[Split] Fuel Tweaks

[Disembodied]

Oh, have you been watching Hollywood again? Hint : dramatic, not realistic. Besides, they like to mix their fuel tanks with explosions, which produces clouds of fine droplets which are a specific different kind of fire. Hint _ we keep the explosives bunker very literally at the opposite end of the site to the Aviation Fuel bunker - when we can't keep the "bang" off-site altogether.

EDIT : all you ever wanted to know about Jet-A(1) : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jet_fuel

My ideas about jet fuel are, I admit, based on the movies; however, it still isn't exactly inert. And we shouldn't forget that present-day safety standards are a product of a WEIRD society - Western, Educated, Industrialised, Rich, and Democratic. Other societies have different tolerances; it wasn't that long ago that the seas were full of ships, made of tarry rope, canvas, and wood, with all artificial lighting provided by (at best) lanterns, and all cooking carried out on open fires. And the ships often carried tonnes of gunpowder. Even when the ships weren't full of explosives, people would still willingly* sign up to voyages where you had a one in three chance of dying.

*For a given value of "willingly". The only other option was often "starvation".

[Redspear]

I've thought about making ship's death throws more explosive.

Besides the fuel there's potentially (very) explosive armaments and perhaps even other reactive elements to consider.
It wouldn't need to fire all of the time, just often enough to makes things interesting.

I was thinking it would scale, so barely a pop for a worm but for an anaconda, just sometimes...

[Cholmondely]

I've thought about making ship's death throws more explosive.

Besides the fuel there's potentially (very) explosive armaments and perhaps even other reactive elements to consider.
It wouldn't need to fire all of the time, just often enough to makes things interesting.

I was thinking it would scale, so barely a pop for a worm but for an anaconda, just sometimes...

I concur, sir!

As a matter of curiosity, what happens in other games?

And what actually would really happen? On Earth, explosive stuff is explosive - there is lots of the element of fire/phlogiston/oxygen about to let it do its thing. But in space? There is oxygen in the ship - but if it is no longer intact...

[Redspear]

And what actually would really happen?

Well a crashed car may have the potential to explode but (thankfully) almost always they don't.
Spaceships aren't cars but then they're not planes either.

What would be most fun? One off events could be palatably outrageous but when they're happening all the time...

I think there's lots of potential for various mission-type uses e.g.
Ship becomes derelict rather than disintegrating "Warning: Nearby Critical Mass Detected"
Could be interesting if you were still masslocked...

Maybe for regular use some subtle effects would be more appropriate a la the ECM induced scanner shake (in the presence of a big explosion).
Nudging the player ship momentarily off course perhaps? Again, I think there's a bunch of interesting possibilities.

...of course missiles already explode to minimal regional effect (beyond immediate range) and so there's that to consider when tinkering with such things.

Maybe a missile kill (i.e. a missile hit that actually destroys the target) could result in a larger than usual explosion. If not exactly rare it would likely still not be happening so often as to become tiresome... perhaps.

[RockDoctor]

Sorry, no. I probably watch a Hollywood film about once every five years on average! But I have visited the fort at Tilbury docks and saw "the magazine houses used to store vast quantities of gunpowder". Rather impressive.

Every so often I'd get involved with the search for "Caverns Measureless to Man" (Coleridge, 1800-ish) involving digging a lot of mud and occasionally dynamiting (specifically "PowerGel"-ing) obstreperous bits of limestone obstructing our pursuit of a draught. Even a few hundred grammes of modern "bang" can do an impressive amount of damage.
It's even more impressive when you've finished digging out the last blast's debris, and the licence-holder puts the bomb, det, and tamping clay onto the hauling tray for you to drag up to the workface and set yourself. Even if you're confident that your friends on the surface aren't the sort to playfully unshort the det line and blow it while you're still in the hole, crawling backwards ... It really makes that first pint of the evening exert an almost gravitational drag to get you out of the hole.
There's an 'ole in the ground somewhere in the vicinity of Swindon where a few hundred tonnes of bang went up during World War 1. A hundred-odd metres across, 25m deep. That would have been a sight to see - with a telescope.

[Cholmondely]

Every so often I'd get involved with the search for "Caverns Measureless to Man" (Coleridge, 1800-ish) involving digging a lot of mud and occasionally dynamiting (specifically "PowerGel"-ing) obstreperous bits of limestone obstructing our pursuit of a draught. Even a few hundred grammes of modern "bang" can do an impressive amount of damage.
It's even more impressive when you've finished digging out the last blast's debris, and the licence-holder puts the bomb, det, and tamping clay onto the hauling tray for you to drag up to the workface and set yourself. Even if you're confident that your friends on the surface aren't the sort to playfully unshort the det line and blow it while you're still in the hole, crawling backwards ... It really makes that first pint of the evening exert an almost gravitational drag to get you out of the hole.
There's an 'ole in the ground somewhere in the vicinity of Swindon where a few hundred tonnes of bang went up during World War 1. A hundred-odd metres across, 25m deep. That would have been a sight to see - with a telescope.

Thank you for that. Truly fascinating... thank you for taking the time to write it down.

[RockDoctor]

And we shouldn't forget that present-day safety standards are a product of a WEIRD society - Western, Educated, Industrialised, Rich, and Democratic.

The various Safety Officers I've worked alongside would contend that present day safety standards are the product of previous deaths and maimings, coupled with lawsuits by survivors. Safety regulations, as the saying goes, are written in blood.
Having chewed the fat with commercial jet engine inspection engineers in an African city with an intensely and smelly inadequate sewage system, I don't think the "WIERD" thing really holds water. Jet engines effectively export small pseudopods of their originating culture to the airports they operate from. There's not a lot of further spread of culture (whether "safety culture", "engineering culture", or "governance" from there - in most countries I've been to. But the aircraft themselves extend "WEIRD" culture at least to the edge of the maintenance apron. And it mostly stops there.

In our scenario, there doesn't seem to be a lot of "technology transfer" from the Coriolis down to the ground. Actually, surprisingly little : you'd expect the prices of minerals "on the ground" to be lower than at the station. You'd also expect those launching booster rockets to carry a fee. Odd, that.

[Disembodied]

Having chewed the fat with commercial jet engine inspection engineers in an African city with an intensely and smelly inadequate sewage system, I don't think the "WIERD" thing really holds water. Jet engines effectively export small pseudopods of their originating culture to the airports they operate from. There's not a lot of further spread of culture (whether "safety culture", "engineering culture", or "governance" from there - in most countries I've been to. But the aircraft themselves extend "WEIRD" culture at least to the edge of the maintenance apron. And it mostly stops there.

These things will vary from industry to industry and technology to technology. WEIRD culture probably pervades the jet industry on global basis because passenger jets falling out of the sky, anywhere, makes the news and is Bad For Business, if you're a jet manufacturer. There's a much lower level of international "safety culture" spread in, say, mining, or the garment industry.

The various Safety Officers I've worked alongside would contend that present day safety standards are the product of previous deaths and maimings, coupled with lawsuits by survivors. Safety regulations, as the saying goes, are written in blood.

Absolutely. But they're written in blood by societies where the deaths and maimings of workers can be turned into legislation, because workers and their families have some modicum of social and political power, and where things like civil lawsuits are actually possible. For an alternative – ship-breaking in Bangladesh:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOmtFN1bfZ8

[RockDoctor]

For an alternative – ship-breaking in Bangladesh:

A highly desirable outcome, from the profit-based mindset of business. They'd do the same in Britain, if they could get away with it. And if they can't get away with it yet, they'll buy politicans, policing and PR support to try to make it possible.

[Disembodied]

For an alternative – ship-breaking in Bangladesh:

A highly desirable outcome, from the profit-based mindset of business. They'd do the same in Britain, if they could get away with it. And if they can't get away with it yet, they'll buy politicans, policing and PR support to try to make it possible.

Definitely:

Catch-22 says they have a right to do anything we can't stop them from doing.

[Cholmondely]

Used to know a lass who worked for Lloyds of London. She was in aeroplane insurance. She told me (20-odd years ago) that the various national airline companies of the independant african nations were an utter shambles as regards keeping their planes up to snuff with the single solitary example of Ethiopia. So only Ethiopia was weird back then, I take it.

[RockDoctor]

Used to know a lass who worked for Lloyds of London. She was in aeroplane insurance. She told me (20-odd years ago) that the various national airline companies of the independant african nations were an utter shambles as regards keeping their planes up to snuff with the single solitary example of Ethiopia. So only Ethiopia was weird back then, I take it.

We were banned from flying internationally with African carriers. For transit in-country (which could be up to three flights to get to the helicopter base) we had no choice but to use local carriers, but they varied from literal amateurs (remember the Cardiff (?) footballer killed in an IFR flight over the Channel a couple of years back, with a pilot not certified for IFR? That level.) to operations with a national flag on the plane and an operations manager working in The Hague.
We got RTB'd once (Return To Base) because of elephants on the runway. Goats on the runway, on the other hand, you just do a wheels-down pass and they tend to scatter. Still big enough to bowdlerise a prop though, if you hit one.
Just to even things up, in Russia, we were also banned from flying with operations other than Aeroflot. Same variation. There's a lovely burned-out helicopter just outside Noyabrsk airport which isn't a fire-training carcass.

[gilhad]

Just observation about Quirium Fuel Transfer

- maybe my bad luck, but whenever I tried to use it, it destroyed lot of cargo (tens of gemstones, gold, platinum ... repeatedly) before transfering enought fuel to be usable, so it went as "last thing to try before die" only, some kind of Escape Capsule (I am not sure, if it was meant as such last resort only device)
- so I hacked it by keeping _damageChance zero all time
- now it allows to do infinite jumps up to 6.0 LY each for 1 ton of Quirium Fuel: when Hyperspace jump is initiated just after fuel reach level allowing it (and the 15 seconds of countdown will not result to stopping the transfer by reaching 7.0 LY of fuel) it continue generating fuel after each jump and if I manage to jump before reaching 7.0 LY, then it files the Fuel Tanks again and again ...

Maybe there should be internal counter, which would stop conversion after converting 7.0 LY of fuel, not just after filling the fuel tanks