Fuel Usage

I know it has been mentioned that traveling to other planets will require fuel for your ship. On the Roadmap it mentions fuel values for items (Fuel UI under User Interfaces). Does this mean that we fuel our ships with random items we no longer want or is there some specific way we will need to find/create fuel in order to continue traveling?

 

Either the unused items that can be used as fuel, OR coal.. or at least something! heh

 

i figured that there will be tied fuel items. like using uranium and such! as of now we've only seen the coal instantly fueling up the engine which i doubt will be in the final release

 

Now that I think about it, I would like to fuel my ship with all these extra pizza toppings. Would be interesting. Of course random items as such wouldn't help much, but there's still energy in there to use so it's something. Pretty sure you have to use specific resources to fuel your ship though.

 

There are going to be specific ores that can be used as fuel.

 

Wait, what if you're out of fuel and can't find any on the planet that you're stranded on? Bad end then?

 

I don't think that's possible. I'm sure that any planet will have some spare fuel or some resources to make fuel.

 

Well, what if you have already mined out everything already!

 

Mined out everything on an almost infinite planet?

 

"Almost infinite" is an interesting concept.

 

I don't think that the planets are "almost infinite", just the universe. Even if that's true, anything can happen, and without fuel sources, you'll can get stranded. However, if you're goal is to mine out all of the fuel and waste it so that you get stranded, congratulations! You just prosperously boned yourself!

 

I don't think you will be stranded. Maybe you can buy fuel from humanoid NPCs in villages/towns.

 

Anyhow, you won't be stranded. Have my word.

 

Mining out all the fuel in a world and using it all up before leaving the planet would have to be something you do on purpose, I have no idea what you could possibly be thinking in the process of doing so. These worlds are big, you'd have to spend a lot of time on that planet just mining and wasting fuel to achieve such a feat. It'd be like mining out all the copper in several large Terraria worlds.

 

There could always be a chance that maybe you auto generate fuel after a long amount of playing time. Like every hour of being in game and not paused will give you a point of fuel or something.

 

They've shown you can use fairly cheap materials like wood to convert into small amounts of fuel- surely you can find one or two pieces of wood somewhere on your planet to allow you to jump to the next planet with materials in the system.

Also, well, the logistics of being trapped on a completely mined-out planet with no fuel are a little absurd- after all, if it was you who had been mining it out, you would have access to some fuel supplies. The only way to get trapped there would be to jump to the planet with the last of your fuel after it had been mined out... and making sure to not carry any spare fuel in your ship or inventory. It's silly!

 

Does make me wonder if they will include anything incase that ever does happen. But it should be near impossible. Maybe the option like "Burn the clothes off your back to get to the nearest mineable planet you silly, silly space traveler".

 

Oh my goodness gracious. Are you thinking what I'm thinking, Marty McFly? We need a Mr. Fusion for our virtual vehicles!

FOR SCIENCE!!!
And for ponies. Yup. Science and ponies.

If you can't find ore on your planet to refuel your ship then:

I think they've specifically said in video(s) that there are different world-sizes. As such, it stands to reason that the individual world instances are themselves finite. However, due to procedural generation, there are such a large number of possible factor combinations that while there is, strictly speaking, a finite number of possible world permutations, it would take you several lifetimes to visit each and every one of them, especially if you factor in exploring them thoroughly.

However, this does not address the gent's question. As some have astutely stated, there is no doubt that there will be SOME kind of fuel on every planet. Now...the question is, what kind of awful baddies are you going to have to fight to get TO that ore? Hope you brought your BFG!!!!

I call shenanigans on this post! There is CLEAR documentation that you can run around stark naked as a jay-bird in this game. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I submit for your consideration exhibit A:


*George Takei voice* Oh my!!!!

As such, in the event of the player being an enormous buffoon who is also out of fuel, who is also without ANY friends to come bail his sorry butt out, and who is ALSO also a N-U-D-I-S-T, I believe that what the devs should implement to address this situation is a scenario called "Fist of an Angry God!"

It would involve Tiyuri's avatar suddenly spawning, his scarf all aflutter in the gentle wind of his divine presence. He would look at the player, facepalm, and then HADOOOOOKEN the player and his/her ship to a new, randomly generated world, but causing the player to drop all their items in the process.


In fact, to heck with it, I'm putting this in the suggestions forum. They could even make it a medal-get for the people who have to HAVE THEM ALLLLLL!

 

Just a quick idea, but if you DID manage to somehow get yourself in a situation where it'd be near impossible to get more fuel and you stranded yourself, perhaps a way to directly convert pixels into fuel could work? If you somehow don't have any pixels, then...well, yeah:

 

Ok everyone, remember this game takes place in the future. When it comes to fuel sources everything has energy, and by then we might have a way of unleashing that energy. Do not forget this important equation, E=MC2.

What that means, the E is for energy. M for mass. C means speed of light. When you burn something you are only releasing a fraction of a percent of the energy in that item, rocket fuel is something like .0015% +/- a few zeros. You know those Fusion reactors people are claiming will solves humanity's energy crisis? That is expected to release around 1% of the energy of matter used. Imagine a future where technology advanced to where a reactor can use almost all sub-atomic energy from matter. This would mean a lump of coal could actually go a really long way!

I find it unlikely that would be in the game because that would mean anything is fuel. I think Starbound will go down the route of most sci-fi shows where they rely on fusion power or anti-matter manipulation as a form of power. Heck, if you got the right engine even a classic fission powerplant of decent size can power it. These sources of power would require certain forms of fuel. Hopefully made common.