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How would you like fuel to work in Limit Theory?

Bah. Energy drinks are all the fuel I need!
Total votes: 12 (9%)
While I like the concept as fuel as a resource to be gathered, made and sold, I still feel actually using fuel should not be a functional part of the game.
Total votes: 27 (21%)
"Fuel" is only needed in order to start the reactor that ships use for energy/propulsion. This gives fuel value for building ships without making it particularly functional ingame.
Total votes: 13 (10%)
Only larger ships should need to use fuel, as smaller ships should have far more efficient engines. Running out of fuel in distant space is a Game Over/Deadlock.
(No votes)
Only larger ships should need to use fuel, as smaller ships should have far more efficient engines. Running out of fuel in distant space means sending a distress message for help.
Total votes: 2 (2%)
Only smaller ships should need to use fuel, as larger ships should have far more efficient engines. Running out of fuel in distant space is a Game Over/Deadlock.
(No votes)
Only smaller ships should need to use fuel, as larger ships should have far more efficient engines. Running out of fuel in distant space means sending a distress message for help.
(No votes)
All ships use fuel. Running out is a Game Over/Deadlock.
Total votes: 3 (2%)
All ships use fuel. Running out means sending a distress message for help.
Total votes: 9 (7%)
Fuel requirements should be different depending on the type of engine/drive the ship uses. Merely as an example, one slow type of engine may not use fuel at all while a fast engine might. Running out of fuel in distant space is a Game Over/Deadlock.
Total votes: 1 (1%)
Fuel requirements should be different depending on the type of engine/drive the ship uses. Merely as an example, one slow type of engine may not use fuel at all while a fast engine might. Running out of fuel in distant space requires sending a distress signal for help.
Total votes: 31 (24%)
Fuel is a part of the game. When it runs out, ships can use some form of an emergency power source instead, which may make their ship slower and/or more vulnerable but allow play to continue.
Total votes: 17 (13%)
Full speed requires fuel but ships can limp along at half speed if they run out.
Total votes: 1 (1%)
Basic engines use fuel, but as they get more advanced fuel requirements drop until they perhaps eventually disappear if researched enough in the right way. Running out is a Game Over/deadlock.
Total votes: 3 (2%)
Basic engines use fuel, but as they get more advanced fuel requirements drop until they perhaps eventually disappear if researched enough in the right way. Running out means sending a distress call for help.
Total votes: 5 (4%)
Fuel is needed for scanning/weapons/mining. You can travel without it but can't really do anything.
Total votes: 1 (1%)
Other (Please specify!)
Total votes: 6 (5%)
Total votes: 131
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Re: Fuel Part 2

#16
We dont have much space travel because of our propulsion tech.
We dont have much space travel because nobody really invested in making space travel affordable.

If NASA would have continued funding after the apollo and space shuttle programs we could have commercial orbital stations, captured icy comets as fuel sources and metallic asteroids in orbit as metal sources with all industry associated with that.
Space would be colonised at least to the moon
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Re: Fuel Part 2

#19
Cornflakes_91 wrote:
Katawa wrote:That's pretty optimistic, car makers still fund cars, where's my flying car?
they dont fund flying cars.



all the space tech was possible with 70's tech and is as possible now...

soo... our current space tech is = to the 70s.. gotcha, thats what i'm talking about.
"C makes it easy to shoot yourself in the foot; C++ makes it harder, but when you do, it blows away your whole leg."
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"A mathematician is a device for turning coffee into theorems."
- Paul Erdos (1913-1996)
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Re: Fuel Part 2

#20
Fuel is a strategic resource, and will add value to the game as a military target. I would expect that barren desert worlds must have a use somehow. Fuel can matter in what powers your engines, be it nuclear, thorium, deuterium, hydrogen, whatever. And then fuel can be consumed by the population. But, we have Navy ships today that can float around for 20yrs+ without needing fuel. Topping off the tanks before every mission is too much realism. I would expect that to colonize the outer rims of the galaxy like we are, one should have mastered the energy requirements it takes to get there already. Similar arguments can be made for oxygen, water, food. These things are consumed. But this isn't a Mission to Mars simulator either. we're supposed to be flying about, conquering the galaxy.
Last edited by Compugasm on Sun Jun 15, 2014 12:10 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Fuel Part 2

#21
Compugasm wrote:However, if it works like our cars work, they're not efficient enough and filling your car up at the gas station is not NOT fun.
Different people have different ideas of what is and is not fun.

I would like people stop using 'Fun' as a magic card. :(
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"Playing" is not simply a pastime, it is the primordial basis of imagination and creation. - Hideo Kojima
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Re: Fuel Part 2

#22
Etsu wrote:Different people have different ideas of what is and is not fun.
I guess that's why games like The Sims exist. You can do exiting things like, buy an alarm clock, take a shower, get the mail, and decide what outfit to put on that day. But, those painfully mundane details are what the game is about. If you have to make high level, empire wide decisions on what tech path to follow, you shouldn't have to stand at the gas pump too like you would in The Sims. Without knowing, I'm just going to assume that part of the LT economy is going to depend on you having a fleet of ships. Does it really make sense to program the AI pilots to fuel their ships too? Do I really have to rescue AI pilots who forgot to fill a ship with fuel/food/water or whatever? What if I have 1000 ships flying around? If refueling happens to often, it's tedium. If it takes 20yrs for a ship to need refueling, then it's not important enough for me to worry about it. I assume that someone other than me knows how to operate a gas pump, or invented a robot to do it. Possibly, maybe the refueling process is dangerous, takes a team of people, or requires technical expertise that I wouldn't have. Not unlike a modern aircraft. It's not something you can just hop out an do yourself. I think those are acceptable explanations of why we don't have to fuel something.
Last edited by Compugasm on Sun Jun 15, 2014 1:05 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Fuel Part 2

#23
Etsu wrote:
Compugasm wrote:However, if it works like our cars work, they're not efficient enough and filling your car up at the gas station is not NOT fun.
Different people have different ideas of what is and is not fun.

I would like people stop using 'Fun' as a magic card. :(
Looking for quote context only to do an investigation to find it has been edited out of existence is...somewhat stimulating, as a puzzle to solve. is it fun though? I wasn't happy or smiling about it, but it was engrossing for the 60 seconds it lasted.

I think that actually touches on a key issue here, opportunities should be ignorable but should exist regardless. Fuel, like every other component SHOULD exist in some form with real consequences, to allow anyone who wishes to go down that road and turn LT into a logistics simulator where every unit of fuel can be calculated and allocated, engine efficiency charts, etc. should be able to be drawn up, and allow you to tweak and increase fuel savings of a fleet by 6.02% yet coming at a cost of 4.64% slower speeds by outfitting the ships with new engines, with a net savings of 2,096,431 credits per Time-unit. If this is the way you want to play than you should damn well be able to do so (Limited only by the coding for what information is tracked and judged against other information). However you should at the same time be able to entirely ignore this aspect of the game and just get a tiny message saying "Do you want to increase efficiency by 6.02% by reducing speed by 4.64%, doing so will cost 30,216,140 credits, and will result in 2,096,431 credits saved per Time-Unit. Yes/No/Diversify(partial)" or even less if you are yet a level removed from that, and just give an order for "save money in the long term, cap short term costs at 40 million credits, I don't care how you do it."

If the information is all there but ignorable, you can simply have a small credit reduction for resupplying each ship, but you can hone in and find out exactly how the money is being spent, on what, and how to improve it and walk away with something better. To me this feels very much in line with the rest of LT, being that you pay only as much attention to something as you want, while the rest just does its thing with or without your help.
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Challenging your assumptions is good for your health, good for your business, and good for your future. Stay skeptical but never undervalue the importance of a new and unfamiliar perspective.
Imagination Fertilizer
Beauty may not save the world, but it's the only thing that can
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Re: Fuel Part 2

#24
Hyperion wrote:... allow you to tweak and increase fuel savings of a fleet by 6.02% yet coming at a cost of 4.64% slower speeds by outfitting the ships with new engines.
That sounds like something in the tech tree, and I agree with that. I think what we're talking about (at least I am), is having to land at a fuel port, and click a fuel button on the interface somewhere. It could be argued, that the super computers of the future would interface with my ships computer, run a diagnostic, and it would detect I'm low on fuel. So, it fueled the ship for me at space dock. Like I said above, the process could be dangerous, or physically impossible to do by a human anyway. If the fuel was created "automatically" by a factory, then it's not much of a stretch to assume a computer system couldn't respond automatically to low fuel levels, and robot built to do this task. Your job as a player, should be to supply the fuel to stations. Not to every piece of equipment that runs off some form of energy.
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Re: Fuel Part 2

#25
Compugasm wrote:Does it really make sense to program the AI pilots to fuel their ships too?
Yes.
Compugasm wrote:Do I really have to rescue AI pilots who forgot to fill a ship with fuel/food/water or whatever?What if I have 1000 ships flying around?
If the AI knows how to refuel their ships, I'm sure they know how to rescue each other. You don't need to do it, unless you decide to get your hands dirty. Maybe that's what you do: you are from the rescue service. Some players are going to chose to build an empire. Others will prefer the dirty work of been a minner, an explorer, a bounty-hunter or whatever they want.
Compugasm wrote:Possibly, maybe the refueling process is dangerous, takes a team of people, or requires technical expertise that I wouldn't have. Not unlike a modern aircraft. It's not something you can just hop out an do yourself. I think those are acceptable explanations of why we don't have to fuel something.
That's not an explenation. It's an excuse.

Excuses are acceptable too, in some degree, because Josh surely will have to make concessions.
Hyperion wrote:If the information is all there but ignorable, you can simply have a small credit reduction for resupplying each ship, but you can hone in and find out exactly how the money is being spent, on what, and how to improve it and walk away with something better. To me this feels very much in line with the rest of LT, being that you pay only as much attention to something as you want, while the rest just does its thing with or without your help.
That's exactly the point. If you manage a fleet or whatever, including a big ship with complex expenses, there is no need to worry about every detail, because in real life you would not need to do it.

I like the rest of your post, by the way. There are some importants notes there.
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"Playing" is not simply a pastime, it is the primordial basis of imagination and creation. - Hideo Kojima
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Re: Fuel Part 2

#26
Compugasm wrote:
Hyperion wrote:... allow you to tweak and increase fuel savings of a fleet by 6.02% yet coming at a cost of 4.64% slower speeds by outfitting the ships with new engines.
That sounds like something in the tech tree, and I agree with that. I think what we're talking about (at least I am), is having to land at a fuel port, and click a fuel button on the interface somewhere. It could be argued, that the super computers of the future would interface with my ships computer, run a diagnostic, and it would detect I'm low on fuel. So, it fueled the ship for me at space dock. Like I said above, the process could be dangerous, or physically impossible to do by a human anyway. If the fuel was created "automatically" by a factory, then it's not much of a stretch to assume a computer system couldn't respond automatically to low fuel levels, and robot built to do this task. Your job as a player, should be to supply the fuel to stations. Not to every piece of equipment that runs off some form of energy.
Agreed, there is no reason to think that computers in the time of spaceships can't do everything necessary automatically, but I don't really think how we are going to say fueling of a ship is done really matters, it could just be beamed in just for S&G. The only difference what you said makes to my statement is that it would be different terminology. It could be crew, robots, sentient fuel sacrificing itself for the glory of some higher calling, whatever, doesn't matter what you call it, it is the fact that you can go in and tweak with it if you want, and ignore it if you don't care and just want to auto-pay for all your resupplying anywhere you go.

A game should look to offer as much fun and engrossing activity as possible. This activity should have a meaningful positive impact if carried out, and avoidable without causing a negative impact if ignored. Logistics which can be delegated to a chunk of CPU running a "good enough" piece of code does just that. Fuel adds significant amounts of strategic gameplay, and while I don't think messing that up should result in a game over, it should come with harsh and natural consequences, like having to wait for some kind stranger, or sell yourself into labor to pay for a rescue, etc. Some people find puzzles like that more fun than any dogfight ever could be, its why some people become accountants and scientists and engineers. Not everyone gets their kicks from directing fleets or making numbers grow for the sake of growing, adding a little logistics zen could be quite rewarding.
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Challenging your assumptions is good for your health, good for your business, and good for your future. Stay skeptical but never undervalue the importance of a new and unfamiliar perspective.
Imagination Fertilizer
Beauty may not save the world, but it's the only thing that can
Post

Re: Fuel Part 2

#27
I like fuel concept in game called FTL, fuel is used to make sector jumps, one fuel cell - one time use. Its simple enough to avoid unnecessary micromanagement. And we all know that Josh loves simplicity. So my take on this: All Sub light engines uses only energy produced by ships energy reactor, faster than light drives: warp; wormhole uses fuel cells. Probably dark energy fuel cells :D
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Re: Fuel Part 2

#28
Hyperion wrote:...it is the fact that you can go in and tweak with it if you want, and ignore it if you don't care and just want to auto-pay for all your resupplying anywhere you go.
We both agree that it doesn't matter how the fuel got in the ship, and you offered more explanations of how it could be done without personal direction from the player. That tweaking your talking about, sounds like info aquired in the tech tree, and deciding if researching the next level is cost effective or not. Which, doesn't sound at all like putting more gas in your engine before a mission to me. We're not talking about the same thing as far as I can tell.
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Re: Fuel Part 2

#29
Compugasm wrote:I assume that someone other than me knows how to operate a gas pump, or invented a robot to do it. Possibly, maybe the refueling process is dangerous, takes a team of people, or requires technical expertise that I wouldn't have. Not unlike a modern aircraft. It's not something you can just hop out an do yourself. I think those are acceptable explanations of why we don't have to fuel something.
it would boil down to pressing a button that says "refuel my ship".
this button would most likely have a price tag attached to it, as it should matter in the economy.

so i wouldnt want that money gets spent at every and any station i dock at just because the auto-refueler buys gasoline.


Compugasm wrote:But, we have Navy ships today that can float around for 20yrs+ without needing fuel.
those navy ships dont need to carry along their reaction mass, as they are floating on it.

even NERVA type engines would need to carry along some mass (usually it was planned to be hydrogen) to expell out of the back

even tough the fuel was the uranium in the reactor, which would last those 20 years you say


Jacobi1981 wrote: soo... our current space tech is = to the 70s.. gotcha, thats what i'm talking about.
thats not what im saying.

i say all the nice things that could come with commercial space travel would have been possible in the 80's if the funding and interest havent dried out
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Re: Fuel Part 2

#30
Cornflakes_91 wrote:it would boil down to pressing a button that says "refuel my ship".
This is the part I'm saying we can do without. It's unneccessary to click that button. The cost of refueling isn't a concern. Like, if you drive from home to work, maybe you use $1 of gas. That sum of money isn't the barrier preventing you from refueling. Similarly, it won't matter for your space ship either.

Say I had a 100% electric car. Every night I park my car in a special parking spot that recharged the batteries by transfering energy from the pad, to the car. All that needed to be done on my part, was to park in that spot. This is not any different than the auto-pay mentioned earlier. We don't have to click that refueling button. It should just happen.

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