Upgrading Sails = Worse Consumption

[andersh]

There is a long (locked) thread about Water Fuel consumption. It ends with a comment from Cory that these bugs are fixed so I'm hesitant to raise this but …

I had Mars Class on Demanding level.
Ship stats: Hull 12, Armour 6, Engines 30, Sails 32, Crew 47, Hold 50, Guns 22, Torps 2 with green consumption 0 and red ~0.9.
Upgrades: Ancient Reactors, Escape Shuttle, Advanced Bridge, Sail Command Probe.
Final upgrade I installed was Advanced Sail Systems, giving me total sails of 40. However, after installing and repairing the sails, my water consumption got worse (roughly 0.6 and 1.5)? Since I couldn’t uninstall this “upgrade” I was rather annoyed to say the least.

This happened on version 4.0.9 and we’re on 4.1.1 now, but I didn’t notice anything about water fuel in the release notes. Lots of lovely new ship designs though.

Is there a reason for this behaviour or is it a bug? Thanks, Anders.

[Fenikso]

Welcome to the club . Now there are two of us. Maybe...

The original thread discussed more possible bugs, some of them fixed, which made it very confusing, so Cory locked it. However, I am still seeing one issue as described before:

• After installing sail upgrade and installing additional sails, the reported fuel consumption (in Status / Cargo) and the actual fuel consumption does not match anymore.
• The reported fuel consumption is worse than before installing upgrade.
• The actual fuel consumption measured during flight is better than before (as expected).

The problem is that Cory was unable to reproduce it on his end. I also do not see it with all my captains and ships, so it may be a bit problematic to hunt this down. Also until now I was the only person reporting this issue. I also suspect that not many people use this report - I do not use it for a long time either and do not really miss it. And it is probably more seen and more pain on higher difficulties (I play Impossible).

Please try to "measure" your real fuel consumption, I would like to check if you really see the same problem as me.

[Cory Trese]

Fenikso -- I was never able to produce any results that were outside of the rules and equations as I designed them. I did not consider the bug closed due to inability to reproduce but due to inability to find fault with the results I saw on my test devices, in screenshots and your saved games.

andersh -- There haven't been any changes to the water-fuel system for many releases. The equations used by ST RPG are not directly linear and the curves may produce "zones of non-optimal results."

There are certain combinations of Crew :: Sail, Hull :: Sail and Speed vs. Sail ratios that cause Water-Fuel use to spike.

The value of the Advanced Sail System is not fuel consumption -- it is actually primarily used to increase the Solar Sail Soak Pool and Solar Sail Combat Dice. So, while I understand your post I think putting "upgrades" in quotes is missing the most highly prized aspect of your selected upgrade slot.

[Cory Trese]

I will investigate the fuel equations some more to see if I can find a specific explanation for you.

[Fenikso]

I will try to get the same results again from the point of buying new ship and supply some screenshots if that would be helpful.

[andersh]

Fenikso - unfortunately I traded in the ship for new one. Forgot to mention it was fast and quick. I couldn't bare to not play If it happens again I'll try it out your theory and also make a note of the captain stats as well.

@cory, could you expand on what Solar Sail Soak Pool and Solar Sail Combat Dice are please? Based on the guide here, I was expecting better consumption. Is a consumption rate of 0/0.9 about as good as it gets?

[slayernz]

Woah ... wait a minute ... adding additional solar sails to a ship DOESN'T make the ship more efficient in long-distance travel? I've always been under the belief that having more sails should improve efficiency. Providing more "soak points" for combat was just an added bonus of having additional sail surface area.

[Cory Trese]

Previous to version 4.1.3 ....

if a ship's solar sails were greater than 30 and less than 36 and the ship's design STARTED with an EVEN number of solar sails, and upgrades applied outside of propulsion (probe) increased the solar sails to be greater than 36 and less than or equal to 48 and ENDED as a number that was a multiple of 4 THEN in that specific condition the upgrade did result in a net decrease in efficiency.

v4.1.3 fixes that issue. Whew.

[Cory Trese]

Also this v4.1.3 fixes and issue where if the number of solar sails sstarted as an odd number but was upgrade to an even number by a propulsion upgrade the fuel use calculator in the cargo would be off by between 0.01 and 0.02 depending on conditions of the ship (repairs made, etc.)

[slayernz]

Ah ... And if you had an odd number of crew but not equal to a prime number, and 2 officers, and you were carrying water units that equated to between 52% and 75% of your crew numbers, then you get +0.21% improvement in water consumption. However, if your crew numbers equaled a prime number, then there was a net inefficiency of 2.91e-2, except if years were divisible by 4, as you then have the 'Olympic' variability factor

[absimiliard]

Fizbin!

[blackgauntlet]

Gods... No Star Trek references, please...

[Fenikso]

@cory - Great! I just hope that it fixed it and I am going to test it today. But I have seen up to ~0.75 difference between calculated and actual consumption on red sectors yesterday on 4.1.1 (and this time I have proof ). 0.02 would not be even worth mentioning.

[Fenikso]

After testing with my two ships where I have seen the issue before and buying a new one and upgrading it again it seems that bug is fixed now. I no longer see mismatch between reported and actual consumption which was up to 0.75 in my case.

Great job @cory! From your description it seems that this was really nasty well hidden bug.

andersh, thanks for mentioning it. You are definitely getting some positive karma ;D.

[Cory Trese]

Proof or not it only helps me if I can make sense of it. I have checked all the saved games you sent me and they are working great.