Fuel Trucks

[xdesperado]

Ok bought elite version when it first came out...then never played as life got busy.
Couple days ago after talking about the Trese brothers games with some friends decided to finally give 4X a go and I'm loving it.

The ship design feature is great but can be a little confusing at first and that brings me to my Fuel Trucks.

Wanted to design a cheap to build and maintain tanker to refuel my combatants. Based it off the Paladin Carrier and after giving it minimal armor and lightweight guns and torps for some defense or light support when not fuelling other ships yanked out the fighter maintenance bays since it was a tanker not a repair ship and that saved on costs and mass...rushed a couple through production and to the front lines only to find...no button for fuelling other ship's...oops got a couple flimsy oversized under gunned cruisers in my fleet.

Decided I'd try a slightly revised version and this time left the fighter maintenance bays in. Only built one this time as a test mule and was very happy to see that the Camel Carrier MK II actually allowed me to refuel my other ships...keeps those fighters blasting and the troop transports hammering the xeno world's.

So either I missed something else on the initial design or else you have to have Fighter Maintenance bays to do refueling...not real intuitive there.

[fallen]

xdesperado - you need to ensure that the Refuel talent is still selected. Perhaps by removing the Fighter Maintenance Bays, the Refueling Talent was deselected?

I can take a look, but I have built ships that only do fueling before.

[xdesperado]

So I can build a design without the Fighter Maintenance bay?
If I recall right you select to remove that before you select Attack types and specialized abilities like refueling and repair...

[fallen]

xdesperado - yes, you need to remove the Fighter Maintenance Bay, and then make sure that when you pick your specialized abilities, pick Refuel.

It's late, and I could be wrong, but this sounds very right to me I can check in the morning.

[xdesperado]

fallen thanks will try another redesign myself to see if I just fat fingered the first one (deleted the original failed design so can't check it)

Tried another design and yes you HAVE TO HAVE the Fighter Maintenance Bay to get the refueling option.
No Bay your option is only Sensor training, With Bay you can get either Fighter Repair or Refueling but no sensors.

Perhaps that upgrade should have name changed to Maintenance/Refueling Bay or something similar.

[fallen]

Ok, I have created #4X-2644 to look at the balance, a chance, or a rename to the upgrade.

[Cory Trese]

Renamed in latest. It is required for balance and ship design reasons.

No refuel trucks without some infrastructure on the ship, it just doesn't make sense.

[xdesperado]

Sept 17, 2014 16:14:06 GMT -5 Cory Trese said:

Renamed in latest. It is required for balance and ship design reasons.

No refuel trucks without some infrastructure on the ship, it just doesn't make sense.

Understand needing infrastructure to support the fueling operations just before without a name change it was rather unclear that was the problem when trying to design them.

Oh and welcome back.

[Cory Trese]

Sept 17, 2014 16:39:21 GMT -5 xdesperado said:

Sept 17, 2014 16:14:06 GMT -5 Cory Trese said:

Renamed in latest. It is required for balance and ship design reasons.

No refuel trucks without some infrastructure on the ship, it just doesn't make sense.

Understand needing infrastructure to support the fueling operations just before without a name change it was rather unclear that was the problem when trying to design them.

Oh and welcome back.

Thank you sir. It is so good to be out of the truck and back at a keyboard. Much to be done, but happy to be doing it again.

[Guest]

I know water trucks should be large hulled with minimal upgrades besides water upgrades, I was wondering about reactors and fuel efficiency though. Is it better to give it the smallest reactor that will push the design with the AP/MP you might want, or is it more efficient to go overkill on the reactor for higher drive to weight ratio?

[Cory Trese]

My personal approach is to go for the highest Refuel rate reactor I can find. I don't risk trucks in battle much, so they tend not to die -- I just need them to refuel fast and move 3 to keep up with fighters.

[Guest]

Thanks, great games btw! Think I answered my own question by checking some numbers, correct me if I'm wrong. There's no fuel economy per se, ALL ships burn 2 fuel moving to a red square, and any excess thrust to mass is fuel by default so the higher the thrust to mass ratio the better.

[Guest]

Just caught my mistake, it's not thrust to mass, it's level+refuel=base fuel tank size?

[Guest]

Ok, last question, is thrust-to-mass being factored in somewhere that I'm not seeing? Or is x-ship/level + y-reactor/refuel rate the same efficiency whether it's half loaded or fully loaded?