Fuel

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marhawkman
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#61 Post by marhawkman »

utilae wrote:
marhawkman wrote:We could add a feature that causes the ship to automatically return when it reaches it's fuel limit. That would sidestep the Micro issue.
We could just have a check box, "Fuel Safe Mode"=Yes/No

If "Fuel Safe Mode" is on, then it's like Moo2, you can only travel as far out as you can travel back to a world with a fuel supply.

If "Fuel Safe Mode" is off, then you can travel anywhere. If your fleet cannot travel back cause you have no fuel, then too bad.
I like this idea. :)
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#62 Post by ewh02b »

Let's refocus on the problem and solution.

Problem:
Fleets should not range freely around the galaxy without any restraint.

Solution:
There should be a limit.

Problem:
How do we impose this limit?

The goals for solving may include:
1. doing so without too much micromanagement
2. give the player choices/allow supply to become a part of strategy
3. letting the player know with certainty how far they can travel
4. limiting the coding required of the programmers
5. limiting the computational processing during the game

Solutions:

I'll leave to you.

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Geoff the Medio
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#63 Post by Geoff the Medio »

Geoff the Medio wrote:
Daveybaby wrote:Fuel shortages should only come about through one of two things:

(1) You over extend yourself, moving your fleet too far from home, and have allocated insufficient supply ships to your fleet.

(2) Enemy action, for example attacking and destroying your supply ships, blockading your supply route, or destroying a strategically important fuel depot.
By those specific measures, my latest suggestion seems to work... just replace "supply ships" with "fuel ships" and adjust the possible enemy actions.
Daveybaby wrote:True, but i think that if things like missile and fighter resupply were to be a part of the game (which obviously isnt decided yet, but if they are) then it gets a bit silly to have separate ships just for fuel resupply. Roll the whole thing up into one concept and have fuel be one of the things which your fleet's supply ships will provide.
(In reference to: http://freeorion.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=22646#22646 )

Making fuel work differently from supply might be done intentionally... It would make fuel a distinct gameplay element and balance tool, rather than just another form of supply.

In particular, if there were explicit fuel ships, these could be attacked and destroyed only by attacking the fleet itself, whereas supplies could be cut off just by blocking all supply routes.

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#64 Post by Sapphire Wyvern »

Practically speaking, there's no such thing as a fuel limit to range. If an empire wanted to expend the effort, they could use the "Napoleon crossing the desert" strategy: send a force out some distance, drop a fuel dump, and then return to home base. Refuel, travel out to the first fuel dump, pick up fuel, travel further out, drop a second fuel dump. Return to base via first fuel dump. Ad infinitum; it's somewhat like solving the Towers of Hanoi puzzle.
hence, excessive micro and doesn't really serve the purpose of limiting range.
Er, yes. Exactly. My original quote was designed to explain why a hard "fuel range" limit isn't necessarily the most credible solution, not as a proposed mechanic for players to have to hash through in fine detail! I can't imagine anything more tedious. :)

The point is that an empire willing to commit sufficient resources wouldn't actually have a finite cap on range (due to fuel limitations, anyway). But, like the question of how much computer equipment to buy for each research project, or what colour the walls of your hab modules should be to maximise morale, it's a level of detail that should be abstracted away rather than dealt with explicitly.
Geoff the Medio wrote: However, both also have the (potential) problem that you end up with your economy essentially determining how much or how far (essentially how) you can move your ships around.
Problem? That was the objective! :) Economy, organisation and infrastructure are (IMO) the principle determinants of strategic mobility. An army doesn't move at the speed of its vehicles; it moves at the speed of its organization, and an empire willing to expend massive resources can generally expedite that organization significantly. The actual speed of the units is an upper cap on mobility rather than the average.

Anyone who thinks that a high-tech well-trained army will ever be victorious without equally good logistics backup is deluding themselves.
A fixed cost system (which could be zero or nonzero cost) and variable supply rate means you're still limited in how much you can move around your ships, but you can't overcome this limit by just spending more money / production / whatever on support for your ships, which you could with a variable-cost fixed-rate of resupply / fuel.
Hmm. I think that there is less micromanagement involved if we simply have an obvious UI element displaying the current maintenance cost and anticipated cost for next turn, compared to having to worry about actual fuel levels in each fleet you control. If you find you are paying too much in maintenance, withdraw some of your fleets from the front line. I imagine that that is reasonably credible. :) A system that actually tracks fleet fuel levels explicitly means that you have to worry about allocation of fleet tenders, etc. To me, that sounds like a lot more micro.

Personally I don't have a problem with the idea of expending greater resources in order to mobilize large fleets more easily. Seems... well, obvious and logical to me! There would still be an upper limit on fleet mobility imposed by your actual drive technology.

YMMV.

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#65 Post by Sapphire Wyvern »

Geoff the Medio wrote:In particular, if there were explicit fuel ships, these could be attacked and destroyed only by attacking the fleet itself, whereas supplies could be cut off just by blocking all supply routes.
In theory, yes, this is possible. However, to my mind, the idea that fuel ships can mystically penetrate the blockades imposed on "supply lines", or conversely that ships can magically manifest ammo and food and air but not fuel, is completely illogical and unintuitive. It *could* be justified if replicators are basic tech and any material good can be synthesized provided one has access to sufficient energy. However, in that case, there would be no "supplies" - only fuel. From a backstory point of view, I dislike this option because it implies an extraordinarily high minimum tech level in the game. Replicators are an incredibly powerful technology!

I really don't like the idea of separating fuel and other supplies in that way. Both fuel and "supplies" are consumables that need to be transported from your industrial base to your field-deployed units in order for them to continue operating. There may be some potential for ships to harvest fuel "in the field" - but they could likewise also harvest breathable atmosphere, synthesize/grow food, and potentially even mine asteroids and manufacture replacement ammo, fighters and parts, given the right specialized support vessels. Please, let's not over-complicate things by having two separate systems for the same damn thing!

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#66 Post by Daveybaby »

I agree - it seems counterintuitive to me to have one supply system for fuel and another one for missiles etc, which works in a completely different way.
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#67 Post by marhawkman »

Daveybaby wrote:I agree - it seems counterintuitive to me to have one supply system for fuel and another one for missiles etc, which works in a completely different way.
Which is why I've advocated a generic "supply" meter. Instead of specifiying what kind of supplies.
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#68 Post by skdiw »

In particular, if there were explicit fuel ships, these could be attacked and destroyed only by attacking the fleet itself, whereas supplies could be cut off just by blocking all supply routes.
i thought about explicit fuel ships, but then it will get really annoying each time you send a detachment, you got to redistribute fueling ships. and then you have to worry about the ratio between fueling ships and the rest of the fleet. do you need a fuel ship for every other ship? or does a fuel ship support certain number of ship masses.

i see blockade as a significant advantage of having a supply line. otherwise, there are much easier way of limiting range. supply line limits range and adds additional gameplay. it would improve stealth-and-detection minigame that some of you like, if FO plans to use stealth. explicit fuel ship can also be automated to run from your fleet to supply bases and back, so you can have the added gameplay.
I really don't like the idea of separating fuel and other supplies in that way. Both fuel and "supplies" are consumables that need to be transported from your industrial base to your field-deployed units in order for them to continue operating. There may be some potential for ships to harvest fuel "in the field" - but they could likewise also harvest breathable atmosphere, synthesize/grow food, and potentially even mine asteroids and manufacture replacement ammo, fighters and parts, given the right specialized support vessels. Please, let's not over-complicate things by having two separate systems for the same damn thing!
i agree. i'm still very skeptical about whether fuel and supply are worth it. on second thought, i'm not sure what all our objectives are or the reasons to implement fuel and supply, lol. it seems to me like a mess on top already sufficiently complex (or getting close) ship battles, which i like to remind everyone that all this is subordinate to strategy. you are not a captain of a fleet or even the field marshal, but rather you are the king, nay, the emporer of an empire that spans over not just one planet, but star systems and galaxy. you have to worry about research, diplomacy, spying, economic affair, production of buildings and ships... each are much more important agenda than fuel. you are in charge of the safety and the defense of your empire. let your officers worry if your F-15 fighters has enough fuel to do a bombing run in Iraq.
:mrgreen:

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#69 Post by marhawkman »

skdiw wrote:
I really don't like the idea of separating fuel and other supplies in that way. Both fuel and "supplies" are consumables that need to be transported from your industrial base to your field-deployed units in order for them to continue operating. There may be some potential for ships to harvest fuel "in the field" - but they could likewise also harvest breathable atmosphere, synthesize/grow food, and potentially even mine asteroids and manufacture replacement ammo, fighters and parts, given the right specialized support vessels. Please, let's not over-complicate things by having two separate systems for the same damn thing!
i agree. i'm still very skeptical about whether fuel and supply are worth it. on second thought, i'm not sure what all our objectives are or the reasons to implement fuel and supply, lol. it seems to me like a mess on top already sufficiently complex (or getting close) ship battles, which i like to remind everyone that all this is subordinate to strategy. you are not a captain of a fleet or even the field marshal, but rather you are the king, nay, the emporer of an empire that spans over not just one planet, but star systems and galaxy. you have to worry about research, diplomacy, spying, economic affair, production of buildings and ships... each are much more important agenda than fuel. you are in charge of the safety and the defense of your empire. let your officers worry if your F-15 fighters has enough fuel to do a bombing run in Iraq.
And that's why I like this idea:
utilae wrote:
marhawkman wrote: We could add a feature that causes the ship to automatically return when it reaches it's fuel limit. That would sidestep the Micro issue.
We could just have a check box, "Fuel Safe Mode"=Yes/No

If "Fuel Safe Mode" is on, then it's like Moo2, you can only travel as far out as you can travel back to a world with a fuel supply.

If "Fuel Safe Mode" is off, then you can travel anywhere. If your fleet cannot travel back cause you have no fuel, then too bad.
There are two ways to reduce Micro in games like this.
One: Model less stuff.
Two: Automate more stuff.

Problems:
One: leads to bizzare gameisms that make no sense.....
Two: probably requires more code, and may add a bit more of a learning curve to the game.
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#70 Post by ewh02b »

we could abstract/automate fuel ships, except for one detail: When a fleet is attacked away from its Empire, there should be a chance (increasing based on the size of the fleet, from 5% to 50% chance) of there being a fuel ship present in the system, fuelling the fleet. If the fuel ship is present, the marauder can try and destroy it. If they succeed in destroying it, that fleet has to stay in that system for a period of time (2 turns? Varying based on distance?) in order for another supply ship to reach it.

The fuel ship should not be present when that fleet is attacking a system owned by another player--the fleet would send the fuel ship away to keep it out of harms' way.

This would probably increase the usefulness of quick strikes, aggressive defence, etc., as opposed to camping out by your star base and waiting for the enemy to attack you.

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#71 Post by Sapphire Wyvern »

There are two ways to reduce Micro in games like this.
One: Model less stuff.
Two: Automate more stuff.
And there is the third way: model stuff in such a way that no automation is necessary. For example, Civ IV Unhealthiness vs. cleaning up pollution in Civ II.

This is, IMO, the ideal solution. Abstract mechanics that create the desired strategic effect.
i agree. i'm still very skeptical about whether fuel and supply are worth it. on second thought, i'm not sure what all our objectives are or the reasons to implement fuel and supply, lol. it seems to me like a mess on top already sufficiently complex (or getting close) ship battles, which i like to remind everyone that all this is subordinate to strategy. you are not a captain of a fleet or even the field marshal, but rather you are the king, nay, the emporer of an empire that spans over not just one planet, but star systems and galaxy. you have to worry about research, diplomacy, spying, economic affair, production of buildings and ships... each are much more important agenda than fuel. you are in charge of the safety and the defense of your empire. let your officers worry if your F-15 fighters has enough fuel to do a bombing run in Iraq.
Making sure that your fighters are fueled is indeed something to be abstracted away. Ensuring that it is *possible* for your "abstract underlings" to fuel your fighters is a very important strategic military concern, and should definitely be modelled in FO somehow.

Civ IV doesn't model supply lines for armies in the field, other than by reducing healing rates for units in hostile territory. However, its strategic resources system does model "military critical supplies" at the supply end (rather than the demand end, which is what we're talking about here). It's extremely difficult to win wars without Iron in the early game, and Oil is even more critical in the late game!

I don't think that we should be dealing with allocation of fleet tenders to specific fleets. If we have a maintenance cost (even a flat one) for fleets, we can surely assume that there are sufficient support vessels to maintain the fleet *assuming that a safe path exists for them to do so*. Alternatively, we could implement an abstract system for fleet tenders based on MoO II's freighters and ewh02b's system.

Fleet tenders are built and placed in a general pool, rather than assigned to a particular fleet. Whenever a supplied fleet is taken by surprise, a number of freighters spawn in the combat proportional to the size of the surprised fleet. These freighters represent the portion of the total pool that was present at the time of the combat, and could then be attacked as a valuable strategic target within the tactical environment.

Fleets undertaking offensive actions shouldn't usually be accompanied by fleet tenders, as they can choose to attack when their vulnerable support ships are not present. Likewise, a fleet that is aware of the attackers should be able to send away its tenders before the attackers arrive.

This modification removes the "random bonus" of having fleet tenders present, and creates a useful role for cloaked ships by explicitly rewarding surprise attacks. Freighters might also spawn when a blockaded fleet is attacked, because there would be no way for the freighters to escape even if there is warning available.

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#72 Post by Geoff the Medio »

Sapphire Wyvern wrote:Economy, organisation and infrastructure are (IMO) the principle determinants of strategic mobility. An army doesn't move at the speed of its vehicles; it moves at the speed of its organization, and an empire willing to expend massive resources can generally expedite that organization significantly. The actual speed of the units is an upper cap on mobility rather than the average.

Anyone who thinks that a high-tech well-trained army will ever be victorious without equally good logistics backup is deluding themselves.
That's nice... but irrelivant. The point is that for gameplay reasons, we may (probably) don't want to make the main factor that determines your fleet ranges to be your "economy". It's really more approrpiate to make it a function of the ships themselves than the empire that's using them... for a game.

Also, what exactly is meant by economy isn't really clear. The Economics tech category deals with Tade stuff, and Production is a separate concept from Trade in the game (they are both major resources produces by all planets and tracked separately...).
Hmm. I think that there is less micromanagement involved if we simply have an obvious UI element displaying the current maintenance cost and anticipated cost for next turn, compared to having to worry about actual fuel levels in each fleet you control.
It's not less micromanagement, and not as simple to understand, because if each fleet's changing position separately contributues to the total cost for the empire, there's no way to change a single thing to change the whole empire's costs... Rather, you have to adjust the flight plans of all your separate fleets at various locations doing various things in order to reduce your single empire cost number. Of course, each individual fleet is a only a fraction of the whole so you have to check all of the fleets, and it's not really obvoius to a player how much moving a certain additional distance with a certain fleet will cost if the number is changing due to a large number of factors, etc...

Conversely, if each ship has some amount of fuel and rate of resupply, then those are the only numbers relevant for that fleet. Those numbers aren't relevant for the whole empire at a separate level, or for any other fleets (excluding some complications relating to merging fleets, I suppose, but that's still mostly only pairwise complication). It's relatively easy for the player to look at a fleet's fuel reserve and supply rate and make a decision based on those numbers for that fleet. The resupply rate could be changing, but if line blockage is an issue, you can assume you'll not be getting any resupply.
A system that actually tracks fleet fuel levels explicitly means that you have to worry about allocation of fleet tenders, etc.
No it doesn't. Each ship would have some amount of supply that it gets each turn at a given supply path length. A fleet would get an amount of supply equal to the sum of all its ships. You wouldn't allocate tenders or have any adjustments to make about how much supply to send, so there is no micromanagement required at all.
Sapphire Wyvern wrote:
Geoff the Medio wrote:In particular, if there were explicit fuel ships, these could be attacked and destroyed only by attacking the fleet itself, whereas supplies could be cut off just by blocking all supply routes.
...the idea that fuel ships can mystically penetrate the blockades imposed on "supply lines", or conversely that ships can magically manifest ammo and food and air but not fuel, is completely illogical and unintuitive.
The fuel ships would not penetrate blockades; they would travel with the fleet. Ships wouldn't magically manifest ammo; they would get it replenished by the supply system. It's not "illogical" if properly explained, and would be intuitive in that you'd have to build and manipulate fuel ships, and would see supply paths indicated on the map when selecting a fleet, making it clear what's going on.

Your discussion on what fuel is or where to get it from a fluff standpoint is irrelivant. A justification could be found for the proposed game mechanic.
Please, let's not over-complicate things by having two separate systems for the same damn thing!
They would not be two systems doing the same thing. They would be two systems doing similar but strategically distinct things: one limits range, especially for larger ships, and makes fleets vulnerable to cloaked attacks on the fleet directly; the other limits use of weapons and makes it beneficial / necessary to maintain a clear path back to a friendly system (and for the other player to break this path).
skdiw wrote:i thought about explicit fuel ships, but then it will get really annoying each time you send a detachment, you got to redistribute fueling ships. and then you have to worry about the ratio between fueling ships and the rest of the fleet. do you need a fuel ship for every other ship? or does a fuel ship support certain number of ship masses.
As discussed in my original proposal, most of these issues were dealt with by making fuel ships limited in particular ways. Specifically, they can only refuel a fleet once, but in doing so, fully refuel the entire fleet. You would need very few of these ships, so would not have any ratio issues to worry about, and could move them around with other ships in the same manner as normal ship reassignment without significant additional micromanagement.
ewh02b wrote:we could abstract/automate fuel ships, except for one detail: When a fleet is attacked away from its Empire, there should be a chance (increasing based on the size of the fleet, from 5% to 50% chance) of there being a fuel ship present in the system, fuelling the fleet.
There should not be any random chance for ships to appear and be with fleets or not. Adding such a significant random factor as this is very irritating and possibly confusing for players. Instead of being in control of where their ships are, players will randomly have ships appearing for no literally reason. It also doesn't really add much that a completely deterministic system wouldn't, unless there's some reason I'm not aware of...

Getting too much into general supply issues than fuel-specific, but I suppose it's a lost cause anyway:
Sapphire Wyvern wrote:Fleet tenders are built and placed in a general pool, rather than assigned to a particular fleet.
Why would the player deal with this step? It seems odd to have a special class of ship that the player has to explicitly build, but which disappear into an abstraction after being built. IMO it would be better to have the player deal with building ships s/he actually ends up controlling and seeing on the map. The supply ships can be abstracted the whole way.
Whenever a supplied fleet is taken by surprise, a number of freighters spawn in the combat proportional to the size of the surprised fleet.
I similarly dislike this suggestion, as it mixes up the player-controlled and -visible ships (the ones s/he builds manually), with the abstracted ones (the supply ships) that the player doesn't deal with or see moving around the map or control in general. A system based around keeping clear and /or cutting of supply lines (not the ships that travel them) is fine, since you don't actually see the ships being blocked and don't build them or notice if they are lost. But if there are freighters / supply ships effectively magically appearing with a player's fleet whenever they are attacked, it changes the supply ships from nebulous abstractions into concrete real game objects... but game objects that have no history or identity before the instant they are created and placed in the player's control (or at least awareness and responsibility). Abstracted and player-manipulated game concepts such as these should not be confused in this manner.

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#73 Post by marhawkman »

Sapphire Wyvern wrote:
There are two ways to reduce Micro in games like this.
One: Model less stuff.
Two: Automate more stuff.
And there is the third way: model stuff in such a way that no automation is necessary. For example, Civ IV Unhealthiness vs. cleaning up pollution in Civ II.

This is, IMO, the ideal solution. Abstract mechanics that create the desired strategic effect.
Um... no.Image that's what I meant by "bizzare gameisms". Abstractions are basically a way to have stuff in a game without actually modeling it.
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#74 Post by Sapphire Wyvern »

marhawkman wrote:
Sapphire Wyvern wrote:
There are two ways to reduce Micro in games like this.
One: Model less stuff.
Two: Automate more stuff.
And there is the third way: model stuff in such a way that no automation is necessary. For example, Civ IV Unhealthiness vs. cleaning up pollution in Civ II.

This is, IMO, the ideal solution. Abstract mechanics that create the desired strategic effect.
Um... no.Image that's what I meant by "bizzare gameisms". Abstractions are basically a way to have stuff in a game without actually modeling it.
I can't agree. "Not modelling" means simply ignoring the existence of some consideration. For instance, assuming that a planet can immediately switch its infrastructure from research to heavy industry.

Abstract modelling refers to modelling these considerations in a way that makes micro-management impossible and automation unnecessary (eg having the aforementioned infrastructure switch occur at a fixed rate).

Detailed, or concrete, modelling refers to including those considerations in a highly detailed and, usually, micro-managey way. For instance, having to build a large series of common buildings, such as auto-factories, robot factories etc.

Another example: ship fuel/supplies
No modelling: ships can go anywhere! There is no maximum range, nor any game penalties imposed for having ships along way away. Ships always have full ammo and can repair normally in any location.

Abstract modelling: lines of supply can be cut and blockaded, but there is no need to allocate particular amounts of haulage to particular fleets. Ships might only be able to repair at designated repair locations.

Detailed modelling: You need to allocate supply haulers to particular fleets. Each ship or fleet has a "supplies" or fuel meter that runs lower and lower the longer the fleet is out of contact. Repairs can only take place at locations which have a stockpile of appropriate materials.

Far, far too detailed modelling: In ship supplies, you need to track levels of sauerkraut and steaks separately. Run out of sauerkraut, and your crew risks scurvy. Run out of steaks, and your morale will suffer. Repairs can only take place if the inventory of your repair base includes the correct widgets (of which there are >250,000 different types per ship class, all of which must be manufactured and stockpiled separately for a "realistic" scenario), and you must negotiate employment agreements with the repair workers if you want them to work on public holidays.

Abstract is fine; it's pretty much the level of FO's existing mechanics. That's where it should stay, IMO.

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#75 Post by ewh02b »

@ Sapphire: Abstract certainly seems to be the way to go.

I don't think that a system that leaned more one way or another away from abstract would be as fun. My definition of fun includes some realism, and some sort of semi-realistic limits on ship range, supply, and repairs would really make the game more of a challenge, without being a chore.

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