Fuel consumption bug?

[Fenikso]

Hi. I have encountered a strange behaviour today. My spear class ship is in perfect condition, I have Piloting skill 20, crew with morale of 7 and the ship still eats 0.5 fuel per green sector. Even status / cargo says 0 and Infinity range. Weird

[Fenikso]

Also red sector eats 2.2 instead of reported 1.3.

[Cory Trese]

Ah that's a bug in the fuel display in Cargo. I will fix it in the next release to show the correct fuel consumption, sorry about that.

[Fenikso]

Hmm. OK. Any way how to find why my consumptiont went so high recently? In the meantime I have added some sails to my ship, improved my piloting skill, and made my crew happier, but nothing helped.

I still feel it started with 3.9.9 update.

[Cory Trese]

There were some adjustments to the fuel curve for FAST ships.

You will find it is much harder to reach zero fuel in a FAST ship.

This change was made for balancing reasons.

At the same time FAST ships were decreased slightly in cost and the combat bonus for them was scaled to match.

[Fenikso]

That is a great change. I have always found fast/quick ships overpowered. It will make game a bit more challenging and ship choice not that obvious.

It would be also nice if you can mention balancing changes in the change log as this one caught captain Picard unprepared :-).

[Cory Trese]

OK thanks for the advice. We only get so many characters for the change log so I try to list the most important ones. I will make sure to list the fix to the cargo page in the next release.

[mordechai]

Aug 7, 2011 13:40:19 GMT -5 Cory Trese said:

We only get so many characters for the change log so I try to list the most important ones.

That may be true for the marketplace, but here on the forum, or on the blog, that shouldn't be an issue.

[Fenikso]

Oh, I didn't know that change log size is limited. Thanks for the information.

BTW: Captain Picard doesn't care anymore. Although he was not-so-peaceful explorer, he died recently in fight with aliens. Some of his crew insist that it is because of lack of water-fuel in ship's cargo hold, but his close mates know the real reason. His warrior skill sucked :-D.

[Fenikso]

Aug 7, 2011 11:34:08 GMT -5 Cory Trese said:

You will find it is much harder to reach zero fuel in a FAST ship.

I have loaded my best captain today (Lvl50, Pilot 73, Intimidate 15) in a perfect condition Royal Class ship (+4 sails upgrade) with Fanatical crew, but I still have consumption 0.5 per green sector. Is this by design?

[Cory Trese]

Yes fuel consumption is by design. Is the Royal Class you have FAST/QUICK?

[Fenikso]

Yes, it is.

I mean that you wrote "You will find it is much harder to reach zero fuel in a FAST ship." It seems more like impossible to get under 0.5 per sector. So, is 0.5 per green sector minimum right now for such a ship? It seems so, because both my captains, with Piloting skill 20 and 73 have the same consumption where before they had 0.0.

This change affected my captains a lot. The way I play them, the ships they use, the upgrades I have chosen. So I would like to grasp the whole change, ships affected (only FAST ones?) and understand it in detail, before I go and change either the way I play those captains or their ships and upgrades.

Actually, I find it a big change (probably because the way I build my captains and upgrade my ships is affected the most), so I want to REALLY understand what is going on and if this is kind of final -- not questioning the change at all if it has desired effect. Right now I have to be extra careful playing affected captains on Impossible.

Thanks for your time, and I am sorry to be a bit edgy. It just made me stop playing for day of two and as you know, there are people addicted to ST ;D.

[Cory Trese]

I play every single day as well.

I will go back and review it some more.

My fast ship is a 0.0 fuel right now, FYI

[Cory Trese]

"more like impossible to get under 0.5 per sector."

How many ships and Captain combinations have you tried, before declaring it Impossible?

[Cory Trese]

here is the change that was made:

rationsNeeded += 0.18 * mShipModel.ShipAgile;
rationsNeeded += 0.32 * mShipModel.ShipSpeed;

Agile and Speed are a range from 0 to 2 (0 = slow, 1 = medium, 2 = fast.)

As you can see from this, the only change improves the relative fuel consumption for slow ships.

I spent about 3 days running simulations and doing tests with this change. I found that it was a workable penalty that encouraged high level Captains to consider Slow and Medium ships.

A Fast Ship is not an Efficient one. Previously, the Fast Ship was universally better than the Slow Ship.

I feel that this is a critical piece of balancing code that opens up more playable components in the game and adds overall value to the experience as well as ensuring that new ships are not ignored due to various factors. One factor that was cutting about 60% of the ships out of usage was the unbalance between speed and fuel consumption.

I found that in the simulator the PC is now being rewarded for having the skills and management abilities necessary to pilot a slower, larger ship.