Mining / Resort / Research; Base's Fuel

[RhinoDad]

Thank you for the wonderful changes to the game. I relocated to a different part of the world and was absent from playing the game for a bit. What wonderful changes, thank you, a much more polished game.

However, a problem that has been since before the Aurora update continues through update 1.2.7.7. That is fuel for bases. It does not matter the kind. Unless they mine Caslon they will sit with no fuel, which means no ability to fire weapons. There seems to be no method except:

- Manually go through all bases for each type and check fuel levels
- Manually direct fuel tanker to a base in need and transfer fuel
- Manually go through all bases for each type and check fuel levels
- Manually direct fuel tanker to base in need and transfer fuel

Lather rinse repeat ad nauseum

As one's empire grows so do the number of bases and the load placed upon the player's time and attention to manually check and service base fuel supplies.

Without doing so bases sit with no fuel. As such the bases get ravaged by pirates and the like and make quick easy targets as they can not fire their weapons, no fuel no weapons. This limits the base's ability to delay for a length of time for relief to arrive.

So currently every base that is built needs you to manually send a tanker to fuel it, the same after a few battles/raids. This does not even take into consideration equipment version upgrades that may cause fuel use needs till a design upgrade and refit. This is a time vacuum that could better be enjoyed playing interesting aspects of the game not gas station and fuel inventory management.

- Tankers should be able to be told to refuel bases or to have that be part of their routine like fueling ships.

- Bases should send out a refuel request when they reach a given percentage of their fuel capacity, then tankers satisfy the need. This should then be able to be automated.

- Or freighters should bring out needed fuel when they come out to load up on station resources; unload fuel, load up resources; however this would not take care of research and resort bases.

- Bases should be given a load of fuel, even if it is a small one upon completion of the build.

- Or just skip all that and have bases show with fuel and never really need it, except in the design.

I really hope I am missing something here and that I am doing something wrong by needing to manually service bases for fuel. If so please let me know. The hours spend on 'road side assistance' would be greatly appreciated spent elsewhere.

[StormingKiwi]

I really hope I am missing something here and that I am doing something wrong by needing to manually service bases for fuel. If so please let me know. The hours spend on 'road side assistance' would be greatly appreciated spent elsewhere.

The developers couldn't program a supply and distribution logistics system that worked for freighters to supply Caslon to the sheer number of stationary bases, which led to empires collapsing for lack of fuel.

The workaround they implemented in the Aurora update of 2nd March 2023 was for stationary bases not to demand fuel unless there was a colony or mining fuel at that location.

- altered automated resource stock levels for bases not at colonies: no longer have fuel stock level unless mine fuel at location; note that this means most bases will depend on energy collection for their defenses/weapons, we plan to adjust this further in the future

(To my knowledge, this was not adjusted in subsequent patches)

Therefore, for bases to fire weapons and charge shields, they need enough energy collectors to fulfil those energy needs.

As far as I know, this is not documented anywhere in-game and causes frequent confusion to players, as evidenced by the myriad of topics on the forums about it.

I hope that helps.

[Xmudder]

So this is an AI Issue? Designing fixed bases with caslon reactors instead of static collectors? Could be fixed by blocking / banning Caslon reactors in most fixed bases.

I just checked my latest save, my auto designed Research Station has 2 static energy collectors (good) and one Caslon devouring Quantum reactor (which is bad). It also has a Medium Starfighter bay and a Docking bay (which is good).

My autodesigned Resort Base has 2 Quantum reactors (badbad) and one energy collector (not good enough).

My auto designed Large Mining Station has 2 energy collectors (good), quantum capacitor (fine), and a caslon devouring quantum Reactor (bad), and 2 docking bays (should be one docking and one medium starfighter).

My autodesigned Monitoring Station ALSO has a Quantum reactor (plus docking bay and starfighter bay)

My autodesigned SSP v3 has 2 energy collectors and a quantum reactors (which is good - to fuel built ships / refuel other ships). It also has a Construction Yard and 3 Medium fighter Bays (also good). What it does not have is a docking bay, despite being able to fit 2 more (one in the second Size 100 construction yard slot, and one in the 4th size 50 slot). Which is horribly bad.

My autodesigned MSP v1? 2 construction yards, 4 medium starfighter bays, no docking bays (but room for 2).

[apd1004]

The whole logistics system is inadequate and has been since DW1. I hate to use the word broken because it isn't entirely broken, but it's close. The whole concept of having all logistics (the only exception being fuel resupply ships) completely in the hands of the "civilian" side is ludicrous. In effect, the "military" side has no ability to handle its own logistics (again, the exception being fuel resupply ships - which is why I can't say it's completely broken).

Let me build a regional supply depot or logistics hub and assign a number of freighters to it, and the number of freighters that can be assigned gets a finite limit which can only be expanded through research similar to how you have to research larger space ports and components to increase size and capability. The job of those freighters is to pull resources from mining locations within their range and then to push those resources to customers within the same range. The mining base a freighter just pulled resources from can also be a customer that receives a different resource (the mining station with a reactor requiring Caslon). Let me set the range of operation for the supply depots, which would create the effect that the farther I set the range the less frequent the customers get visited by the assigned freighters because increasing the range also increases the number of customers. The opposite effect would be the smaller I set the range the more frequent the supply runs to a specific base would happen because there are fewer customers within their range. The system could be automated (the devs seem to like automated systems) or it can be manually controlled. That way I can specify that the job of any regional supply depot is to push resources to another regional supply depot or to a specific colony or base, or maybe to just concentrate on gathering a specific resource such as Caslon.

We can come up with a thousand great ideas and fixes but they will never be implemented because ideas like these have been posted in the forums for decades. I want to love this game but I just can't play it because a level of frustration sets in which kills my enjoyability of the game.