Synthetic Fuel Anyone?

[Overlord015]

Manufactured fuel resource(s) to be exact. Would it work? How do you guys think the AI would react to this? Anyone experimented with this? How much mayhem would this bring upon the private sector? Theoretically you can make luxuries into fuel, therefore you could probably create a manufactured fuel resource. Now how would this play out on an actual game, that's the question. Looking to see whether anyone has tried this before putting it to the test myself.

[Bingeling]

Energy to fuel converter?

Not that I ever get that tech, but I believe it is there

[Rosbjerg]

Haven't tried it - but yeah sounds like a great idea.. In fact I've been tossing a few ideas around myself on how to radically change the whole fuel situation, it feels like there's too little variety between 'em

[Overlord015]

Not in the sense of a component Bingeling [:'(] . But using the manufactured luxury resources system to make, say, "synthetic" caslon/hydrogen at your colonies and so forth. Though when it comes to the converter I do plan on experimenting with that one once I get to components and the tech tree.

[Sirian]

I tried that as part of my "getting rid of Caslon" experimentations. I dropped it again, but I can't really remember why. Another person tried it too and there were some serious issues in lategame, he said. Look for a thread with fuel or uranium or something like that in the title.

I *think* AI Ships have a problems refuelling lategame since they prefer gasmining stations as fuel source - where there would be none. And I *think* I dropped it because you can only specify 4 planet types to produce the resource in the resource file but there are 6 different habitable planet types (numbers may be off, its been a while) so some races would be screwed.

So far from my very limited memory...
Sirian

[feygan]

I'm somewhat confused as to what purpose this would serve? Currently you have a number of direct fuels sources in the game, If you are finding yourself with fuel issues then you could either simply make them show up more often, or look to see if it is a strategic problem. Secondly there is the energy to fuel device which essentially removes your need to ever mine any fuel, this could be made so it can be built at an earlier time in the tech tree.

So by adding a third method of fuel production are you not simply creating a possible micromanagement nightmare for a problem that essentially doesn't exist?

[Osito]

In my 'research unleashed' mod I originally tried adding uranium as the 'starter' fuel for fission reactors, but I found it was very difficult to mine enough of it to fuel a decent sized fleet (at least not without making uranium ridiculously common compared with other materials like steel). The AI, in particular, got itself into a mess very quickly.

I also considered a similar thing with manufactured resources. Again, the problem is with the AI. The AI will try to use the tech dependent on the manufactured resource, but it isn't intelligent enough to realise that it can't manufacture enough of the stuff to support its own infrastructure.

Osito

[Overlord015]

Hmm, I suspected as much. On that last part Osito, i took that into consideration so the idea was to create a series of Hyper-efficient reactors for it. The point was to create a manufactured endgame fuel that would power "super" reactors (with ridiculous, nigh broken efficiency, to the point ships would rarely need to refuel) and serve as an "unlock" of sorts for a series of end game gravity super weapons (Gravitational beam emitters anyone? I wonder if someone gets this reference).

[Overlord015]

Sirian, on the four planets type issue. Really? I'm using several manufactured resources in my mod, haven't had issues starting the game, of course haven't gone far enough in the testing to see whether they spawn where they should. The idea with many of these consists in using several ultra-common manufactured resources that, in theory, should eventually spawn(given a specific development level) at every single colony. The point of this is to have manufactured resources that are vital for colony growth and make outlying/new colonies far more dependent on core colonies (foodstuffs, industrial machinery, consumer goods), to further emphasize this some of these resources would be central to the production of many industrial components (production plants, labs, construction yards, etc.). Hmm, kinda veered off the the main conversation on that one (should i make a separate thread on this other idea?). . .

[HerpInYourDerp]

Also, keep in mind you cannot have minerals and gases spawn on the same site, meaning it would completely break Ice colonies and Ice-based races if you were to maintain the default resource distibution unless you made it a luxury.

[Overlord015]

Aren't manufactured resources luxuries by default? Plus I altered the distribution so ice spawns regular mineral resources as well (Tyderios is no more), and it seems to work in the few tests I've managed to make.