Oolite Bulletins

Disembodied wrote:

DaddyHoggy wrote:

And yes, no military drives (per Frontier), BUT like in RL where certain v. high performance cars MUST use super fuels or carry specialist additives if they can't get specialist fuels or these cars run like complete dogs then it doesn't take much of a leap does it to think that perhaps Asps in the core game might need specialist fuels for their clearly high-performance engines, or stuff like the Kirin and Cadeceus which are either military or semi-organic!

We'd have to be careful with this. We don't want to make sunskimming a non-starter for some people, as it's an interesting part of gameplay. Unless, of course, we decided that sunskimmed (fresh?) fuel was the highest grade ... that way there would be another incentive to go and get your juice straight from the star.

What would happen if the star of an Anarchy system turned out to produce the absolute mutts nutts of quirium when "plagued by frequent solar activity" - it would be worth sunskimming in this system - the pirates would gather on the sunskimming routes - big fuel tankers ships with huge scoops filling fuel tanks under heavy escort to sell to race teams and high-performance ship owners for premium prices - fuel could become a commodity! I know I am now way ahead of the proposed curve, but I like to think of the possibilities, not the limitations...

I like where you're headed DH. If the JS methods/properties get added to do an OXP like this, I'd love to help out on it. It would dovetail nicely into some of the stuff I'm doing for SR2 actually.

Kaks wrote:

Ok!

Fill-up prices: I'm quite happy to implement changes that will

• * make it cheaper to fill up ships smaller than the cobra3
  * make it more expensive to fill up ships noticeably bigger than the cobra3

Variable fuel quality: I might find the time to implement the code to allow OXPs to create different fuels ( what Ahruman described ), but

• - I wouldn't hold my breath on me actually putting that code in anytime soon! (sorry many-fuels people)
  - we'd still need someone Thargoid to actually write a 'different fuels.oxp'

OK, so I'm on commission now eh?

Well you write the trunk code for it, and I'll have a look at what can be done.

Ahruman wrote:

Poro wrote:
Might we also roll this up into fixing another bugbear of sci-fi: that being large ships having a lower max speed than small ones?

No. Redefining the flight model or the characteristics of core ships is out of scope for Oolite. Redefining the price model for fuel is not, since Elite didn’t define the fuel cost for anything other than the Cobra III.

I thought if you retained the top speeds in the form of an injecter-consumption multiplier you would be able to keep the propotionality of the ship speeds. Ah well.

@DaddyHoggy: Yes, your explanation is as good as any other I come up with - but when I see a chance to slay a bugbear, I try to blast it with bullets made from my own handwavium

Lucidor wrote:

I guess that is generally accepted among the patrons of this site, but there are those who like the flight mechanics realistic. And I'm one of them. But I enjoy Oolite too

Did you ever play Freelancer? Apparently that had terrestial flight mechanics as the default, but for as long as you held down a button it would switch to Newtonian movement. I've never played it so I don't know how successful it was.

Back on topic, I also think the new fuel pricing is a desired feature, and as another_commander said "... since the MkIII fuel pricing is low enough as it is at 2Cr/LY." Has there been any thought to increasing it? It always struck me as a shade too low.

Poro wrote:

Did you ever play Freelancer? Apparently that had terrestial flight mechanics as the default, but for as long as you held down a button it would switch to Newtonian movement. I've never played it so I don't know how successful it was.

Happens when you deactivate the engine and just use your afterburner to maneuver.
If I remember correctly, you don't have fuel that gets consumed by that.
I never tried it when I played Freelancer, but a friend says he does that all the time in fights and it works pretty well.
But, yes, back to topic...

Poro wrote:

... as another_commander said "... since the MkIII fuel pricing is low enough as it is at 2Cr/LY." Has there been any thought to increasing it? It always struck me as a shade too low.

I don't think there has been any thought towards increasing the starting fuel price and this is for a good reason: When the player starts with 100Cr, it cannot be possible to have them spend big amounts on fuel. Doing so would null any profits from trading at startup, which would result in no progress with the game. 14Cr for a top up may not seem a lot, but it is when one is at the game's early stages. This is why it was mentioned at the beginning that startup behavior of the game should not be altered if we go on with this change. Increasing the price for bigger ships does make sense though, since by the time the player is in position to buy a big ship, they will have more than enough Cr to not worry about increased fuel price.

Sendraks wrote:

I would like to see there being more of a tradeoff made here, i.e. big ships need more fuel and they can also carry more fuel. That doesn't mean that a big ship can jump further than 7lyr in a single jump, but it can do multiple jumps on a single tank of fuel or some such to balance the extra fuel costs big ships will incur.

Meanwhile smaller ships are limited to 1 7lyr max range jump on a full tank.

All ships are and will be limited to a 7LY max range jump on a full fuel tank. This whole debate is not at all about increasing the 7LY limit, and it is not going to happen, because it would be a very fundamental change of the overall game mechanics.

I think there is a flaw in your reasoning here: big ships need more fuel and they can also carry more fuel. Yes, but they can carry exactly the amount of fuel they will need for a 7LY jump, the same as small ships can carry the exact amount of fuel they need for a 7LY jump. The result is the same for both: after a 6.8LY jump (7LY jumps don't exist) the tank will be almost empty.

By the way: A modification like debated here should have an implication for Fuel Collector.oxp: As the tanks of big ships would be bigger, it should take more time to fill them in-flight (probably also through sunskimming). Or else we would have to assume that the fuel collectors are also bigger.

And for fuel pods and so on.

Commander McLane wrote:

All ships are and will be limited to a 7LY max range jump on a full fuel tank. This whole debate is not at all about increasing the 7LY limit, and it is not going to happen, because it would be a very fundamental change of the overall game mechanics.

I didn't say change the max 7ly jump limit, I'm merely suggesting whether the larger ships could have the capacity to make multiple jumps (none further than 6.8lyr) to balance this nerf to them. Obviously if it is not possible to give an Anaconda a fuel tank capable of holding 21lyrs with of fuel (good for three jumps) due to the game code, then fair enough. It was just a suggestion.

However, I do think there needs to be a balancing act here. This is game, this proposal is logical, but clearly one that makes life harder for the big ship pilot and big ships are already penalised for being big. So we've got the take, where is the give?

Commander McLane wrote:

I think there is a flaw in your reasoning here: big ships need more fuel and they can also carry more fuel. Yes, but they can carry exactly the amount of fuel they will need for a 7LY jump, the same as small ships can carry the exact amount of fuel they need for a 7LY jump. The result is the same for both: after a 6.8LY jump (7LY jumps don't exist) the tank will be almost empty.

Again, I'm not arguing the logic that a big ship would need more fuel to go the same distance as a small ship and, by that rationale, ships smaller than the MKIII will need less. What I am saying in terms of game design is that this is still a nerf to most big ships, which already make trade offs for their size. This is a further trade off and I was merely positing an idea to balance this nerf which would be inkeeping with the concept being discussed.

Naturally being able to carry fuel for multiple 6.8lyr jumps will cost a big ship more money than just fueling up for one jump. So the costs will scale and would be up to the individual commander to decide how much fuel to put in.

This is merely a suggestion to balance what is essentially a nerf to big ships, a logical one, but never-the-less a nerf and a buff to small ships.

Sendraks wrote:

Commander McLane wrote:

All ships are and will be limited to a 7LY max range jump on a full fuel tank. This whole debate is not at all about increasing the 7LY limit, and it is not going to happen, because it would be a very fundamental change of the overall game mechanics.

I didn't say change the max 7ly jump limit, I'm merely suggesting whether the larger ships could have the capacity to make multiple jumps (none further than 6.8lyr) to balance this nerf to them. Obviously if it is not possible to give an Anaconda a fuel tank capable of holding 21lyrs with of fuel (good for three jumps) due to the game code, then fair enough. It was just a suggestion.

<snip>

This is merely a suggestion to balance what is essentially a nerf to big ships, a logical one, but never-the-less a nerf and a buff to small ships.

Why will it nerf big ships? You keep saying it, but why? If you start in your Cobra Mk III with 100Cr buy 3TCs of Liquors and Wines and jump to Diso then paying 10Cr out of your profit to pay for fuel is a biggie (and a realistic one at that). But after months of playing the game and you've bought your big Boa Class Cruiser got a few 100K in the bank, doing a big cargo contract hauling a 100TCs of something-or-other across 10 systems for a potential 50K profit then spending even 10x->100x as much on fuel as you would have done making the same trip in a Cobra III (pointless as you couldn't fulfill the contract) then what's the biggie?

It's just a small re-balancing of owning one of these big, relatively quick, powerful haulers.

Show me some figures where it becomes nerfed and I'll believe you otherwise it's just resistence to change for the sake of it.

How about we wait for someone to play with some numbers and either test in game, or simply calculate what impact it will have.

If ships are sized sensibly (which they arent, but still...) then the larger ships will more than make up for the fuel costs with larger cargo capacity, and thereofre larger profits to offset againt the fuel. People who insist on flying star destroyers with no cargo can rightfully expect it to be expensive, but by then players should be so rich that money hardly matters anyway.

Should there be a problem, then the solution is to rebalance pricing, not to start adding other features like multi jump tanks (which exist in the form of fuel pods anyway).

Keeping it simple, the status of big ships is as follows:

1 - They are large easy to hit targets
2 - They are slow
3 - They are more expensive
4 - They are not necessarily tougher than smaller combat ships
5 - They do not handle well

These are already substantial trade offs to make when owning a big ship and the idea is to add a further negative to this

6 - they cost more to fuel.

Now I do think that logically, making the big ships cost more to fuel does make sense, but it is a blunt tool when you consider all of the other negative factors. Yes, there are OXP ships (and arguably one core oolite ship) that are not terribly well balanced for thier trader roles and as a balancing act across the piste, this fuel change would help bring those ships into line with their smaller counterparts without conducting a root and branch review of every ship.

But then you've got ships like the Boa, the Monitor, the Python, the Hamadryad, the Anaconda, which are not fast, agile vessels and sticking an additional negative on those seems a trifle odd.

It seems more odd when all smaller vessels (those smaller than the Cobby at any rate) are effectively getting a buff on top of their advantages of:

1 - Being a small, hard to hit target
2 - Being relatively agile
3 - Some of them are surprisingly tough for their size.

The tradeoff is that they don't carry much cargo, but their money making power comes from combat not trading. Yes there are a few bigger ships (the Imp Courier, the PCC, the Python ET, the BCC) which are highly effective multi-role combat traders and I'd be well behind those getting hit not just buy extra fuel costs, but some sort of additional premium fuel cost for clearly operating outside of the template for the other trade ships.

Clearly trading in Oolite, especially contracts, is the biggest money maker going and if this fuel hike is a way of balancing the effectiveness of that, then I do see the argument. However, I would've thought (the unbalanced ships aside) that the balance to trading was that you'd be doing it in a slow ship not ideally suited for combat. If the view is that this trade off isn't nearly enough for the profits from trading and the logical inclusion of additional fuel costs for big ships helps balance this, then that seems a reasonable argument to me.

What doesn't make sense is just doing it on raw mass, as that is rather unsophisticated and doesn't take into account the other attributes of a ship.

The Asp MKII has signficantly less cargo space than the Cobra MKIII, but it is a faster tougher vessel. It isn't massively smaller than the Cobra either, but using the dimensions formula, its fuel would still be cheaper for what is essentially, a performance craft. If you were to base its fuel costs on its cargo capacity, then the formula gets even worse.

I'm not saying this is a bad idea. I'm not saying it is illogical, but I do think that a simple formula of mass or cargo capacity could produce some weird results across the specutrum of vessels, even in the core ships. I like this idea, it just doesn't feel quite right yet.

What I don't like is the lack of civilty (unintended or otherwise) in the posts directed towards me and in the spirit of these boards, I am biting my tongue. Whether you agree or disagree with me, it should be obvious that I am putting time into thinking about this and that merits a polite response.

Sendraks wrote:

What I don't like is the lack of civilty (unintended or otherwise) in the posts directed towards me and in the spirit of these boards, I am biting my tongue. Whether you agree or disagree with me, it should be obvious that I am putting time into thinking about this and that merits a polite response.

If the above is directed at me then my humblest apologies, absolutely no lack of civility was intended - I was, I admit, trying to move the discussion on a bit from "this will nerf big ships" in the hope of seeing "why" - which you have now explained eloquently and substantively. I'm quite prepared to see what numbers the Dev Team come up with and see what happens in play testing - if big ships are indeed nerfed I will eat my trumble-fur lined hat with a side order of humble pie.

In 3 years and almost 4000 posts I've never been accused of not being polite even in the darkest of days of Sung and more recently OSE - I shall enter my inner sanctum and contemplate my navel for a while...

Hum ... maybe what's required is less of a blunt instrument. Rather than take a blanket approach, perhaps it would be better to make "fuel consumption" a specific ship characteristic – something which could be modified in the .plist? That way maybe there could be other rebalancings performed, e.g. smaller ships with high top speeds, such as the Tiger or the Supercobra: perhaps they achieve their high performance because they have an oversized witchdrive. They can scoot around at .45 or .5 c, sure, but it costs them a big chunk of change in fuel every time they want to punch out a wormhole.

The default "fuel consumption" value would be the same as the Cobra III. If no value is specified in the .plist, then that's what gets used. But maybe this could be a way to let designers of low-end ships find a way to make their craft that little bit more attractive, if they can be made more fuel-efficient – and it would also be a good way for those more über-minded designers to counteract carping comments from the "it's not very balanced, is it?" crowd (naming no names ... ahem ) by making their latest muscle-ship a pig when it comes to fuel.

I don't like to get testy, but I thought I had summarised why I thought (too many thoughts, arggh!) this would be additional negative to the big ships and felt I was being accused of not providing a reason.

I'm glad you found the more detailed explanation helpful, working through it helped me see other sides of the debate as well.

*edit*

Disembodied - I like the idea of having the fuel cost/consumption attribute being in the plists, especially as it gives individual control to both creators and players to assign stats that they think fit the overall feel of the ship. Certainly if the attribute was in plists, I'd be going to town on a number of vessels to ensure their fuel consumption was closer to "Chelsea Tractor" than "Hybrid Car."

I also realise that the sums of money we're talking about here are quite small, so the impact will be negligible in many cases. Even if you made the cost of fueling an Anaconda ten times that of fueling a Cobra, you're still not looking a at a full tank costing more than 200credits from the most expensive outlets in game at present. Although over time these costs would add up, which means serious traders getting into their big ships for the first time would need make sure they had funds set aside to cover fuel costs as they start making money.