Please explain movement range to me

[profanicus]

Hi, I'm new to the game but loving it so far! My understanding is growing but I am baffled by some things, for example:

The large dashed circle around my ships - the galactopedia says that this represents the ship's movement range, to "visually gauge how far it can travel before requiring refueling".

But when I fly the ship to a location at the edge of this range, the circle has hardly shrunk at all & I have over 70% of my fuel still left.

Can anyone help me understand what is going on here?

[Grotius]

I'm puzzled about this too. I think maybe the manual mentioned something about the ship slowing down and using less fuel as it approaches low fuel?

Also, if you speed things up, you will see the circle does shrink substantially as you move. Then the shrinking slows down -- maybe the ship does too?

[profanicus]

I looked in the manual and it says that when the ship runs out of fuel it travels at 1/3 speed until it is refueled again. Nothing about reducing fuel use when fuel gets low that I could see.

Ships consume energy at different rates depending on the speed (impulse, cruise, sprint, hyper), so that explains the variance in the circle shrinking speeds I guess.

It doesn't explain why the circle doesn't seem to represent the actual movement/refuel range at all though.

Perplexing!

[Grotius]

Yes, that's the part of the manual I had in mind. I'm stumped too, then. Does anyone know what the dotted-circle really represents, if not actual range? Maybe it's just broken?

[Mestor]

I'm not certain why, but I too noticed that the range circle didnt seem to be appreciably smaller.  Also that the edge of the circle didnt seem to mean 100% fuel use.  My guess was that the edge of the circle is 50% of a full tank of fuel, possibly a little less than that, indicating enough fuel to go to the system and get back.

But that is a COMPLETE guess, on my part.

[idgar]

ORIGINAL: Mestor

I'm not certain why, but I too noticed that the range circle didnt seem to be appreciably smaller.  Also that the edge of the circle didnt seem to mean 100% fuel use.  My guess was that the edge of the circle is 50% of a full tank of fuel, possibly a little less than that, indicating enough fuel to go to the system and get back.

This was my guess as well. An experiment showed that it seems to be about right. After moving a ship to the edge of its circle with a full tank the new circle was a bit bigger than half the radius of the original one. Fuel level was also a bit over half a tank.

Interestingly the radius seemed to shrink the most when the ship was at the destination (on the maximum zoom) and dropping out of hyperspace. At this point the energy of the ship suddenly dropped to 0 after being somewhat steady at around 75-80% during the hyperdrive flight.

Edit:
I guess if I had waited for the energy to fill up to 100% the fuel would have been at half a tank...

[forsaken1111]

It seems to have some built in maneuvering room as well, as moving a ship to the circle's edge and back did not quite exhaust its fuel. Looks like they left a bit of a reserve for combat or other activities.