Military grade Hyperdrive

bliss

bliss
From the Design Discussion Archive:

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=14422

TYPES OF FUEL
To add variety and player choice to the fuel mechanic different types of fuel are available to be purchased/scooped/acquired. The following rules apply to different fuel types:
The default fuel sets the benchmark on which other types of fuel operate; it is considered standard
Other fuels are either of a lower or higher quality than the standard fuel
Lower quality fuel has a penalizing modifier to consumption rates, i.e. if standard fuel will keep a particular power plant running at 75% power for 1 hour, a lower quality fuel with a modifier of +20% consumption would only last 50 minutes
Lower quality fuel also has a penalizing distance modifier for hyperspace jumps, i.e. if standard fuel gives a 1 light year jump per unit fuel, a lower quality fuel with a modifier of -50% distance would only jump ½ light year per unit fuel instead
Higher quality fuel has a beneficial consumption modifier, i.e. a ship will run for longer on it compared to standard fuel
Higher quality fuels also have a beneficial distance modifier, i.e. each unit fuel used in a jump will go further than 1 light year
Regardless of quality certain types of fuel may have additional effects or byproducts that need to be dealt with (e.g. irradiated waste that must be stored in empty cargo canisters or risk contaminating the ship and its crew)
The entire Fuel Tank module can only operate on a single quality level type of fuel
The player can acquire fuel of a different quality level to that already in their system but conveniently all fuel is compatible with one another albeit only as efficiently as the lowest quality in the system (i.e. the entire Fuel Tank takes on the quality of the lowest quality fuel within the system)
E.g. scooping any fuel higher in quality to that which you have will maintain your fuels current efficiency. Scooping fuel of lower quality than that in the system will lower the quality of everything to the same level as that scooped
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Persoanally I am glad the above never made it into the game. Far to convoluted and a massive inconvenience for explorers.

IMO adding a Military grade Hyperdrive and Fuel Conversion module would be a much better idea.

A Military grade Hyperdrive would be .5 higher than the corresponding Standard Hyperdrive. For example, the Mil Drive version of a class 4 Standard Drive would be class 4.5. It would have the same weight as the class 4 Standard Drive but a jump distance between a class 4 and a class 5. The Mil drive would cost five times more than a standard drive. Mil grade fuel would cost 10 times more than standard fuel and would only be available to purchase at Military Outposts. Mil Drives could also have higher power requirements.

Ships would be able to fit a Fuel Converter module. Fuel Converter modules would work in tandem with a Fuel Scoop. Ideally you would want a matching class and grade. For example, an A3 Fuel Scoop would match with an A3 Fuel Converter, both would take the same amount of time to work (i.e, 1 min to scoop the fuel and 1 min to convert it). Fuel Converters would be quite expensive.

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The above would enable three things:

1 - Current exploration ships would be much more effective at the cost of an internal slot and the high purchase price of the Mil Drive and Fuel Converter (An Asp's 5.5 Mil Drive would cost over 25 million).

2 - Ships that are borderline exploration ships (Clipper, Courier) would be far more viable at the job.

3 - A new profession is added to the game, "Fuel Miner". Ships with lots of internal compartments (Asp, Lakon Type 9) could load up on extra fuel tanks, scoop and covert the fuel, then sell the Mil grade fuel for a tidy profit.
 

Flavio

F
I do like the idea of a military hyperdrive or military whatever so that you get an extra oomph for whatever job it is doing but you need to be up to a certain reputation with that military before you can purchase such a device. Am hoping that either there is a difference between the federation and empire types or that one may provide for example a military grade laser while the other sells a military grade canon but you can't get both and in saying that they both have military grade hyperdrives with slightly varying pros and cons (or is that going too far).
Your proposal on the drive side of things I certainly interesting and would like to see FD test it out to see if it is better for gameplay as without testing it, it is difficult to say which method is better.
 

Caylo

Caylo
I like the thought of reintroducing military drives, although I feel the game could do without fuel converters. The military drive in your concept seems a bit too penalising in terms of what it brings to the table for its cost, whilst at the same time a fuel converter negates the idea of military fuel.

I understand that you apparently wanted to make military drives to be exceptionally useful for exploration, but personally I'd prefer it to be geared towards fast movement across populated space. As such, it should actually be a *bad* idea for explorers, because out there they cannot buy military-grade fuel for these drives. Unless of course they'd convert much of their cargo space into fuel tanks, which is possible with 1.3! If military fuel lasts a lot longer than conventional fuel, it might still be a viable alternative, and explorers would have to make a choice as to whether they'd plan out their route beforehand and work with fixed fuel tank limitations, or sacrifice the convenience of a military drive's longer range and rely on the good ole' fuel scoop instead.

The "fuel miner" activity is something I had wanted to see in the game for some time, although this idea is entirely independent from military drives or fuel converters.
 

bliss

bliss
Troa Barton said:
I'm surpirised one of the powers didn't have a better FSD....
Click to expand...

I think I remember one of the dev's mentioning that Powers will have special ship modules.

I would love a special FSD that has an extra 5% - 10% range, or maybe an experimental scanner that combines the surface scanner and advanced discovery scanner (weighs more, takes more power).
 

Troa Barton

Troa Barton
bliss said:
I think I remember one of the dev's mentioning that Powers will have special ship modules.

I would love a special FSD that has an extra 5% - 10% range, or maybe an experimental scanner that combines the surface scanner and advanced discovery scanner (weighs more, takes more power).
Click to expand...
They do but none of them offer a better FSD.. I would like more usable tools myself. Scanners, turrets, cargo racks, thrusters, maybe even lighter armor than we have now. All would be welcome.
 

callahan44

callahan44
Do I remember dumping tons of Radioactives in a previous "Life"?

Would be great to see more military grade components, that aren't linked to PP factions.
 
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