My Super Duper Ancestor (from CVS)

[Lonestar]

With a good overdrive upgrade, my ancestor can now fly about as fast as anything in the game can. Its huge thrust pushes it forward and to top speed so quickly that it makes travel very fast. Its thrust and turning power vs its very low weight added to its very fair armament make it a great fighter. There is a reason the Shaper have not upgraded the ship in 10 years. It's almost perfect (aside from the tiny fuel tank, of course). And it has enough room for a couple trade missions at a time.

It's the perfect ship for a... ahem, cargo runner, nothing amiss, just taking some ISO Propa... er, ha ha, grain, yeah, I'm moving some grain around the sector. Scanning me? Contraband? Nonsense! Here, take a quick peek! (at which point I zoom off, leaving Homeland Security seeing just my bumper sticker, "Bye Bye, Admonisher!")

If only I could get one shaped like a Winnebago...

[klauss]

Talking about fuel... is it an issue?
I never ever ever ran out of fuel, even after repeatedly accelerating to 144000 and back, and crossing entire galaxies (well, perhaps only solar systems).

I think fuel should be a little more limited... don't you think?

[smbarbour]

I have, and the only effect was that afterburners stopped working. No other effect.

[Silverain]

Talking about fuel... is it an issue?
I never ever ever ran out of fuel, even after repeatedly accelerating to 144000 and back, and crossing entire galaxies (well, perhaps only solar systems).

I think fuel should be a little more limited... don't you think?

I seem to recall that this was something the MoI was reviewing (in his copious free time!), regarding ship power systems and propulsion. At present its left open to be examined I believe. The main operation (ATM) is serious depletion only for AB, but there is a very minor consumption for normal flight, but flight needs to be of extreme duration to have a noticable effect.

[klauss]

Risking turning this into a Developer forum thread, I would prefer an elite-style approach, where every acceleration (or, like VS does actually, any energy production for any purpose) consumes fuel. AB would, however, consume much more relative to attained propulsion, due to high inefficiencies derived from exceeding thruster specs.

It should be possible, and somewhat common if flying carelessly, to run out of fuel. In such case, you would remain adrift until you either scoop enough fuel to restart the reactor and reach your target, or someone rescues you by refuelling inflight.

After all, with care (limiting acceleration), you can reach any place with any amount of fuel.

[Lonestar]

Actually, with the ancestor you can see your fuel go down every time you jump systems. If you made the max fuel you could carry lower, you'd get a decent setup. No need to make your first steps running between Atlantis and Serenity cost anything extra.

Another idea - you could make your fuel tank be another upgrade. First you start with x, then you get Fuel Tank I, then II, III, etc. Each one increases the amount of fuel you can carry, and increases in space it takes up, etc. But I think the ancestor strikes a really neat balance - an excellent fighter/smuggler ship with a limited range. Means I can go on a six jump run through Uln space, but hey - there are neutral planets there to land on.

[jackS]

Current fuel efficiency is currently artificially high because some of the numbers/formulae used were derived incorrectly due to failing to account for an accelerating reference frame. This will be fixed.

Overdrive(==Afterburner, but AB is such a misnomer ) efficiency is already (parametrizably, IIRC) significantly (default value of 2x, again, IIRC) less than normal accel induced fuel consumption.
Reactor consumption of fuel for energy generation (efficiency again parametrizable, but global at this point - any notions of per-reactor efficiencies can wait until existing bugs/oversights have been removed from both the energy/fuel subsytem interactions and reactor balancing, etc.) will be added as soon as I fix the fuel-accel-deltaV-energy code to remove the above mentioned bug with reference frames.

Personal time-frame goal for initial implementations ~ sometime next week, unless other VS things of noteworthy priority come up (in addition to the N things I'm already supposed to be working on/pondering/whatnot ).

[Ari Rahikkala]

just taking some ISO Propa... er, ha ha, grain, yeah, I'm moving some grain around the sector.

You know you're a geek but not a VS one when you read this and think "There's an isopropanol cargo in the game? What's wrong with hauling isopropanol?"