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[Tecrys]

Hi everyone!

As I'm working on DSMK2's mod I realised it would be very cool if DSTech would have some unique mechanics to stand out in the crowd of mods but I'm not sure how to do it.

DSMK2 provided some lore for the faction:
"The DSTech Corp is a front for a race of sentient mechanical lifeforms who advance in technology (as high as it is already) and knowledge relatively slowly. They reside in artificial mega-structures (not quite Dyson spheres) which surround stars relatively distant from current human civilization. These structures extract large amounts of gas from the host star to be converted into useable matter; generally used in continued growth of their mega-structures, but also used to construct various tools...

Their ships are created from that matter, hence why their ships are cheap. However, very few of those ships venture beyond their origin system; kept mainly for overwhelming defense. Those that do often set up bases and factories near civilization, under their common moniker.

They have begun selling their ships in human space, using human captains and crewmen to take their eyes to places in the galaxy they would never otherwise see."

Keeping that in mind I think it would be cool for the faction to be completely reliant on fuel instead of using supplies and fuel.

Would there be a way to use fuel/day instead of supplies?
Would it be possible to use fuel for repairs instead of supplies?

[xenoargh]

Ships only get charged fuel/day when they're in Hyperspace and are in motion.  To charge them fuel / day, you'd need a CampaignPlugin that ran a script once per day, subtracting from their Fuel according to how much Crew they had.

[Tecrys]

Writing scripts and custom plugins is beyond my capabilities but thanks for clarification.

Any modder/coder/programmer willing to help out with this?

In the meantime I will work on stuff I can actually fix myself xD.

[HELMUT]

Why reliant on fuel only?

Xeno, as they are machine, they probably won't have crew so it's possible there won't be any consumption like the current supplies/crew(there was a mod adding an AI crew hull mod to ships, could be implemented for DSTech as well). Could be interesting to have a faction that don't cost any supplies and just need times to auto-repair. However, negating totally the supply need is a gigantic buff for the faction and as they are already extremely powerful, it would make the balance tricky.

[Tecrys]

I would like them to use fuel because lorewise DSTech is able to create matter out of gasses (Fuel).
Basically they have extremely advanced fusion technology which enables them to create any matter out of "thin air".
Those are the reasons I would like them to be completely reliant on fuel and since all DSTech ships have very large fuel tanks I could balance them around this.
They would be using much more fuel then other factions would use supplies.
Just read the first post, there's some lore, makes a lot of sence to me but I'm not sure if that's even possible without changing Starsector core mechanics.

Edit: There's an explanation why they have crew, btw

[xenoargh]

Well, you basically have to script this mechanic, and it's not exactly simple to script, either.

Probably the best way is through a Built-In Hull Mod (that nobody else can use) that would implement the strategic effects of fuel use on CR (see Tow Cables for an example).  I'm really not sure how hard that would be to write; I haven't explored using that code much.

In terms of balance, having that as their "thing" would be a pretty major buff in and of itself, since Fuel is cheap.  They'd need some pretty major penalties to their combat stats or they'd have to be heavily penalized in terms of resource consumption (i.e., they're great if you're right next to a base with lots of Fuel, but they'd be terrible at chasing things).

[Tecrys]

Ok, well ... That sounds way too complicated so I'm just gonna do the supply thing as usual.
I was thinking about using really big amounts of fuel like 200-300 per day for a medium fleet but since that would involve such difficult code I'll just increase storage capacity, decrease fuel capacity and keep it vanilla.

Edit: Thanks for the advice!