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Re: New species trait: fuel efficiency

Posted: Sun Jul 08, 2018 6:58 pm
by Oberlus
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.
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).
From a balancing perspective i think additive bonus is better
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...
Interesting subject, I don't really have a conclusion.
It would be nice if you could come up with some constraits for later game.
I'll try to get something better than forcing a single fuel part per ship, which I think is not ideal.

Re: New species trait: fuel efficiency

Posted: Sun Jul 08, 2018 7:56 pm
by Dilvish
Last I looked, we already had a limit of one fuel part per hull, and I think you can expect it to stay that way.Nevermind, I got momentarily mixed up with the engine limit.

Re: New species trait: fuel efficiency

Posted: Sun Jul 08, 2018 9:44 pm
by Ophiuchus
Oberlus wrote:...Sometimes, I guess, if the enemy is not guarding properly all its front, or if we mix this with stealth...
Interesting subject, I don't really have a conclusion.
Well, i have use for extra fuel mostly either in enemy territory (hello stealth disruptors and stealth colony ships) and speeding up expansion (far out colony/outpost will build supply lines for refilling ships with less range). Sometimes I miscalculate combat power and my ships get stranded somewhere so i would have loved to have added more fuel in advance (but usually i wont "sacrifice" a lot for fuel); i tend to use organic and asteroid line with extra fuel.
Oberlus wrote:.I'll try to get something better than forcing a single fuel part per ship, which I think is not ideal.
Actually regardless of the fuel efficiency trait maybe the single fuel part is actually a good idea. For fuel efficiency it would guarantee that it always gives an extra edge you cant just buy of because you have internal slots to spare.

Re: New species trait: fuel efficiency

Posted: Mon Jul 09, 2018 2:54 pm
by Oberlus
Ophiuchus wrote:Actually regardless of the fuel efficiency trait maybe the single fuel part is actually a good idea. For fuel efficiency it would guarantee that it always gives an extra edge you cant just buy of because you have internal slots to spare.
That's a good point. Therefore I'll assume only one fuel part can be added to a hull.
Ophiuchus wrote:* a good_fuel species should increase outpost/colony ships' fuel at least by one
* a good_fuel species should increase the basic scouts reach by one (this is different from fuel+1, it should include the return trip)
That's a bit tricky to achieve.
First thing I thought is to use multiplicative factor and ensure a +2 fuel for some ships and only +1 for the rest. For example, floor(fuel*0.5) will produce +2 only for 4-5 fuel hulls. Problem is the standard hulls for scouts have same fuel than standard hulls for colonizer/outpost ships.
Rather I would drop the requirement of giving a +2 (+1 for go forth and +1 for go back) to scouts. It complicates things and is of lesser importance (most of the time I use deep exploration, less than half of my scouts ever try to stay under supply range). But got an idea midway:

Using addends instead of factors, the bonus could apply independently to the hull and the fuel parts. Thus, good fuel (+1) species would have +1 in a ship with no fuel part and +2 in ships with fuel part (apart from the the bonus given by the fuel part). Great fuel would have +2 (without fuel parts) or +4 (with fuel parts). This means that late game, when fuel parts bring in a total of 4 fuel, average species will have 6-8 fuel, good ones 8-10 and great ones 10-12 (great species to have 50% more than average).

The requirement of allowing further range to scouts than to colonisers is indirectly achieved by the fact that standard colonizers can't have a fuel part, so scouts with a fuel part will get that +2 for good fuel.

What do you think?

Disclaimer: figures might be wrong, haven't checkout the actual fuel capacities of fuel parts depending on fuel techs.

Re: New species trait: fuel efficiency

Posted: Tue Jul 10, 2018 12:02 pm
by Ophiuchus
Oberlus wrote:
Ophiuchus wrote:* a good_fuel species should increase outpost/colony ships' fuel at least by one
* a good_fuel species should increase the basic scouts reach by one (this is different from fuel+1, it should include the return trip)
That's a bit tricky to achieve.
First thing I thought is to use multiplicative factor and ensure a +2 fuel for some ships and only +1 for the rest. For example, floor(fuel*0.5) will produce +2 only for 4-5 fuel hulls. Problem is the standard hulls for scouts have same fuel than standard hulls for colonizer/outpost ships.
Rather I would drop the requirement of giving a +2 (+1 for go forth and +1 for go back) to scouts.
The requirement i gave was not giving a +2 in fuel but giving +1 reach. This also depends on the base fuel of hulls and the way fuel consumption is handled. With current content etc. the small hull (and flux hulls) has 4 fuel, which is only missing one fuel for making three jumps out of supply. So a +1 would suffice for 4 base fuel (you need 2 fuel get away and 3 to get back).
Oberlus wrote:Using addends instead of factors, the bonus could apply independently to the hull and the fuel parts.
Interesting; your suggestion would allow for heavy scouts (medium hull 3+2) and deep space bubble (scout 4+2) without research. Doesnt apply to small/spatial flux hull though.

So to sum up: its ok with current content if good_fuel gives a +1 for 3 or 4 base fuel. Extra fuel efficiency based on ship parts and fuel techs (and balancing with *_supply) needs probably some more thought.