The next instalment in the trilling fuel saga!
Lightcruise engines now require fuel like reactors. Power consumption have been rebalanced and a bunch quality of life features where added.
Check out the full list:
Lightcruise engine:
Lightcruise engine will now require fuel to function properly. Like the reactor they have an internal tank of 250l for a 1m one (1/4 of its volume).
Their power draw have been greatly reduced accordingly.
As a result existing ship power usage balance will now be much lower.
Power Rebalancing:
There is now a bigger difference between idle and charge consumption for weapon and shield bricks: from 4x to 8x.
The goal is to have an active but idle ship consume little fuel to minimize "fuel anxiety" should the player want a to explore at a slow pace.
Bigger fuel draw will be linked to actual gameplay like lightcruise travel or space battle.
Inactive ship wont draw power until someone fly them.
This change will not require any tweak to the number of reactors needed on existing build.
To better understand a ship power balance there is now two "Power Draw" stats: a "Power Draw at Idle" and a "Power Draw at Charge".
It is okay to have "Power Draw at Charge" over 100% (you might want to add Capacitors to smooth out any potential down time).
A few note on balancing:
- Both reactor and engine can function at full power on their internal tank for 6 min.
- It means that a 1m reactor/engine piped to a 1000L tank will be operational for 30 min at full draw.
- Idle time will be around 48 min and 4 hours on internal and 1000L tank respectively.
- This means actual real gameplay time will be between 30 min and 4h for a reasonable tank.
- Pipe flow requirement has been reduced: a single 0.25m pipe is enough to power 4x 1m reactors/engines.
- Check your uptime estimate in the entity codex stats screen. You will have to configure your tank first.
Quality of Life:
- Fuel debug mode: you can visualize an X-ray view of your ship system and piping. The direction of flow is also displayed!
- Check it to make sure your piping is working as expected.
- Pipe to tank connection: a little brick will spawn once a pipe connects to a tank, reactor or engine.
- This allow a better visual feedback and is more believable on the edge of systems.
- New Tank Join. Flat pipe allowing to connect two adjacent tanks, reactors or thrusters.
- Idle and Charge range stats are added.
- HUD: fuel level widget added.
- Tank config screen: set the tank type in order for the HUD and stats to be computed accurately. This does not impact how the tank will work.
Next up will be fuel harvesting in the world!
Thanks for playing the game!