the default, or because they didn't want to)
Remember, Star Damage is the unavoidable "suddenly there's holes in my ship" bullshit-damage caused by being within 2.5 sectors of a star.
The bigger yous ship is, the more it hurts, Stations can't stop it, and claimed planet plates explode too.

So, find for me, a multiple binary star systems, where the two stars have a non-burn sector between them. (because I've yet to meet one such system, let alone the 12 or so that would justify catering to it.)
In the main same galaxy, naturally.