Awwww! I am so sorry you feel that way. I hate to hear that you don't like this part of the UI.
I can look again at the efficiency curves and economies, but it has a huge amount to do with the design of the ship.
I will think about, and take feedback regarding the number of clicks. I've watched so many people play but still hadn't heard that feedback about "fighting the UI" for refueling.
Any ideas you'd expect to help are always appreciated!
Its a complex area to be sure. At a base here's the refueling, it this also hits on comparing the cost/value of fuel burning weapons vs non fuel/burning at turns of battle readiness and clicks per attack. So, apologies up front, this will ramble a bit.
Click 1 select carrier
2 click refuel
3 click target
4 click refuel again
5 click target again
6 click refuel again again
7 click target again again
End result of seven clicks? Ability for a cruiser or mesa fighter to fire three and a half shots or world killer to make three invasions. In other words, more than twice as many clicks as number of actions we get fuel for. And that's not including moving the tanker or needing two or more tankers to support one cruiser that shoots every turn.
Fuel in general, I think is an unusual balance. Some areas are great, but others are really just inefficient or counter-intuitive.
For example, the efficient bridge gives +8 fuel. That's less than one torpedo spread 1 (cost 10), or only 4 moves. At the highest level of "deep space exploration" we get another bridge... Same 4 squares of move. In even a small map, 4 squares is hardly "deep space". The starting explorer has 90 fuel, so its just under a 10% improvement. The best of the best gives 60 fuel, which is 2 torpedo spread 3 shots, and a nearly end game level 7 battle cruiser has 213 fuel so it is 28% capacity, but translated to only two actions, given all of that investment and the huge maintenance cost... Hard to justify. Historical extended fuel tanks for fighters doubled (or more) operational range.
If we assume torpedo spread 2, and say 30 fuel for maneuvers, that's 12 attacks base +3 from the best possible fuel tank upgrade before this cruiser is unable to fight. Except to get the best tank you necessarily unlock spread 3 which burns 24 fuel/shot so only +2 attacks. And dropping to the +30 fuel middle tank, with spread 2 that's only +1;; shot because two shots needs 32 fuel, not 30. And what's the /turn $ cost for those extra attacks (whichever tank is used)? It only costs ~2,600 (see below) to build a new cruiser, so is it worthwhile ever adding that extra tank?
The first refuel tech gives 20 fuel + mods per use, the highest tech one, over ten thousand research points farther down, gives only 30 per click + mods. The " best" reactor gives 6 per turn refueling in a green square so it appears the refuel click power is 5 times better... But compare to action costs:
Torpedo spread 2 = 16 fuel
Spread 3 = 24 fuel
Planet invasion 2 = 18 fuel
Invasion 3 = 24 fuel
Boarding is the only affordable one out of the lot: 3 base, or 6 for boarding 2 way at the end of the tree.
I'd like each refueling click (and it takes two clicks to move any fuel at all) to provide more than 1.2 actions worth of fuel. Ideally something like 4 or 5 actions. But then, ships have such limited access to fuel that its hard to see this as balanced. As for boarding, the reactors available to late game fighters are very limited (six options for 3k reactors, five 4k reactors, but only two 5k and three 6k selections none of which have 2 attack / 4 move to allow torps or boarding, they're all as slow as cruisers or only 1 action so can't mount fuel burning weapons at all).
Then you look at the time and cost for those ships that need fuel and it gets very wasteful of resources.
On cruisers, they can't be repaired and that fact combined with their huge maintenance cost makes them fail the "return on investment" measure. Again, looking at a level 7 battle cruiser (obviously there are many designs, but going with h.reactor 15, mark 80 torp, duranium hybrid plating ii, battle bridge and pirate crew) with evenly spread stats 5 or 6 in most categories, like torpedo attack, durability, repair,etc... That's 264 HP, 213 fuel, 6 repair,6 refuel. If it gets beat to 25% hull and zero fuel then pulled off the front lines, it needs 33 turns to recover to full hull or 27 turns to hit full fuel.
It costs 21 turns to build a new one with 15cp/turn (reasonable production for that stage of the game), and a cost of 2,670$. Waiting for refuel/repair at the $383/turn costs $10,341 until refueled or $12,639 until repaired.
In no economic scenario is that viable. Scrap the ship and build a new one, save the $10,000 (8k for refuel time only) and finish getting back to full by more than 10 turns compared to rebuild/refuel. Which means that the fuel isn't the only pressure to go with barrage-based ships that can fight forever, though it does closely link to it.
With refueling on a 3ap tanker that fills 29/action going from zero to 213 fuel takes 8 actions or three full turns. Except/now we're paying for the tanker too so add another $206 to the /turn cost for $1767 to refuel in 3 turns or $ 2670 to build a new cruiser. Refueling here is viable economically
only if our cruiser never needs repairs. Except, we forgot combat duration... The cruiser can empty its fuel tanks in 12 turns but it takes the tanker 27 to regain enough to keep it full, so you need two tankers per cruiser to fight constantly... Plus a third or fourth if you're far enough from a planet that the tankers burn fuel and/or turns on travel. Now it is no longer cost effective to refuel, you're back to shooting twelve times then scrapping the cruiser and building a new one for optimal effectiveness.
End result, using designs and powers that consume fuel takes more clicks and costs more money for fewer turns of battle-ready status. Refueling helps some, but at the cost of 2 clicks of refueling for every one attack. How many attacks do you make in a war? Tripling (or more if you factor moving three tankers per cruiser) the number of clicks is... Painful.
Its an exponential increase in the complexity of combat going from the barrage-based fighter moved barrage star get... To the fuel user with tankers managing supply lines and adding multiple extra support ships per combatant.
So, fighters with barrage for the win (or disposeable rail gun cruisers). But if you're gonna burn fuel, boarding parties are the way to go.
