[New build - DEFAULT] 22w09a: The Fuel Saga #3: Revenge of the Tank

[tsunamayo]

The next instalment in the trilling fuel saga!

Fuel has been extended to Lightcruise engine. Power consumption have been rebalanced and a bunch quality of life features where added. Check out the full list:

Lightcruise engine: Lightcruise engine will now require fuel to function properly. Like the reactor they have an internal tank of 250l for a 1m one (1/4 of its volume). Their power draw have been greatly reduced accordingly. As a result existing ship power usage balance will now be much lower.

Power Rebalancing: There is now a bigger difference between idle and charge consumption for weapon and shield bricks: from 4x to 8x. The goal is to have an active but idle ship consume little fuel to minimize "fuel anxiety" should the player want a to explore at a slow pace. Bigger fuel draw will be linked to actual gameplay like lightcruise travel or space battle. Inactive ship wont draw power until someone fly them. This change will not require any tweak to the number of reactors needed on existing build. To better understand a ship power balance there is now two "Power Draw" stats: a "Power Draw at Idle" and a "Power Draw at Charge". It is okay to have "Power Draw at Charge" over 100% (you might want to add Capacitors to smooth out any potential down time).

A few note on balancing:

• Both reactor and engine can function at full power on their internal tank for 6 min.
• It means that a 1m reactor/engine piped to a 1000L tank will be operational for 30 min at full draw.
• Idle time will be around 48 min and 4 hours on internal and 1000L tank respectively.
• This means actual real gameplay time will be between 30 min and 4h for a reasonable tank.
• Pipe flow requirement has been reduced: a single 0.25m pipe is enough to power 4x 1m reactors/engines.
• Check your uptime estimate in the entity codex stats screen. You will have to configure your tank first.

Quality of Life:

• Fuel debug mode: you can visualize an X-ray view of your ship system and piping. The direction of flow is also displayed! Check it to make sure your piping is working as expected.
• Pipe to tank connection: a little brick will spawn once a pipe connects to a tank, reactor or engine. This allow a better visual feedback and is more believable on the edge of systems.
• New Tank Join. Flat pipe allowing to connect two adjacent tanks, reactors or thrusters.
• Idle and Charge range stats are added.
• HUD: fuel level widget added.
• Tank config screen: set the tank type in order for the HUD and stats to be computed accurately. This does not impact how the tank will work.

Cheers!

[tsunamayo]

Build is up, it was quite a heavy one - I expect a bunch of bugs... HUD element will be tweaked (I re-used the subsystem for now). Tell me what you think of the new balancing! Cheers

[ProPeach]

Wow, a lot of fantastic changes here! Really like the direction you are going for balance, and the QoL changes are brilliant as well. Looking forward to testing it all out

[Arutus]

will you be looking at shipyard bugs next?

[ProPeach]

will you be looking at shipyard bugs next?

The shipyard bug you posted #4608 was marked as fixed 3 hours ago, it'll be live later this week

[Kadzar]

Cool update, this is something I've been looking forward to for a while!

Trying this out with an existing blueprint that will need to be reconfigured, I'm noticing that this bottom-most tank doesn't seem to have flow like the ones above it from some reason.

Also, these tanks at the back seem to have pipe connectors coming out of them and clipping out the back, and I don't understand why.

Blueprint for reference: Saucer Shuttle mk 2 v 0.21.zip

[Uncle-Ulty]

I can't place the fuel tank through bricks anymore...

[Kaiser-Indrasil]

@edit: Verifying file integrity solved the issue!

I've restarted the game and Steam several times now, changed back and forth between versions, set my update urgency to High Priority, and still, no luck...

[Kaiser-Indrasil]

Much like Ulty has stated, you can't clip through fuel tanks, even the tank joins.

[COMICLER]

How does one turn on the pipe debug mode

[Kaiser-Indrasil]

@COMICLER F1

[tsunamayo]

I can't place the fuel tank through bricks anymore...

@Uncle-Ulty Where you able to do that before? If yes then it was a bug, only pipe are intended to clip through hull. @Kaiser-Indrasil This is normal it is not made to be used like that. You put your first tank, then the link, then the second tank. What you are showing is only possible with F5 btw.

[Uncle-Ulty]

Yes, we could do that, and tbh it was perfect in both aesthetically and functionally ways. Aesthetically cuz it allows us to make better details on exposed tanks, without the annoying hitbox restriction. and functionally cuz sometimes we need to clip some bricks...

also, pipes only clip on bricks, they can't be placed inside the 1/2 and 1/4 tiles.

[Uncle-Ulty]

Also, the flowing direction doesn't show on every pipe, and in some cases it points in both directions when you have a pipe connecting two tanks, or a tank and a 6x way pipe.

https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/73253472/156542839-9f8c5903-bc37-4cfe-8a11-9ac186dd21dc.mp4

[tsunamayo]

Well it was a bug, I wont re-introduce it for plenty of reasons. Yes the hitbox sucks, it will stay like that for a while but hopefully one day I should be able to fix it. Now the flow is only showing the current flow. So it might be zero indeed if your reactor is full and your ship is inactive for example, as now there is no power consumption of nobody is flying the ship. You can toggle an option in the codex entity to force systems on. Then the weird back and forth between two tanks is also what happens actually, those tank are in an equilibrium. They constantly exchange small amount of gas to stay in equilibrium. Cheers