necrooo \o/
we could use a variation on the system stardrive 2 uses for fuel:
ships have limited on-board fuel but dont use fuel while in range of a friendly supply station or planet.
as we want fuel to be its own industry we cant just magically keep ships from using fuel while in range, so i have a couple of thoughts on the whole complex:
first: everything requires fuel, all the time, in varying amounts.
to keep your patrols flying, you have to supply them with fuel.
that fuel can either come from internal tanks aboard the ship/station.
or from a friendly ship/station with a remote supply module.
the RSM transfers fuel to connected ships from the fuel bay of the supplying ship
(and maybe getting handed through multiple RSM's along the way)
im personally a bit split between those two possibilities:
- the RSM straight up refills the fuel tanks of connected vessels, greatly simplifies the whole fuel handling. remote supplied ships never have to dock anywhere
- the RSM removes the fuel requirements on the supplied ship and directly uses up the fuel of the supply ship instead. ships need to dock to refuel when they got out of supply range for some time
both variations have pros and cons, i personally prefer variation B because it requires long range exploration ships to actually return to base occasionally and not just within 2 jumps of some friendly station.
another point where we have multiple options is how one connects to an RSM
we either
- just have to be in range of the RSM to connect
- have to get in close proximity of the RSM to connect and then can use the full range of the RSM
option A is the simple option again here, but gives for less interesting interactions, as the only thing necessary is to be in some general area to get fuel.
with an explicit binding procedure theres a clear hierarchy of fuel flow (and thus predictability of where the fuel gets actually used up)
explicit connections also enable fuel supply range to be a limiting factor for drone usage, when not every ship with an RSM can assist the drone tender with supporting its drones.
in that avenue RSM's could have a limit on how many connections they can keep up at once, with the amount of connections being inversely proportional to the range of the RSM.
so a drone tender RSM would have pretty short range but could keep many drones running at once or a large resupply station could keep a single ship running across half the galaxy.
connection range could be a function of both ends of the RSM connection
maybe like
2*(A*B)/(A+B)
which gives A range for A=B and otherwise converges towards 2B for B<<A
which gives advantages for upgrading both ends of a connection but doesnt overly increase the range for just upgrading one end.
so a larger supply station gives larger supply radius, but still limied by the smaller ship
The system would remove the hassle/headache of having to explicitly care for every single ship to refuel when in general usage in friendly territory but preserves the strategic and economic aspects of fuel usage.
An active fleet uses a lot of fuel and has to be supplied.
Either by a big remote supply station or (if out of range or not enough capacities) by tankers going back and forth.