What is the best strategy for dual fuel supplies?

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sventhebold
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What is the best strategy for dual fuel supplies?

Post by sventhebold »

I have always stuck with a strictly Caslon fuel supply. Is there any bigger benefits to switching to Hydrogen or dual fuel?
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Tehlongone
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RE: What is the best strategy for dual fuel supplies?

Post by Tehlongone »

Well many say Caslon for cvilians and Hydrogen for military, I do much the same but it's not too important if you make sure to have resupply ships to tend to your military needs.

There is some advantage in that you increase the amount of fuel you draw from and make it easier to have enough for your military ships which might bring down station shortages.
Aeson
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RE: What is the best strategy for dual fuel supplies?

Post by Aeson »

One of the reasons why it's suggested that you split the fuel supply up is that, as Tehlongone says, it increases the total available fuel, which reduces the likelihood of significant shortages, especially when you have moderate access to both fuel types. A second advantage is that fusion reactors are typically more efficient but less powerful than quantum reactors, which makes fusion reactors relatively good for civilians (as they provide better range on the same fuel supply, and civilian ships and stations typically don't need that much power anyways), while quantum reactors are relatively good for military purposes as they provide more power per unit size but pay for it with decreased fuel efficiency. NovaCore Reactors are an exception to this, but they're the Quameno racial tech and racial techs have a tendency to be superior in general to equivalently easily researched technologies.

Quick reactor overview:

Code: Select all

Reactor                Size     Output     Storage     Fuel per 1000 Energy     Output/Size     Storage/Size
 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Basic Space Reactor     18        46         90             4.11 Caslon            2.56             5.00
 Fission 1               22        60        105             3.81 Caslon            2.73             4.77
 Fission 2               22        72        125             3.84 Caslon            3.27             5.68
 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Fission 3               22        86        150             3.83 Caslon            3.91             6.82
 Quantum 1               18       120        230             3.48 Caslon            6.67             12.8
 Fusion 1                15        84        180             2.89 Hydrogen          5.60             12.0
 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Quantum 2               18       145        275             3.49 Caslon            8.06             15.3
 Fusion 2                15       100        215             2.79 Hydrogen          6.67             14.3
 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Quantum 3               18       175        330             3.48 Caslon            9.72             18.3
 Fusion 3                15       120        260             2.69 Hydrogen          8.00             17.3
 HyperFusion 1           16       180        350             2.79 Hydrogen          11.3             21.8
 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 HyperFusion 2           16       215        440             2.67 Hydrogen          13.4             27.5
 HyperFusion 3           16       260        540             2.52 Hydrogen          16.3             33.8
 
 NovaCore 1              20       120        240             2.00 Hydrogen          6.00             12.0
 NovaCore 2              20       155        300             2.00 Hydrogen          7.75             15.0
 NovaCore 3              20       192        375             2.00 Hydrogen          9.60             18.8
Grouping is by roughly equivalent location in the tech tree. NovaCore Reactors are separated out because they're the Quameno special reactor and so somewhat easier to research the higher tech versions than the position in the tech tree would imply; regardless, NovaCore 1 comes out roughly with Fission 2, NovaCore 2 comes out roughly with Fusion 2 or Quantum 2, and NovaCore 3 comes out roughly with HyperFusion 2. As can be seen in the chart, Caslon reactors outperform equivalent-tech Hydrogen reactors in terms of output per unit size and energy storage per unit size, both of which are important considerations for military ships attempting to fit as much firepower/shields/speed as possible within size limits, while Hydrogen reactors are more fuel efficient and are somewhat smaller. NovaCore Reactors are an exception to this rule and are quite simply the best reactor you can get until HyperFusion Reactors come into play, and even when HyperFusion does come into play the NovaCores are still better where fuel efficiency is more useful than power density (such as on civilian vessels or many space stations).

This is not to say that you must use one reactor or the other for some purposes, or that you must divide your fuel supply when you can. Quantum Reactors are better than Fusion Reactors only when you actually need the output or if you have more than enough Caslon but relatively little hydrogen, and may be overkill for smaller military vessels, most space stations, and probably all civilian vessels. Moreover, if you have a situation where you have access to a great number of sources of one fuel type but little access to sources of the other fuel type, it is rather likely that you'll be better off keeping the military and private sector running on the same fuel. Another case where it's probably better to keep to a single fuel supply is when you have access to reactors that use one fuel type which are better in all categories than your available alternatives that use the other fuel type, such as when you have access to either NovaCore Reactors or HyperFusion Reactors.

One last thing - it is possible to mix reactors on a ship. However, we cannot set the amounts of the different types of fuel the ship will carry, and we cannot easily control what types of fuel the ship picks up or how it balances the fuel load, so it isn't possible to create a ship that uses Fusion reactors for normal travel purposes and fires up the Quantum reactors when it gets into combat. Mixing reactors furthermore makes your ships vulnerable to running out of one or the other type of fuel before running completely out of fuel, which shuts down the reactors that run off that type of fuel. This can greatly reduce a ship's combat capabilities, especially if it runs out of the fuel that most of the reactor power comes from.
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pycco
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RE: What is the best strategy for dual fuel supplies?

Post by pycco »

ah love your graphs, ya separating the military and civilian to use different types of fuel is a great idea will save you lots of shortages.
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Bingeling
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RE: What is the best strategy for dual fuel supplies?

Post by Bingeling »

While splitting fuel between civilians and military is a good idea, splitting fuel within a fleet can be very annoying. As soon as fuel supplies are less than stellar in an area, one typically regrets putting a hydrogen powered alien ship in the fleet with other caslon driven ships.

The fleet will only want to refuel at locations with both hydrogen and caslon available, which mostly leaves mines that happen to mine both, spaceports and colonies. If the fleet used only one type of fuel, they could in additional refuel at gas mines that mines only that kind of fuel.

A reason to mix fuel in this case, is of course that the early alien ships can be very powerful, but not quite powerful enough to do it all by themselves.
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