Ship travel w/ no fuel confusion...???

[jacozilla]

Love the game, been playing obsessively since found out about it couple weeks ago. 90% of everything I just learned as I went. But one major item I can't figure out and don't see anything in game or offline to help explain it.

I know WHAT it is doing (apparently), but have zero clue as to how or why, and dying to know.

The Behavior --> How can a ship travel in hyper / space when it has zero fuel? Thought zero fuel = 0 speed = dead in the water?

1. A capital ship I repaired and rescued from debris field got forgotten by me between systems, and next I looked, it had zero fuel. It is part of a fleet I put together from existing fleet and then adding this ship into it. I ordered fleet to move to another system and forgot this ship was low on fuel, so midway to destination it ran out.

2. But to my surprise, it is still cooking along in what appears to be hyper speed - reduced to kinda slow, but not regular non-hyper speed. It is still definitely traveling way, way too fast to be considered normal non-hyper cruise / sprint / impulse speed.

3. How can this be? Looking at the ship, it says on my screen it is Fuel = 0 but says 'Fuel 0 (speed reduced)
Energy also says 0, and my shields are 1371 / 2080 and slowly decreasing as it powers down from having no fuel I guess

4. Sat and watched and this trooper limped at slow hyper speed for about 1.5 sector distance to catch up with my fleet at destination, and then refueled.

5. I examined the design and while this debris field capital ship has much better tech in terms of higher tech, I don't see anything like an energy to fuel converter on board (which I read about as a really higher end tech that converts solar into fuel. But this ship definitely does not have that on board.

What it does have is 2 energy collectors - but I thought all that did was convert energy into the static energy use it otherwise takes from fuel. I use them on my stations and bases, but did not install on ships yet.

Anyone know or have thoughts on a) what is the general rule of thumb re: fuel and ship travel - I thought 0 fuel meant no travel but now I'm confused.
And b) in this specific scenario - is the cap ship still able to travel because it was in mid hyper so stayed in slow hyper even with no fuel? e.g. can't re-jump, but your last hyper still carries on 'momentum'? Or is it the energy collectors?

Appreciate any insight.

[RemoteLeg]

Yes, I found this too and did a bit of investigating.
I did a video about the results that shows ships with no fuel can still travel at hyper-speed, can still use their maneuvering engines, and their systems that have a static energy requirement (e.g. life support) continue to function.
This is weird considering that the reactors burn fuel to provide all the ships energy as well as transportation.

I think the reason for this is game-related.
Ships must go to a fuel source to refuel; the fuel cannot come to them. This means any ship that runs out of fuel should essentially be derelict. Also, the life support should cease and the crew will die.
The designers got around this by allowing the engines to function, making it possible to get the ship back to a refueling station.

It makes sense from the aspect of game-play. It just seems a bit odd if you let those pesky "laws of physics" get in the way.

[Aeson]

This is expected behavior. Assuming that your ship's drives and reactors are undamaged, a ship which is out of fuel will be capable of propelling itself at one third of its designed hyper and cruise speeds. I would suggest that you consider the ship to be operating on emergency reserves of fuel.

I suspect that this was implemented to get around issues with fuel shortages and stranded ships. If lack of fuel rendered ships completely immobile, it would be fairly easy for situations to arise where a fuel shortage is essentially game-ending since you would require fuel in order to obtain fuel. Additionally, freighters are in my experience not particularly reliable when supplying deep-space stations; I would not want to have to rely upon them to rescue ships which have been stranded by lack of fuel.

[jacozilla]

Ah, ok - great stuff to know.

I think the 1/3 of rated hyper speed limit is a decent check to make sure players don't abuse the n0-fuel issue, but give soft landing to those (like me) that just forgot a ship was almost out of fuel.

I try and play manual where I control the important stuff, but let automation handle lots of the detail stuff that would get overwhelming once your empire starts to get decent size. The one function I wish there was - that would help me avoid this fuel situation is that mostly my fleets are on about same tank of fuel level - except when I add new ships into the existing fleet.

That 'stray' I add in has to get to the fleet - and if I forget I have some incoming adds, and give my fleet a move order - then I add up in the situation that spurred this OP.

Good to know thought that I'm not totally screwed if my ship tanks hit 0 on fuel. Would have hated to do all that work to repair the debris field capital ship and then have it basically be dead in space lol