[Sephiroth]

I agree with Injustice, making it so you can't fly at 100% throttle indefinately will just increase travel times and as far as I can tell ND wants to move in the opposite direction of that (hasn't Scorch said they are working on ways to decrease travel time?) Space is big, I don't want to have to slow myself down 25% just so I can avoid having my engines overheating mid-fight and screwing me in the long run.

[Sephiroth]

Oh and if limited fuel is implemented it had better be a lot.

Fighting close to your station already has a lot of advantages, no real reason to add yet another.

[alphabet]

Originally Posted by Karash

I can just imagine a Ace pilot grinning as he knows his advasary is about to overheat and lose 50% of his thrust soon...would be a great dynamic.

Exactly, sorta the way we count FFs fired from an adversary. I have both fuel and heat considerations in the game I am currently playing and Im telling yall it really adds a lot to the fighting strategy and tactics.

I think what some of the peeps are against this, really doesnt understand how this works.

When you launch, your temp is 0 degrees and you have 100% fuel. Most fighters in the game I play now can travel a little over an hour without having to worry about refueling. Anyway, if you put the "hammer down" and travel, your engine temp starts to get hotter. You could probably travel from wake to QC full throttle and you would be "hot" when you arrived and burned possibly a quarter of your tank of fuel. Now if you cut engines your temp drops dramatically! You can actually see the temp guage start to fall, its not a slow process to cool your engines.

What I was saying is that at full throttle constantly + ab, you have a chance to overheat your engines. When that starts to happen you can come off AB and drop to 75% power to cool.. it wouldn't be a fast cooling like say zero throttle, but in a combat situation who is going to come to a complete stop?

It is an easy way to add ship management to the game. If you try it in another game, you would see the point Im trying to make. It definitely adds to the skill set and takes nothing away.

[Karash]

I am with alphabet on this one...even with the 100% throttle + heat thing that Injustice doesnt like. Newbs would figure out quickly how it all worked out, and if you catch a traveling ship on 100% throttle, you know their heat 'signature' would be huge, thus giving you an advantage in heat, even though most likely their initial velocity gives them an advantage.

You could have Auxiliary (modx) equipment that could 'dump' a massive amount of heat buildup as well. I see traders and such using this sort of equipment a lot (in this system at least)

[Evolution]

Originally Posted by alphabet

Anyway, if you put the "hammer down" and travel, your engine temp starts to get hotter. You could probably travel from wake to QC full throttle and you would be "hot" when you arrived and burned possibly a quarter of your tank of fuel.

It's a cool concept if you could balance it properly between being annoying as hell and being a waste of time. Being able to make 2 round trips between wake and QC on a tank of gas with your throttle at 100% for a gigantic majority of that time as you're suggesting here wouldn't be annoying. You have to wonder if it's a worthwhile system to implement if it's so insignificant though.

[Aphelion]

Expand this heat/fuel idea to complete control of your ship's systems. What if you could power towards a gate where you knew enemies were, shut off your engines to save fuel and drag-glide towards the enemies while turning off your ship's systems to avoid detection. After waiting the full minute or two it would take to get there, hit the 10s startup button (advance warning for the enemies) and ambush.

[Wild_Bill]

Okay, I want to up the ante here. Let's say you can overheat your engine, guns, etc. When it happens, it degrades the performance while it is overheated. It cools down and everything is fine... or is it? Repeated overheating of anything leads to permanent damage. Some slight (as in reduced range on radars, losing a couple of v's at max speed, longer delay in firing weapons, etc) some more serious (totally losing your radar; or shield failure, engine reduced to 10-15v etc). Suddenly this becomes more serious; still a hassle of course as something else to pay attention to.

Next lets take something else away or significantly change it. Currently when you dock at a Space Station (faction or neutral) you get automatic R/R/R at no extra charge. You don't pay a docking fee or a launch fee, just the darned insurance fee every time you launch based on the ship value, cargo value and the insurance coverage. Let's add in small launch and docking fees (to pay station upkeep of course). Let's also take the automatic R/R/R away. You have to check for it and PAY for it!

It certainly makes things more difficult; requires more attention and perhaps even makes it more logical/realistic. Is it worth adding? Only the devs can decide that, but we DO have the equipment icons to show damage don't we?

[alphabet]

What if Im flat broke. TRI at least gives me a basic kit to launch and make money to afford upgrades.

If there is a docking/launch fee and Im broke, how am I going to be able to launch?

I think that just by the virtue of being a TRI pilot, I should get fuel, a basic kit, repairs and be able to launch.

And yes, repeated overheating will lead to serious trouble unless you dock and repair.

[Duodecimal]

Fuel probably shouldn't be a consideration when plying intrafaction trade routes. Afterburner usage should stay in Jumpgate Evolution as it is in Jumpgate Classic, but fuel consumption at 100% standard thrust should consume, at most, a quarter of the tank from Sol Core to Quant Core.

Fuel consumption can be handled pseudo-logarithmically - traveling at 90% thrust consumes half the fuel of 100%, 80% thrust half the amount of 90% thrust, and so on. If I was worried about gas consumption, I'd just throttle down a little bit for big savings.

The amount of gas you have left should only be a concern for when you are on prolonged, deep-space expeditions. Sorties deep into enemy or unexplored territories should probably bring along a fuel tanker. The only times I watch my gas gauge in real life is on the Baltimore-Florida annual trip. Worrying about gas on run-of-the-mill tasks is not fun. Most people only have to gas up every few days. I go six weeks between refueling mine.

I would prefer engine overheating to be caused mainly by driving beyond spec or with damage. Afterburner usage contributes X% 'overheat' per second, and our super-futuristic engines cool off at the same rate that they heat up while they're off.

For damage contribution to overheating, we'd probably need to have individual ship equipment pieces be able to get damaged. If the engine is damaged, each percentage of damage contributes to engine overheating, with 50% damage being equivalent to the afterburner overheating rate, which has a coefficient of thrust rate.

So if your engine has 50% of damage, and you're going at 100% thrust, you're overheating at the same rate as though you were running afterburners. Reduce to half thrust, and it's half the afterburner rate. 25% engine damage means full thrust is overheating at half the afterburner rate.

Cooling off has to be fast but would require shutting the engine off. So if you're running at 100% and you apply afterburners for a little while, and your engines are 5% overheated, they'll stay overheated until they're no longer in use.

That's with passive cooling. Combat pilots would undoubtedly invest in an active cooling system of some kind.

The effect of overheating is decreasing efficiency. The more overheated a component becomes, the more energy it consumes. A 50% overheated engine reduces its base efficiency by 50% (multiplicatively). Overheated engines soak up more and more power until your guns no longer have enough, then your radar, and lastly your shields (depending on how energy is directed in your ship). Overheating other systems act the same way.

Capital ships (teehee) could probably keep three people occupied - one for navigation, one for turrets, and one for keeping systems from overheating by managing the active cooling system, and making sure the right components are getting enough power when overheating conditions occur.

[Cpt_Blood]

I like the idea of limited fuel, as long as it is a big fuel tank or fuel is used up at a very low rate under normal thrust, and there is plenty of warning of low fuel so you an easily make it back to a faction station.

The overheating, I don't like. 100% thrust should be the maximum thrust you can go without overheating, and I think the lack of fuel for AB would be the real limiting factor rather than heat. From an RP point of view, the ships' would have had an heat problem designed out of them. From a game point of view, it just overcomplicates the system and could put off new players.

Remember, for Jumpgate Evolution to succeed it needs to be more accessible, not less.

[Lordopic]

We have limited AB fuel and Drop tanks to top it up, as for limited ship fuel, no thank you I thought by now we would have ships with self replenishing energy source …oh we do.

Heat, maybe like they have in Eve now where you can boost guns etc for better short term performance at the cost of damaging the equipment

[vorlon31]

while you can disco, go for a pizza come back and be at a station I see no point whatsoever in limited fuel for main thrust. Being dead in the water is only any good if you log in to being dead in the water and then can call out to your squadmates to come find and r/r/r you - or not....drifting... forever drifting... oh.. here comes a flux