Is it possible to have the fuel and drill gages some other color, like blue, maybe? I keep on thinking, "Oh, there is just a sliver of red in the fuel bar, everything must be alright". Then, whoops, fuel gone.

When u have a sliver of red in yo fuel that means that its about to run out. I tried experimenting with different colors and it was bad when the colors were different. The red color is the best, i noticed.

Considering aceboard forums: They been deathly slow lately. Ive sniffed around and some people talking about the end of Aceboards, which is exaggeration, most likely. Yet, the aceboard people are as eager about fixing it as Xgen people are eager about fixing the high-score problem. You know me, i wont pay a dime for a payed board, so we either have to hope for it to get better or transfer all posts to a new (free) board (and hope it wont go bad as aceboards did).  

--Last edited by alexxz4 on 2008-03-02 15:35:54 --

Idea: The ability to build more mars bases underground every couple thousand feet.
Easymode would be like every 4000 feet
Normal would be every 8000
Hard would be every 10000

The bases would need to have limited supplies of stuff so as not to reduce playing field.
The next planet will definitely have multiple bases...

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The next planet will definitely have multiple bases

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Alexxz What next planet is there a new version allready with more planets e.g pluto

I said the next planet WILL have multiple bases. That means IF i decide to make a new planet it WILL have multiple bases. I already mentioned the name of the planet somewhere (pardon my secretiveness...).

Reserve fuel tanks like in Xgen ML.

Energy recharging or better means of recharging the energy cells.

Thermal power?
As in less energy drain in hotter areas.
Also, I don't get the point of the burn fuel for energy thing until you get to the reactor.
Why can't it just give a fuel bonus?
Or even go farther and make it so fuel could be burned into energy for some benefit.  

--Last edited by Da fighter on 2008-03-04 12:48:12 --

Ok, first of (for those who are not very well informed), i already have 10+ gadgets that use 10+ keys, so adding new gadgets will make controls more complicated.
1. The reserve fuel tanks will kill the later stages of the game. If i make them $10,000,000 that would be unfair for early stages, if i make them $100,000, thats nothing compared to 300+ mil. of cash u r gonna have.
2. The supership converts heat to energy, so there is thermal power. And naturally, you would use more power when its hotter to run yo air-conditioner.
3. The burn-fuel-for-energy-thing means... well... i dont know what it means... I guess what YOU mean is "burn minerals for energy", i.e. convert some minerals into energy (burn-fuel-for-energy is redundant cause why else would u burn it?). So it means that if u have a converter (coal burner for example) you can either convert it to fuel or sell it.

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Why can't it just give a fuel bonus?

Well, im trying to refrain from using to much "magic stuff", like out of nowhere fuel bonuses. Technically speaking, its much cheaper to bring all the fuel with u than to make it on the spot.

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Or even go farther and make it so fuel could be burned into energy for some benefit.

Ummm... running your ship is a benefit. The only benefits that could come from burning fuel is: burning it to run your ship, to get high from the fumes, to make your ship lighter, to increase temperature inside the cabin (which would kill the radiator)... Anyways, there is no burning fuel to appease a money-giving god...  

--Last edited by alexxz4 on 2008-03-04 14:23:12 --

No no, what I mean is why is it that you make mineral burnings give ENERGY as opposed to fuel, since fuel is just a burning compound, and it is doing the same thing by burning, and creating energy to power the ships systems.
But for some reason, coal and petroleum get processed and refined into ENERGY instead of fuel, which would make a bit more sense because it isn't a two stage thing, just a one stage.
But what am I, a rambling noob going to change?

And thermal power, I just meant that it would have a lesser amount of energy being drained because it is contributing a bit of power, like 0.01 percent per degree of temperature.
Also, I ment the fuel to energy thing to take off weight, but it would also waste some fuel, like 10-15%.

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No no, what I mean is why is it that you make mineral burnings give ENERGY as opposed to fuel, since fuel is just a burning compound, and it is doing the same thing by burning, and creating energy to power the ships systems.

There are two reasons: Its not natural. What you call "energy" is created from potential difference between electrons and protons in the battery, there is no lack of either, it just requires some work to create it, so when you discharge it, you get most of it back. Now fuel's "energy" comes from chemical bonds. Once you break those bonds, you cant fix them, so yo fuel is discharged as waste. What this means is that you can burn "stuff" up to charge a battery, but you cant use battery power to turn waste fuel into good fuel again. Also, you cant create fuel from thin air. Second reason is that you would need to store the fuel somewhere. If you were to get 10L of gasoline from coal, you would need to put it in yo fuel tank, which would require you to burn off 10L to make extra room. Since most of petrol/coal is at the surface you would never convert them to energy.  

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And thermal power, I just meant that it would have a lesser amount of energy being drained because it is contributing a bit of power, like 0.01 percent per degree of temperature.

You are not considering the net effect, which is what counts. If u need to burn 0.1L more fuel per second every 1000ft of depth increase and you get 0.01L of fuel saved every 1000ft every second, it would seem as though you are losing 0.09L every second per 1000ft of your depth. So the fuel you save is not noticed and you burn more fuel when its hotter or deeper anyways.  

--Last edited by alexxz4 on 2008-03-05 16:01:28 --

What I am asking, is why can't you just burn the petroleum and coal along with the fuel, instead of converting it to electrical power.

Also, I said 0.01 per FOOT.

Thats a liter saved per 100 feet.  

--Last edited by Da fighter on 2008-03-05 21:14:07 --

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What I am asking, is why can't you just burn the petroleum and coal along with the fuel, instead of converting it to electrical power.

Like Alex says this game doesn't run on 'magic'. Petroleum and coal must be first processed before being burn or put into your car. It can't magically turn into fuel. So the Petroluem and Coal is then processed and burned to create electric power to charge your battery. It is how the game is designed.

Though I can see your reasons but it just doesn't match up to the realism this game trys to produce. Now Alex could design a type of Fuel processor that could in turn change petroluem and coal into fuel. Thats up to him to decide.

It processes the coal allready.



Why can't it just process it and add it to the fuel?
And before you say "Because the engine isn't compatable!!!"
Well, then how the hell is it that you can burn it for energy, because I doubt that ship has an incinerator big enough to burn a chunk of coal almost the size of the ship in seconds.

Dude, it's a video game. It's suppose to be unrealistic. I mean, you are on mars mining for kryptonite [sic].

The existing system works well enough, just leave it be.

Lets reason scientifically, coal is 90% or so carbon, gasoline is a Carbon Hydrogen compound, so where are you gonna get hydrogen from?
Long ago i had gradual conversion where the coal was converted to energy in about 10 sec.  
That worked, only you couldnt precisely know if u could bring a mineral on board because yo cargo space was constantly changing. It created more confusion than realism.
The way coal is converted to energy is the same as in a coal-powered locomotive only instead of wheels, its turning a coil of wire inside a magnet which induces current and voila!
Ok, i dont wanna get nerdy here, so, like jimmy said, leave it be.

Wow, advanced into the future with mining things that can reach around 6 miles under the surface of a planet without imploding, but we still use gasoline?

I haven't posted on this board for a looooong time...

The last thing I remember doing was making an Ideas thread but then not realizing there already was one.  
Is it okay if I delete that thread? We don't need it anymore.

EDIT: Would it be that hard to make the dynamite/plastic explosives have a timer (like the fuse on a pack of dynamite) before they explode? It would be like ~2 seconds. And you would have to get out of the way of the explosion otherwise you get hurt (plastic explosives would do more damage than dynamite).  

--Last edited by MLUftw on 2008-03-07 16:37:51 --

Mining drones: a package of little drones that will try to mine the most valuable ores on the screen and then put them in your bay.

Well, my question (the first) was directed to alex, so I don't expect you to answer it da fighter.

Yeah...drone guys. Sounds kind of good, although probably not from the programming perspective. I mean, you'd have to program them to find a way to get to a mineral in any spot on the screen...(Maybe I'm wrong). They would die from lava/magma right?

Yeah mining drones is too hard, they involve advance AI.
I could do timed bombs (if u find the game to easy that would make it a bit harder, i guess...)