[SUGGESTION] Auto-piping option for fuel, etc

[nokturnihs]

Hi, just a suggestion to reduce headaches with fuel piling, etc and that is to have an (optional) build tool or setting to use Auto-piping (hides, connects fuel systems automatically hidden within blocks). This could be done simply by forcing different systems (fuel, etc) to assume they're connected and render nothing (no hidden pipes, etc) or you could create a system that would try and find valid paths. This second option would be a LOT of work but it's there. Either way this should add more flexibility to play styles and allow admins to disable the feature in multiplayer. The people who want to spend the time with the routing logic can, the people who do not don't have to.

Allowing people to play the game different ways seems like a great way to maximize your player base. Just a thought as I'm sure more issues will drop related to piping and routing. Something similar could easily be used for mining too or item logistics.

[Dwarf-LordPangolin]

Having had a chance to look at the fuel system for a while, I agree -- specifically with the first option. Being forced to deal with pipes, tubes, etc. is simply not worth the effort. I would prefer things to just automatically be connected. This is especially true for smaller things like hoverbikes or shuttles, where space is very limited. Space Engineers' conveyor system was largely a pain to deal with, and I feel this is heading in the same direction, because crawling around inside my ships trying to find space for pipes is incredibly annoying. Even with pipes being able to go through other blocks, there's not enough room for everything. Pipes just aren't fun.

If players need to control what is connected with what, let them use the link tool: then only tanks/cargo that are linked to other things will transfer to them. Simple as linking a tank to a reactor. Plus a lot of the required elements are already in the game.

However, if the game simply must have pipes, the flow rate system absolutely has to go. That is a mechanic that sparks absolutely no joy, and is simply annoying to worry about. Not even Space Engineers worries about flow rate; the only games I can think of that do are Stormworks and Kerbal Space Program.

[SL-Nokz]

I feel like I can never properly understand how the current fuel system works. I watched a few videos but every time I build my ship, try to insert tanks, reactors, and engines. I pipe them all together but then it seems like my tank just automatically empties in five seconds.

I understand the thought behind fuel but in a game like this where people want to be creative and build things it absolutely takes away from that. But I also understand this is meant to be a game that's actually playable and it's not only about building.

Sadly for me, creative building is what I love, and worrying about fuel piping and what not going all through the ship to some of my more unique designs, is just a headache.

[nokturnihs]

Yeah I'm one of the original big backers from tsuna's first Kickstarter and this game has changed a lot since then. Sadly I'm not super into the fuel system. The development been influenced pretty heavily by space engineers I think and i gotta say that's my least favorite building/survival game set in space. I'm also not sure how in hell we're supposed to add fuel mechanics to child entities unless we're just not supposed to at all, which kind of kills most of the joy of those child entities as it solidifies the square in space meta....

[Dwarf-LordPangolin]

So after talking with a bunch of folks and thinking about it, I've been able to pin down one, specific cause of a lot of the frustration with the piping system as far as I'm concerned:

The weird dimensions of the basic fuel tank.

As an example, I'm currently trying to add fuel to a hoverbike that I made, and because it's so small there's not a ton of space available for fuel. Fair enough, that's part of the challenge. But what makes adding fuel tanks even more challenging is the fact that the basic fuel tank effectively uses a completely different grid than everything else does. Here's what it looks like:

That is actually a very decent amount of space for any other system; you could fit a lot of reactors in there (for a hoverbike), or shields. But because the fuel tank doesn't work on the same proportions as the rest of the system blocks, it makes for a very awkward situation.

Thankfully, we have the transparent tank block, which is a lifesaver in this situation, because it will actually fit. But the piping system would be vastly improved if the fuel tank was either changed to scale along the same dimensions as the other blocks, or (possibly preferably, since making rounded fuel tanks is nice to have) a fuel tank that is a rectangular solid was added; bonus points because these are used IRL for things like boats. Actually, this picture is a perfect example of what I'm talking about:

Rectangular shape, and the dimensions have been precisely scaled to fit the available space. That's what we need to be able to do with fuel tanks. Adding a fuel tank block that fits into the current grid that everything else uses would alleviate a lot of the frustration around piping ATM.

[BigBadKangaroo]

I actually enjoyed the time when fuel tanks could clip through basic blocks. It gave some extra spaces where tanks could fit inside a ship.

I don't know if it's possible but it would be genius to be able to place down fuel tank blocks that connect to each other to increase the fuel amount. A bit like the wood block does with it's texture - but in functional.

[nokturnihs]

I actually like both of those ideas quite a bit. Regular scaling blocks that can be expanded and can be clipped into blocks would be nice as well. In either case it would be a functional approach. If you have an Auto-piping option you'd need a flag on your blueprints that say piped/not piped but it wouldn't be too bad to grab a BP from the workshop for example and add in your own piping if that option is disabled where you play. We still need a proper way to connect piping across child entities unless there's something I'm missing... Having a tank that drops down for refueling at a station probably isn't that hard to work out considering we have FTL travel in the game and antigravity....

[Dwarf-LordPangolin]

Letting fuel tanks clip through basic blocks would definitely alleviate a lot of the issues as well. The pipes do already anyway.

As far as child entities go, my suggestion would be to just make all hinges, rotators, etc. capable of transferring fuel and inventory. Hook a pipe up to the parent end, and another to the child end, and the game treats them as connected. When Space Engineers added those kinds of blocks, it was met with much rejoicing. That would solve the child entity issue pretty much at a stroke.

Having listened to a bunch of people give their feedback elsewhere, I need to change my thoughts on this. Pipes should stay, but the kind of quality of life changes discussed here would make them a lot better.

[SL-Nokz]

I like those ideas. I honestly think I'd be happier just building my own fuel tanks somehow (shape wise), I just think it would make more sense. You could fit them into more places and allow them to be as large as you need. The challenge would be smaller fuel tanks, though.

[nokturnihs]

I'd still like the option to opt out through auto piping. A fuel line in a car is incredibly small. I also still feel like if I wanted to play space engineers I'd just play space engineers. I mean we have antigravity generators and even a quarter block is about 4x larger than you'd likely need to transport fuel in liquid or power form. Fiber-optic wire is incredibly small. I'm not saying people can't pipe, but having an option for people not having to would be great. Currently it'd be difficult to mount engines on wings that are on child entities without multiple tanks and frankly speaking refueling would make that design so impractical no one would ever want to fly one. Pipes are significantly reducing building creativity and if they NEED to be there we need all the moving blocks to support fuel transfer in addition to having standard size tanks (1/4 grid align and up with modular expansion) and flow shouldn't be a thing. I understand difficulty and class mechanics but we have FTL travel, gravity generators and energy weapons. We pretty much solved pressure, basic wiring and pneumatics hundreds of years ago and we're still using a traditional gas tank? So I guess it breaks immersion too for me at least.

[SL-Nokz]

You bring up some very valid points, and I feel like it's the problem with all modern space games. We have these amazing technologies yet like you said we are still using archaic forms of fueling.

I played starmade before this game and I honestly loved it but it kind of died. The early versions of the game though had an energy system that was kind of like a battery, and a capacitor.

You had energy blocks that basically worked like reactors and the more you build the more power per second they would make. And you had capacitor blocks that basically increased your max charge or Max holding power.

They shy away from that build design due to people building massive capital ships and even though the power gains would get smaller and smaller the larger larger you build a ship, you could still theoretically build one massive ship with massive power. I just think that design makes sense and I hate that games go away from it because they are scared of people building capital ships.

I wish we would've had that basic design in this game. It solves all of our fuel and piping issues. I just figure if we have a technology we have maybe we are using gravity to produce power through our reactors, or dark matter, or who knows whatever else we maybe using.

[tsunamayo]

Hello all, sorry for the lack of update I am still absorbed into the terrain shenanigans. Thanks for your feedback. There is several things at play here so I am gonna list them here:

• It seems there is a lot of frustrating things still, I want to address those. If I had to drop things that didnt work at one point there would be nothing in the game. I will address them one by one. I will check the tank, yes the format is awkward, it is because of the side. I agree I should change it. Worst case I will add another square one (which I might do anyway to offer to variety)
• Of course retro-fitting existing ship already packed is gonna be a nightmare. @nokturnihs @Dwarf-LordPangolin for your ship currently in game being used as NPC you dont have to bother with this, I will have them use the no fuel option anyway as this will also make the game faster.
• If fuel consumption rate is still problematic dont hesitate to raise an issue (with your bp) I will look into it.
• I will do something for children entity, yes mechanisms will carry fuel. Yes that is a feature gap for now!
• Also you only really need to pipe from from tanks to reactors, lightcruise engines and to the harvester. The mini thruster dont require fuel. Every other system require power, and power is delivered magically. That does not seems too excessive to me. But of course it has to be seamless!
• I think I will have to increase pipe rate otherwise fuel harvesting might takes forever or require a lot of pipes.
• I totally get that the current player base in more into creative mode (otherwise they would likely not have followed the game). But the fuel is just a mechanism to make survival interesting. @SL-Nokz If you dont want to care about fuel, you can deactivate the option inside the entity codex page. That being said I am open to add another option for people that want to care about fuel, but dont want to care about piping (on the other side I also rely on your feedback to improve fuel!). But how that would work if I want to add multi-fuel? Or fuel being used in crafting logic? I dont want to add something that will make my life impossible later on, and that would require to be dropped which would then generate frustration...
• I know the 6 way "connector" is also frustrating, people think it works like a pipe but it dont. It works like a tank. I will try to make it work like a pipe though.
• I will also likely add other reactor type at one point, but the void (or nuclear) one would be a higher tier one.

I short please continue to throw at me your difficulties with the system. It needs improvement, but I just don't want to simply give up on this. I want to make it easy and hassle free for you guys, that is why I added pipe clipping and debugging tool in the first place. I am about to start work on "solid" inventory so the same issues will apply...

Cheers

[tsunamayo]

Yeah I'm one of the original big backers from tsuna's first Kickstarter and this game has changed a lot since then. Sadly I'm not super into the fuel system. The development been influenced pretty heavily by space engineers I think and i gotta say that's my least favorite building/survival game set in space. I'm also not sure how in hell we're supposed to add fuel mechanics to child entities unless we're just not supposed to at all, which kind of kills most of the joy of those child entities as it solidifies the square in space meta....

Hey howdy! So I am not sure in which respect as I didnt played Space Engineers. But if it is about survival elements then unfortunately I think the consensus is why it is not moving faster toward survival! Yes I will do something for children entities. Cheers

[nokturnihs]

Yeah I'm one of the original big backers from tsuna's first Kickstarter and this game has changed a lot since then. Sadly I'm not super into the fuel system. The development been influenced pretty heavily by space engineers I think and i gotta say that's my least favorite building/survival game set in space. I'm also not sure how in hell we're supposed to add fuel mechanics to child entities unless we're just not supposed to at all, which kind of kills most of the joy of those child entities as it solidifies the square in space meta....

Hey howdy! So I am not sure in which respect as I didnt played Space Engineers. But if it is about survival elements then unfortunately I think the consensus is why it is not moving faster toward survival! Yes I will do something for children entities. Cheers

So mainly my gripe is just complexity for the sake of complexity. I absolutely do not mind survival mechanics but - is there a way to use some kind of "link mechanic" instead of pipes that cause limitations in build design? I wouldn't even have an issue with a relay system using something the size of logic buttons to accomplish this, and it would immediately solve your child entity support issue elegantly... For example you link your tank to the fuel scoop IN and maybe a refuel port with a link IN then use OUT links to push said fuel to the engines? It removes the need for additional build time, removes frustrations regarding building the pipes in, opens up more build options and if desired can accommodate flow types of mechanics based on distance in blocks between the tank and engines, perhaps requiring "pump" blocks to push said fuel? It also makes one universal mechanic that can be used for solid fuel or liquid/gas fuel, and can be adapted to other forms of power or logistics without interfering heavily with creative builds. No there's no physical pipe that can be shot up in combat to compromise the engines but if you use relays that should function the same as far as combat impact goes although requiring a little more precision to sabotage fuel in combat. The other thing it doesn't do is cause problems at all with any crafting mechanics or other mechanisms because crafting mechanisms and the like can be linked to output to the tank or a fuel loader. If you wanted to use the same system to pipe items or ammo you can limit the transfer rate by power, distance in blocks and the size of the input block/output block. If more balance is needed for survival mechanics you can simply edit the pump/extender blocks to only extend so far or at such a rate based on their power consumption. Hell, you could even tie in the logic system to turn on/off fuel transport (or items) for efficiency or power consumption or whatever. It's a system you already have working really well and as far as new player adoption using the same mechanics in multiple systems makes it significantly easier for new players to learn, reduces the amount of different systems you need to get your players to grasp and makes future function changes easier for you as a developer because I'm guessing you can copy some if not all the code and then edit variables and targets, maybe conditions. Hell, make them use a special hand tool to link power, items, etc or make a multi tool. A lot of it would be recycling stable code you can easily adapt across multiple systems. It would speed up your development time and reduce your work load at a guess and everyone is happy.

Main issue is while the concept is amazing to have blocks sunk in blocks it's harder to build with and a lot harder to troubleshoot because of the visibility of it all. If you had say quarter blocks that doubled as pipes but didn't require us sinking pipe it would be easier although it wouldn't solve your child entity support issue.

Building creativity and games like this do require an imagination to fully enjoy and I don't see a huge problem of "imagining the pipes being there" between connnected systems and for those that want it, there's great block and visualization options for them to put in visible paths for that fuel, albeit at the cost of them being purely cosmetic. If it saves you man hours I'd consider it...

Anyway, love ya man, keep on keeping on!!!

[tsunamayo]

@nokturnihs well what about inventory? We use magic connection too? Because we will run into the same problems.

[nokturnihs]

@nokturnihs well what about inventory? We use magic connection too? Because we will run into the same problems.

I mean that is what I'd suggest, using linked systems for inventory, item piping, logistics, logic, fuel, etc. Is that a bad idea? I think you could actually do a lot with it....

Example:

Crafting widget makes cannister using raw materials linked in from (cargo or wherever) and the empty cannister is exported to a liquid storage system where it gets loaded with flamethrower fuel in an input link then exported to say a flamethrower ammo box on your asteroid base to defend against bugs. That widget needs input/output links for power and inventory/materials etc. Using a link we can put this ammo crafting system on a secondary power system to say our main base life support system and have a third system (say solar) with links to our station lights. It's more linking but doesn't force the design of our asteroid base in a major way and gives us more options to create more complex creations or for those who just want straight forward connections it's up to them. You don't have to teach people how the storage system works and how it's different from how you hook up a fuel system or a logic system and the logic can be hooked up to control all the different pieces should the player want that level of complexity.

Maybe I'm wrong? Would it make your development time longer to use the same basic functions to operate those things with different conditions or variables? I don't know much about unity at all but in the languages I've used using functions and gosub style libraries usually makes things easier....

But it was just a suggestion....

[nokturnihs]

It would also scale really well in regards to hover bikes, small ships, escape pods, Capital ships, bases and death stars if i were to guess...

[nokturnihs]

Sorry one other note, you could simple build a "range extender" block that you go into it's config menu and set it to items, liquid, logic or whatever and if you wanted to get really fancy, throw different tiers offering better transfer rates or improved power efficiency or whatever....

[nokturnihs]

I mean it would suck to scrap your existing fuel system for something like this but if it made life easier getting all your systems to work with each other with less headaches down the line, maybe something like this might be worth it to ya? I can't tell you if it would or wouldn't. I know you work your ass off on everything you do! That said I've had projects I've had to scrap thousands of lines of code because it screwed me halfway through and usually I ended up doing something like this and the end result worked really well for me. Just trying to help bud, not talk down your hard work!

[tsunamayo]

Well I can understand your view point, but if there is an issue or you dont like something, I want to hear what are they in details first and foremost. I mean I am always open to suggestion but when the mechanic is in, but I cant just unplug things as soon as they dont works. thx!

[tsunamayo]

@Dwarf-LordPangolin

The new tank format, it is now like a normal block, minimum size of 0.5m. I think one additional difficulty is because it was rounded it was harder and more frustrating to visualize whether it fit or not, so I added a bound preview for placing. You will tell me how it feel in the next update. I will try to do an auto-conversion.

I will make a smaller cubic tank, but really for small hovercraft / fighter they should not require much if at all any additional tank as each reactor has its own internal tank (and those are by nature short range and rely on a "base" of some kind, you are not gonna use them as your main ship for survival).

I will also bump up the flow per pipe, so piping should less gets in the way. I will see if it make sense to make it infinite or not later on. Tell me if you have further feedback. Are the debug view useful?

[ProPeach]

@tsunamayo the bounding box is a nice catch, should make the placing of tanks a little less ambiguous. For the new size, if they're 0.5m does that mean they scale down to 1/2x scale minimum? The current ones scale down to .375m on the 1/8x scale, I'm just wondering if they will convert OK as I have a few .375m tanks in my ships. It might nice to have the minimum be .25m or 1/4th scale so it's not larger than previously unless ylthe smaller cubic tank will be included in the conversion.

The debug views are very useful in seeing where all your systems and pipes are located, although I have a bug where they are not visible recently - #4675

Also the flat Tank Join piece has a strange collision box, I can't place it on systems or tanks as the placement hologram just stays red - #4631

These are some of the few issues I have with pipes and fuel so far, I'm pretty happy with the direction the system is going in as a whole I just think it needs a little balancing on the numbers so fuel lasts a bit longer

[nokturnihs]

Well I can understand your view point, but if there is an issue or you dont like something, I want to hear what are they in details first and foremost. I mean I am always open to suggestion but when the mechanic is in, but I cant just unplug things as soon as they dont works. thx!

Well will refrain from further suggestions until there's support for child entities i suppose. That missing functionality probably makes a big difference?

Could you rephrase that last sentence and explain it a little more? I'd kind of assume troubleshooting issues would include unplugging things when they didn't work but I'm guessing that's not what you meant?

[Uncle-Ulty]

An idea: maybe there should be an "auto pipe tool" for ships up to certain fuel consumption. From that point, piping for fueling would be obligatory. Most of people don't like to place pipe, it seems, and it would discourage them to build... but at the same time we can't let it too easy for bigger builds...

[TwoNiner29]

Hey guys, I’d just like to say I’m actually in support of the fuel and piping system. Yes they need some tweaking, especially with the fuel flow and fuel consumption rates, but overall they make building more interesting and be more creative, you actually have to consider the following:

1. Have 1 big fuel tank and risk your ship becoming inoperable if it gets destroyed
2. Split the fuel tanks which would make refuelling more complicated and less space efficient because of the extra pipes needed
3. How to pipe place your fuel collectors and pipe them up

There are so many more considerations but you get the point. The fuel system doesn’t restrict creativity but adversely forces players to be more creative to make their ships more efficient, I think anyone who says otherwise is just bring a little too lazy to give it a shot.

[nokturnihs]

Hey guys, I’d just like to say I’m actually in support of the fuel and piping system. Yes they need some tweaking, especially with the fuel flow and fuel consumption rates, but overall they make building more interesting and be more creative, you actually have to consider the following:

1. Have 1 big fuel tank and risk your ship becoming inoperable if it gets destroyed
2. Split the fuel tanks which would make refuelling more complicated and less space efficient because of the extra pipes needed
3. How to pipe place your fuel collectors and pipe them up

There are so many more considerations but you get the point. The fuel system doesn’t restrict creativity but adversely forces players to be more creative to make their ships more efficient, I think anyone who says otherwise is just bring a little too lazy to give it a shot.

First of all no one said "kill fuel" in this suggestion... So don't understand why you have to drop support for the system...

Second of all, gave it a shot, understand where you're coming from and it does in fact impact creativity OUTSIDE of the PvP/combat build dynamic.

Third of all, people aren't lazy because they aren't as enraptured by combat builds over other build types and calling people lazy because they don't pursue the same build objectives as you is offensive.

Fourth, both the suggestion at the beginning and the ones offered further in this discussion did not limit how YOU want to enjoy the game, but gave suggestions for OPTIONAL approaches that others might enjoy. Later in the suggestion I put forth a system overhaul that absolutely "supports" fuel but in a method that is more approachable and less creatively limiting and certainly less time consuming. It still offered the same risk/reward system you mentioned you enjoyed and as far as the initial suggestion, it would be up to individuals or groups of individuals to use it or not. Not forcing everyone down a single play style.

[TwoNiner29]

Hey guys, I’d just like to say I’m actually in support of the fuel and piping system. Yes they need some tweaking, especially with the fuel flow and fuel consumption rates, but overall they make building more interesting and be more creative, you actually have to consider the following:

1. Have 1 big fuel tank and risk your ship becoming inoperable if it gets destroyed
2. Split the fuel tanks which would make refuelling more complicated and less space efficient because of the extra pipes needed
3. How to pipe place your fuel collectors and pipe them up

There are so many more considerations but you get the point. The fuel system doesn’t restrict creativity but adversely forces players to be more creative to make their ships more efficient, I think anyone who says otherwise is just bring a little too lazy to give it a shot.

First of all no one said "kill fuel" in this suggestion... So don't understand why you have to drop support for the system...

Second of all, gave it a shot, understand where you're coming from and it does in fact impact creativity OUTSIDE of the PvP/combat build dynamic.

Third of all, people aren't lazy because they aren't as enraptured by combat builds over other build types and calling people lazy because they don't pursue the same build objectives as you is offensive.

Fourth, both the suggestion at the beginning and the ones offered further in this discussion did not limit how YOU want to enjoy the game, but gave suggestions for OPTIONAL approaches that others might enjoy. Later in the suggestion I put forth a system overhaul that absolutely "supports" fuel but in a method that is more approachable and less creatively limiting and certainly less time consuming. It still offered the same risk/reward system you mentioned you enjoyed and as far as the initial suggestion, it would be up to individuals or groups of individuals to use it or not. Not forcing everyone down a single play style.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but your first suggestion was to make fuel piping like linking systems? So the fuel flows from tanks to components through “magic”. If that were an option then no one would use physical pipes because it’ll never be more efficient than just magically linking them up. Besides if that were the case then it wouldn’t matter where you place your light cruise thrusters, reactors and warp drives because u can just magically link them from one end of the ship to the other without any drawbacks. You’re essentially killing pipes.

Your second suggestion is to come up with a tool which automatically places pipes for u? I don’t see the point in that, pipe placing isn’t rocket science, coming up with a program to do it automatically would be hard and time consuming on tsuna’s end, time which can be better spent on other aspects of the game.

perhaps I misunderstand your suggestions, and I do agree the fuel situation in its current state needs work, however the core concept and idea behind it is good, once the issues with fuel tank placement, fuel tanks magically losing fuel, fuel flow and fuel consumption are fixed, I can see this as a very solid and fun system.

A lot of good points have been brought up in this thread about why the current fuel system isn’t where it should be yet, and I completely agree with them, however I don’t see any valid reasons to scrap the entire system aside from “it’s too troublesome” which I also don’t get because u can literally do it with 1 tank and 3 pipes if you really wanted to…

[nokturnihs]

Hey guys, I’d just like to say I’m actually in support of the fuel and piping system. Yes they need some tweaking, especially with the fuel flow and fuel consumption rates, but overall they make building more interesting and be more creative, you actually have to consider the following:

1. Have 1 big fuel tank and risk your ship becoming inoperable if it gets destroyed
2. Split the fuel tanks which would make refuelling more complicated and less space efficient because of the extra pipes needed
3. How to pipe place your fuel collectors and pipe them up

There are so many more considerations but you get the point. The fuel system doesn’t restrict creativity but adversely forces players to be more creative to make their ships more efficient, I think anyone who says otherwise is just bring a little too lazy to give it a shot.

First of all no one said "kill fuel" in this suggestion... So don't understand why you have to drop support for the system...

Second of all, gave it a shot, understand where you're coming from and it does in fact impact creativity OUTSIDE of the PvP/combat build dynamic.

Third of all, people aren't lazy because they aren't as enraptured by combat builds over other build types and calling people lazy because they don't pursue the same build objectives as you is offensive.

Fourth, both the suggestion at the beginning and the ones offered further in this discussion did not limit how YOU want to enjoy the game, but gave suggestions for OPTIONAL approaches that others might enjoy. Later in the suggestion I put forth a system overhaul that absolutely "supports" fuel but in a method that is more approachable and less creatively limiting and certainly less time consuming. It still offered the same risk/reward system you mentioned you enjoyed and as far as the initial suggestion, it would be up to individuals or groups of individuals to use it or not. Not forcing everyone down a single play style.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but your first suggestion was to make fuel piping like linking systems? So the fuel flows from tanks to components through “magic”. If that were an option then no one would use physical pipes because it’ll never be more efficient than just magically linking them up. Besides if that were the case then it wouldn’t matter where you place your light cruise thrusters, reactors and warp drives because u can just magically link them from one end of the ship to the other without any drawbacks. You’re essentially killing pipes.

Your second suggestion is to come up with a tool which automatically places pipes for u? I don’t see the point in that, pipe placing isn’t rocket science, coming up with a program to do it automatically would be hard and time consuming on tsuna’s end, time which can be better spent on other aspects of the game.

perhaps I misunderstand your suggestions, and I do agree the fuel situation in its current state needs work, however the core concept and idea behind it is good, once the issues with fuel tank placement, fuel tanks magically losing fuel, fuel flow and fuel consumption are fixed, I can see this as a very solid and fun system.

A lot of good points have been brought up in this thread about why the current fuel system isn’t where it should be yet, and I completely agree with them, however I don’t see any valid reasons to scrap the entire system aside from “it’s too troublesome” which I also don’t get because u can literally do it with 1 tank and 3 pipes if you really wanted to…

Yeah you do misunderstand but maybe that's due to my poor explanations. No one said scrap the fuel system. I also agree an auto piping script would be hard and I wouldn't suggest it either, which is why I suggested instead put in an option in settings to assume linked tanks and the like are connected via piping as an option for those who don't enjoy it, don't have time to do a lot of piping or for testing or mixed creative/survival testing or building (aka build it in a pseudo creative way then fill in the details after you have your look right).

The linking suggestion would not reduce your tactical considerations as you still have valid targets (the tanks) and you would have further tactical concerns if he used the "range extender" options to accommodate distance or flow mechanics. You wouldn't have an entire line of pipes sure but there's still links in a chain to be targeted and disrupted, they just take 1/4 of a meter in build space, don't require specific shapes to adhere to and take considerably less time than piping a large ship. Or ships with multiple power sources or complicated logic systems controlling the fuel system. It added in addition to that a much simpler approach for new players so they're using one mechanic rather than learning many and it would integrate well into other survival systems like crafting, logistics, ammo and cargo. Because we don't currently have support to/from child entities we're unable to do things like extending refuelling lines or "tank ships" that could be docked to a capital ship to provide fuel. A linking system could handle all that and save tsuna a lot of hassle in the long run. Sounds like he's not interested in that though.

But again, no one said scrap fuel in here. And your argument about the option setting is that no one wouldn't use it but you like pipes. Not a problem. You wouldn't be forced to use it while others would have the option to. The same argument you made could be said about creative modes - no one would ever play games in survival mode if creative modes exist and that's just not the case. Games like this can appeal to all types if they aren't locked into playing it in just a single or small set of gameplay loop options.

That's all i was pushing for. Variety and appeal to everyone. I dislike PvP and would probably play a game like this solo or multiplayer in cooperative PvE but others wouldn't find that fun at all. Games that offer the kind of creativity STEVO offers should allow those different options to enjoy the game. It helps their player base grow, funds future development and keeps the game alive. You can't please everyone for sure, but by pleasing only one section of your player base you're limiting yourself to that player base.

Right now we're forced to do it one way and it's a way that wasn't finished before tsuna moved on to mining so some of this may be irrelevant when he does dip back to it.

[Dwarf-LordPangolin]

I'm going to break my comments into sections to make this simpler.

Fuel Tank Size

• Of course retro-fitting existing ship already packed is gonna be a nightmare. nokturnihs Dwarf-LordPangolin for your ship currently in game being used as NPC you dont have to bother with this, I will have them use the no fuel option anyway as this will also make the game faster.

So, I don't think I explained that well, @tsunamayo. I'm not having problems refitting them because they were designed before the fuel system. I actually left space on a lot of my pre-existing ships for fuel, even before the fuel system started being worked on -- I even made sure that the spaces planned for fuel would match the game's grid. And I'm not just having this problem with old ships, but with new ships too. But since the fuel tanks don't scale well along the game's grid, that planning doesn't help as much as I thought it would, and makes refitting old ships, and designing new ships, more awkward than it would otherwise be. My ships don't need a no-fuel option; all they need is a tank that works on the same grid as the rest of the game's features. And since you're fixing that, they should be good to go. 👍 The mini tanks will help too. I agree that small vehicles should be more dependent on returning to base to refuel, but jerry cans are a thing IRL, even on motorcycles.

Fuel Consumption Right now, one of the challenges gauging whether ships have enough fuel is because the player needs to tell the tanks to show up on the fuel gauge. That's not a bad thing, in fact I think it's great you added it because it's awesome for tankers, but I didn't know we had to do that until very recently, so I haven't had much time to get a feel for fuel consumption using that system. However, purely based on watching fuel tanks drain while a ship is idling, it looks like they're draining really fast -- but after poking around for a while, I'm starting to wonder if there might be a bug with fuel consumption rate before/after reloading the game, which I need to investigate.

The other issue is that a lot of the time, I can't really tell if a tank is actually connected to other systems or not; for example, sometimes it looks like tanks that are connected to reactors through other tanks aren't draining, which doesn't make sense. I think it would help if you could describe how the fuel system is supposed to work right now, because I'm starting to get the feeling that the way we think it's supposed to work isn't how it's actually working (for example, I didn't know the 6-way connector was acting like a fuel tank until you mentioned that just now).

Based on what I've read, it almost sounds like tanks won't allow fuel to go through them, which is not the way most people expect it to work (for example, Space Engineers, Kerbal Space Program, and Stormworks all let fuel from other tanks pass through them on its way to other systems). The debug view is a great idea, but I'm not sure it's working how it's supposed to; I don't know if that's a bug or if I'm not using it correctly.

Flow Rate Now that we're getting tanks that fit the grid system better 🚀 , this is the biggest issue for me, because finding space for a small pipe is very different from finding space for a big pipe. ATM it's very difficult to get fuel pipes that are larger than .25m around a ship -- particularly where the ship is supposed to dock with other ships -- without the pipes getting in the way of hallways.

But the main issue with flow rate though is that it doesn't seem to add anything to gameplay; it's a con with no pro. I'm not sure why it's a gameplay feature at all. It's like how Small Conveyors in Space Engineers can't move the same items that Large Conveyors can; it adds nothing to gameplay, and just bugs people.

Thanks for taking the time to look into this!

[nokturnihs]

On flow rate I'll also point out that typically smaller fuel lines would offer better efficiency than large fuel lines unless volume really is needed over efficiency or continuous flow... Smaller line, better pressure, better flow rate. Bigger fuel lines mean less pressure and worse efficiency.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding the form of fuel being utilized? Is it propellant or creating a reaction similar to a car engine? It's going into a reactor which implies the latter...

I agree that currently flow doesn't provide any advantage. All cons and no pros. it seems to work opposite compared to modern systems like cars and other pressurized systems too.

[tsunamayo]

@tsunamayo the bounding box is a nice catch, should make the placing of tanks a little less ambiguous. For the new size, if they're 0.5m does that mean they scale down to 1/2x scale minimum? The current ones scale down to .375m on the 1/8x scale, I'm just wondering if they will convert OK as I have a few .375m tanks in my ships. It might nice to have the minimum be .25m or 1/4th scale so it's not larger than previously unless ylthe smaller cubic tank will be included in the conversion.

The debug views are very useful in seeing where all your systems and pipes are located, although I have a bug where they are not visible recently - #4675

Also the flat Tank Join piece has a strange collision box, I can't place it on systems or tanks as the placement hologram just stays red - #4631

These are some of the few issues I have with pipes and fuel so far, I'm pretty happy with the direction the system is going in as a whole I just think it needs a little balancing on the numbers so fuel lasts a bit longer

I fixed the first issue, I am looking into the second one. thx

[tsunamayo]

Hey guys, I’d just like to say I’m actually in support of the fuel and piping system. Yes they need some tweaking, especially with the fuel flow and fuel consumption rates, but overall they make building more interesting and be more creative, you actually have to consider the following:

1. Have 1 big fuel tank and risk your ship becoming inoperable if it gets destroyed
2. Split the fuel tanks which would make refuelling more complicated and less space efficient because of the extra pipes needed
3. How to pipe place your fuel collectors and pipe them up

There are so many more considerations but you get the point. The fuel system doesn’t restrict creativity but adversely forces players to be more creative to make their ships more efficient, I think anyone who says otherwise is just bring a little too lazy to give it a shot.

@TwoNiner29 Thanks for the feedback! Tell me if you need anything to improve the experience.

[tsunamayo]

Well I can understand your view point, but if there is an issue or you dont like something, I want to hear what are they in details first and foremost. I mean I am always open to suggestion but when the mechanic is in, but I cant just unplug things as soon as they dont works. thx!

Well will refrain from further suggestions until there's support for child entities i suppose. That missing functionality probably makes a big difference?

Could you rephrase that last sentence and explain it a little more? I'd kind of assume troubleshooting issues would include unplugging things when they didn't work but I'm guessing that's not what you meant?

Well I just wanted to say that I cant just simply scraps entire mechanics because they have issues. The first thing to do is to fix them, only scraps them when you realize that they will never work. Otherwise everything around us would have never come to fruition! You are being associated with features at an early stage compared to other game, which is unfortunately frustration for you but incredibly useful for me. thx

[tsunamayo]

@Dwarf-LordPangolin Hi, so on your remarks

• An inactive ship should no longer drain power, unless you toggle the option.
• yes I think I have to count tank in the UI them by default, I will do the change.
• So when you link two tank together they will form an equilibrium. Say one tank is at 80%, the other one is at 20%. They will exchange fuel up until they each reach 50% capacity. Now if you link tank A to a reactor, that tank will also provide fuel to the reactor, so its fuel % will decrease over time. Equilibrium will still wants to form, but at an ever decreasing rate, so the tank B will ends up giving fuel to A to feed the reactor, working as intended. It must have been written in a patch node but I really need a knowledge base integrated to the game and a tutorial on this (will wait for the system to be stabilized for it)
• I bumped the flow rate by 4 for next update. Now a 0.25cm line can power 16X 1m reactor, which seems quite a lot for me, but lets see how it works while designing ships.

Cheers

[nokturnihs]

Well I can understand your view point, but if there is an issue or you dont like something, I want to hear what are they in details first and foremost. I mean I am always open to suggestion but when the mechanic is in, but I cant just unplug things as soon as they dont works. thx!

Well will refrain from further suggestions until there's support for child entities i suppose. That missing functionality probably makes a big difference?

Could you rephrase that last sentence and explain it a little more? I'd kind of assume troubleshooting issues would include unplugging things when they didn't work but I'm guessing that's not what you meant?

Well I just wanted to say that I cant just simply scraps entire mechanics because they have issues. The first thing to do is to fix them, only scraps them when you realize that they will never work. Otherwise everything around us would have never come to fruition! You are being associated with features at an early stage compared to other game, which is unfortunately frustration for you but incredibly useful for me. thx

I can agree to that absolutely. Mainly just hoping you have plans laid out to integrate all the moving parts (crafting, mining, logistics, etc) and how much complication they'll be to learn or if you're planning out each system as you come to it.

I am really hoping for the addition of functionality with fuel in child entities because I probably cannot accurately provide feedback without that at the moment. And yes, that is frustrating me. Still a bit confusing of a system to me to be honest and doesn't seem to behave like real world counterparts but maybe I'm missing something?

Anyway, will keep an eye out for updates and see what develops. :)

[nokturnihs]

Just a question, you got an updated roadmap for your development? Can't seem to find it...

[tsunamayo]

@nokturnihs There never was a public roadmap I am afraid. This would only generate frustration for the player and be counter productive from my point of view. Thanks

[nokturnihs]

So some quick questions then if ya could bud - when we should expect support for fuel transport across child entities? What was the reason you moved on to mining before implementing it?

[tsunamayo]

@nokturnihs So the fuel system is now using the inventory system, and is fully compatible with children entity. You can either link to the mechanism or a use the new hose. I hope you are doing well! Cheers