Fuel and resources

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!

Moderators: elliotg, Icemania

Post Reply
MaB1708
Posts: 343
Joined: Sun Aug 13, 2006 10:46 am
Location: Freiburg(Germany)

Fuel and resources

Post by MaB1708 »

Hi! Greetings from a new DWU player. Two questions:
I am mining Caslon on a gas planet some distance away from my home star. In my home colony there is almost no Caslon left and I have to send my ships to the gas planet to refuel. When they are back fuel is already 50% depleted. How can I raise the Caslon reserves in my home colony?
I have only yesterday discovered that if I design freighters with max. size 200 (which is as far as I can go atm), they will be automatically build and now a first group is en route to refueling at gas mining station (far away, as you might remember...). Will freighters help to bring Caslon home? Will they do it automatically?

Second question: I have around 21K supply of Helium at my home colony (and space port resp.) and am currently trying to retrofit a mining station at a far corner of the galaxy. Retrofitting is stalled due to lack of Helium there. How do I move Helium to my station to get the upgrade done?
Thanks, people!
Martin
Bingeling
Posts: 5186
Joined: Thu Aug 12, 2010 11:42 am

RE: Fuel and resources

Post by Bingeling »

You seem to have a crippling fuel shortage.

If you look at the gas mine, it will have almost no caslon in store. As soon as some is mine, it is probably reserved by some refueler, or by a freighter that will spend more fuel getting there and back, than it will actually carry home.

You need to build more caslon mines. A gas mine on every source in reasonable vicinity is recommended, you can never have too much fuel.

The civilians (freighters) will bring resources back home as soon as there is something to bring home, and they have fuel enough to do the trip.

The freighters will take care of moving helium around to those that need it, but they may not do so while you have an ongoing fuel shortage. Also, getting fuel to a far off retrofitting station may take quite some time, even without a fuel shortage.

Since you have a fuel shortage, I would recommend not building more ships until that is solved. I would also consider to retire military ship to stop them from burning fuel, and from wanting to grab the little fuel that is there.

Your construction ships should have only one mission in mind, to build mines on caslon sources. If you know of none of the sort, you are in trouble, and need your exploration ships to discover some...

To figure out where the caslon is, use the expansion planner. You can also use the galaxy map with "know resource" filter to figure out where certain materials are found.
User avatar
RemoteLeg
Posts: 153
Joined: Tue Apr 21, 2015 12:57 am
Location: Canada
Contact:

RE: Fuel and resources

Post by RemoteLeg »

One other thing you can try is to work on your reactor technology (it's at the top of the Energy & Construction tree) to get off the Fission reactors that burn Caslon and onto the Fusion reactors that instead burn Hydrogen. Once you have that you can redesign all your ships to use hydrogen.
See my Distant Worlds tutorial videos here:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... VfLtaT9Y81
User avatar
Retreat1970
Posts: 1125
Joined: Wed Nov 06, 2013 11:09 am
Location: Wisconsin

RE: Fuel and resources

Post by Retreat1970 »

MaB1708
Posts: 343
Joined: Sun Aug 13, 2006 10:46 am
Location: Freiburg(Germany)

RE: Fuel and resources

Post by MaB1708 »

Thank you all for your helpfull replies.
Yes, it is crippling, I started pre-Warp and have not left my home system. The only fuel source is at the edge of the system while my home colony is not. Freighters are slow. I started a next game with a Caslon gas giant next to my home planet - completely different situation. First of all I am aware of having freighters build earlier (had to figure out first that I can design them, too, to meet my starting size 200 restriction).
Apart from the particular situation: thanks for your explanations, helpfull to understand the mechanics.
I have read quite a few in the forums prior to posting, but have not seen the post that Retreat has linked, so cheers for that, too.
M
Bingeling
Posts: 5186
Joined: Thu Aug 12, 2010 11:42 am

RE: Fuel and resources

Post by Bingeling »

Being pre-warp explains a bit. Personally I would not move beyond the immediate surroundings until I got the first warp bubble drive. I did not think it was pre-warp in my reply above :)
MaB1708
Posts: 343
Joined: Sun Aug 13, 2006 10:46 am
Location: Freiburg(Germany)

RE: Fuel and resources

Post by MaB1708 »

ORIGINAL: Bingeling

Being pre-warp explains a bit. Personally I would not move beyond the immediate surroundings until I got the first warp bubble drive. I did not think it was pre-warp in my reply above :)

It is valuable information nonetheless, thanks!
User avatar
Shark7
Posts: 7936
Joined: Tue Jul 24, 2007 4:11 pm
Location: The Big Nowhere

RE: Fuel and resources

Post by Shark7 »

ORIGINAL: RemoteLeg

One other thing you can try is to work on your reactor technology (it's at the top of the Energy & Construction tree) to get off the Fission reactors that burn Caslon and onto the Fusion reactors that instead burn Hydrogen. Once you have that you can redesign all your ships to use hydrogen.

With this in mind I also suggest only changing either state or Civilian ships over to hydrogen. Bear in mind that under the hood, both Caslon and Hydrogen are high demand resources both for fuel and for colony growth. The best way I've found to keep things on track is to redesign my state ships to use Hydrogen fuel while leaving the civilian ships on caslon reactors. It's a bit of extra work, and will require manual upgrades and avoiding the 'auto upgrade' options, but works to fix the shortage problem early game.
Distant Worlds Fan

'When in doubt...attack!'
MaB1708
Posts: 343
Joined: Sun Aug 13, 2006 10:46 am
Location: Freiburg(Germany)

RE: Fuel and resources

Post by MaB1708 »

Thank you for the information, Shark7!
User avatar
Retreat1970
Posts: 1125
Joined: Wed Nov 06, 2013 11:09 am
Location: Wisconsin

RE: Fuel and resources

Post by Retreat1970 »

Getting a non-Caslon reactor isn't quick, so you will be stuck with Caslon fuel for awhile. Make sure your mines are designed efficiently, and find more Caslon sources as soon as you have warp. Caslon is priority. You'll recover.
User avatar
tortugapower
Posts: 303
Joined: Thu Dec 17, 2015 6:10 pm

RE: Fuel and resources

Post by tortugapower »

Well if you are pre-warp, I doubt going for hydrogen reactors is going to help, haha [:D] (it's too far off, otherwise that is really good advice).

Depending on how crippling your supply is, this might mean you need make the warp drive your #1 priority, so that you can explore more systems -- for more fuel sources! Also, minor point, but I think it's more fuel-efficient to warp anywhere than cruise there.

Another little thing that might help is park all your state ships. If that's a concern because you need defenses, pay off the pirates to help you instead (and then still keep your ships parked). Fuel is the worst bottleneck to have... we've *all* been there.

Matrix Games video tutorials:
Distant Worlds Universe
Advanced Tactics Gold
Aeson
Posts: 786
Joined: Fri Aug 30, 2013 7:36 pm

RE: Fuel and resources

Post by Aeson »

Also, minor point, but I think it's more fuel-efficient to warp anywhere than cruise there.
Correct. There's technically an edge case over very short distances, but it's not an edge case worth worrying about due to just how short the distances that cause it to come up are.
Another little thing that might help is park all your state ships.
And it'll help more if the ships have energy collectors so as not to burn fuel while idling.

It depends a bit on what you're actually doing prewarp, but energy collectors are generally the best way to cut fuel consumption that early in the game, and the first version of the component is more than adequate for most purposes for quite some time.
User avatar
RemoteLeg
Posts: 153
Joined: Tue Apr 21, 2015 12:57 am
Location: Canada
Contact:

RE: Fuel and resources

Post by RemoteLeg »

Energy collectors only work when the ship is not moving, so they are not much help with Scouts that should be moving most of the time.
They certainly help with some ship types - particularly Constructors because they spend a lot of time not moving while they are building or repairing things.

Military ships ordered to patrol a planet will burn more fuel than ships told to stop at a planet, so you can save some fuel using the Stop command.

Do other people put energy collectors on their military ships? Just asking. [&:]
I tried it then decided the extra space required for the collectors could be better used for extra weapons/shields/fuel tanks etc. so I stopped doing it. Perhaps you feel differently.
Nowadays I only put energy collectors on static structures (bases, etc.) and ships that spend a lot of time standing still (like constructors and resupply ships). I'd be interested in your opinion.
See my Distant Worlds tutorial videos here:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... VfLtaT9Y81
User avatar
Retreat1970
Posts: 1125
Joined: Wed Nov 06, 2013 11:09 am
Location: Wisconsin

RE: Fuel and resources

Post by Retreat1970 »

Military ships sit around a lot, unless you constantly have them moving, and either way you're burning fuel. If you feel like and extra fuel cell, or missile bay, or whatever, is more important than a collector on your designs, that's ok.

On a side note, I've never understood fuel problems. There's so many fuel sources in the game.
Aeson
Posts: 786
Joined: Fri Aug 30, 2013 7:36 pm

RE: Fuel and resources

Post by Aeson »

Energy collectors only work when the ship is not moving, so they are not much help with Scouts that should be moving most of the time.
If you have more than two or maybe three scouts for any significant period of time prior to getting Warp Bubble Generators or better, you're doing something strange, and if you're not just about ready to upgrade to something warp-capable by the time the scouts are done exploring the system, you may well be better off decommissioning the scouts than keeping them around wasting your fuel.
Do other people put energy collectors on their military ships? Just asking.
I tried it then decided the extra space required for the collectors could be better used for extra weapons/shields/fuel tanks etc. so I stopped doing it. Perhaps you feel differently.
An energy collector takes 8 size and has an energy collection rating of 24+. It is a very rare standard-type ship that needs more than one energy collector, and having the energy collector means that it's not wasting fuel while idle. For anything but very small or very, very active ships, 0.44-2 guns or 0.8 shield generators or 1.33 fuel cells probably isn't worth going from "I can stay here forever or until combat depletes my fuel reserves" to "I can stay here for perhaps an hour or two or until combat depletes my fuel reserves."

The cost to offensive/defensive capability for installing energy collectors is marginal, and for it you get a significant improvement in fleet readiness - a fleet equipped with energy collectors which last refueled an hour ago and has been idle ever since is still more or less fully fueled and ready to go; a fleet which is not equipped with energy collectors which last refueled an hour ago has likely burned through a considerable amount of fuel (size-300 ships in the earlyish portion of the game tend to have static power requirements of about 12 energy per second; even with NovaCore Reactors that's still ~86 fuel, or somewhere around a quarter to a third of an earlyish game size-300 ship's probable fuel capacity). A minor defensive fleet such as might be provided to a colony to ward off minor pirate raiding will likely not see significant combat; giving each ship in it an energy collector takes the fleet's maximum time on station from "an hour or two, lessened significantly by any combat seen" to "indefinite and only limited by combat." Any fleet constantly burning fuel puts a strain on the local fuel supply and defending areas with such fleets while the local fuel situation is poor or worse can be a royal pain because you need to send the fleet elsewhere to get refueled and as a result you only have perhaps one to two thirds of your fleet's designed fuel capacity available for use on station and you're wasting that fuel on idling while waiting for targets when you could have more or less all of it available for combat or travel.

Energy collectors are well worth the costs on most warships. Decent player-designed ships are usually going to beat the stuffing out of anything the computer fields, and by the time you're looking at size-300 or larger vessels, the sacrifice to add an energy collector is very marginal compared to what you already have on the ship - oh, no, instead of 13 Maxos Blasters and 8 Standard Armor, you have 12 Maxos Blasters and 5 Standard Armor, or instead of 9 Corvidian Shield Generators and 5 Standard Armor you have 8 Corvidian Shield Generators and 7 Standard Armor. Big deal. As long as it's at least competitive with the computer's designs, that's all you need, and if you know what you're doing when you design a ship, it'll be more than merely competitive whether or not you include the energy collector.
Twigster
Posts: 1024
Joined: Tue Jan 13, 2015 1:35 am

RE: Fuel and resources

Post by Twigster »

Do other people put energy collectors on their military ships? Just asking.

Definitely, yes. Just to reinforce what others have said concerning this.
User avatar
RemoteLeg
Posts: 153
Joined: Tue Apr 21, 2015 12:57 am
Location: Canada
Contact:

RE: Fuel and resources

Post by RemoteLeg »

Fair enough. Just make sure the ships are parked at their destination and not patrolling. If they patrol, they keep moving and the energy collectors never activate.
See my Distant Worlds tutorial videos here:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... VfLtaT9Y81
Twigster
Posts: 1024
Joined: Tue Jan 13, 2015 1:35 am

RE: Fuel and resources

Post by Twigster »

Understood there about the not-patrolling point. Typically, my military ships with Energy Collectors are not patrolling but will if necessary and I am understanding the cost. Like you, I put Collectors on all bases.
Post Reply

Return to “Distant Worlds 1 Series”