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?
