Just throwing this out - The U.S. stopped using liquid fuels in the 1960's... and we are almost assuredly within 50 years of ending solid fuel use. In 1000 years, there is NO way we would be using either. Look at my PREVIOUS POST for comparison numbers...

Maybe if hydrogen was used not only in the reactor, but for kind of a nuclear rocket engine, too. I think we've been researching one of those.

Perhaps an engine that uses electromagnetic fields to shoot a stream of ionized particles out the back of the ship. It would require an aneutronic fusion reactor to be efficient enough to work in a spaceship, since Deuterium-Tritium produce mostly neutrons, which are used to heat water to turn turbines to produce their electricity, while an aneutronic reactor produces almost all charged particles. Some of those particles could be fired out of the ship, accelerated by electromagnetic fields powered by the reactor. This would be a more realistic future technology (since that is a good point, LostCommander), produce much more thrust with much less fuel mass than a liquid or solid rocket, and it would use hydrogen as fuel, which is abundant. It would be highly unlikely that anyone would run out of fuel, since the fuel would last awhile.

Meh. It would probably be much easier to just use a high-power photon drive (my suspicion is that boost is already something like that, since the light intenstiy is increased). A photon drive exploits the fact that photons have a mass equivalent and thus deliver an impulse when pushed around (just FYI).

Making a fusion reactor feed both energy production (maybe not a water vapour but an argon gas system? Doesn't this sound much cooler?) and a newtonian drive (which is what you suggested) would be the devil to control (too much instabilities, outlets, inputs.... argh). The limitations here are physical in nature, not technical, and can as such not easily be surmounted.

This is some really interesting discussion, both sides make good arguments.

In general I like the idea of fuel, on the whole I think it would add a fun new dimension to gameplay... "energy management" as Snax puts it.

I'm against requiring fuel for in-sector maneuvering; if you run out then you would be stuck drifting in space which is no fun, and if fuel automatically recharges well then, why have it in the first place? I can see how it could come into play during long extended dogfights, but Turbo already drains energy steadily and to add an additional fuel source on top of this just doesn't seem to add enough to gameplay to justify the additional complexity. K.I.S.S. should definitely apply to the fuel system if one were ever added.

On the other hand I think using fuel for intra-system warps and whs brings up some interesting gameplay possibilities:

-Assuming cap ships have a longer range than fighters, it would give fighters a reason to ride along with cap ships.

-The amount of fuel used per jump could be directly related to the mass of the ship, leading to some tactical decisions such as whether or not to jettison heavy cargo in order to increase range.

-As FatStrat mentions, there is an added element of danger when exploring; 'running out' of fuel, but I prefer the term 'energy management.' Flight plans, anyone? Whether or not this is more 'fun' seems open to debate, but I think it would be on an intra-system scale. More on this later.

-Economics! The price of fuel at each station could be tied to the dynamic economy and the faction system.

Okay, why do I think this would be more fun? Four words: it makes you think. I'm not advocating micromanagement: fuel doesn't have to be any more complex than a bar that gradually depletes with each jump.

There is already a lot going on with in-sector reckoning: proximity warnings, 3000m clearance, radar, sector list, jump points... these things are all monitored by a veteran pilot on an almost subconscious level. Getting around a sector safely actually takes some thinking... this is a good thing.

Intra-system navigation is a walk in the park by comparison. As roguelazer points out you can fly around the universe in 26 minutes without a second thought. I think fuel can be to intrasystem navigation what clearance is to in-sector navigation; Something that isn't necessarily complex, but takes a little strategy. It would make the universe an effectively 'bigger' place without actually adding to travel time.

Objections.
1: What if you run out of fuel?

It's no fun to be stranded, I think everyone agrees that's a bad thing in terms of gameplay. On the other hand you have to give fuel a point otherwise it wouldn't be worth implementing. FatStrat mentions the /explode command, but of course then you lose your ship and cargo which is a bummer.

Don't know if anyone has suggested this, but I think one solution to this problem would be a /recall command which, after a 10-second timer, transports your ship and all its cargo back to the last station you docked at.

So you were naive enough to run out of fuel, this doesn't mean you have to die or lose your ship and cargo or wait for god knows how long for a passing trader, you just don't get to where you were going. The ten second timer prevents this from being abused in combat situations, just like logging off.

2: What if you run out of money?

So it costs money to get places (unless you hitch a ride). Well nothing in life is free, unless you are just sightseeing remember to carry a little cargo or take a mission to cover your fuel expense. But what happens when you are flat broke?

I'd suggest making the s-port mining beam free (gov't issued) and making it available at all stations. All stations have asteroids, if you are flat broke grab a freebus and mining beam and mine some ore until you have a little cash to start running trade or escort missions. If you dug yourself all the way to the bottom you gotta climb back out.

I realize Fuel may not be a practical idea at present; Given the size of our playerbase getting around the universe for free almost seems necessary. With 30 people online it's as though the entire universe is our backyard. Eventually a lot more people are going to be playing this game however, and 30 people per system may be a common number. In that case the universe is no longer the backyard, the system, or even the sector, is the backyard.

The idea behind fuel is the same as the idea behind limiting universe chat (see: immersion); When this game goes massive the universe ought to feel like a big place, and flying from one far end to the other should take a little consideration in my mind.

I know I'm repeating myself, but I agree. I'm not so sure about your /recall idea though. Fuel would also prevent people from wandering too far into enemy territory (without a capship escort at least). They couldn't dock anywhere and wouldn't be able to refuel.

I really believe this would be a very good feature. Keep it simple. Escape Velocity got it just right I think. The refuel button could go right next to the repair button in the station interface.

I just realized this is similar to Phaserlight's post, but....

Someone mentioned how they liked Escape Velocity's way of handling fuel. Maybe instead of having to worry about fuel in normal space, what if ships had special jump fuel that are used up in in-system and wormhole jumps. Imagine if the Centurion only had fuel for 7 jumps (I imagine that would be a lower bound, seeing as it is the smallest fighter).

That would mean that starting from the station, and barring any ion storm encounters, it can make it through three wormholes and safely to another station to refuel. It would mean that cargo runs require more planning in order to not run out of fuel, but you don't need to worry about running out of fuel in combat because "normal space" is handled differently.

I liked Phaserlight's idea of mass affecting jump efficiency, so kinda like EPA estimates on cars, the figure listed when you buy your ship will list the uppermost bound (unarmed with just a battery) for jumps, and maybe provide a small spreadsheet listing jump efficiency as mass increases upon the player's request. So if you're a behemoth, you'll have to keep a fairly close eye on your "fuel efficiency meter" which basically calculates the number of jumps you can take as you load or offload cargo so that you don't find yourself stranded somewhere. <-- this idea isn't central to my fuel suggestion, but would add an extra amount of strategy and forethought on the player's part

If you were to run out of jump fuel, you could easily shoot off a message to a station within the system, and depending on your faction standings, pay either slightly more than normal price for fuel, or significantly more if you're not liked. In which case, it would be possible to request fuel from other players. There'd be some sort of game-managed fuel/money transfer, in which the player recieves one jump's worth of fuel for a negociated price.

What if you run out of money, well, that's kinda tough. You could trade cargo, possibly, or hope that you can get a friend to transfer fuel for free. The other possiblity is that all ships have a bussard ramscoop, or something similar. Basically if you run out of gas, you have to fly your ship around until there's enough fuel for a jump. The faster you go, the faster your fuel increases. This process, however, would take time. Upwards of 10 minutes. So where a fuel request to a station only requires the time it takes for the "refueling bird" to un-dock and warp to your sector, this process penalizes you for not having enough money by taking up your time, but doesn't leave you completely stranded.

I don't like the automated transaction idea. Keep transactions as they are: mutual trust between players. Sometimes people get screwed over, but that'll be the first and last time.

CrippledPidgeon, I was always talking about only using up fuel when jumping. See my post on the first page.

http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/14728#185211

It would be really easy to write a technical explanation of why jumping uses a fuel system different than normal thrust. You could say to create the warp tunnel, the engine needs a massive burst of energy obtained from a source other than the normal power cell. That alternate source (liquid fuel, antimatter, whatever, etc...) is finite and needs to be replenished every few times you warp.

I'd say keep the current boost system the way it is (using the normal power cell). Just have fuel in regards to warping. If you run out of money, just make the free bus come with a full tank. You can always buy a bus and do a few missions.

Agreed; it seems as though our ships use a somewhat different form of propulsion for warping, what's not to say they have a separate warp drive in addition to their regular gravitic pulse engines?

The "free bus comes with a full tank" thing sounds like an even better solution to the problem of running out of credits, I didn't even think of that. Man, the bus really is the hippie van of the universe.

CP's transaction idea definitely sounds like another option when running out of fuel... in fact it would be cool if players and NPCS could jettison a set amount of fuel as a cargo canister which could be picked up by other players. This way you could potentially have a buddy, wingmate, or hired NPC come to your rescue when stranded.

The /recall idea might sound cheap but remember in general you want to minimize "downtime" in games... maybe you don't want to wait for someone to come rescue you, but you still don't want to lose your cargo. Many people seem to object to fuel because the danger of running out and getting stranded would be a monkey on their back (even if others might enjoy the added challenge).

With a /recall command, the penalty for running out of fuel wouldn't be unduly harsh: hardly a penalty at all really. If you wanted to jump all over without worrying about running out of fuel and losing your ship, you could. However, if you wanted to complete your mission or get to wherever you had planned on going you *would* have to figure out a way to get some more fuel while in space if you ran out.

Here's another idea: CP mentioned ion storms briefly and how they would cost an extra jump. What if your fuel slowly recharged while in an ion storm (a.k.a. warp storm), or if ramscoops were implemented what if they worked twice as fast in an ion storm? Aside from the ever present danger from bots and pirates, hitting an ion storm might not be such a bad thing after all, particularly if one were on a reconnaisance mission deep in enemy territory...

Your idea about being able to refuel in ion storms is interesting. I might like that. Then again, it might make storms something people won't try to avoid and that's what they are supposed to be; something to avoid.

I still don't like your /recall idea. Running out of fuel should have consequences. Waiting for a buddy to help you or self-destructing seems reasonable to me. Otherwise the whole thing would be almost pointless and not worth implementing.

I agree that fuel should be purchasable in cargo containers, so you could put 120 fuel containers in your moth. I'm assuming each one will only partly refill a tank, maybe 1 container per jump if a normal tank has enough fuel for 6 jumps. This way, if you didn't have much cargo, you could fill the rest of your cargo hold with extra fuel. You'd have to add an option to transfer the fuel from your cargo hold to your tank while in-flight.

Have the devs made any comments on whether or not they would consider adding a fuel system? If not, can a dev please chime in with a comment or two?

I like fuel a lot. It would make racing require more thinking :)

[STAMP OF APPROVAL]

What if we called batteries Generators and each generator would have its own fuel to energy rate which determines the energy efficent rate of a generator.

There could also be different types of fuel. Different fuels can increase the power of ship. The standard fuel, which let over waiste from a station, would be sold for free since the stations want to get rid of it. This could also give people that a broke or people that like to save money, a way to not always be able to afford fuel. This fuel bonus rate would be 1:1. Each ship stats would have a rating like this. This means that if the all the stats of the ship would remain the same. Then there could be a fuel with a 1:1.1 in its weapons and a 1:1 in everything else. This means if a energy weapons does 100 damage, then with this fuel in your ship, you would do 110 damage. There could be fuels for max speed, acceleration and fuel efficentcy. In this last case, if there was a reactor that gets 100 energy per 1 ounce of fuel and this fuel gave it a fuel efficiency bonus of 1: 1.5; then the reactor would give 150 energy per ounce of fuel.

The different combinations of fuel advantages would add a new level of game play to this game. Fuels would weigh different amounts per volume. A fuel that weighs 20 pounds per square meter and gave the same amount of energy( per volume) as a fuel that weighed 25 pounds per square meter would cost more since it would leave the ship lighter after completely filling the tank. Some generators my be designed for high energy output but have terrible fuel efficient which would give someone an annormus amout of power at a time buy cost them heavily for using it. There could even be generators that are designed to us fuel a different efficientcies. That way you can get a higher power max but less fuel efficientcy during combat and little power but high efficiency for the other times.

Then there comes the problem of running out of fuel. One idea that will not make the user completely dependent on an outside source for help is have all ship gain a 5 to 10 energy charges a second just from solar cells on the ships surface. That way if you run out of fuel you can slowly make your way back to a station or person. If you are found like this by a pirate then you are still helpless to a pirate or NPC because no one can fight with that kind of charge rate.

Different generators could use different combinations of fuels and have different or the same efficiency rates for each type of fuel it uses. I imagine that the generators that give the most advantage would be limited to few to one type of fuel.

It makes absolutely no sense for something to weight aything per square meter. You mean cubic meter, and a cubic meter of "cold" water weighs 1000kg.

From that we can find the size of the ingame "cu" since a "cu" ingmae of purified water weighs 100kg.
Anyway.

I don't like the fuel idea, it just looks like an extra annoyance to me.

[Stamp of Disapproval]

I realize I am bringing a dead topic back to life, but I think it still shows merit. Fuel, or "Battery Juice" is obviously disbursed as a source of propulsion. Mass is converted to energy, and used up. So, to some effect, this could mean that smaller ships with faster charge drains would be more effected, thus limiting range of the "superior" fighters we all use.

To sum it all up, Capships could provide the necessary recharging facilities for the thirsty fighters, and fighters would become very impractical to travel around the galaxy without stopping at every other station on the way.

The part of the battery that is used for traversing through wormholes between systems, would probably cost even more "Juice" than just jumping sector to sector.

Anyway, I know I'm probably going to get flamed for this, but I seriously think this would provide interesting strategic gameplay for larger scale battles and refueling/rearming depots.

I agree with you, Jim Kirk. I think that would be better.

Why thank you.

I just feel like it's one of those necessary things in a space simulation type game.
I know, it is a game, and it's not 100% accurate, but there should be some kind of strategy to launching fighters in certain sectors where they have a defined range. Hell, I'd even consider certain fighters to have no jump abilities at all and just depend on the capship to carry them where they are needed most. Granted these fighters would have better performance abilities because they don't have jump batts.

Also, setting up an ammo and fuel depot into a contested sector may prove crucial for time constraints of either war-force. I'd like to even see capturing vessels introduced. (NEW THREAD)

No. Given the fact that we employ gravitic drives for propulsion eliminates the need for fuel.

Not to mention that in order to have constant coverage of the universe with FARP, we'd need tons of capships. Not going to happen anytime soon.

Hmm, toshiro's got an excellent point. Still, I have this idea; what if all ships were equipped with some sort of device that provided for faster than light transportation? It could like, open an artificial wormhole or something, that would be way faster than that retarded 220m/s gravitic propulsion. But since it was so much more powerful, this inter-system jumping would probably require some sort of finite amount of fuel.

Anywho, the thing about making fuel canisters as a cargo widget is that trade ships would be at the advantage for long distance journeys. However, if jump efficiency was also weighed against the mass of a ship, then things would kinda' balance themselves out. A 'moth making a bulk procurement mission would take a *ton* more fuel, but on the other hand would have the space for it. So, a trader would have to consider carrying the right amounts of extra fuel, because if something went awry (ion storm) then he'd have to jettison some of the valuables, or call in for help.

Of course, if jumping sectors took all the same amounts of fuel, then there'd be no point to plotting to avoid storms. So maybe bouncing off empty sectors shouldn't cost nearly as much fuel, since there's no nearby gravitational disturbances to throw off the artificial wormhole, or whatever. For that matter, perhaps different systems, sectors, or whatever would have some variation in fuel consumption. A trader would have to truly know the territory to maximize his profit.

Also, traders might start thinking about the weight of a good being traded, instead of just strictly profit margins. Honestly, how many of you even look at what a commodity weighs before purchasing? Since heavy goods would take so much more fuel to transport, and therefor had to be delivered more slowly, their values would pretty much skyrocket. A 'moth XC load of AAP's might be worth enough to make money a real issue.

I'm sorry, SMM, but your logic is a bit flawed. The way we play now, gravity is inexistent. But gravity is the only force in space (neglecting solar wind amongst other, minute ones) worth reckoning with, and worth overcoming. Thus, if fuel were introduced, we'd need to introduce gravity.

If you have played Space Simulator, or even Moon Lander (Tractor Beam, whatsitsname, though those are 2D), you know how difficult this can be. We'd exclude and alienate all people not interested in true 3D-navigation.

Why not keep it simple, and leave it the way it is? If we abslutely need 'FTL' travel at beck and call, we could introduce capital ships capable of creating their own wormholes (at the cost of various abilities like fleeing, fighting or carrying cargo. Think Dune).

Okay,

1. What does that have anything to do with my post?

2. Gravity is already implemented in this game. It's just that since you can't travel near any particularly heavy objects, you never get a chance to experience it. Duh!