How the NPC update makes fuel (and money!) viable

[Valiant70]

Over the course of most of Starmade's lifetime up to this point, fuel has seemed great to some folks and stupid to others. At the same time, money had little use. It gained some use with the trade update, but there still wasn't a real economy. The NPC update will create an economy, however.

An NPC economy makes fuel more viable because it offers a lot more options for obtaining it. Anything you can do to make money in the future game translates to a fuel source. Traders and bounty hunters won't really need to mine anymore, and they certainly won't need to grind fuel. They may have to use smaller ships in some cases to turn a real profit, but this just adds to the challenge of the game. On the other hand, it makes freelancers lives easier by encouraging factions to field their Death Stars less often. In the current game, two 5k mass ships can frequently do the same job as a 20k ship, but there's no real motivation to spare an extra pilot. Fuel will introduce ship size diversity.

And of course you can still be lame and turn fuel consumption off in the configs... ya softcore scrubs. With fuel off, it's the same as it always has been - you can fly your epic Titan around to your heart's content.

So what about default configs? It's probably best to have a low rate of fuel consumption in defaults to introduce new players to the mechanic without it being much of a bother. Buy or refine some fuel now and then. OK, big deal, that's cool. Once players get further into the game they can change the default values if they want to change their NPC economy's behavior and either present more challenge or allow themselves to fly giant ships with no drawbacks.

A further note on fuel:
It doesn't need to be a grind to be a challenge. The challenge should not be that you have to burn massive amounts of something that doesn't last long, but rather that your fuel supply lasts a while, but is sometimes a challenge to replenish. This could go a couple of different ways (which could be options too!):

• A substance that appears moderately often and can be easily collected and refined in small, useful quantities by just about anyone who bothers installing the salvage beams you spawn with. Independent players will have to find some now and then if they don't want to buy it, while Titans will require fleets of small support ships to search around for it, or will have to trade for it.
• Something that requires infrastructure to obtain at all, like a gas collecting station in a specific kind of nebula or a node that pulls a limited amount of energy out of a spatial anomaly. Factions will fight over it while trying to capture enough fuel sources to field the Death Star, while independent players will just buy what they need from whoever will sell it. (I like this option better.)

 

[nogg]

I like this idea, as it would help reduce the use of titans. at least it will make more reason to control territory. Perhaps make the fuel found in the planned nebulas? of course make it found in other places too.

 

[Kelpaz]

Adding fuel in any form would create more problems than they solve, and yet would make small ships sacrifice even more space for the fuel. Which in turn makes the minimum size for ship building even bigger while adding more to the learning curve for new players.

Not to mention someone could just jump sectors (either with jumpdrive or warpgates) with a titan to do "bounty hunting" release a mining fleet and do some trading, only spending little fuel to shuffle around within the sector.

Also consider what happens if you run out of fuel in the middle of nowhere, or worse someone else destroys your ship but leaves you alive to spend eternity lost in space. (Many new players would just quit the game at that point)

I would love to see smaller ships being more viable but the need for many critical systems already make them quite large if you want something more than a slow decorative hull.
Infact small ships could use a specific buff that makes them good for their size, they sorta have this already, it's the energy soft cap.

It would still add unnecessary grind in the form of running missions, trading and so on just to keep your ship running, it would get old pretty fast.

 

[Lukwan]

Over time I have come around on fuel as it's potential usefulness. I don't have some grand system figured out but rather guidelines for consideration. These are just opinions & ideas. Use as you see fit.

Things to avoid when designing a fuel system:
-Fuel should never require grinding to obtain.
-Fuel should not take up space or count as mass. (too messy & unpopular).
-Fuel should not be able to be stockpiled infinitely. (Fuel is volatile.)
-Fuel can never be a strict necessity. It should impinge on a player/faction only as they get medium-sized or larger.
-New players should not need to worry about fuel in smaller ships.

The paradigm matters:
-Fuel should not exist 'just because'. If it is introduced it needs to fulfill a purpose and we should be clear what that is before beginning.
-Fuel could be used to balance game-play and ship sizes or curb general-gigantism (of ship and fleets). Fuel will fill a resource niche along with credits, mats & FPs. Some trading between these things would be useful it that works within the economy.
-Generating fuel should be harder for larger ships than smaller ships on a sliding scale.
-Fuel will make racing a lot more interesting.

Sample fuel system:
-Basic travel at default speeds should remain the norm without any extra fuel.
-Using 'fuel-boost' gives some kind of buff to top-speed, acceleration, maneuvering and/or jump charge-time. (Toolbar activation?)
-Bonuses should be 'nice-to-have' not game-breaking. (In CoH2 the Intel-bulletins offer only 2-5% boosts and you can only have three of 'em)
-No grind: [Fuel as a concept, not actual fuel-blocks.] Fuel could be generated slowly (to a max-limit) by each faction-block (an existing block already limited to one-per-ship). Each ship has a fuel capacity based on it's mass. When fuel runs out ship still functions at default (normal). Alternatively, instead of fuel blocks you could have fuel-capacity blocks. These would expand the fuel-storage on a ship and are perfect for added volatility (risk/reward).
-Stations can generate extra fuel using some kind of station-refinery and refuel ships automatically when they dock. (Time needed to refuel)

I am not married to any of these suggestions. Feel free to use this when brainstorming your own clever fuel-system.

 

[Valiant70]

Adding fuel in any form would create more problems than they solve, and yet would make small ships sacrifice even more space for the fuel. Which in turn makes the minimum size for ship building even bigger while adding more to the learning curve for new players.

This is only true if it is implemented horribly.

Not to mention someone could just jump sectors (either with jumpdrive or warpgates) with a titan to do "bounty hunting" release a mining fleet and do some trading, only spending little fuel to shuffle around within the sector.

That's an improvement over what we have now. Besides, many fuel suggestions are centered more around FTL travel than space-normal travel.

Also consider what happens if you run out of fuel in the middle of nowhere, or worse someone else destroys your ship but leaves you alive to spend eternity lost in space. (Many new players would just quit the game at that point)

Press esc, then respawn.

I would love to see smaller ships being more viable but the need for many critical systems already make them quite large if you want something more than a slow decorative hull.
Infact small ships could use a specific buff that makes them good for their size, they sorta have this already, it's the energy soft cap.

They actually have two buffs now. One is the energy soft cap, and the other is the fact that larger ships take an HP penalty so less of the ship must be destroyed to overheat the core.

It would still add unnecessary grind in the form of running missions, trading and so on just to keep your ship running, it would get old pretty fast.

You're clearly one of the people who would simply turn off fuel consumption in the configs because it wouldn't be fun for you. Many others would prefer the dynamics that an essential consumable resource would introduce into the economy and large scale strategy. Still others like the challenge of meeting maintenance requirements in return for fielding a more powerful ship.

 

[Nerva]

For the specific fuel type I recommend ice and water. It's relatively easy to obtain in the current game, serves no purpose, and is a realistic source of propulsion, life support, and electricity if broken into hydrogen and oxygen. It also would make ships seem very futuristic to run on nothing but pure water.

 

[Jojomo]

I like this idea, as it would help reduce the use of titans. at least it will make more reason to control territory. Perhaps make the fuel found in the planned nebulas? of course make it found in other places too.

Harvest it from certain types of stars?

 

[nogg]

Harvest it from certain types of stars?

yes, fuel could also be found around black holes and in rare asteroids, some planets too I'd think.

 

[aRottenKomquat]

I still think we should have an additional reactor type. Take existing Power Reactors and reduce the soft-cap so they are only viable on smaller ships, but still produce free energy. Then create a new type of reactor (Fusion Reactor, or Antimatter Reactor...maybe both in a tiered approach with pros/cons? Fusion is high-power and safe, antimatter is extremely high-power but expensive and explodey) which has a much larger soft-cap but requires fuel to use. And also make Jump Drives use fuel. For simple early-game tasks fuel won't be needed, but try to field any larger or long-distance ships and then the mechanic comes into play.

I don't recall if gas giants are planned or not, but hydrogen gas giants would be a great and relatively common source of the hydrogen isotopes needed to fuel a fusion reactor. Antimatter would need a rare and exotic source, maybe some kind of passive mining system in wormhole systems?

 

[Nocturna]

It would be nice. Fuel and food - are two things missing here...

 

[herr_phil]

I think there an interesting way to approach this too (I've always been a proponent of fuel/munitions), instead of having a separate block for fuel meaning you now have to add fuel tanks (I'm so cool with that idea too, but I would make it an optional block in addition to below), you could simply treat each reactor core as having a default fuel amount and it only burns it when it is being used. This ties in well with using H2 as a fuel source as you can use it for thrust or for power and since thrusters use power already, it seems easy to cut out the middle man and just power the reactor. The reactor blocks would hold say 100 kg of fuel each by default, a dedicated fuel tank would hold the same but be drastically cheaper and lighter than a standard reactor block.

Ideally you'd have it setup so fuel consumption is relative to the amount of power generated on a simple upward curve. So 100 reactor ship consumes say 10 T/hour, a 1000 reactor ship would burn 1000 T/Hour. So now you get a new kind of diversity ala when the battle-cruisers and light cruisers came out in the 20th century, do you want endurance or armor?

 

[Sachys]

I like so many of these thoughts.

 

[Ultragamer2000]

I still think we should have an additional reactor type. Take existing Power Reactors and reduce the soft-cap so they are only viable on smaller ships, but still produce free energy. Then create a new type of reactor (Fusion Reactor, or Antimatter Reactor...maybe both in a tiered approach with pros/cons? Fusion is high-power and safe, antimatter is extremely high-power but expensive and explodey) which has a much larger soft-cap but requires fuel to use. And also make Jump Drives use fuel. For simple early-game tasks fuel won't be needed, but try to field any larger or long-distance ships and then the mechanic comes into play.

I don't recall if gas giants are planned or not, but hydrogen gas giants would be a great and relatively common source of the hydrogen isotopes needed to fuel a fusion reactor. Antimatter would need a rare and exotic source, maybe some kind of passive mining system in wormhole systems?

maybe instead of blocks made them modular? antimatter reactor blocks would be placed everywhere, oh god one piece of damage...
also modular reactor would be easier to fuel

 

[Mr.Steam]

Anything to help diversify and expand the economy sounds great!

I would like the option of being able to generate free energy through solar panels in addition to fuel based energy sources.

 

[Paullus]

I still think we should have an additional reactor type. Take existing Power Reactors and reduce the soft-cap so they are only viable on smaller ships, but still produce free energy. Then create a new type of reactor (Fusion Reactor, or Antimatter Reactor...maybe both in a tiered approach with pros/cons? Fusion is high-power and safe, antimatter is extremely high-power but expensive and explodey) which has a much larger soft-cap but requires fuel to use. And also make Jump Drives use fuel. For simple early-game tasks fuel won't be needed, but try to field any larger or long-distance ships and then the mechanic comes into play.

I don't recall if gas giants are planned or not, but hydrogen gas giants would be a great and relatively common source of the hydrogen isotopes needed to fuel a fusion reactor. Antimatter would need a rare and exotic source, maybe some kind of passive mining system in wormhole systems?

I had a well received suggestion for this. maybe we can integrate it with this one and get them recognized?
Nuclear Power structures