Limit Theory Forums

Of course, an idea just popped into my head. Treat fuel the same way that other games treat hunger?

For example, in Minecraft, if you hunger depletes completely, your health starts dropping until you only have half a heart left. Maybe have it so that if are out of fuel, you take damage down to a certain percent. I know it's gamey, but it might work. Afterall, fuel is a ship's 'food'.

DWMagus wrote:First off, let me start by saying "Grats on trying to solve the puzzle"

MyNameWuzTaken wrote:"Hello captain. Our ship currently has enough fuel to travel X amount of distance. Fuel prices of (your required type of fuel) at this location are X amount (above/below) what we pay on average. Would you like to purchase fuel? I do not consider it to be critical at this point in time."

The logistics officer doesn't consider it to be critical so we click the nice little button that says "no". No fuel is purchased.

Now, the re-occuring issue has been 'how do we handle it for FLEETS. Something like this is great for single ships. But if I have a fleet of 1000 ships, all in different statuses of fuel, there are usually two camps;

1) You have a single button that says "Refuel all ships". If it's a single button, why even bother with the player having to click it? Might as well make it automatic.

2) If you have to click 'yes' or 'no' for each ship, it gets old fast and becomes tedious at best when you need to choose a selection for each ship.

It's the logistical reasons when it comes to fleets that cause headaches since handling them in the same way as single ships doesn't really make sense.

It doesn't really make sense to use fuel when you're exploring, as then you're essentially putting limits on the 'explore' track and sense most people wouldn't be gaining income when just exploring, you're basically telling explorers that they can't explore.

It doesn't make much sense to use fuel when you have a fleet, because by the time you have a fleet, the cost of fuel becomes minor if even a problem at all due to how much (probably) money you have.

Trading is about the only one that seems plausible to add fuel costs to since the whole basis of trading is 'ship from place A to place B' and then the challenge is whether or not the trading run is worth it.

But by now, I'm mostly just rehashing what has already been stated many times, so I digress.

The running assumption though is that there is a maximum limit to fuel. Don't think of it in that way. Fuel takes cargo space just like anything. Its not like pulling up at a gas station and filling your tank. Its like filling your tank and deciding how many canisters of gas to store in the trunk, because the next gas station is a hell of a long way away.

And for fleet mechanics, there will be trade-offs with speed and the mass of your ships. Choosing to play it safe and bring extra fuel means your ships will be slower, but woe is you if you have ships run out of fuel during a fleet battle. Also, if your fleet of 1000 ships remains stationary in a system when you aren't out conquering and defending, I see no reason why they have to consume fuel. Just tie the fuel expenditure to distance covered.

This way the decision is about the amount of fuel you want your ships to carry into battle or campaign. Or maybe you want to bring supply ships that are dedicated to carry extra consumables. Once again though, you now have to protect these ships.

Fuel is a mechanic that can create meaningful gameplay decisions. It causes fleet combat to stretch beyond just killing more ships than the opponent.

For instance, what if I am heavily outnumbered, but the opponent has chosen to store his extra fuel in a few ships that remain on the edges of combat. I maneuver myself into position to destroy these supply ships, and withdraw from the engagement, picking up extra fuel and then burning all of my fuel supply line in the system as I leave. Then I wait for my opponents fuel to run out, ship by ship, as his fleet retreats to the closest location that has fuel. I pick off the stragglers with overwhelming firepower. Once he manages to refuel and re-evaluate, he decides that he still wants to fight. Luckily, I have evened the odds enough to win the engagement.

Consumable goods add complexity to fleet battles. In Space, over vast distances, supply lines will be very important until technological advances reduce that necessity.

Hasn't the whole point of the UI and delegation to be "If you want to do it yourself, you can, and you will probably be better than the AI; if you don't want to do it, hand it off to the AI, who will do a decent but probably not ideal job"

I like the logistics officer, though I don't think it needs to be a fully functional Executive. Commands are looking to already be hierarchical and scalable, in that it should be as easy to command a hundred ships as it is to command a handful, and not much different than commanding your own ship. Would you not just have a logistics program always in play by default that can account for multiple ships with different requirements rather than an officer which can only account for the current ship? That way if you are a hardenberg rogue with a single ship or a talvieno fleet commander with a single fleet or a flatfingers emperor with dozens of fleets you could just tell it your needs for whatever scale you choose to work with, and the AI will generally handle it for you, unless of course you choose to step in and micromanage.

Ideally I would think that this sort of thing could be done in the general command window, where as you purchase/assign/order ships you can shuffle them into their slots and they will be supplied according to the resources/orders you have given that division. If you want certain ships of yours to have different supply needs, so they can be mobile battlefield tankers or an elite squadron that gets priority access to resources, then you can just go into that particular fleet node, select the ships, and change their logistics arrangement.

It's not the president's job to make sure a particular division receives its fuel rations, but the president can surely go in and say to the person whose job it is to do so "Make sure these people get these additional supplies, now."


Also, Interesting concept with the fuel/generator potentials. I like it, but think it would be kind of strange to turn titanium into a fuel... perhaps you could just have a class of resources that can be used as fuel scattered among the stars in different localized concentrations, each region would specialize in a particular type of engine that does well with that fuel type but ships which exist or do their thing where multiple fuels are common would have more generalized engines to be able to handle the available types, or maybe even multiple generators, one for each type. (That could give you a particular defensive edge if the enemy uses a different fuel type and you are in one of those boundary zones. They will wave to form longer supply lines, run out of fuel, or make engine conversions, while you can locally source your fuel).

Good points. The executive was used as an example, but it would be better to integrate it into an overriding logistics system that could work for individual ships or fleets. We all know that Josh prefers single scale-able systems. They tend to be more effective.

My point was that fuel and ammunition can be managed in a way that is game-play enhancing, by using the UI. The president doesn't concern himself with these things normally, but the president doesn't have to rely on AI that probably wont be as accurate as humans. I would trust the AI entirely in matters of this importance.

Also, spot on with the generator/fuel thing. Just give a yes/no value to each raw material as to whether it has fuel potential. Then generators can be built that exploit certain levels along the spectrum. It would work kind of like the scanner UI does! each fuel burns at a certain 'frequency' just like all objects on the scanner have a particular frequency they can be identified by. Then, generators are built with a particular frequency in mind for exploitation. The amount of overlap between the generators frequency and the fuels frequency determine the efficiency of use. Any one generator may be able to burn multiple fuels, but there will be a 'best' option.

Perhaps something that can be linked to this?

Idunno wrote:Perhaps something that can be linked to this?

Oi, thats a good idea.

Just have energy density with an exponential falloff (the particular rate related to the seed) and random energy opperating frequencies according to the seed.
Put right all right in there along with other material stats.

You might get a really common material in one area be really effective as a fuel and in that area fuel is really cheap, while in other areas that element is almost unknown and while any ships looking for it will pay a pretty penny for it, local ships wont even use that as a fuel, and so the demand wont be that high.

I am thinking you would see a divide between fuel generalists and fuel specialists. Fuel generalists could travel pretty much anywhere, but never get great economy, while fuel specialists might get great economy but be fairly limited as to where they can go.

In terms of world generation, i would actually think that fuel types would overlap perfectly to the hubs of civilization, and even offer a fairly decent explanation as to why spacefaring civilizations exist in clusters.

This is good guys. I really like the direction this is headed.

Idunno wrote:Perhaps something that can be linked to this?

The pun wasn't intentional, but it was good.

Talvieno wrote: Welcome to the forums! You slipped through the cracks somehow before, so allow me to give a warm LT welcome - and my apologies that I missed you. I hope you're liking it here so far.

Thanks! Yep, mostly been reading the devlogs for the last two months (just discovered LT not long ago, sorry I missed the Kickstarter drive). Now venturing into the polls and who knows where next.

MyNameWuzTaken wrote: Also, spot on with the generator/fuel thing. Just give a yes/no value to each raw material as to whether it has fuel potential. Then generators can be built that exploit certain levels along the spectrum. It would work kind of like the scanner UI does! each fuel burns at a certain 'frequency' just like all objects on the scanner have a particular frequency they can be identified by. Then, generators are built with a particular frequency in mind for exploitation. The amount of overlap between the generators frequency and the fuels frequency determine the efficiency of use. Any one generator may be able to burn multiple fuels, but there will be a 'best' option.

Pretty much what i said, plus that small yes/no boolean

Yeah I skip anything with a graph. Great minds I guess!

MyNameWuzTaken wrote:Yeah I skip anything with a graph.

It would be more logical to ignore the posts without graph

fuel and ammunition can be managed in a way that is game-play enhancing, by using the UI. The president doesn't concern himself with these things normally, but the president doesn't have to rely on AI that probably wont be as accurate as humans. I would trust the AI entirely in matters of this importance.

I was thinking, for a scaleable system, you could have different ranks of supply officers:
corperal, at the lowest level
then sergent at the squad level
then general for the battle group level
and admiral at the highest level

c\_s
c/ .\g\_A
c--s-g/
c\_s/
c/

(attempt at org chart)

N810 wrote:I was thinking, for a scaleable system, you could have different ranks of supply officers:
corperal, at the lowest level
then sergent at the squad level
then general for the battle group level
and admiral at the highest level

c\_s
c/ .\g\_A
c--s-g/
c\_s/
c/

(attempt at org chart)

Or you could just ditch the hard classes and just say "the guy who sits in the 2nd level" (in this case general)

Define them by what they do, and not by some arbitary scale

Yea those are just arbitrary titles, but I was thinking 4 deep would probaly be enough.

smallest group

basic unit

whole fleet

all fleets