Matrix Games Forums

Please make it so that if a fleet want to go some place it actually count the range it needs to travel and not just the shortest range to that spot.

As ships need to jump between systems and Nebulas will have a very big effect you will see fleets running out of fuel in areas of difficult terrain of badly positioned stars.

Fleets with tankers also should stop and refuel if possible before going into the area of a mission, just in case. The chance of this happening should probably be closer to if the fleet used up more than half of its fuel on any ship... or some such. The issue is that combat can sometimes take a long time and combat will eat allot of fuel, sometime leaving ships that went into the are with low fuel without fuel... ships who are very low on fuel should also escape from a battle... ending up without fuel in a battle is basically a death sentence.

In any case... automated fleets need to be allot smarter with how they use fuel and the engagement ranges of the fleets.

In addition to this I would like to see ships and fleets plan their trips with refuelling point in mind. Currently ships or fleets will just ignore perfect opportunities to refuel and spending all fuel and then limp to the end destination. This might be a particular issue if you top up a fleet and a ship is at the end of the empire and need to travel all the way across and it just ignore having to refuel on the way.

The same is true of a patrol fleet that goes to fight some pirates and end up spending most of it's fuel in the fight. Now it might just ignore any refuelling option before heading back, such as tankers or a refuelling spot.

I sometimes find I have to babysit my fleets and ships a bit too much so they don't end up without fuel.

It should not be terribly difficult for a ship/fleet to know if the fuel it has will carry them to the end destination given the jumps needed at the start of the trip. If the trip is dangerously close to empty fuel the ship should make a different trip that include a fuel station or simply call for a fuel tanker to help them out.

I also see fleets with tankers running out of fuel trying to get home... they don't seem to stop and refuel sometimes.

Ships just seem to rather travel on without fuel rather than wait for a tanker to show up and help them out... sometimes it might be faster to drive without fuel... but it should not be terribly hard to find a tanker and see how far away it is and make some judgement if they should wait or simply soldier on.

Two things:
1. Set your fleets to 33% of fuel range (instead of the 50% that the game ships with - that will give you some leeway to actually be able to navigate there & back).
2. This will all be less of an issue if fleets had some smarts added for dealing with fuel tankers (i.e. they didn't run away from them, called them from a sensible location - instead of the ones furthest away, broke up the fleet to refuel members that were low when needed, etc.).

But fundamentally it feels like computing the "realistic envelope" might be very hard to do - you'd have to compute a route to everything to draw a weird border, no?
So both computationally prohibitive, as well as hard to express in to the player...

Better to just fix the tanker and fleet refuel issues + default to 33% instead of the nearly guaranteed to run out of fuel 50%.

mordachai wrote: Tue Aug 23, 2022 4:40 pm Two things:
1. Set your fleets to 33% of fuel range (instead of the 50% that the game ships with - that will give you some leeway to actually be able to navigate there & back).
2. This will all be less of an issue if fleets had some smarts added for dealing with fuel tankers (i.e. they didn't run away from them, called them from a sensible location - instead of the ones furthest away, broke up the fleet to refuel members that were low when needed, etc.).

But fundamentally it feels like computing the "realistic envelope" might be very hard to do - you'd have to compute a route to everything to draw a weird border, no?
So both computationally prohibitive, as well as hard to express in to the player...

Better to just fix the tanker and fleet refuel issues + default to 33% instead of the nearly guaranteed to run out of fuel 50%.

I NEVER use the 50% fuel, rarely the 33% fuel either... only if I have very low fuel ranges will I use the 33%... otherwise I go with Sector Range which is around 200M distance.

I know how it works and have studied this extensively...

I don't agree that it would be hard to compute the actual range. When they try to go to a mission the fleet measure the complete path to the system, if it is too long they simply will not go... done. This way they will never try to path around a nebula or through it as it will consume too much fuel.

Ah - you just want them to check when they go to execute a mission?

I had in my mind you meant some way to draw a circle showing what they can get to - what's in-range!

Yeah, checking before launching on a mission is 100%

Jorgen_CAB wrote: Mon Aug 22, 2022 11:44 pm Please make it so that if a fleet want to go some place it actually count the range it needs to travel and not just the shortest range to that spot.

I completely agree. And I think that the algorithm would be fairly simple.

1- When the mission is assigned, the game should figure out at what point on the chosen path it will be out of fuel

2 - Between the starting point and the "out of fuel" point, it should check for refueling points that are a certain distance of the path.

• That distance could be specified in empire policies, with a possible override in the fleet's tactical settings (new setting). Or it could be left to the game to decide (automated).

3- Then it would check to see which have enough fuel for the fleet, and eliminate from its list those that don't.

• One exception would be if there's no refueling point with enough fuel for the fleet. In that case, it's better to get "some" fuel than none. So in that case, no potential refueling point would be eliminated from the list

4- Then, if there's more than one possible/acceptable refueling point, it becomes a question of choosing the best one to minimize the number of required refueling stops. The ideal one would be one that is the closest to the "no fuel" point, and also the closest to the chosen path and that has enough fuel for the fleet.

I'm not saying that's a complete algorithm. But I think it shows that it should be doable. And that it would be better than what the game is currently doing (see a bug report I've posted about exactly that problem: https://www.matrixgames.com/forums/view ... 6&t=387438).

mordachai wrote: Wed Aug 24, 2022 5:36 pm Ah - you just want them to check when they go to execute a mission?

I had in my mind you meant some way to draw a circle showing what they can get to - what's in-range!

Yeah, checking before launching on a mission is 100%

Yes... the range limitation should always be based on the actual range to to the target with any traveling inside a nebula based on the speed impact. That way the range limitation never is a circle but the true range to the target system.