Ah, youre right. Multiple fuel parts with the multiplicative bonus would be brutal. Could be solved by forcing one single fuel part per hull. What hulls with several internal slots would like to sacrifice two or more of them for fuel? Maybe huge battleships that want to wreak havoc on smaller, further away Empires without having to stop in the way to outpost some planets for refueling, and weird, overdimensioned scouts. Not sure if thouse should be considered as legit, interesting strategies to be allowed. Means you can greatly override standard supply/range restrictions via a lot of PPs and some RPs (for the hulls with two internal slots).Ophiuchus wrote:I dont think that usefulness should necessarily scale with the number of internal slots available. Maybe the main usefulness would be for ship designs with few internal slots available.
If multiple fuel parts are allowed, I think the systems is already a "hackable" and the balance is an illusion supported because most players won't sacrifice any internal slots for extra fuel, even less for twice extra fuel, when they can just keep conquering and enlarging their supply range (which is the "standard" way of playing). I bet some good players do try fancy stuff, but I wonder if it does pay off, never tried myself to (e.g.) have a big fleet of selfgravitating hulls full of fuel parts (no shields, no fighters), faster engine, armor, laser and some flak, to do deep incursion. Would the loss in offensive and defensive be compensated by the extra range? Sometimes, I guess, if the enemy is not guarding properly all its front, or if we mix this with stealth...From a balancing perspective i think additive bonus is better
Interesting subject, I don't really have a conclusion.
I'll try to get something better than forcing a single fuel part per ship, which I think is not ideal.It would be nice if you could come up with some constraits for later game.