Distant Worlds is a vast, pausable real-time, 4X space strategy game which models a "living galaxy" with incredible options for replayability and customizability. Experience the full depth and detail of large turn-based strategy games, but with the simplicity and ease of real-time, and on the scale of a massively-multiplayer online game. Now greatly enhanced with the new Universe release, which includes all four previous releases as well as the new Universe expansion!
Yeah... already pointed that out, lol. As I said up above, they have niche uses in combat, but those uses are not at all related to being good at refueling.
As far as their combat utility goes, they're even limited there. Resupply ships will not actively engage enemy targets, even if they are blockading an enemy planet. They will only fire on enemy ships if fired upon first, or if you manually order them to fire. So like I said... niche uses. But they're awful as the role they're intended for.
I'm telling you that if you design your fleet correctly, no. No they won't. If you design your fleet brainlessly, then yes. Yes they will.
You need to structure your ship design with fleet refueling as a design parameter. For starters, I wouldn't ever make a 50-ship fleet. Even if you DID use refuelers, 50 ships with large fuel cells would suck it dry in a matter of seconds, and you'd be waiting anyways. The trick is to create a ship designed to be part of a specific fleet. Here is what I am suggesting:
Fleet size: 10 ships
Fuel per ship: 2000 fuel (1000 if you are going lean, and adding more weapons)
Fuel used: Hydrogen
With these specifications, you need enough cargo space on each ship to have enough to refuel the 9 other ships in the fleet, assuming they are totally empty. Then add a little more cargo as a safety margin. You would then add 9 docking bays to each ship, so there is no wait line (although you can get away with 1 docking bay to save space). Because gas is gathered by ships at 4x the listed speed, you can also get away with only having one gas extractor too, to save more space. Thus, a lean ship design would look like this:
Gas extractors: 1
Cargo space: 9000+ (assuming 1000 unit fuel cells)
Docking bays: 1
And a deluxe model would look like this:
Gas extractors: 2 (if you need 2 to get 40 gas mining rate)
Cargo space: 18000+ (assuming 2000 unit fuel cells)
Docking bays: 9
At any time, you can find a nearby Hydrogen planet or gas cloud, select your fleet, CTRL-right click the planet or cloud, and select "Move to". When the fleet moves there, it will stop. When they stop, they will automatically mine gas until they top off their cargo stores. This process is frighteningly quick if you do it right.
A resupply ship can't touch this setup. Not even close.
Okay let's run with your premise. Let's say you NEED to send 50 ships to an enemy system in order to not be killed. Fleet resupply is STILL better, because you just make 5 fleets of 10 ships, and hotkey them 1-5. There's your 50 ships on target, with the ease of fleet refueling. Resupply ships still aren't needed, even in your scenario.
And if you run the lean design (1000 fuel per ship), you can make 20-ship fleets that can refuel, and still have tons of room left for shields and weaponry.
Yeah it's definitely broken. My hope is that when the Dev team sees this, they'll make the suggested fix (disallow commerce centers on star bases) and not do anything heavy-handed that would break other aspects of star base utility (specifically as fleet refueling stations).
I'd agree to that, as long as combat ships with gas collectors are able to use their collected hydrogen/caslon to refuel themselves.
Fleet refueling as I described it above is a workaround, because ships can't collect hydrogen and put that hydrogen in their own fuel reserves.
I'd even settle for energy-to-fuel devices filling up the ship's fuel stores, but that's not an option either. End-game refueling is extremely problematic when there are large numbers of ships in the field. Haphazardly sprinkling gas mining stations here and there is not an effective strategy. There has to be an option.
Yeah it's definitely broken. My hope is that when the Dev team sees this, they'll make the suggested fix (disallow commerce centers on star bases) and not do anything heavy-handed that would break other aspects of star base utility (specifically as fleet refueling stations).
I would rather restrict mining components to mining stations and mining ships, but your idea may work better. I like to throw a commerce center on my bases (SB or DB) and use them in lieu of small space ports. No construction or repair, but trade and storage. Maybe I just think that works, but that's how I play dammit!
I would rather restrict mining components to mining stations and mining ships, but your idea may work better. I like to throw a commerce center on my bases (SB or DB) and use them in lieu of small space ports. No construction or repair, but trade and storage. Maybe I just think that works, but that's how I play dammit!
That's an interesting point... I never thought about that application for star bases.
Your suggested fix would end combat ships as refuelers, and also end star bases as clustered hydrogen farms.
I guess that would still leave options though. Mainly, I'd have to park 3-4 resupply ships with large cargo bays in a gas cloud, and surround them with 3-4 defensive bases. It'd make resupply ships a little more useful at least!
The option I like the most though is the solar tanker concept. But the energy-to-fuel device is so broken right now, that concept has no place in actual gameplay.
Well lets not get hasty. Just as long as we can restrict the resource gathering somehow. I like your idea of combat ship refueling. I'm trying a new game with it now. Also we could probably mod the energy-to-fuel device somehow. I can look into it.
He's probably a bit frustrated because he's researching stuff in the game that the rest of us didn't actually know while you're sitting in your armchair and shouting "lol, u be n00b on easy mode!!" and stuff.
@ Airpower
Some really nice work here, but I'm thinking it probably would be better to simply make any station with mining equipment on it block off any future mining capable stations, as opposed to blocking off commerce centers on star bases. As for resupply ships, they're really more useful during the mid-game when you need something to support long distance operations and lack tech to get by without. Once your military ships end up with a range of 18 sectors, you can actually get by just fine with a single refueling base that's a sector and a half away.
Yeah, after reading Retreat's use for star bases with commerce centers, I'm prone to agree with you.
If a mining star base locks out future star bases and mining bases, it will fix this exploit. But as a side effect, it will remove the strategy of clustering multiple gas mining star ports in a gas cloud, to act as a defensible, large-scale refueling point / staging area near enemy space.
That's not a killer though I guess. It would be just as easy to crank out multiple small, unarmed/unshielded resupply ships and park them next to each other in a nebula, protected by a fleet or stationary defensive bases.
As long as there's at least one way to allow a single resource to be multi-mined for gas, I'll be happy with whatever fix they decide on.
By the way, I've lurked here for a while, and have always been impressed with your posts. Nice to talk to you!
