A Potential Minimal-Grind Fuel Mechanic.

[lupoCani]

Find for me a single fuel-rich gas giant in the game. You can't, because we're discussing features to be implemented, not features that exist.

On a more serious note, stations are immune to star damage, and we'll need more elaborate mechanics for stars and their damage anyways. Worst-case scenario, just add a "sweet spot" corridor of sectors in between binary stars, where shielded ships take no damage. In any case, improving on stars should be less work than implementing new stellar features altogether. Not to mention it serves as fleshing out the features of the game, rather than filling it out with new ones.

Though, make no mistake, I'm suggesting binary star harvesting because I find it extraordinarily cool, and I think it would be worth a mechanic or two to make it work. It could be an exclusive, high-end fuel source for large factions, a run-of-the-mill thing for mostly anybody, or anything in between. It's not very important, so long as it's in the game in some usable fashion.

 

[Lord_Greyscale]

Fair enough.

 

[Lecic]

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.

First off, star damage distance varies by star color. The normal white stars are closer to 1 - 1.5 sectors burn distance.

Secondly, binary systems are rare as hell, let alone safe binary systems. That's a problem with their rarity in the universe generation code.

I do remember that the Aethi Imperium had their homebase in a safe corridor in a blue giant binary system between the two stars once on a server though.

 

[Calhoun]

safe

blue giant

Lecic pls

 

[Nickizzy]

generate fuel with movement but just a tiny bit less that what they need for their reactors to be infinite power.

Most of the issues with this system so far have been because it's too much of a hassle to ever move big ships.

I think what you mean is that it would require 1 Fuel for every 100 seconds for each power block(or something). If you produce 500 power per PB(in a given ship) then you consume 1 F per 50k power. Using 50k power in thrusters would give you back .99 Fuel.

Why couldn't you just make it a default lower value, so slow ships aren't super inefficent and little zippy things last forever. From the previous example; PBs need 1 fuel every 9,000 seconds, or 2 and a half hours. This is the same as getting on every system a .90 return on the old tick rate for all systems.

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.

First, these are two different ideas, second, the first idea seems eerily familiar to the RP/PVP ship conflict. One ship gives a certain portion of it's volume and weight for an unessicary reason, then get smuffed by a ship that doesn't.

Third, the second idea seems to follow the OP, just from a different, even rarer source.

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.

CoughFactorioCough. It's called automation, and it's what late game is. And how robotics works.

 

[lupoCani]

First, these are two different ideas, second, the first idea seems eerily familiar to the RP/PVP ship conflict. One ship gives a certain portion of it's volume and weight for an unessicary reason, then get smuffed by a ship that doesn't.

Well, duh. That's the idea. All things being equal, the ship that is backed by infrastructure, and has fuel provided for it, is superior to the ship that has to provide its own.

CoughFactorioCough. It's called automation, and it's what late game is. And how robotics works.

Yes. Late game. Though, to the best of my understanding, the suggestion proposed NPC mining as the go-to option, and stations and such as the late-game system. If we now contend that NPC mining is also a late game option, early game players are left with no option for fuel whatsoever, which is unacceptable.

 

[Nickizzy]

early game players are left with no option for fuel whatsoever, which is unacceptable.

Point to you. Hopefully either fuel will be such an easy thing that you wouldn't need to much work to do it(say it just takes from storage containers on the ship that are slaved to the core). And hopefully fuel will be an easy enough thing to get in the small quantities that you would need. Every 2.5 hours of run time by a ship you need a fuel for each power block. This would probably be 50-100 fuel or so for the average early game player ship, and if fuel weighs 1 each you would need to refuel every 5 hours worst case on a single storage.

Maybe ships given at a player's spawn come will a storage slaved to the core with 200 fuel. You need to upsize to be required to understand the system. As long as fuel wasn't thousands a piece(the faction trading potential of this system!) you could buy whatevery you needed.

Now, if ships continued to use fuel if they had max power and were sitting idle, you would have a problem. Maybe you could have a seperate "Deboot-Reboot" thing, debooted ships don't use fuel but are like debooted ships now.

 

[KiraSerra]

I voted: It needs major improvement to be worth using (Specify)

Why only large ships need maintenance and fuel to properly function? That makes no sense to me. I believe, both should require maintenance and fuel.

The fuel generation by movement part is really weird and is not necessary. You just need to base your fuel consumption on the number of power reactor blocks or on the consumed power. That way you would get what you want. Or something like that.

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.

So you want it to be simple. Here is my simple idea.
You want fuel mines and fuel refineries. Let's put them on the same thing! Using only one type of block. Fuel Collection and Production Module. You could use them on planets and later on stations that are in nebulae.
I would allow them to be home bases.
I would allow them to be built in hostile territory.
Transportation:
Between docked entities.
By transporters in the same system.
Between connected warp gates.

Ps. I had the feeling while reading your post that all you want is smaller ships and more pew pew with the additional "make it harder for bigger ships" thing.

 

[MrFURB]

So if ships create fuel at just a slightly slower rate than they require what is stopping one from 'cutting out the middle man' so to speak? Simplify the system by removing a ship's fuel generation and lowering the fuel consumption by the same amount.

 

[Nickizzy]

Most of the issues with this system so far have been because it's too much of a hassle to ever move big ships.

I think what you mean is that it would require 1 Fuel for every 100 seconds for each power block(or something). If you produce 500 power per PB(in a given ship) then you consume 1 F per 50k power. Using 50k power in thrusters would give you back .99 Fuel.

Why couldn't you just make it a default lower value, so slow ships aren't super inefficent and little zippy things last forever. From the previous example; PBs need 1 fuel every 9,000 seconds, or 2 and a half hours. This is the same as getting on every system a .90 return on the old tick rate for all systems.

The fuel generation by movement part is really weird and is not necessary. You just need to base your fuel consumption on the number of power reactor blocks or on the consumed power. That way you would get what you want. Or something like that.

If you want to say an idea that's barely thought out, make sure you check that someone hasn't said the same thing in more detail earlier first.

So you want it to be simple. Here is my simple idea.
[1]You want fuel mines and fuel refineries. Let's put them on the same thing! Using only one type of block. Fuel Collection and Production Module. You could use them on planets and later on stations that are in nebulae.
[2]I would allow them to be home bases.
[3]I would allow them to be built in hostile territory.
Transportation:
[4]Between docked entities.
[5]By transporters in the same system.
[6]Between connected warp gates.

[7]Ps. I had the feeling while reading your post that all you want is smaller ships and more pew pew with the additional "make it harder for bigger ships" thing.

1. The collection block collects fuel, but what does the production module do? Is it a factory enhanncer for fuel?
2. Why... not? I guess it could be an encentive to build more stations if the opposite was true.
3. What do you mean? That you can sneak a collection station into hostile territory, make it neutral, then take all the fuel off it as it generates? I assume this would be less efficent.
4. Cargo transfer. Yea Yea.
5. Can you transfer cargo/ships through teleporters? That would be nice for ships that can't dock for faction or practical reasons.
6. Why couldn't you just have a ship travel on rails and use cargo transfer on either side to move fuel? No need to make quantum entangled storages and then somehow balance them.
7. And the added bonus of resource points to fight over, and better raidable targets, and more trading, and actual infrastructure for large factions that you can peck at.
[doublepost=1493749131,1493749080][/doublepost]

So if ships create fuel at just a slightly slower rate than they require what is stopping one from 'cutting out the middle man' so to speak? Simplify the system by removing a ship's fuel generation and lowering the fuel consumption by the same amount.

No one reads my posts!

Most of the issues with this system so far have been because it's too much of a hassle to ever move big ships.

I think what you mean is that it would require 1 Fuel for every 100 seconds for each power block(or something). If you produce 500 power per PB(in a given ship) then you consume 1 F per 50k power. Using 50k power in thrusters would give you back .99 Fuel.

Why couldn't you just make it a default lower value, so slow ships aren't super inefficent and little zippy things last forever. From the previous example; PBs need 1 fuel every 9,000 seconds, or 2 and a half hours. This is the same as getting on every system a .90 return on the old tick rate for all systems.

Stap ninjaposting guys!

 

[KiraSerra]

If you want to say an idea that's barely thought out, make sure you check that someone hasn't said the same thing in more detail earlier first.

I don't recall anyone mentioning that fuel usage should be tied to energy consumption.

1. The collection block collects fuel, but what does the production module do? Is it a factory enhanncer for fuel?

It is a single block: "Fuel Collection and Production Module" It would make fuel on a planet or in a nebulae. Based on some kind of fuel richness multiplier of the planet or nebulae. Let's say there is a planet with fuel richness of 3. A single FCPM block would produce 3 fuel in an hour. In friendly territory it could get a bonus like salvaging.

2. Why... not? I guess it could be an encentive to build more stations if the opposite was true.

Home base fuel production rate could be lowered compared to remote bases so there is your incentive to build more than one station.

3. What do you mean? That you can sneak a collection station into hostile territory, make it neutral, then take all the fuel off it as it generates? I assume this would be less efficent.

Exactly, illegal fuel production facilities.

6. Why couldn't you just have a ship travel on rails and use cargo transfer on either side to move fuel? No need to make quantum entangled storages and then somehow balance them.

Yeah, it could be a bad idea. I'm no expert of any sorts.

7. And the added bonus of resource points to fight over, and better raidable targets, and more trading, and actual infrastructure for large factions that you can peck at.

I did not get that at first read. Now that you mentioned it I can feel a hint of those as well.

 

[NullForceOmega]

Let me be blunt. I was sold a blocky sandbox shooter, not a massively complex trade and economy simulator. Fuel is yet another gods be damned maintenance task in a game rapidly becoming 'maintenance: the game'. Mining, claiming, building, repairing, automating, for the love of Hel can we just play a damned game already?

 

[Nickizzy]

Let me be blunt. I was sold a blocky sandbox shooter, not a massively complex trade and economy simulator. Fuel is yet another gods be damned maintenance task in a game rapidly becoming 'maintenance: the game'. Mining, claiming, building, repairing, automating, for the love of Hel can we just play a damned game already?

Well you can be a fighter pilot in my Legions of Death then. 'Hanks for giving me a free defender. I like the game to be balanced though, and there be an exuse to expand the Glorious Mining Swarm and grind those pesky alternate factions to block chunks.

 

[NullForceOmega]

Titans are already balanced, to get one you have to design and build it, then gather the materials to actually purchase/repair it. There are already options for max block count etc. with more being added all the time, balance in a sandbox is purely arbitrary anyway because of creativity. I build massive space stations and warships, gathering the materials to do so is already a full-time activity (usually in the form of laying waste to pirates), adding even more reasons to curtail freedom of creativity in favor of optimized builds is very literally the exact opposite of what I want from StarMade.

 

[Lecic]

Let me be blunt. I was sold a blocky sandbox shooter, not a massively complex trade and economy simulator. Fuel is yet another gods be damned maintenance task in a game rapidly becoming 'maintenance: the game'. Mining, claiming, building, repairing, automating, for the love of Hel can we just play a damned game already?

If you just want the game to be nothing but non-stop fighting, have you considered just setting up a battlemode server?

 

[NullForceOmega]

Considering that this thread is for discussing the merits of adding a fuel system to StarMade, what in the name of hel does your suggestion have to do with anything? If all you want to do is hugbox within this echo chamber then by all means do so, but dissenting opinions are acceptable in an open forum and as a member I have a reasonable expectation of being allowed to voice my position on the matter.

Have the decency to let it stand as what it is, an opinion, in a thread for opinions, that does not jibe with other expressed opinions.

 

[alterintel]

IT seams like your idea of fuel is centered around making territories worth fighting for while simultaneously making gigantic ships less desirable by making a consumable resource necessary for large ships that can only be had in nebulae or gas giants?

And what do you get with this Fuel, it can't just be used to power large ships? There as to be some other use for it. If all of this is just to make large ships function, why wouldn't I just make a fleet of ships just big enough not to need fuel. Hasn't it already been proven that, mas for mass a group of smaller ships can best a larger ship of similar mass.

It seems to me the price of controlling a nebula is too high, and I'd rather just sit in my unimportant sector making smaller ships that are more effective than larger ships anyways.

Don't get me wrong, I think the idea of a consumable resource is a good one. I just think this idea needs a little more work.

 

[Nickizzy]

IT seams like your idea of fuel is centered around making territories worth fighting for while simultaneously making gigantic ships less desirable by making a consumable resource necessary for large ships that can only be had in nebulae or gas giants?

And what do you get with this Fuel, it can't just be used to power large ships? There as to be some other use for it. If all of this is just to make large ships function, why wouldn't I just make a fleet of ships just big enough not to need fuel. Hasn't it already been proven that, mas for mass a group of smaller ships can best a larger ship of similar mass.

It seems to me the price of controlling a nebula is too high, and I'd rather just sit in my unimportant sector making smaller ships that are more effective than larger ships anyways.

Don't get me wrong, I think the idea of a consumable resource is a good one. I just think this idea needs a little more work.

Because it needs to be a general resource not a specialized one. If it was only used for massive ships everyone would use fleets of drones. But if it's just on a per-power-block basis than it becomes a common commodity that with rise and fall in price, and that people will always want.

Keep in mind that while nebula would be rare and valueable, gas giants would be on a 1 in 3 systems basis and fuel would be widely avalible in small quantities. Kinda like you can drive your car around and fill it with gas just fine, but if you want to power a fleet of tanks or have a long term gas powered system you need a personal supply, or buy gas in bulk from a friendly supplier. If you want to sell gas for profit you need the largest collection possible, and if you want to take over the world you want the largest collection possible.

 

[alterintel]

I thought the point of this was that normal ships wouldn't need fuel. Only the big ships would need fuel.

 

[Nickizzy]

I thought the point of this was that normal ships wouldn't need fuel. Only the big ships would need fuel.

All ships need fuel, but big ships need proportionally more and then some. Based on the soft power cap, so each power module requires fuel, and less effecient setups or setups that go over the soft cap need more fuel for less generation.