![]() That's mainly why I'm putting so much effort into Europa: aside from being a good fuel drop-off from Jupiter, it has 900k sorium at 0.8. ![]() I'm pretty certain I'm not mining that much, and the only body I've colonized with actual people that has sorium is Mars with ~2 million at 0.1 accessibility. Right now, after some research, I can produce 12 million a year, costing over 6000 tons of sorium. I still have about 150 million liters stockpiled, but I had been running training sessions until the ships were at 50% fuel - each has a fuel capacity of 500k, so 250k*12 ships is ~4 million every half-year or so. But in the new C# game version, prototypes are free (!), so no research points are spent until AFTER we've done the comparison and approved a design.Not exactly a fuel crunch, but a sorium crunch. Up until now (ie: in previous game versions) we've never bothered exploring this possibility, because it would have required designing and comparing different engine size / thrust augmentation / fuel bunkerage ratios before settling on a design that worked, and that would have wasted many research points. as long as the gain in thrust-to-weight ratio is greater than the mass of the extra fuel required. So there is a narrow design window where you can actually INCREASE your ship's cruising range by using engines that are LESS fuel efficient. Because augmented engines have a higher thrust-to-weight ratio, an augmented engine can be made SMALLER while still delivering the same total thrust, and that extra mass can be used to carry the required extra fuel! So you might initially think that augmented engines can NEVER give you a longer-ranged ship. and all that extra fuel must be carried inside the ship's tanks and increases the ship's total mass, thus slowing it down. it will be less fuel efficient by that "fifth power of the square root" relationship. The catch is that an augmented engine will always burn hotter and use more fuel per kilometer traveled. and asked him "Under what circumstances does that actually IMPROVE the ship's speed and range?" I pointed out to him that Thrust Augmentation (increased engine power, such as the +25% tech that we just finished researching) consumes fuel at a rate of the fifth power of the square root of the degree of augmentation. This next idea harks back to a discussion that I had with Capt Kiwi several years ago. So let's prototype a couple of different engines and see which one works better, before we actually spend any research points implimenting the practical. Once a prototype is accepted, you have to convert it into a real component design, research it, and build THAT. You just can't tool a yard to BUILD that ship. So what use are they? You CAN design a ship with them, using partially off-the-shelf tech and partially prototyped "hypothetical" components, and then SEE if the resulting ship gives you the speed, range, protection, breakdown rate, hull size, etc that you wanted. ![]() They represent paper studies, not actual components. What's the catch? You can't actually build or use them. ie: you can create new practicals which cost nothing to research. Under the new rules, you can design components using your current tech that cost NO RESEARCH POINTS to impliment. Now we get to try out one of the neat new features of C# Aurora. and we are finally ready to design our first crude spaceship engine! June 14th, 1951 - The second Fuel Efficiency tech has completed, and research has begun on Maximum Engine Power +25%, due in mid-August.Īugust 11th - Done. That will speed up the assembly of the ship once the engines are ready. In the mean-time, I will use our factories to pre-build half-a-dozen Geo Sensors. even though that means delaying the construction of our first spaceship by about two years. should we just throw together the crudest and cheapest engine we can make, and build a Geo-scout as fast as possible? I would really prefer to press forward at least one more level in engine technology, and also one or two levels in fuel efficiency, before building our first ship. May 18th - Our Sensor researchers have completed research on Geological Survey Sensors. ![]() That Economy tech has boosted our income by about $10 per day. Research has begun on a tech that will increase the productivity of our construction factories by +20%. May 14th - One of our Construction and Production research teams has completed research on Wealth Generation +20%, which increases our tax revenues (only from employed citizens, of course). March 30th - Our Logistics research team has completed Large Fuel Tank, and has begun research on Cryogenic Transport, a required tech for building Colony Ships. February 13th, 1949 - Our Defensive Systems researchers have finished Conventional Composite Armor, and have immediately started work on Advanced Conventional Composite Armor. ![]()
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