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Fuel Part 2

Posted: Fri Jun 13, 2014 9:59 am
by RationalEffort
So a while ago now I ran a poll asking people what they would prefer when it comes to a fuel system in Limit Theory. There were some interesting responses, yet I felt I made the poll a bit limiting. This one takes in some of the ideas that people left in the last thread and makes them proper options, as well as a few more. I've deliberately left out the idea of a slider for fuel when starting a new universe as I want to hear what people actually like, rather than have everyone vote for a compromise. Feel free to comment on it though! I also haven't mentioned the ways fuel could be obtained or created, so I'd like to hear ideas on that.

Re: Fuel Part 2

Posted: Fri Jun 13, 2014 10:17 am
by N810
Depends on the engine:

Chemical thrustes would be cheep and lightweight compared to ther options,
but they go through fuel rather quickly: ideal for fighers

here are other less convential engines, like ion drives, these would use power for fuel,
and they would be quite efficent, but quite slow: ideal for large cargo ships

on the expensive side you might go for a large nucular engine of some sort,
it would have plenty of power and near limetless supply of fuel:
theses would be ideal for large warships.

Re: Fuel Part 2

Posted: Fri Jun 13, 2014 10:25 am
by Cornflakes_91
i doubt that we will still use chemical engines in times of LT.
more likely fusion drives of some sort.

but these in different efficiency classes.

there may be high-burn, short range fighter engines which give lots and lots of thrust and are relatively small but use fuel like nothing.

or slow burn high-efficiency engines for long range ships that go slow but are very energy efficient.

Re: Fuel Part 2

Posted: Fri Jun 13, 2014 1:39 pm
by Ownez
fuel sounds good !

Re: Fuel Part 2

Posted: Fri Jun 13, 2014 2:31 pm
by Gazz
Other. =)

viewtopic.php?p=28904#p28904
Gazz wrote:We've been over this several times by now. Nothing really new here. =)

I get the desire to have supplies. Even support it because it's a useful mechanic to diversify weapon types.
Then splitting it up into 5 different categories and sub-categories only increases complexity, not depth.
It doesn't add a new decision - only forces you to make the same decision over and over again.

Ships can have infinite fuel. Resources are then only used for "special moves" like an afterburner or cloaking system.
No need for "fuel". When you drain your ship's afterburner fuel bar, it slowly refills while "military supplies" are used up from your storage.
If you fly anything bigger than a fighter, you can reload your weapons with "military supplies", too.

That doesn't prevent you from using different types of missiles or all those fancy moves. If you change the missile type in a launcher it just takes a bit to break down the currently loaded ones and "produce" new missiles of the desired type.
The supply situation of a ship can be judged by a single number or bar. KISS.


All that this removes is the chore of doing bookkeeping and tracking 50 different kinds of supplies.
It is assumed that you have a staff to deal with the grisly details while you deal with the big decisions of how many supply ships of what type to add to a task force - not whether they should load the green or the white toilet paper.
If some supply clerk asks the fleet admiral if he should order the green or the white toilet paper, the probable answer is "You're fired".

Re: Fuel Part 2

Posted: Fri Jun 13, 2014 5:04 pm
by Ownez
mmmh very good point gazz, i have played starsector recently and that supply system seems very interesting.
however, in starsector supplies and fuel are separate. I very much like that

Re: Fuel Part 2

Posted: Fri Jun 13, 2014 6:11 pm
by Cornflakes_91
i acknowledge gazz' points, but it strikes me as too simplicistic at the lone wolf player level.

i'd prefer a "tiered" approach on this.
(i already suggested this in another thread, but after 30 minutes of searching i gave up)

ammunition types are still independent objects.
so when you fire a missle out of a starkiller torpedo launcher, you have to have a starkiller torpedo first.

but with research you can advance into a stage akin to gazz' idea.

at invention time you may get specialised prodction modules which can only produce this special kind of ammunition.
they need a great variety of basic materials to build the ammunition up to spec.
its very efficient in terms of resources, as you just use the precise materials and amounts it was designed for.

with some more research one gets more general-purpose blueprints.
these allow to produce the ammunition in general-purpose ammunition fabricators but need still special resources, but more abstract ones.
so instead of only axium hull alloy any kind of alloy that is used as hull can be used.
more resources needed per produced ammunition as you have to adapt the materials you have gotten and produce more waste in doing so

at the highest stage of specialisation ammunition fabricators only need gazz' supply resouce to build ammunition.
albeit this should be relatively inefficient compared to the other variants as you just have a generalised lego set you have to adapt to your needs.



this keeps the advantages of both systems.

high detail for fighter pilots and adventurers.
some middle ground for advanced players
and highly streamlined and abstracted mechanics for fleet-level play

this also makes "elite grade" equipment possible.
newly designed ammuntion which has not been developed to general purpose manufacturing levels, and is relatively short in supply because of that

and older equipment is pretty much omnipresent through the fleet as any carrier ammo-assembler can produce it

shift from
high tech -> common tech -> standard equipment

it creates also a choice,
do i use the new missles now but have vulnerable supply routes for them or do i wait until i can produce them more distributed but risk that they are outdated by that time

Re: Fuel Part 2

Posted: Fri Jun 13, 2014 8:26 pm
by Etsu
I can't see missiles as a resource for particular cases. I like the idea of having supplies as a kind of general stat, but I don't think it fits this specific game, at least not for a specific ship, not for what we have read in the dev logs and saw in the updates videos. Missiles are concrete objects, and you have to buy them or build them first. One thing is if you are managing a fleet, but when it comes to my personal ship, or whatever specific ship I have, been the only one of just one of many, I want to be able to decide for every individual element in it if I want to.

Re: Fuel Part 2

Posted: Fri Jun 13, 2014 10:23 pm
by Hyperion
i am quite enamored with the idea of fuels and other supplies being real and necessary objects to take Gazz's example, Sometimes I want to decide whether the ship has green or white toilet paper, but other times I don't. I sort of thought that the AI delegation already took care of this, that you never had to pay attention to anything you don't want to, provided you have someone else to order around and do it for you. If I am busy working on the strategic level of how to defeat the Huns, I don't want pesky things like toilet paper getting in the way, but I want to know I can go and see it there setting by my toilet, white with the delicate lilacs embroidered in it like I love.

The nature of a fuel/transportation system will always in reality determine the very structure of a society, it's why American cities are different than European cities. I really want to see that sort of effect take place in LT, to see different social patterns emerge from different fuel types, different engine types, etc. To me this is worth even the possibility of getting stuck...though I wouldn't say this should be a game over, merely a significant inconvenience which ruins my day, but again, never worry about things you don't want, the crew can go and always buy plenty of fuel or I can just autopilot in achingly slow mode to the nearest station.

Re: Fuel Part 2

Posted: Fri Jun 13, 2014 10:33 pm
by Jacobi1981
as for the use of a "fuel" i seriously doubt that is a realistic future technology. everything is switching to pure "energy" based. i believe the "generator" should be the sole factor involved with space travel, weapons, shields, etc...

as for the current technology the most "efficient" method i've heard about is the ion drive but its thrust is miniscule. even that system required several pounds of a chemical thats not easily obtained.
how do you propose we would use a "fuel" to travel fast, and efficient?
our most powerful rockets can accelerate things in space very quickly, but they need hundreds or thousands of pounds of liquid hydrogen ... and oxygen.

Re: Fuel Part 2

Posted: Sat Jun 14, 2014 1:32 am
by Cha0zz
Jacobi1981 wrote:as for the use of a "fuel" i seriously doubt that is a realistic future technology. everything is switching to pure "energy" based. i believe the "generator" should be the sole factor involved with space travel, weapons, shields, etc...
And where would the energy come from, the generator would need some kind of fuel, no?

Re: Fuel Part 2

Posted: Sat Jun 14, 2014 4:31 am
by Ownez
indeed.

Re: Fuel Part 2

Posted: Sat Jun 14, 2014 7:38 am
by Cornflakes_91
Jacobi1981 wrote:as for the use of a "fuel" i seriously doubt that is a realistic future technology. everything is switching to pure "energy" based. i believe the "generator" should be the sole factor involved with space travel, weapons, shields, etc...

as for the current technology the most "efficient" method i've heard about is the ion drive but its thrust is miniscule. even that system required several pounds of a chemical thats not easily obtained.
how do you propose we would use a "fuel" to travel fast, and efficient?
our most powerful rockets can accelerate things in space very quickly, but they need hundreds or thousands of pounds of liquid hydrogen ... and oxygen.
How would you move without fuel in a realistic setting?
To generate thrust you need something to push from, and that is usually matter you take with you, the propellant.
Not fuel!

Fuel is the stuff you use to get your energy from, which for example the xenon or argon in an ion drive does not does.
The gases are the propellant, just inert mass.

In chemical rockets fuel and propellant are incidentally the same, as you use the hydrogen as energy source and reaction mass.



There is maybe a way of creating a reactionless drive, which does not need propellant.
The Quantum Vacuum Plasma Thruster, which is currently investigated by NASA.
They even have better thrust per kilowatt ratio than modern ion engines O.O.

But im carefully optimistic regarding these, as it just seems too good...

Re: Fuel Part 2

Posted: Sat Jun 14, 2014 9:24 am
by Hyperion
Well obviously it seems too good to be true, you never get a free lunch, and if we discovered free vacuum energy... we would probably wake cthulu with all the noise we make from it...

Re: Fuel Part 2

Posted: Sat Jun 14, 2014 9:31 am
by Jacobi1981
my point is exactly what has been said so far... current technology is not suitable for space travel...thats why we dont do much space travel yet.. lol
but that does not mean that technology wont improve to a point where we do not need to pack "fuel" .. how do we get electricity, solar, nuclear, and all kinds of fueled methods(engines that run on fuel) ... solar does not require any form of fuel, but energy is still produced, with the right advances in this technology i can see it producing a viable amount of energy for space travel... but we will still need to develop a propulsion technology that requires no fuel. its a tricky situation, our current understanding of space will tell us that we need to "push" against something to gain momentum, its that "something" that we need to understand better.