Fuel formula

[chard]

Ok, so, granted, tooling around in a Flagship Cruiser doesn't exactly sip fuel. I probably need to drydock it until I get my piloting skill a lot higher.

Still, something is off. I leave my home base with 0 fuel consumption green, and some small number red, with more than four times the range I needed for my contract. I get halfway there, and something happens.

I've increased my piloting skill some, and have completely repaired, and I'm burning 2 green and 4.8 red. What's happened?! Regardless of damage or crew, this much variation in fuel use is too much!

[Cory Trese]

There is a blog post about this.

tresebrothers.blogspot.com/2010/11/water-fuel.html

Distance to Nearest Friendly Sector ...

Damage to Solar Sails ...

Size of Crew ...

There are many factors. I will not try to tell you that Water-Fuel usage is a simple thing to manage, but getting around it (or learning to live with it) is part of ST RPG.

I am very open to hearing suggestions but after working for 4 months on the equations I can't really do much with "this much variation in fuel use is too much!"

[chard]

The variation is too much when the distance from the nearest friendly sector can increase fuel usage by up to 500%. I'm not sure why fuel use would be dependent upon distance, myself. There are often situations where I'm leap-frogging from planet to planet, and these little independents only have 10 or so tons available to supply me and all the other ships stopping. Perhaps water should be essentially unlimited except for the cost of the method to extract and purify it?

Likewise, it seems a bit counter-intuitive to me, that a few points of solar sail damage on solar sails upgraded a few points would cost much more in fuel usage than fully-repaired sails without the upgrade.

Also, solar sail damage seems to happen an awful lot.

As an aside I may expand upon later, I'm not sure I understand ship naming conventions.

[Cory Trese]

Distance from nearest friendly sector can increase fuel usage by 5%.

Testing shows that it isn't very significant.

This quote, however, confuses the issue.

"Likewise, it seems a bit counter-intuitive to me, that a few points of solar sail damage on solar sails upgraded a few points would cost much more in fuel usage than fully-repaired sails without the upgrade."

First, it is best to have as many points of Solar Sail as possible. The ship will move faster with less fuel.

Second, avoid all damage to Solar Sails as this will cause the hydro-acceleration system to leak Water-Fuel in to the vacuum of space. This is wasteful.

Third, avoid all damage to the Ship's Directed-Fusion Reactors (Engines.) Damaged Engines cause heat exchangers to be required which consume vast amounts of Water-Fuel.

Fourth, keep the Crew happy and in good working order. A full compliment of disciplined fanatics will consume less water, keep the ship in better working order and ignore many of the risks of Artifact transport.

[Cory Trese]

This statement does make a lot of sense to me.

"There are often situations where I'm leap-frogging from planet to planet, and these little independents only have 10 or so tons available to supply me and all the other ships stopping. Perhaps water should be essentially unlimited except for the cost of the method to extract and purify it?"

I will look at making a change the increases the Water-Fuel stocks.

[exavion]

I had a question - If I am looking to best manage fuel and safety of the ship, is it better to

1) Not upgrade crew max size and keep the crew at 100%, be it as it may a smaller crew?

or

2) Upgrade crew and keep it low, never fully staffed, to keep fuel consumption down?

I usually always try to max out the upgrades but crew size seems to do more harm than good... especially when it almost doubles fuel consumption in red sectors (even fully staffed...)

[Cory Trese]

Next release will include additional options in that category.

I must apologize for the ridiculous undocumented "someone will figure it out" style of the game.

If the ship has "Attack Shuttles" and a huge Crew the Captain will get ridiculous bonuses for Board-Board and Prow-Ram.

Water-Fuel usage it is best to have a skeleton Crew and High Solar Sails.

However, a Skeleton Crew is more susceptible to Accidents and Artifact Madness (therefore damaging the Ship and Crew.)

Damage to the Solar Sail drives up Ship Water use regardless of Crew numbers.

But low Crew reduces Signature and need for big Cargo Loads -- which makes Landing, Docking and Flying easier.

However, Low Crew means less efficient operations, which means that the Captain's skills are critical -- or the Ship will fall into every shipping lane, patrol and bounty hunter checkpoint along the way.

[exavion]

Hmm alright, but what if the max crew size is default (no upgrades) and i have say 50/50 men or its 50/100 with upgrades, does not having "100%" make me susceptible? Or is it purely based on the number of men on board?

In either case, it would be nice to be able to downgrade ships, either sell or pay to scrap an upgrade (maybe only allow this on large Civilized worlds). Since now I may be looking for new ships so I do not make the mistake of upgrading the crew size to Battleship architecture..

I apologize if this is not as related to the fuel economy as the OP

[Cory Trese]

The game's internal database and tracking system doesn't support removing an upgrade.

With 50,000 active installations I'm not able to make any type of "breaking" change that would impact saved games or existing Ships.

I'm sure there are ways the persistence layer could be modified to support it but with our development staff it just isn't feasible at this time.

Future games will be sure to include the ability to remove anything that is added. Because of early game play and design choices, upgrades are forever fixed with the Ship once they are installed. They cannot be removed, replaced or changed.

Save up money + buy a new ship + install other upgrade is the Star Traders RPG way -- for better or for worse I'm not sure I can change it.

[exavion]

Thanks I completely understand, I do some development myself and run into issues that are not easily or even feasible to change like this. My other question though still stands (i might not need to downgrade depending on the answer) -what if the max crew size is default (no upgrades) and i have say 50/50 men or its 50/100 with upgrades, does not having "100%" make me _more_ susceptible? Or is it purely based on the number of men on board, without care of maximum capacity?

[Cory Trese]

The game uses a percentage scale to determine efficiency.

So 50/50 is better for efficiency than 50/100.

[spike]

This question had been troubling me too.

I start out with a ship that takes 50 crew and runs at maximum efficiency with that 50 crew. I then install an upgrade, called a Narvidian Gazebo, that allows an extra 50 crew to sit on a spacious sun deck under a crystillium dome, and admire the beauty of the passing nebulas. Nothing has been added to the (previously efficient) ship, apart from extra crew space and extra crew. No extra systems to operate and maintain. Yet all of a sudden I am at lousy efficiency. That's hard to understand.

Generally you would expect efficiency to rise with the number of crew, as a basic economy of scale. Or due to an inverse square rule (ship surface area = leakage losses rises exponentially slower than ship volume = more crew).

Maybe there needs to be a distinction between Maximum crew, Optimum crew, and maybe Minimum crew. And these numbers should be generated from the number of systems on the ship that need to be operated. The game should tolerate surplus crew who are in effect Marines, Exploration Parties, Replacements, or Passengers. Efficiency penalties should only kick in when crew level falls below Optimum level, with harsher penalties below Minimum level.

Apologies if this has all been already dealt with since the Jan posting date.

[Cory Trese]

"That's hard to understand [for an advanced player who thinks about it a lot.]"

I think that the two numbers, one efficiency value is easy to document, easy to support and easy to explain.

Looks like I've sent about 900 e-mails about fuel efficiency and I can't find one where someone responds with this confusion. Maybe there needs to be a distinction.

---

Lets say we had to pick -- adding a third number to ships (following all required change rules, preserving saved games, testing, balancing, ect) OR player bases and planetary conquest.

At this point in the game's testing/balance cycle I would say those two are similar in cost.

I'm also having a hard time getting motivated about this change ... it just doesn't sound that cool.

There are some new upgradings coming out that support Marines.

I also think you might be looking at it only from a fuel use standpoint, and not a ship efficiency standpoint. You are mixing the two words in your post which makes me wonder if your keeping them apart or not.

[spike]

I think you are right about what I am confused about and I hear you re the regression test pain.

Forgetting fuel use, what me and I think exavion are finding counter intuitive is that taking an efficient ship and adding extra crew makes that same ship inefficient. But I guess it turns on what "efficiency " means here.

Your Marines rules will likely fix this, especially if they can beam down for red Jersey exploration missions. :-)

[Cory Trese]

Adding Crew adds additional Crew to the "how much water do they drink and use in the food machines" equation.

The ship "knows" how many Crew it needs, based on Engines, Hull, Solar, Speed, Agility and Guns (maybe other stuff, memory.) So those factors are improved (less accidents)

but the overall size of the ship and the water consumption of the engine systems doesn't change no matter how much crew or marines you add.