My suggestion for a fuel mechanic

[aRottenKomquat]

I wanted to formalize my thoughts on a potential fuel mechanic, and realized my ideas are different enough from Jake_Lancia's thread to put it in my own thread rather than hijacking his. There will be a fair bit of similarity though. I will break these thoughts down into sections specifically addressing how a certain block or system would be changed (or created).

I think these ideas are completely incompatible with Schine's initial proposal for the new power system. How this could play with their new (still-secret) ideas remains to be seen. Oh well.

Fuel Capsule
First off, there needs to be a consumable fuel item. These can just be called a Fuel Capsule. I will describe the manufacture of these later. (What it actually contains doesn't matter, but in this idea it's basically deuterium.)

Power Reactor Changes
Next, I suggest changing the Power Reactor softcap to a server-configurable hardcap and greatly reducing it. For example, the hardcap could be 10k e/s, meaning a ship or station will never generate more than 10k e/s no matter how many Power Reactors it has. Otherwise they remain similar to the current Power Reactors, generating energy for free. The idea here is to allow very basic starter ships, thruststicks, etc. to function without requiring any fuel so new players are not penalized. It also allows a very small amount of free power which could allow a large ship to eventually limp home if it ran out of fuel.

Change Aux Reactor to a fuel-using Fusion Reactor
Power Auxiliaries no longer generate energy for free. They also have their own small inventory which can only hold Fuel Capsules. Next, the Fusion Reactor acts like a Power Capacitor with a limited energy output rate, which cannot be recharged by anything but itself. When its energy storage is 0, it will consume a Fuel Capsule which will instantaneously recharge its energy pool, which can be drawn into other systems just like a standard Power Capacitor. It can also be linked to Storage/Cargo Space to auto-pull Fuel Capsules from a larger inventory.

Gas Collector Blocks
Fuel Capsules are produced by mining gas sources using a new Gas Collector block. These are similar to the Salvagers, but do not produce beams. Instead, when active in an appropriate environment such as a Nebula or a Gas Giant's atmosphere, they will consume Crystal Composite and Alloyed Metal Mesh to produce Fuel Capsules.

Gas Giants as a Fuel Source
Some star systems may have gas giants, their atmospheres can be mined to produce Fuel Capsules. Because a planetary atmosphere is dense, gas mining is quick and efficient. Gas Collector Blocks here produce more Fuel Capsules per input items (Crystal and Mesh) so Gas Giants become a very valuable strategic resource. By default, Gas Giants cannot be depleted, though that would make a very interesting server option if they can only create a limited amount of Fuel Capsules before being drained and unsuitable for more gas mining.

Nebula Systems as a Fuel Source
Some star systems may be inside a Nebula. We kind of have this right now via the background image shown when you're in a system, but to add to this they need to be represented on the map somehow. Anyway, Gas Collector Blocks in a nebula system can produce Fuel Capsules. However, because a Nebula is a very sparse gas cloud, the rate of production is rather low and inefficient. Still, mass-production of Fuel Capsules is viable, and even faster than Gas Giants, if you build a whole bunch of gas mining stations throughout the system. Also, Nebulas can never be depleted, making them a long-term strategic resource if the server allows depletable Gas Giants.

There should be a server option which configures the probability of a system being a nebula. So if this is 0.1, then 10% of the non-void non-wormhole systems in a galaxy count as nebulas. An "easy mode" server could set this to 1.0 so all systems can be mined.

Refueling
Refueling is simple. Since Fuel Capsules can be stored in Storage/Cargo Space, just make the Storage auto-pull Fuel Capsules through a dock. Dock to a station (or fuel supply ship, or whatever) and if it's configured to provide fuel, the ship will refuel. Fuel is just another inventory item so I don't think anything special is needed here.

Mining Fleets
Fleets gain a new mission/order type, which is to perform Gas Mining. Any ships properly outfitted will mine gas from the target sectors. In addition, there is a new fleet order to Supply Fuel, which can be used for fuel transport fleets to send fuel to remote stations/outposts, or also used by gas mining fleets to deposit their output to a fuel station.

Shops
Finally, NPC shops need to carry and stock Fuel Capsules. If you don't want to mine, or you find yourself short, just buy more fuel.

I think that pretty much sums it up. Additional thoughts, suggestions, and criticisms are welcome.

 

[Shaker]

And hopefully this all comes with a button to turn it all off.

Im pretty sure schine has stated they arent looking to have consumbles in the game, yet these fuel threads still keep popping up

 

[KaRe]

Badabing, badaboom!

 

[aRottenKomquat]

yet these fuel threads still keep popping up

We're all bored.

 

[Shaker]

We're all bored.

I know brother, we all are

Waiting for these planets

 

[DeepspaceMechanic]

I wanted to formalize my thoughts on a potential fuel mechanic, and realized my ideas are different enough from Jake_Lancia's thread to put it in my own thread rather than hijacking his. There will be a fair bit of similarity though. I will break these thoughts down into sections specifically addressing how a certain block or system would be changed (or created).

I like the idea of having a depletable fuel system - partially because things are a little too unrealistic without it, but I'm also probably a little biased in this subject (I have three awesome in-progress RP projects, a fuel refinery station, a refueling station and a fuel tanker ship).


I think your proposal is very well thought out, and again, I believe it would help StarMade a lot in terms of realism.


To make things a little more clear, let's consider a few additional things. In the current state of the game the auxiliary power system works like real-life nuclear reactors: they both "store" energy (like how fissile materials store nuclear potential energy) and "generate" energy (like how fission rods produce usable heat when arranged in certain ways).

The two elements of the classic power system might be interpreted realistically as well if we think in electrotechnical terms: Power Reactors might be considered electric generators, while Power Capacitors are like industrial-performance electric batteries.

But realism breaks down at the thrust system. I guess there are people who aren't fully aware of the fact that in space you can't simply use power systems that convert the potential energy of some materials into mechanical work to repel a vehicle from its surrounding medium via friction or pressure, while potentially preserving the by-products of said fuel materials on-board. That's terrestrial (or marine, aeronautical) locomotion, where gravity forces you into a constant contact with a medium to repel from, while in space you have to first eject some on-board stuff (called "reaction mass") from which you can then push yourself away.

So, if we really care about realism (and I don't know if we do or not, I personally appreciate the game anyhow) than we should have depletable fuels - not so much fuel that powers on-board processes, but rocket fuel definitely.



I believe your proposal of gathering fuel from gas giants and nebulas, and then the refueling system would work very well for a rocket fuel systems as well as an on-board power production fuel system too.

However, we might need some refinements: if we imagine that our on-board power systems are fusion-based, than the deuterium gas gathering could be a thing too, but if it's fission-based, we could mine nuclear ore from planets and perhaps asteroids too. The pros of fission is that its sources already exist in-game and that it lasts longer(?), while the pro of fusion is that it would give purpose/value to gas giants and nebulas (if these ever get implemented).

Rocket fuel on the other hand could be produced from the melted ice of asteroids: you electrolyse water via electricity (produced by turbines fed with steam pressurized by nuclear heat), then separate the two products into liquefied molecular hydrogen tanks and liquefied molecular oxygen tanks, and there you go, realistic propulsion materials from water/ice.


EDIT: Note that it's much harder to initiate and sustain H1-H1 fusion, so gathering deuterium would be a good investment, while the diatomic hydrogen-1 would be utilized only as rocket fuel (oxyhydrogen production with regular water yields only diatomic hydrogen-1, so we couldn't base the whole power system on water/ice).


As with aRottenKomquat 's post, additional thoughts, suggestions, and criticisms are welcome.

 

[KaRe]

I can't seem to find it. Mayhaps they deleted the thread/s, but somewhere I know Schine has stated that Starmade is not meant to be realistic, just a reflection of their wants.

 

[aRottenKomquat]

I don't know about rocket fuel/propellant. That might be a bit too much to manage, though I'm admittedly thinking of KSP where 90% of your vehicle's mass is just disposable propellant which would obviously not be a good fit for Starmade.

 

[Lecic]

Power Reactor Changes
Next, I suggest changing the Power Reactor softcap to a server-configurable hardcap and greatly reducing it. For example, the hardcap could be 10k e/s, meaning a ship or station will never generate more than 10k e/s no matter how many Power Reactors it has. Otherwise they remain similar to the current Power Reactors, generating energy for free. The idea here is to allow very basic starter ships, thruststicks, etc. to function without requiring any fuel so new players are not penalized. It also allows a very small amount of free power which could allow a large ship to eventually limp home if it ran out of fuel.

The problem I see is that this is too high of a power cap. Drones are already effective, so with fuel, why wouldn't everyone just make power cap drones and ignore the need for it ever?

 

[DeepspaceMechanic]

I don't know about rocket fuel/propellant. That might be a bit too much to manage, though I'm admittedly thinking of KSP where 90% of your vehicle's mass is just disposable propellant which would obviously not be a good fit for Starmade.

Just a thought... Thrusters take up a lot of space, yet are unrealistic due to never getting depleted (again, we might believe this in the case of nuclear fuels meant to power on-board processes, but hardly in the case of a space locomotion system - gravity warpdrives are an exception). So the thruster bulks could have a storage-like nature and filled like how you described the feeding of fusion reactors with make-believe deuterium capsules. I always used to think of all those hidden thruster blocks as fuel tanks instead of engines anyways