Simple fuel question, dashes vs solid lower fuel line.

Shrapnel316

Shrapnel316
As I understand it I think the fuel gauge reads like this:

Top thin line = The fuel currently being consumed by your ship for normal flight and supercruise.
Bottom fat line = The ships Reservoir, which refills the top thin line when fully consumed, and is also consumed directly for jumps to other systems.

My question is that sometimes I have noticed that the bottom fat line is made up of dashes, and other times it is a solid line. What is the difference? Does one represent multiple reservoirs?

Thank you all for your time!
 

CMDR Ash

CMDR Ash
I was always under the impression that those lines meant one full thin bar of your current fuel (the one at the top) you mainly see them in combat ships because there tanks are so small, I may be wrong but thats what I thought :)
 

bamber

B
The broad thick line is your Hyperspace fuel tank, This Fuel tank is used to power your Hyperspace drive imagi

The thin line is your fuel tank is your main fuel tank - this will power your supercruise engine and main systems - if it becomes empty then it will be topped off from the hyperspace tank
 

Deleted member 38366

D
The top (solid) line, which is unavailable for HyperJumps, equals 1ton.

The segmented bottom line seems only visible on Ships with a 4ton fuel tank.
If the Fuel Tank is 8tons or larger, a non-segmented line is shown.
 
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Loskene

L
Yeah it depends on the size of your fuel tank. Each segment is 1 ton of fuel, so on ships with 16+ ton capacity there's not enough room to show all the segments at a readable size.
 

bambam_ofc

bambam_ofc
thanks for this info ... I never knew how much the top thin line was going to suck out of the bottom thick line when it depleted, and that was kinda important when I hyperjumped to a system running on fumes with the destination station a long way away. So now I know it'll suck 1 tonne out of my 60-tonne main tank(s) and I can eyeball that...
 

MickyG1982

M
It's where most first timers to Hutton in alpha centauri think they are running out of fuel. They look at the top line, see that it's almost empty but forget that it refills from the main tank.
 

Red Kite

Red Kite
Bear in mind also that when you hear the message "Main fuel tank drained" it doesn't mean that literally. It just means that the main tank (thick line) does not have enough left to do another top-up of the Active Fuel Reservoir (thin line). There is still probably some fuel in both.

As noted above, the only thing which uses fuel directly from the main tank is hyperspace jumping. Everything else, powerplant, engines, supercruise, weapons, life-support etc, uses the AFR. When you fuel scoop only the main tank refills, not the AFR, but when you buy fuel in a station both tanks go to 100%.
 

Ravenov

Ravenov
correcting a bit of misinformation that i believe i can see here ... the thin line is the reserve tank which powers the ship's systems is half a ton (at least on my Asp). You can test this by having a full main tank and almost empty reserve and note your maximum jump range (right panel > functions) then wait for it to refill from the main tank and check the range again. I used Coriolis.io and the fuel slider at the bottom to match the new jump range.

Also, i think the 'main fuel tank drained' message currently plays when your tank drops below the level to make your next plotted jump, or perhaps below a certain percentage of the tank (i've heard it when not having a route plotted so not so sure on this). Either way, chances are that even when that message has played, there will still be enough fuel in the tank for a less than full range jump, which might be enough to get you out of trouble.

And no one has yet mentioned it, but i see a lot of false or incorrect info about it, the numbers that are to the right of the fuel display are the consumptions rate (of the reserve/systems tank) in tons per hour. I've seen a lot of people think that this is how long it will take for their fuel to run out, which you can work out if you know exactly how much is left in the reserve.
 
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