Frigate Fuel Costs is Way Too Complicated

[Psayne]

Ive spent the better part of two weeks trying to understand how it all works out. Just when I think I have it nailed down, it turns out the base fleet coordination of the Freighter (and indirectly its class, since higher class=higher coordination) affects fuel cost. To keep me from going insane, Ill try to summarize what Ive learned

Frigate fuel costs displayed when viewing them is the cost with all calculations in effect. any "fuel cost reduction" traits only apply to the mission the frigate is assigned to, not the frigate. You can take the fuel efficiency modules off your freighter to see its "base" fuel, and throw math at it to see that the fully modified fuel is the "base" * (1-eff1) * (1-eff2) * (1-eff3) where eff# is the 3 efficency upgrades you can install. There is no apparent adjacency bonus, so you can use the displayed value.

The problem is that the "base" isn't the base of the frigate. It is modified by the class and/or fleet coordination stat. What I learned today is that the base fleet coordination stat could be the difference between being able to have most/all specialized frigate fuel costs down to 1, or only a minimum of 2 with supercharged fuel efficiency modules.

Having an S class freighter instead of anything lower helps in this regard hands down, but the hidden affect is staggering. you could have three non-perfect efficiency upgrades and a high base fleet coordination and have a better overall efficiency than three perfect efficiency upgrades and a low base fleet coordination.

The strangest part is that modules that increase the FC don't seem to improve the efficiency, so you can't artificially achieve a good FC, if your freighter just has low stats, its just doomed to have worse fuel efficiency comparatively.

Protip; if you want the best fleet efficiency, look for S class freighters with 3 nearby supercharged slots. They don't have to be adjacent, just in a small area since, as I said, there is no adjacency bonus. If you are instead going for warp distance/efficiency, then yes, adjacency matters.

TL;DR if you want a better efficiency, you have three choices: get frigates with lower base fuel cost, get (better) fuel efficiency modules (and supercharge them), and get an S class freighter with a high base fleet coordination stat (save editing suggests 55 is a decent value, but this is not what's displayed in the overview of stats)

Oh and one last thing: the amount of information that is either incomplete, outdated, or just unhelpful for this was staggering. Not even the wiki suggests freighter class affects frigate fuel efficiency.

[DennisM the Diligent]

I wrote this guide largely from the perspective of someone wanting to run frigate fleet missions, so the approach here is to emphasize fleet efficiency. When you level up all your frigates to 55 or more completed missions and they are all S-class, then the fuel requirements for the support ships drops to 1 ton per 250 light-years and the others to 2 tons per 250 light-years. As you say, if your freighter strategy is for warp distance and efficiency, then get the best hyperdrive upgrades and arrange them as you described. The best results are, of course, with S-class freighters.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2897201809

[Mr. Bufferlow]

If the frigate fuel requirements really bug you, the simple answer is to use the save game editor and give all your frigates (or as many as you desire)the fuel saving bonus. You could also upgrade your freighter to S class at the same time.

Personally, I really disliked the 24+ hour mission times, so I adjust the time bonus for several of my ships so I will always have enough to bring those 24+ hour missions below 24 hours. It just bugs me to have a mission still going on the next time I log into the game.

As a parking garage for your ships, there is no "advantage" to upgrading your Freighter except for the passive income stream you can achieve from frigate missions. Since those are just a glorified graphic text adventure, I have no problem tailoring them to my desires.

[Jaggid Edje]

Yep, that's why I have always only recruited frigates which have the lowest fuel requirement for their type, and why I also always recruit all of my frigates before doing anything to upgrade fuel efficiency (so that what is displayed for the frigate being recruited is the actual base state).
It's also why I always go for an S-Class freighter. A lot of the community likes to say it doesn't matter that much and an A is fine, but they obviously either don't care about fuel costs or don't understand how the fleet coordination stat functions.

It's not actually as complicated as you make it out to be. Everything you wrote most of us who worry about that sort of thing figured out within a few days of when frigates and frigate missions were added to the game.
The problem isn't that this information isn't out there, the problem is that there's so much information out there, that finding what's actually correct and relevant to your search is a pain.

[Jaggid Edje]

Originally posted by Mr. Bufferlow:

Personally, I really disliked the 24+ hour mission times, so I adjust the time bonus for several of my ships so I will always have enough to bring those 24+ hour missions below 24 hours. It just bugs me to have a mission still going on the next time I log into the game.

His post about fuel efficiency also applies to expedition times. You can easily get the longest missions to be far short of anything approaching 24 hours using the same principles for fleet speed upgrades and a freighter with high fleet coordination.

[kissakias]

nah tritium and d-hydro are way too plenty in every planet.
and if you add the specific upgrates to freighter superslots, you will need 3 times lesser.

[lordoftheapes79]

Yeah, I'm not reading all of that, but I've been around long enough to make a few assumptions. They totally nerfed this last year with the Outlaws update, but with good reason. It was super easy to get fuel back then. BUT, you should check out pirate systems. There are lots of frigate fuel options there, as well as when you get tech upgrades for your freighter from derelicts, then there's the fact that you need fewer ships as they upgrade, meaning less fuel. For someone who puts a few hours a day in, getting enough fuel isn't a big deal, but if you're only putting a couple hours in every few days, it can be rough.

Really tho, pirate systems. There's tons of easily attainable fuel.

[knighttemplar1960]

Originally posted by Jaggid Edje:

Yep, that's why I have always only recruited frigates which have the lowest fuel requirement for their type, and why I also always recruit all of my frigates before doing anything to upgrade fuel efficiency (so that what is displayed for the frigate being recruited is the actual base state).
It's also why I always go for an S-Class freighter. A lot of the community likes to say it doesn't matter that much and an A is fine, but they obviously either don't care about fuel costs or don't understand how the fleet coordination stat functions.

It's not actually as complicated as you make it out to be. Everything you wrote most of us who worry about that sort of thing figured out within a few days of when frigates and frigate missions were added to the game.
The problem isn't that this information isn't out there, the problem is that there's so much information out there, that finding what's actually correct and relevant to your search is a pain.

I'm in the "don't care about fuel costs camp." unless you are on the hardest difficulty you can still find space stations that sell jellies and tritium. Buy up all the supplies every couple weeks and forget about it. You are going to make more units back from the mission rewards than you spent on the components for fuel.

If you are a save editor user just create the fuel out of thin air instead of taking the time to tweak all the ships.

[Foxglovez]

I went down that long and winding road trying to figure out fuel, and then they changed it all so I started all over again and came up with a simple system. Get an S freighter, be sure your support ships are max fuel efficiency, never buy a new non support frigate that uses more than 8 or 9, lesser is better. Go to good derelict. I use Mobar in Eissentam that gives gold upgrades to fuel of 19%. Get three of them. Never keep a frigate that gives you less time on a mission, always look for maybe one upgrade that gives you efficiency. Upgrade all the frigates, upgrade the freighter.

Come to the realization that all that fussing is a waste of time and just play the game. It is a temptation to go down the rabbit hole and try to figure out how HG sets it all up, but it's like chasing smoke. On my main save I haven't had to make fuel in weeks. Many missions take no fuel at all. I feel like I have won that minigame.

[Rexxer]

Originally posted by Psayne:

Ive spent the better part of two weeks trying to understand how it all works out. Just when I think I have it nailed down, it turns out ...

Why is this important? Generally it's pretty easy to make frigate fuel. Maybe with the dihydrogen nerf it's slower, but it's still not that bad. Or just focus on getting the greatest mission fuel saving upgrades. Or don't do frigate missions at all, they aren't necessary for the game.

I think all I did was, (1) got all the S-class upgrades for fleet fuel savings, (2) then spent a day making a large quantity of fuel. About 10 or 20 slots full. After that I could run missions for a month without really thinking about it.

[DennisM the Diligent]

As I describe in the guide, once your frigate fleets are fully upgraded (S-class and 55 missions) and at least half of the fleet are support frigates, the fleet missions themselves will generate the frigate fuel and you will have a surplus relatively quickly (I send out at least 4 support frigates on every mission). With 3 of each S-class fleet speed and 20% fuel efficiency upgrades in an S-class freighter (2 of each supercharged), the longest fleet missions will be about 6 hours and you will be swimming in frigate fuel. No mods or save edits required.

[Jaggid Edje]

Originally posted by DennisM the Diligent:

, the fleet missions themselves will generate the frigate fuel

I think they changed/fixed this with the Fractal update. Since Fractal, my expeditions have not been generating fuel; 0 fuel cost has just been 0 fuel cost.

[Azure Fang]

Originally posted by Jaggid Edje:

Originally posted by DennisM the Diligent:

, the fleet missions themselves will generate the frigate fuel

I think they changed/fixed this with the Fractal update. Since Fractal, my expeditions have not been generating fuel; 0 fuel cost has just been 0 fuel cost.

This. They floor it at 0 now

Originally posted by Rexxer:

Why is this important?

Some of us like to understand the how and why of things. It's what we enjoy.

Originally posted by lordoftheapes79:

Yeah, I'm not reading all of that, but I've been around long enough to make a few assumptions. They totally nerfed this last year with the Outlaws update, but with good reason. It was super easy to get fuel back then. BUT, you should check out pirate systems. There are lots of frigate fuel options there, as well as when you get tech upgrades for your freighter from derelicts, then there's the fact that you need fewer ships as they upgrade, meaning less fuel. For someone who puts a few hours a day in, getting enough fuel isn't a big deal, but if you're only putting a couple hours in every few days, it can be rough.

Really tho, pirate systems. There's tons of easily attainable fuel.

It's not about ease of getting fuel. It's all about knowing how the costs are calculated. Next time, please don't assume.

Originally posted by DennisM the Diligent:

I wrote this guide largely from the perspective of someone wanting to run frigate fleet missions, so the approach here is to emphasize fleet efficiency. When you level up all your frigates to 55 or more completed missions and they are all S-class, then the fuel requirements for the support ships drops to 1 ton per 250 light-years and the others to 2 tons per 250 light-years. As you say, if your freighter strategy is for warp distance and efficiency, then get the best hyperdrive upgrades and arrange them as you described. The best results are, of course, with S-class freighters.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2897201809

It goes deeper than 1 and 2. A freighter's Fleet Coordination also plays a part in the costs. It is completely possible to get all frigates - support, specialized, and organic - down to a floor of 1, but three SC, synergized, 20% efficiency modules aren't enough. Base freighter efficiency needs to be somewhere around 55-57 (inventory screen shows this figure as ~24.6 on an S-Class) to achieve this. THIS is why I hate the fact that they took away the hidden tooltip that showed the inherent bonuses for ships, multi-tools, and freighters when you hovered over a class badge.

[Jaggid Edje]

Originally posted by knighttemplar1960:

I'm in the "don't care about fuel costs camp." unless you are on the hardest difficulty you can still find space stations that sell jellies and tritium

You can actually still find both quite easily even on the highest difficulty. Though a bit more rare, neither of those is a resources that was removed from the trading pool entirely on the highest difficulties and you can still teleport around and get quite a large volume of both rather quickly.

But that's not the point. For those of us who actually care about what this thread is about it, it has nothing to do with 'how easy it is' to get the fuel. It's about knowing and understanding how things work.

[DennisM the Diligent]

Originally posted by Jaggid Edje:

Originally posted by DennisM the Diligent:

, the fleet missions themselves will generate the frigate fuel

I think they changed/fixed this with the Fractal update. Since Fractal, my expeditions have not been generating fuel; 0 fuel cost has just been 0 fuel cost.

Mine still do. Even my Utopia save, with a small fleet of 8 frigates (4 S-class support) is generating fuel.

[Jaggid Edje]

Originally posted by DennisM the Diligent:

Originally posted by Jaggid Edje:

I think they changed/fixed this with the Fractal update. Since Fractal, my expeditions have not been generating fuel; 0 fuel cost has just been 0 fuel cost.

Mine still do. Even my Utopia save, with a small fleet of 8 frigates (4 S-class support) is generating fuel.

Are you entirely sure about this?

You could be mistakenly thinking it's happening due to how missions that do use fuel split the larger fuel modules and create the smaller volume fuel modules when making change.

I suggest you actually pay attention to the total volume of fuel both before and after sending out expeditions to see if they really are still creating fuel. I have 5 active saves where I send out frigate expeditions daily, all with mostly support frigates, all with maximum fuel efficiency upgrade modules installed, all with the lowest fuel frigates that are recruitable.
NONE of them are creating fuel any longer.

Here's a video to show what I mean. Previously, every one of the missions I sent out would have created fuel. But the video shows start and end fuel volume is exactly the same:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2949528500

If you are seeing different results in your game, then you probably have a mod that is out-of-date such that your game is still using the old calculation formula that is not floored.