Fuel Collector Release 0.06

[Cmdr Wyvern]

I might even replace my Caddy Omega with one.

Uh-huh. How do you plan to dock that thing? It's a little large for a smooth dock. Maybe with lots and lots of KY...

[DaddyHoggy]

I might even replace my Caddy Omega with one.

Uh-huh. How do you plan to dock that thing? It's a little large for a smooth dock. Maybe with lots and lots of KY...

Similar to this?

[Capt. Murphy]

DaddyHoggy, you made me spit my coffee all over the keyboard I laughed so hard at that image.......

[Cmdr Wyvern]

Similar to this?

BWAHAHAHA!!

[DaddyHoggy]

Why thank ye Gentlefolk. It is good to know that I can still initiate a smile response on the board.

[Wildeblood]

What's that pretty, glowing ship, and where do I download it?

[Capt. Murphy]

Ann Summer's probably......(that might not mean much to non-UK members....cough.....google it)

[Cody]

Ann Summer's probably.

Surely you mean Ann Soommers!

[Capt. Murphy]

Would that be Ann Soommers retailer of the 'Trembling Trumble' and the 'Pocket Python' - very popular amongst the Zadies Ladies so I hear - 2.5 million units sold last year alone.

That's the 'Luxuries' we are moving around by the ton...

[DaddyHoggy]

What's that pretty, glowing ship, and where do I download it?

I think it's a Condor: http://wiki.alioth.net/index.php/Condor

[Commander McLane]

Revisiting an old OXP and thread (which incidentally hasn't been about the OXP anymore for quite some posts!) as someone who as already made and released some changes with Frame's approval.

A couple of weeks ago we had a short discussion about which OXPs have to be considered "cheat" OXPs, resulting even in the creation of a new category "Cheat OXPs" on the Wiki. This got me thinking, because—to be honest—personally I'm considering a substantial portion of all OXPs released since 2011 or so "cheat" OXPs. It could even be the majority of non-ship-and-non-HUD-OXPs. To be honest again, there was even a time when I was beginning to lose interest in the boards, because of the prevalence of so many OXPs that pulled all sorts of game-changing features (usually in favour of the player, hence "cheats") out of thin air, with no thought spent on balance, and without any reluctance. As a result, I added very few new OXPs to my personal collection during the last two or three years.

I think the Fuel Collector is the only "cheat" OXP that I'm seriously using. I have Killit installed as well, but I'm not using it for serious game play, only for having some quick fun and not saving afterwards. And for that, it's perfect.

And it's beginning to bug me that one huge part of the Fuel Collector's functionality is essentially a cheat: pulling fuel out of thin air. I have nothing against the milking-derelict-ships functionality. That one is also limited by the fuel capacity of the derelicts, because it actually transfers fuel from the NPC to the player. If the NPC had used up its fuel, there's nothing to transfer. For me that's a fair feature.

But the main functionality—getting more fuel just by flying around—is harder to call "fair". Its main justification from a balancing point of view is that it remedies one of the few serious flaws of vanilla Oolite: the ability to get stuck in interstellar space. But these days there are other remedies for this as well, and the justification falls flat in-system anyway.

So, the main feature of Fuel Collector is that it gives you fuel for free, just by flying around normally. Thus the question becomes: provided that we don't want to undo this feature completely, what can be done to counterbalance the "for free" part? The obvious answer is: we can attach a cost to it. Now, what cost can it be? The device can't use up fuel for its functioning, that would defeat its purpose. What else do we have? Money? Money is not a real obstacle during most of the game; also, fuel is dirt cheap.

But what about some other resource, that isn't free, and that may not always be available? Specifically: what if the Fuel Collector needs a precious metal for functioning? Either Gold or Platinum? It could be necessary for processing the extremely thin concentrations of Quirium far from the sun, by binding it to itself. Some sort of catalyst, if you want (similar to the one in your car's exhaust pipe), where the Gold or Platinum is finally ejected in your exhaust, so it has to be replaced periodically.

Practically, this would mean that the Fuel Collector would use 1kg of one of the precious metals (which one is purely a decision about the price tag we want to attach to it; the technobabble can easily be adjusted to any of them) every now and then. If it doesn't find any, it stops working until the player obtains more of the stuff.

As for the numbers, I'm thinking of something like 1kg of precious metal for 20 scoops, meaning 2LY worth of fuel. This would translate into ~18 or ~36Cr/LY, depending on which precious metal we're going for. This is of course adjustable by making the kg either last longer or shorter. My main point with this is not the financial cost as such (money isn't such an issue for most players), but the necessity to invest something for the convenience of refilling your tanks just about everywhere 'on the fly'.

This could also be combined with making the Fuel Collector a primeable equipment, so that you can turn it off if you want to preserve the content of your safe.

Thoughts?

[Cody]

I only ever used the fuel collector briefly, then discarded it for the reasons mentioned above.
The idea of using a valuable, finite resource to power it seems pretty cool, McLane.

[Smivs]

Agreed.
Both with the general point that 'cheat OXPs' seem to be becoming the norm, and that your proposals for the fuel collector are balanced and sensible. I can see the logic of making them primeable, but with the caveat that with more and more primeable equipment becoming available cycling through them could be a bit of an issue for some players.
I should add that I don't use this OXP myself - I have cut back on OXPs a lot over the last year and mostly tend to install only eye-candy these days, and the only primeable equipment I have is a Tea Maker.

[Disembodied]

Gold, or platinum, though, is still just money. Granted, it's not always available, but in my own experience I've almost always got some in the safe. Still, it's a wrinkle, and worth doing, I think.

The other resource a player has is time: if creating fuel takes time, and work, then it diminishes the "free!" cheat element. There's sunskimming, of course, so it should take less time/effort than that, otherwise there's not much point.

Does the fuel have to be sucked out of empty space? Could it not perhaps be something players could, with the right equipment (primed with gold/platinum - platinum's probably better, as a catalyst), tease from e.g. the surface of an asteroid? A blip or two of laser fire could release the quirium that, like Helium-3 on the moon, has collected there over billions of years, and the Fuel Collector (essentially, an especially sensitive Fuel Scoop) could suck it in. CommonSenseOTB's Custom Shields OXP did, on occasion, allow damaged ships to leak blue puffs of quirium, which a player could scoop ... might a similar effect be possible using asteroids?

[Cody]

As I recall, it would operate at torus speed too - perhaps that shouldn't be possible?