Fuel price in proportion to ship?

[Kaks]

Fuel is needed every time we generate wormholes, or need extra speed via fuel injectors.

I was thinking that a bigger ship would need to generate a bigger wormhole to begin with, and they should really need more fuel than smaller ships when in 'turbo'.

If we had different fuel requirements, not much would need to change to the way Oolite works. The fuel level is still measured in terms of distance we can travel, which is the same no matter which ship we use, but the actual quantity of fuel would vary, in proportion to the mass of the ship.

The simplest way to introduce that extra level of 'realism' is to have fuel prices change considerably in between ships.

What do you guys think?

[another_commander]

Sounds like a very interesting idea. My only concern is that it may change the financial dynamics at the early stages of the game (as in spending too much on fuel when not enough money is in the bank yet), so I would suggest that if this goes ahead, the Cobra MkIII fuel pricing remains the same as now and used as reference to calibrate fuel prices for the rest of the Oolite fleet.

We also need to be sure that strict mode fuel pricing remains unchanged.

[JensAyton]

Sounds like a very interesting idea. My only concern is that it may change the financial dynamics at the early stages of the game (as in spending too much on fuel when not enough money is in the bank yet), so I would suggest that if this goes ahead, the Cobra MkIII fuel pricing remains the same as now and used as reference to calibrate fuel prices for the rest of the Oolite fleet.

We also need to be sure that strict mode fuel pricing remains unchanged.

The latter follows from the former, since you can’t buy ships in strict mode.

[Kaks]

Yep!
I was thinking ship mass divided by cobra3 mass as the price multiplier.

A direct mass/fuel price relationship might be too harsh, though, so it might well need some frantic tweaking to get it close to feeling right!

[DaddyHoggy]

Yep!
I was thinking ship mass divided by cobra3 mass as the price multiplier.

A direct mass/fuel price relationship might be too harsh, though, so it might well need some frantic tweaking to get it close to feeling right!

Nice to see the good ideas keep coming round again - I think I may have asked this a long time ago - when I first joined (or shortly afterwards) because it was one of the very few things I liked about Frontier.

Can I ask in addition to this - to tie in with Injectors and Fuel Stations - could "branded" fuel be better (less usage for distance travelled) than generic fuel (i.e. RL equivalent Shell Optimax compared to cheap as chips Supermarket fuel (and as somebody who used to drive a tuned Nissan 200SX it DOES make a difference) so Fuel Station fuel could be better than sunskimming or Main Station bought fuel - it could come with a premium price tag but for those who want injectors for combat to last that little bit longer - it could be worth it...

[Cmdr James]

I thought "better fuels" were generally about "octane numbers" or anti-knock properties rather than calorific value?

I wouldnt want to see different fuels in the core game, but if its possible in an OXP (I dont see how at the moment) then of course that would be fine.

At the moment fuel price is so low that I dont see why anyone would ever worry about paying 20% more for better fuel. I dont think it makes sense to make it 10 times as expensive. There might be a case for military engines, like in frontier, but thats a significant divergence, and might be better in the OOlite extended universe.

[JeffBTX]

I dunno about this one.

Bigger ship = bigger wormhole = more fuel needed. That logic isn't ABSOLUTELY applicable, it just depends.

It depends on the (fictional) process by which these wormholes are opened.

If you are on a camping trip, and need to warm your hands, you start the campfire. You can do that with a match or a lighter, but a boy scout might use a magnifying glass.

If you want to start an avalanche, which will fall on top of the dam, wreck the dam and release the lake, which will flood the whole town... you COULD do that from on top of the mountain by applying a magnifying glass to a pine cone. Pine cone falls off the tree, and you have wrecked a mountain, destroyed a dam and flooded a town with a magnifying glass.

If I throw (well.. drop) a pebble at an ant, I kill the ant. If I throw a pebble at my landlord, I get evicted (but I will still laugh about it... he is a jerk). If I throw a pebble at a policeman, I will probably get charged for a misdemeanor or at worst end up paying a fine with a few days in jail. If I throw a pebble at a visiting Head of State, I get arrested and tossed into a federal prison for a while. If I throw a pebble at the President of the United States, either I go to prison for a LONG while or the U.S. Secret Service and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security or both might shoot me.

If I yell at my neighbor to turn his music down, I will get ignored or he MIGHT turn his music down. If I yell at a passing automobile with the same compaint, but being driven by a psychopathic crack dealer, I get my head blown off.

Would a bigger ship REALLY need a bigger wormhole? Is there a linear relationship between one wormhole or the other, and the FORCE that was applied? Or is a wormhole opening just a "reaction"? A match can light a piece of paper. Or a campfire. Or a pile of dynomite.

[Cmdr James]

I am pretty sure there is no real canon for fuel consumption. In the frontier universe there certainly is a varying need, but that isnt 100% applicable to oolite.

I do think it is a senseible change, it might mean that large ships need to be more full to justify the fuel for a jump, but that sounds sensible -- in the real world you wouldnt normally send a truck with only 25kg of potatoes in the back.

[another_commander]

I dunno about this one.

Bigger ship = bigger wormhole = more fuel needed. That logic isn't ABSOLUTELY applicable, it just depends.

The logic may not be absolutely applicable, but the thing is that we can choose to make it applicable. We are not looking for an explanation from a physics point of view to justify it or not, but for a way to make gameplay more intereting by adding one more factor in the ship selection decision process and in the way the player credits are spent. For example, if a big ship is extremely costly fuelwise, it may be an option to actually consider sunskimming rather than continuously paying up for quirium. Contracts may be considered differently depending on the route to take and the fuel to spend on it. I think it improves the gameplay quite a bit. Also, it does make sense also from an in-game perspective, because a wormhole's lieftime is directly related to ship's mass, so it is very reasonable that more fuel is spent in generating a big wormhole.

What I would not consider as part of the core game (but would probably be OK if it could be scriptable) is the option of high-tech fuels of varying prices. I think this is going just a little bit too far for core.

[DaddyHoggy]

What I would not consider as part of the core game (but would probably be OK if it could be scriptable) is the option of high-tech fuels of varying prices. I think this is going just a little bit too far for core.

I concur - even though it was my idea - I didn't mean for it to be core - just that if you make this change to the way fuel consumption works/costs then if you made these figures variable via OXP then that allows for the use of super fuels (or cheap and nasty fuels...)

[How about a Navy Refueller ship - based on the Fuel Station Rings - during a big battle Navy Asps and the like fly through the Navy Refueller Ship's rings (or equivalent) and refuel - thus allowing more time flying on injectors - a bit like RL fast-jets refuelling mid-air and thus increasing comabt patrol radius and/or duration time of afterburners]

[Kaks]

Wow, quite a lot to think about.

About different grades of fuel: it might just be possible via oxp.... maybe never let the fuel rise above 5 ly if sunskimming... (it should be doable with timers, but not too sure), and if the last refuelling was done at a supadupa special station, have the tanks refilled by 1/3 of the distance, once we enter the tunnel. I wonder if a certain Thargoid might entertain the idea...


Back to the fuel price: Jeff, I hear what you're saying, and - incidentally - similar concerns are the reason why I wrote 'realism' within quotes.

Nevertheless, spending noticeably more in fuel for a bigger car/van/truck seems a given on this side of the pond, and I just thought having a mild version of that in Oolite could add some more depth to the gameplay.

Emphasis on mild!

[JeffBTX]

Kaks;

I didn't know that... you mean to say that if you are in a little "runabout", the price per liter is less than what you would pay for if you were in a large van or truck? They charge more for fuel if you are driving a large vehicle?

The "extra money" / "surcharge" or whatever probably goes into taxes (I'm guessing).

Anyway that's one aspect that doesn't quite mesh with "reality"... it doesn't make sense to me that if a Python or Anaconda pulled into a station, that the fuel would cost the pilot ** more per liter ** (or whatever), than it would if he were flying an Adder.

It seems that to MAKE the idea work, different ships should have different fuel capacities... A Cobra Mk III takes so-much fuel to jump 7 LY. But a Boa might need several times that amount to make the same jump. So the Boas, Anacondas etc. all have larger fuel tanks, and yes it costs more to fill up, but not more per-unit. All simulated of course... then the Cobra might have to pay 20 Cr to "fill up" completely from an empty tank for a 7 LY trip, whereas the Boa might have to pay 100 Cr to do the same thing.

Maybe thats what you meant and I misunderstood. "Syntax".

EDIT: Sorry, yes, I re-read your first post and misinterpreted. Thats what I get for staying up all night re-writing the HUD that I am working on, drinking cup after cup of coffee.

I'm "frazzled".

[DaddyHoggy]

Kaks;

I didn't know that... you mean to say that if you are in a little "runabout", the price per liter is less than what you would pay for if you were in a large van or truck? They charge more for fuel if you are driving a large vehicle?

The "extra money" / "surcharge" or whatever probably goes into taxes (I'm guessing).

Anyway that's one aspect that doesn't quite mesh with "reality"... it doesn't make sense to me that if a Python or Anaconda pulled into a station, that the fuel would cost the pilot ** more per liter ** (or whatever), than it would if he were flying an Adder.

It seems that to MAKE the idea work, different ships should have different fuel capacities... A Cobra Mk III takes so-much fuel to jump 7 LY. But a Boa might need several times that amount to make the same jump. So the Boas, Anacondas etc. all have larger fuel tanks, and yes it costs more to fill up, but not more per-unit. All simulated of course... then the Cobra might have to pay 20 Cr to "fill up" completely from an empty tank for a 7 LY trip, whereas the Boa might have to pay 100 Cr to do the same thing.

Maybe thats what you meant and I misunderstood. "Syntax".

EDIT: Sorry, yes, I re-read your first post and misinterpreted. Thats what I get for staying up all night re-writing the HUD that I am working on, drinking cup after cup of coffee.

I'm "frazzled".

Hi jeff - I think Kaks meant if you drive a 1.0l VW Polo BlueMotion you're looking at 74mpg whereas if you're driving a big 3.0l Jaguar then you're going to get about 25mpg and if you're driving a 38-ton truck then you're looking at cruising at about 7mpg - and thus on a journey of say 700 miles the polo will have used less than 10 gallons of fuel, but the haulage truck will have used 100 gallons - so the fuel cost for the journey would be 10-fold.

Implementing this in Oolite I think would be a good idea.

But how... Do we have each ship mass (laden or unladen?) - since the dimensions of each ship is only the max dimension in any one plane this gives potentially false impression of ship size (and therefore mass if same average density is assumed).

So a Cobra III (our baseline) has dimensions of 130x30x65 = a bounding volume of 253,500 units, the Anaconda has max. dimensions of 75x60x170 = a bounding volume of 765000 - almost exactly 3x that of the Cobra III, but of course this is only a bounding box, and given the shape of the two ships is nowhere near the actual volume the ship has.

Compare this to the humble adder: 45x8x30 = a bounding volume of just 10,800 units about 1/20th that of the Cobra III and given its shape it does actually almost fill its bounding box...

[Lucidor]

ship mass (laden or unladen?)

See if you can get the air speed velocity into the equation too.

[Kaks]

Air? o_O

Anyway:

Hi jeff - I think Kaks meant if you drive a 1.0l VW Polo BlueMotion you're looking at 74mpg whereas if you're driving a big 3.0l Jaguar then you're going to get about 25mpg and if you're driving a 38-ton truck then you're looking at cruising at about 7mpg - and thus on a journey of say 700 miles the polo will have used less than 10 gallons of fuel, but the haulage truck will have used 100 gallons - so the fuel cost for the journey would be 10-fold.

That's what I meant. But it does seem that Jeff kind of figured that out already!

EDIT: Sorry, yes, I re-read your first post and misinterpreted. Thats what I get for staying up all night re-writing the HUD that I am working on, drinking cup after cup of coffee.

And yes, how I meant to implement it - from the beginnig - was:

different ships should have different fuel capacities... A Cobra Mk III takes so-much fuel to jump 7 LY. But a Boa might need several times that amount to make the same jump. So the Boas, Anacondas etc. all have larger fuel tanks, and yes it costs more to fill up, but not more per-unit. All simulated of course... then the Cobra might have to pay 20 Cr to "fill up" completely from an empty tank for a 7 LY trip, whereas the Boa might have to pay 100 Cr to do the same thing.

Anywho, this is getting way too detailed! All I had in mind was price per ly worth of fuel to be affected - roughly - by the overall mass of the ship.

However, same as with cars, I'd imagine fuel efficiency to vary from model to model, so I wasn't going to go for a hugely accurate fuel price system.