Let's Talk Fuel

[Barrier]

Fuel is the most ubiquitous commodity in space. All ships need it, and Houses have developed local alternatives to support their operation. In the lore, fuel access plays a major role as a plot-point, with the 80-Year war arguably being fought primarily over fuel control. Fuel is necessary for any industrial operations, which are the backbone of most relevant plot points enjoyed in vanilla and disco alike. More generally, "fuel as a resource" plays a major role as a sci-fi trope, with its own pros and cons. I would like to convince you that there are more pros than cons to it in Freelancer.

Basic premise: all ships require fuel to move; fuel becomes perishable, simulating its inrp usage (or denaturation); fuel becomes a multi-unit commodity, but all ships increase hold size to maintain existing trade balance; a new class of ship gets bonuses to carrying fuel (e.g. hegemon & ore, liners & passengers) - perhaps the little-used medium transports.

Now, I will outline a list of the most relevant pros and cons that I could think of, and their elaboration. Please feel free to add more, or discuss the existing ones.

Cons:

• Merely playing the game will now require a monetary and attentional investment. This can be offset by boosting the profit of existing money-makers and tinkering with fuel capacity.
  
• Running out of fuel may prematurely end your game session. There are many solutions here besides the obvious (just plan ahead lol), which may not be obvious to new players.
  
• Running out of fuel in a fight will likely result in a very unpleasant death. This can be solved by judiciously using fleet oilers, ships which are meant to refuel fleets before they go into combat.
  

Pros:

• A whole sub-type of RP is now possible and in fact necessary for efficient gameplay - fuel hauling. Ideally, a fleet has a carrier which houses the fighters who have very small fuel capacities, and is supported by at least one oiler, who will need to keep everyone topped up. This also makes both of these ships important tactical targets. Moreover, fuel haulers can prowl Sirius, on the lookout for poor sods who ran out of gas or simply need a top-up, for an extra charge.
  
• The spending of money is required for a healthy, interesting, and dynamic economy, and fuel will provide a small but steady outlet towards that end. This will ensure that all other econ systems are being adequately used, even by players who have a lot of money saved up. The fuel itself will also serve as a trading commodity like it already does, but to a far greater degree.
  
• While needing to monitor your fuel and running out may seem like chores, I believe that both may lead to interesting interactions which can deepen the flavor of existing character RP. If you run out of fuel and open a distress call, will your next visitor be a friendly hauler, or a pirate after easy pickings? And if you decide to respond to that distress call, are you sure you're not heading into a trap?
  

I believe all mechanics are already in-place to make this work, but it remains to be seen if the idea has merit. I would love to hear people's opinions.

[Big Bison Bessie]

What would the consequences be of running out of fuel? No cruise engines? No movement at all? With the low server population hours we can't guarantee rescue operations like the fuel rats are even possible.

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[Tenshi]

I'm very supportive of this idea as it can introduce a lot of roleplay possibilities that certain people already roleplay simply for the sake of roleplaying it. No longer having to come up with arbitrary fuel-related yapping during your roleplay about how far you can go or how long a trip takes and instead having to base such things off of actual ingame mechanics is something I very much welcome.

In addition to the above, it makes carriers feel more like carriers, making Forward Operating Base (FOB) roleplay not only more fun and engaging, but also borderline mandatory for operations that occur far from the nearest friendly base.

I really like this idea and I'd love to see it coming to the game. Huge + by me.

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[Culbrelai]

I am wholly uninterested in Freelancer becoming an escape from tarkov analogue in space.

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#NotMySNAC

[Kauket]

we're slowly moving away from the arcade and free movement style of the game if we start to think about stuff like this. and as prob mentioned, systems would need to get redesigned. again.

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[Big Bison Bessie]

I am of the opinion that if something like this gets implemented we can't strand people outright. I would say you'd want to keep thrusters and impulse viable, but no cruise engines perhaps. That way you can bail yourself out, limp to a base, and defend yourself rather than being totally dead in space.
I can't speak to whether or not this is a good idea yet. It's interesting though.

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[Lord Caedus]

I can only see this working if the fuel doesn't take up cargo space, and to be perfectly honest I don't think it would be a very enjoyable mechanic outside of niche roleplay scenarios. I can appreciate it for those scenarios, but outside of that its completely unnecessary.

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[R.P.Curator]

Cons:
- Fuel consumption and carriage capability has and it imposes limits - fighting, trading, exploring. Sounds fun, but its tedious and another thing to watch out in an already crowded game with a small community that has a propensity for toxicity.
- It will limit trading for traders and pirates and will funnel them into certain routes with access to "petrol stations". This would be the 2nd time that the map and routes decrease in size since 5.0.
- Chases: pirate bomber chases a 3.6Ker or even a 5ker. A snub will have a smaller fuel reservoir and will consume it faster than a 3.6 Ker or a 5ker. So this would benefit only the traders and power traders.
- Fleet fights will be tedious "defend the resupply" ship or "destroy their resupply ship and run around until they remain out of fuel".
- If you run out of fuel while exploring Kepler or any Uncharted, and nobody is online to give you a cup of fuel. What then? I'll not mention friends trolling by "forgetting" or simply not resupplying you with fuel.
- Sieges will be even more obnoxious than they already are
- Mining in Earhart and Uncharted will become a true adventure, obnoxious and dependent on fuel
- Fuel and refueling implies more time spend in game or taking time from some other task to do it. This reduces the "fun in game". Some of us don't have it. Its added time that for many is a no go, which will shorten game sessions by making them tedious and "I have to fucking refuel!" will be heard in all chats and voice channels. What happens when an expeditionary snub fleet goes into a series of systems where they can't dock to refuel? What then? "Oh, you have to plan ahead and get a tanker with you". Ugh, please no.
Also, Omicrons are 100K or more. Where do you want to refuel there?
Its a dose of realism that is nice to have later, when the community is larger and more peaceful, with routes and ways to refuel so it doesn't turn out to be tedious and obnoxious.

[9th.Legion]

No.

- No need to elaborate, don't make the game more complex as it is now, ty.

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[St.Denis]

So I suspect that this would be something along the lines of the Cloaking Batteries (CBs).

Instead of calling them CBs they would be Fuel Cells (FCs).

The faster you go, the quicker the FCs would be used up.

I could see that this would make Docking Modules more of a useful item, ie, Snubs docking with a ship that has a DM would be able to purchase FCs from said ship. If that is the case, then said ship would have its own FCs and 'carry' spare FCs to fuel other ships.

The only problem I see with this is the silly thing with CBs being used up faster when in Trade Lanes. If this was fixable, then I could see this working.

People would have to plan their routes a lot more carefully, making sure they have friendly/neutral bases to dock on along their route, so they can refuel.

As for running out of fuel, you could restrict the ships to a 'limp home' speed (say 30 speed).

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