octagon999 Posted February 25, 2004 Report Share Posted February 25, 2004 Fuel Dissstillation Complexes I beg to differ go for the Fuel Purification Refinery, at leassst until you can use the advanced conssstruction materialsss. Usssing improved CM'sss for fuel isss sssuch a wassste. CTO, Sssarasss With all due respect... If you have them fine. If you don't use what you have. The idea is to generate the fuel rather than skim. Not everyone has Fuel Purification Complexes, and if you don't, the Distillation complexes work just fine, thank you very much. Plan A: Make the fuel and just LC at the colony (IF you have some means of advanced fuel production). Plan B: Skim the fuel and preposition it at the warp point. PS Since Improved Materials never go away, at some point you can always re-use them later once you have a different fueling strategy. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EternusIV Posted February 25, 2004 Author Report Share Posted February 25, 2004 All nice points. Did I overlook the efficiency of just building separate skimmers? Probably :/ Confession: I have no Gas Giant in my home system - and I'm super short on CMs...so....my situation forced me to instinctively look elsewhere. I'll rework my Yankee Math without the Fuel Shuttles. Won't be a HUGE difference I don't think. Thanks for all the replies I hope it was of some limited use to show newer players the scale of such projects. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MadMartinB Posted February 25, 2004 Report Share Posted February 25, 2004 Eternus - I would not build skim ships. If you want build 100 Fuel Distillation complexes using Improved CM (I think it's that one). Or just slap the return tankage required onto your ship. It can't be that much at say 6000 multiple... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
octagon999 Posted February 25, 2004 Report Share Posted February 25, 2004 Eternus - I would not build skim ships. If you want build 100 Fuel Distillation complexes using Improved CM (I think it's that one). Or just slap the return tankage required onto your ship. It can't be that much at say 6000 multiple... The Pirate and the Rathe agree! I think the principle is to keep your actual ship tonnage at a minimum so that your engine requirements are used only for critical cargo. Fuel and fuel tankage are not critical. Use other means to help your infrastructure. As far as pop, etc, if you are throwing out 500+ pop a turn to some colony, what difference does 100 or even 500 pop and 50,000 Improved CM's make? Nothing. If you AREN'T cranking that many out every turn, well... Then your needs are much simpler and your life is so much less stressful, so its a win-win situation. Tom Rathe Federation Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EternusIV Posted February 25, 2004 Author Report Share Posted February 25, 2004 I'll have the precise efficiency configuration for all the suggestions made so far in a couple days if someone else doesnt beat me to it Darn Astrophysics Exam/Complex Analysis Exam/Turn Deadline hit the same day! /shakes fist at fate Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MadMartinB Posted February 25, 2004 Report Share Posted February 25, 2004 100 pop here or there means nothing other than we have pop constraints on the HW. I am in a deficit right now and slowly stripping away the ICs/Stripmines to make myself more efficient. Cloning centers help but still I did not take High Reproduction so the off load of population is killing me. (they are also extremely expensive and since I spent 5 turns working on Imperial Medical Centers and the DISM does not allow a CON..../.) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hobknob Posted February 25, 2004 Report Share Posted February 25, 2004 I only build fuel distillation centers as a last resort as they are much less efficient and convenient than a handful of 10 AP skimmers. And you don't have to have a gas giant either, there are plenty of atmospheres that will provide decent return. The only place to ever build FDC's would be on a homeworld with surplus pop, but what is surplus pop? Any pop that could be used to build a FDC could better be used to man improved IC's or improved stripmines. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
octagon999 Posted February 25, 2004 Report Share Posted February 25, 2004 I only build fuel distillation centers as a last resort as they are much less efficient and convenient than a handful of 10 AP skimmers. And you don't have to have a gas giant either, there are plenty of atmospheres that will provide decent return. The only place to ever build FDC's would be on a homeworld with surplus pop, but what is surplus pop? Any pop that could be used to build a FDC could better be used to man improved IC's or improved stripmines. To paraphrase Lt. O'Reilly... "You should have been born an Irishman". Well, a high repro, excellent colonizing Irishman anyways. Pop? No prob. Imp Con Mats? No prob. 10 AP? Ya gotta be kidding me! "No one has engines like that!" Nice thing about good colonization is that most of them come hand in hand with excellent combat bonuses. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MadMartinB Posted February 25, 2004 Report Share Posted February 25, 2004 Hobnob - 100 Fuel Centers make lots of fuel and the cost is 50,000 Improved CM. Your 10AP skimmers probably are more economic..I'll have to analyze that.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EternusIV Posted February 27, 2004 Author Report Share Posted February 27, 2004 I'll elaborate to stupificaiton later but..... It appears that you are all right. If you have nice fuel distillation AND you have a nice little nework of fuel ships at the warp points, you can save quite a chunk of resources. I'm reworking the spreadsheet a bit so that you can opt to but the fuel tanks/shuttles into the design. With all of that said, I still feel comfortable with my original design. By the time you factor in the fuel ship logistics etc - you only save on engines and fuel shuttles. At this stage, my production is at a healthy enough clip that I can just cough up the extra engines without much concern. PLUS - I set up 1 convoy route and don't have to worry about setting up fuel tanks at all the relative warp points and possible disruptions etc. I'd rather save the real $$$ on orders than saving on the resources for a few thousand engines and a handful of fuel shuttles. The fuel installations are nice....and yes....after looking it more closely, I can EASILY produce enough fuel without having to worry about SKIM orders. If I change one thing - it will be removing fuel shuttles. counterpoint: I do get to save those handful of CMs/ICMs which I need for my new massive colonization project by skimping out on fuel installations. PLUS - the concept of pulling resources out of the thin air excites my long term analysis. Hope all your turns run well and thank you all for the comments and feedback. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WKE235 Posted February 27, 2004 Report Share Posted February 27, 2004 One way to compare costs is to convert all items into the Raw Resource cost. A fuel shuttle + 600 fuel tanks = 126,000 + 90,000 = 216,000 Raw. One Fuel Distillation Complex costs 45,000 Raw. An added factor, each engine costs 24,000 raw. So, for a fuel skimmer ship to be more efficent than Fuel Distillation complexes, the total fuel skimmed in a turn divided by the raw cost of the ship must be greater than the complex (250/45000 .. or 1/180 .. 1 fuel produced each turn for each 180 invested raw .. not taking into account the 60 per turn in Raw to create the petroleum, or the use of 1 POP unit ... yet). Keeping the ship simple, it takes 3 AP per ship load (NM, Skim, NM, OC) to get 600 fuel from a Gas Giant back to the homeworld. Lets design a 9 AP ship using Mk II Fusion engines. The 1200 tons of Shuttle and Tanks requires 10 engines (to get to 2200 tons and 20,000 tons of thrust). So the Raw cost is 216,000 + 240,000 = 456,000. You can skim and move 1800 fuel. 1800 / 456,000 = about 1/ 254. That's 35%+ less efficent than the distillation complex. Now the big uestion .. does the one POP make up for the less efficent fuel per raw cost difference? Yes it does. Lets say you can place that one POP in an improved stripmine. That's will generate 3000 raw per turn. So using the POP in the FDC costs you the chance to generate 3000 raw per turn ... something you have to pay for every single turn. In 5 turns, you lose 15,000 raw ... and the FDC is now 250 / 60,000 or 1/240. In 6 turns, its 250 / 63,000 or 1/252. In 7 turns its 250 / 66,000 or 1 / 264. And it declines from there. So in the long run, the skim ship is better than an FDC. Ahh ... the Purists could say "building the ship plus the stripmine uses another 45,000 raw for the ISM materials .. so that cost is now 1800 / 501,000 or about 1 / 278" . Fine. But the FDC loss per turn keeps going up. After 9 turns its 250 / 72,000 or 1 / 288. All this bought was another couple of turns before the skim ship finally paid for itself. SO .. short term, building the ship does cost more in resources. But over the long term (7-10 turns), it pays for itself and after that ... it is the better buy. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EternusIV Posted February 27, 2004 Author Report Share Posted February 27, 2004 Nice. That is pretty good analysis. Now throw in the fact that I don't have ANY pop shortage issues at all (in fact I need every friggin long term advantage I can get for for CMs/ICMs) ....... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hobknob Posted February 27, 2004 Report Share Posted February 27, 2004 WKE - It doesn't look to me like you have high AP ships yet. You would never build a high AP skimmer and have it trek back and forth to the gas giant. You build a 10 AP skimmer with 200 fuel tankage and a single fuel shuttle. You then have it Skim - OC to a pop group on the gas giant 10 times a turn. After that you have a very slow 2 AP tank ship make a single trip out to the gas giant and recover the fuel. The fuel is then taken to where ever you want it, including a fleet on SUPP orders at the warp point. Now if you have the luxury of only traveling through cheap warp points you can likely do it with onboard tankage, but if yo are going through D's and higher you will need to refuel on the way. With skimmers you build them and move them anywhere you want. They start skimming and you are in business, not much cargo needed, no colonists required and you haven't lost much infrastructure if they get waxed. In fact they are much easier to move if danger approaches. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WKE235 Posted February 27, 2004 Report Share Posted February 27, 2004 Actually, the thought of using two ships had not crossed my mind. I will properly chastise myself for overlooking such a solution. In addition, for some reason I used 600 fuel per skim in the analysis. Since a fuel shuttle only generates 200 fuel per skim (so far), you get less fuel but of course need fewer tanks and hence engines to move it. Sigh... So, a ship stationed over a world doing skim after skim and offloading the fuel to a colony (fuel depot) + a show moving tanker to take it home would be 156,000 raw (Fuel shuttle + 200 tanks) + 240,000 raw (10 MK II Fusion engines) + 300,000 raw (2000 fuel tanks on slow moving tanker) = 2000 fuel / 396,000 or 1/348. OK. A little worse than before. But again the opportunity cost of the FDC eventually catches up in a reasonable amount of time. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Clan Elder 'Keen Posted February 27, 2004 Report Share Posted February 27, 2004 "So, a ship stationed over a world doing skim after skim and offloading the fuel to a colony (fuel depot) + a show moving tanker to take it home would be..." The point is that you do not take it home. You set up the skimming operation and resupply at the destination system, or at points in between as needed depending on warps. Then you cut down your fuel tankage requirements on your colony ship saving engines. That comparison should be quite advantageous to FDC depending on the distance of the colony route and the warp difficulties. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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