Fuel balancing

[Nuh_Uh]

[quote=“BeerBeer, post:23, topic:12965”]Car
Humvee
Military Cargo Truck
Main Battle Tank
Electric Car
…[/quote]

Should a motorcycle be added to this list? None of those vehicles seem like they would properly simulate fuel economy like a motorcycle would. Though honestly, I don’t know. Mechanics and vehicles are beyond my expertise, coding is beyond my expertise, and the calculus and physics that might be necessary are also beyond my expertise. I have always had a motorcycle in game because I wanted to model and approximate the real world advantages of having a motorcycle over a regular car; they are heaps more fuel efficient. With the previous engine mechanics, I could install a V-twin for fuel consumption 1 and I would choose that over any other sort of engine (If I understood the previous system correctly).

[ragamer]

This process that I'm seeing here feels like shooting blind, fumbling with values until we get ones that seem/feel right. We have to take a more result-oriented approach. What do we want from these cars?

It’s not that simple, because in-game autonomy of a given vehicle is not ONLY controlled by something as specific as fuel efficiency. There are other factors at play like:

• Are drivers allowed to ALWAYS go at optimum speed? (ie Can a player reach maximum travel distance with a given vehicle?) No.

• Are vehicle templates allowed to mount the most efficient engine/gearbox for their mass? No.

IMO, until the above 2 topics are “fixed”… Any attempt to “balance” fuel efficiency looking at how specific in-game templates should mimic IRL behaviour is spending time in something you will have to revise later.

What I would do is paying attention to the process itself on how players (and their worlds) are affected by this ongoing effort:

1. Keep fuel efficiency really high so overall fuel consumption in ongoing players/worlds is very low (ie prevent CURRENT players from becoming dry while the whole process is been worked on).

2. Ensure players can drive at optimum speed by offering alternative Control paradigms.

3. Collect current templates and divide them into discrete “weight classes”. DO NOT include Mobile Bases/Deathmobiles as a superheavy class (Reassoning at the End).

4. Define average cruise speed for each “weight class”. Create one and ONLY one engine+gearbox for each weight class so vehicles of such class travel at that cruise speed at optimum fuel efficiency.

5. Establish percentage of “fuel mass” an average autonomy template should come with (IRL most Civilian Landbased vehicles “spend” around 5% total mass in fuel capacity). Establish average autonomy HOURS (IRL civilian landbased vehicles are expected to have 48h of autonomy on a “FULL” tank).

6. Use the above figures to assign to each engine+gearbox PER CLASS the “optimum fuel” consumption rate at cruise speed. You now have a figure of how much weight of “optimum fuel” your engines should consume per hour of optimum use.

7. Create engine power vs fuel consumption “inneficiency” curves for our “ONE per Weight class” set of engines/gearboxes when player drives at a different speed than optimal.

Well, now you have set a of average optimum performance figures you can balance… So it’s time to “disrupt it” for the sake of variety. This should also be done in steps:

1. Fuel Diversification: Diesel = Optimum Fuel. Gasoline = More weight per hour but better top acceleration (I don’t know if the Vehicle simmulation accounts for this… But IRL, engines offering the same power DOESN’T mean that can change their RPMs at the same rate… Precissely that’s the main operative difference between Diesel, Gasoline and other “more energetic” fuels). Alternatively you can convert weight to volume and use “weight” as balance so Gasoline is lighter but less efficient per Hour and Diesel heavier but more efficient per hour (Meaning “light” vehicles should enjoy better overall efficiency by reducing the overall mass by employing Gasoline… While Heavy vehicles, that can afford heavier fuel payloads, should look at Diesel as the most optimal solution. This has the advantage that if, in the future, aerial vehicles are included that have a much higher difference between dry and loaded masses, a “lighter” fuel would be mandatory). Meanwhile, Batteries, should exhibit the worse efficiency per weight because of their, potential, self-generation (in comparisson with the limited ammounts of the other 2 common fuels). OFC, more exotic sources can be balanced in the same way by been “better” or “worse” than the 3 “standard” fuels.

2. Engine Diversification: 2 extra variants of engine per class should be available (Better simmulated if gearboxes were a component themselves). High RPM versions, designed to provide better acceleration at the cost of a reduced O/S/T speeds. And Low RPM versions, designed to provide worse accelerations but higher O/S/T speeds. I repeat that, ideally, gearboxes should be made a component themselves so even more variety between engine power and speeds could be offered without having to flood .json files with miriads of engine definitions.

3. Template Diversification: Armed with the above diversification tools. You can now return to existing templates and put there all the new elements. The small differences between total vehicle weight should take care of “disturbing” the average figures providing variety. Then, as a last finishing touch, MOST Military vehicles are usually designed to contain extra fuel tanks for all kinds of “Oh! Shit!” situations and better autonomy than their Civilian counterparts.

The final step, OFC, is puting your Average Fuel figures back into the game so the whole system works as intented and your players can then jump into their “less fuel efficient” worlds.

And what about Mobile Bases/Deathmobiles?..

…IMHO, they are the peak of player progression and as such, they shouldn’t be balanced at all… EACH WORLD has far more parameters affecting them than what a “base fuel efficiency” simulation should have to deal with:

• Luck based part accesibility.

• Average fuel sources density, including distribution of fuel types and the locations they appear (Basically the size and density of cities as Main Factor).

• Player mechanics skill (And supporting skills) progression.

What we lack ATM is an open-ended propulsion mechanism, because multiple engines can’t be linked together. Once we have this back, EACH player will get their own Deathmobile version based on how “well” a given world can support it. There is no need to “disturb” the common set of Templates/Rules for something that is very unique and SHOULD be heavily influenced by the resources each player can get.

Sorry for the length.

[pisskop]

Wholly cows Did you guys up fuel consumption or what. This hurts players outside of cities, since fuel is so plentiful inside them that its easy to grab a full tank.

It hurt motorcycles and light vehicles too.

[Wally-kun]

I’ve lost track of whats going on with the development at the moment and find myself questioning how matters are being handled.

I’ve always had good faith in the devs. Unsure what to think.

[Coolthulhu]

Here’s my idea of verifying that fuel “works”:

[ul][li]Spawn some artificial map made entirely of roads[/li]
[li]Spawn vehicle with full tank[/li]
[li]Drive it until the tank empties[/li]
[li]Note how much it traveled[/li][/ul]

As I noted before: I want the regular car-brand car to get a 1 overmap’s side length worth of distance. More than 1 but less than 2 is fine.

[DeclanFrost]

[quote=“Wally-kun, post:27, topic:12965”]I’ve lost track of whats going on with the development at the moment and find myself questioning how matters are being handled.

I’ve always had good faith in the devs. Unsure what to think.[/quote]
Same.
Also, is fuel balancing fixed in the latest experimentals?

[SpadeDraco]

Also, is fuel balancing fixed in the latest experimentals?

Enabling the “megavehicles” mod makes fuel consumption more manageable, but still a bit quick.

[Aabbcc]

Also, is fuel balancing fixed in the latest experimentals?

For diesel and gasoline engines, if you believe that what Coolthulhu has stated to be what he wants as consumption under optimal conditions to be correct, then yes.

If you are using an electric engine, or you disagree with that measure, then no, but it’s easily modable, just 1 json line per fuel type.

Electric engines do have a problem without modding, since “batteries” don’t have an “energy” field defined, the item_factory assigns them a value of 1 Kilojoule per unit. While Diesel has 30 and gasoline has 20. Once you factor in engine efficiency, for vehicles driving at optimum speed, a car with a base gasoline engine will consume 10 times less fuel units than an electric one, and a base diesel one will consume a whooping 22.5 times less fuel units. Even a v12 gasoline engine will consume 8 7.2 times less fuel units.

The math gets only worse when you count that storage batteries hold 40k units, while a car tank holds 60k. If a gasoline v12 car will run out of fuel in 2 hours, replacing engine & tank for electric versions will get you 10 11.1 minutes.

Even while redlining at it’s worst, that v12 is going to be 3 times more efficient-per-unit than the electric engine, and 4.5 times more efficient per tank. I ask what the hell.

Thankfully, this is easily solved with just giving batteries an energy value (like the megaveh mod does), tho it’ll take quite some fiddling to get a value that feels “right”, it’s currently somewhat high in that mod in comparison to other fuel types.

If you want, say, batteries to be half as good per “tank” as gasoline in optimum conditions, a value of 45 (base), or 135 (megaveh mod) would do the trick. Current megaveh value is 150.

EDIT: fixed values of v12, had missed it copied from v6 which copied from v4, instead of straight copying from base engine. Also added consumption comparison when redlining for said engine.

[pisskop]

As of current gamestate, what is the advantage, if any, to using a smaller or large engine?

[Aabbcc]

In most cases, you get more power the bigger the engine, alongside higher weight, and battery cost to start it. Power lets you move bigger loads, so just pick the smallest you can get away with to reduce vehicle weight. The exceptions are the following:

The largest diesel engine nets you lower speed/acceleration than the others, but it’s more efficient when operating outside optimum rpm and of course, provides a helluva lot of power.

The tiniest gasoline engine is weird, it’s inefficient as all hell, it barely has any power, but it gets you silly-high speed and acceleration when it can actually move the thing it’s powering. It also doesn’t require power to start. I guess you could carry one along in a foldable frame and use it to jumpstart other vehicles, but you might as well use pedals for that and save yourself the gas.

Once you hit V6’s in gasoline, efficiency starts to go down. Once you hit Wankel and V12s, you can get higher RPMs (and speed), the former gets you faster but is less efficient, the later gets you more power.

[pisskop]

Okay. Ive made what I hope is the right move.

If I -we- assume a car can last for 72 hours one a full tank idling, it now does for me. 12% for 8 hours, so between 11.50 and 12.49. Within toleration for what I set out to do.

Because 8 percent gas in a tank consumed an hour is a littttle silly.

Anywho, I bumped up energy by a factor of ~3.3 250 for diesel and 175 for gas. I tweaked the idle of the engines a little too, but …

[stk2008]

Cool

the thing is different cars can idle for different amounts of time depending on

Engine type
Fuel tank size etc etc

A v12 using a 1ltr tank will run out of fuel before a 1 cylinder engine using same size tank and amount of fuel etc.

[pisskop]

Theres till variations due to engine size and such.

I said a car -refering to a car car. genric car.

I dont mind gas rotting slowly or increased fuel consumption on the road. I do mind an engine guzzling gas by simply turning over.

[stk2008]

Fair enough

And yeah a car going through a ton of fuel when idling ain’t right.

[mugling]

I’ve got a PR in progress that handles the alternator and idling issues - fuel consumption becomes proportional to how much work the engine has to do to refill the battery.

[stk2008]

I am a mechanic/mechanical engineer if you lot want me to go in depth on the workings of an engine etc let me know depends how deep ya want to go really.

[TooDAMNMuch]

[quote=“pisskop, post:34, topic:12965”]Okay. Ive made what I hope is the right move.

If I -we- assume a car can last for 72 hours one a full tank idling, it now does for me. 12% for 8 hours, so between 11.50 and 12.49. Within toleration for what I set out to do.

Because 8 percent gas in a tank consumed an hour is a littttle silly.

Anywho, I bumped up energy by a factor of ~3.3 250 for diesel and 175 for gas. I tweaked the idle of the engines a little too, but …[/quote]

i definitely agree that the fuel usage before the change you’re talking about was… well… insane and not in the good way, however i’ve heard there is a replacement to the bugatti veyron being made that depletes it’s entire fuel capacity in 7 minutes when traveling at top speed.
in other words, maybe jet engines when we have them fit with extreme fuel usage and other very high performance applications as well, but it sounded like fuel usage was for a bit heading towards being mostly a nuisance.

[pisskop]

Just noting that batteries accept the ‘energy’ tag. And that 10 seems be be sufficient to make electric engine not crunch their their power.

Car batteries, truck batteries, and storage batteries are ‘magazines’ under the current system. they store ‘battery’, but cant be loaded or unloaded. So granting batteries, the same thing you plug into your vibrator, energy will make them last longer in a car that uses them as fuel for an engine.

p:

6. Im using 6 energy now and I feel better about it. Since Im fairly sure that ‘energy’ is only called upon for engine consumption this means that headlights and other car uses, as well as mobile battery uses, will not be affected.

[Vastin]

I’d love to take a hack at spread-sheeting the whole fuel/engine/power consumption system out in a public google sheet if someone can point me to how the dynamics are defined in game.

I’ve been a game designer for most of my life, and I do love to make me some balance sheets.

[pisskop]

Ive also come to notice that you cant really override an abstract like you can an item. Making changes to the abstract engines in a mod does not have an effect on the engines ingame, as evidenced by something clearly visible such as efficiency.