Do expeditions/frigates only use fuel...

[CatPerson]

.....if you use those slotted items on the lower left for special bonuses? Because I finally started a few rounds of fleet expeditions and they seem to use/require zero fuel. I see the "fuel required" slot on the right side opposite the special items squares, but it's always greyed out and the fuel I stuck in the freighter inventory remains untouched.

eg, if you care not about those special item slots, you never need any fuel?

[Shaken_Widow]

no that's def a bug.

you should be using fuel no matter what, those extra slots are just technology slots for things that add bonuses to the expedition like increased trade and mining resources.

check your frigates in the manage fleet menu in your freighter command room and look at their fuel requirements, they may have some wierd bonus or something but other than that i can safely say that it's not normal to not spend any fuel whatsoever.

[umop-apisdn]

Disagree; you can use support frigates to reduce the fuel cost... even below zero. Doing so will tell you "Fuel required: - tonnes" in the mission setup screen.

Edited to add: This is on "Standard" fuel usage difficulty settings; I double-checked after AmberAnvil's comment, below.

[AmberAnvil]

Did you adjust "Fuel Usage" under the "Difficulty" settings to "Free"?

[Felis_Exploria]

I use max difficulty settings. Short runs using support frigates often uses no fuel.

[CatPerson]

Hm. No, I don't have fuel set to free. I use a Custom game because I like to toggle foot combat stuff on and off as mood dictates but most things have been on Standard, including fuel. (edit: well, except for that couple hours where I used the discount prices on, heh). My personal ships like to be fed their fuel sources regularly.

I have been sending one, sometimes two supports with the other slotted frigates I send on a mission. And I think most missions haven't been terribly far away - mostly 1200-2000 maybe, occasionally 4k?
I don't think it says "minus" tonnes, it's just greyed out. but I'll double-check.

My other two saves don't have a freighter so I can't see if it affects all saves or just that main/first one.

I'll try with zero Supports next time.

[smurfy]

Any Frigate can have one or more - x expedition fuel cost attributes. Support frigates have them more often but Living Frigates seem to roll them commonly too.

Assigning those frigates to your expeditions, having "Fuel" salvaged frigate modules in your freighter tech (especially supercharged ones) and using Fuel Oxidiser consumables all contribute to reducing your fuel costs. Like @Felis_Exploria, I play on max difficulty and regularly get 0 fuel cost short (<5 hour) expeditions, even before having a fully S class frigate fleet.

[CatPerson]

I have zero freighter tech modules except the three things that came with it when I bought it. The hypderdrive and a couple jump distance increase type ones. It is an A class Venator freighter - I used 4 of those upgrade things to increase inventory and tech mod space (not that I need it yet) by two each, that's it. It still sits in the system I acquired it in as I gallop solo around the Universe. Edit: I don't even know how to get freighter tech modules. lol

I do often have space combat off, I forgot about that. Would that do anything. Far as I could tell before it only halted the repetitive periodic-warp freighter-rescue from appearing, and any random pirate attacks.

[CatPerson]

Yeah, it says a fuel cost amount, not minus, looks greyed out (dunno if that's default look or not tho), but when I launch the expedition (or they come back, I don't know when it's supposed to happen) the fuel in inventory stays the same.

I guess I have a "nice" bug then. Maybe it'll resolve itself one day. Or I suppose I could put fuel setting to max briefly just to see if that debugs it for some weird reason. *shrug*

[smurfy]

Example of a good Frigate with three -Fuel cost attributes (it rolled as a B class with those attributes and has since levelled up to S):
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3064985497
Example of a short expedition with 0 fuel costs:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3064984411

Whether it is a bug or working as expected really depends on your frigates. Have a look at each of your frigates in the Fleet Management and see if they have - fuel attributes. I'm not 100% sure the Fuel difficulty setting actually impacts Frigates, but it would be worth changing it, testing it, and changing it back, just to rule that out.

Incidentally, if an expedition costs fuel, it is deducted from your inventory immediately when you start the expedition.

[CatPerson]

Supports do have a single -15 expedition cost on them, I figured that was normal since all I encountered while hing seemed to have it. Not sure about multiple. l I could only double check a couple (not multiple), the others are on missions right now and apparently I can't look at them if on mission.

Regardless, when I made a Combat mission earlier with nothing but Combat frigates, it said cost would be 750 tonnes, but nothing was removed. And most of my missions have been in the 7-21 hr category.

I did have one unassigned mission left and I tried just now increasing the fuel setting. The stated cost (using a bunch of not-supports) said *this* - but then I backed out and tried lowering the fuel setting to "discounted" - not "free" - and with the same frigates chosen, it said -tonnes that time. Which seems odd, I would think discounted would = simply a lower number, not minus/free. >.>

Anyway, intriguing, bug/s or not. I'll look/fiddle more tomorrow.

Observational Learning sidenote: frigates seem to level up quite fast.

[Johnny in the Clouds]

Using Support frigates on expeditions will greatly reduce overall fuel costs.
Fleet tech upgrades also can reduce various costs.
Fuel costs can be reduced further using the x3 Upgrade Module slots with crafted items.

When deciding on a new frigate to add to a fleet, choose a frigate that uses the least amount of fuel. C-class frigates upgrade very quickly so don't limit choices holding out for a S-Class.

[smurfy]

Support are guaranteed one -15 Fuel but can have more in the other slots (as shown with the 3 in the screenshot earlier).

I just did a quick look through my last 5 save games (4.0, 4.0 no tutorial self-found, restarted again at 4.2, again at 4.4 and also 4.4 Exp 11 converted). Unfortunately most now had predominantly S frigates since, as you noticed, they level up pretty quickly. But I still had some fresh Cs and Bs in a couple of slots. It's probably worth noting that I don't target this attribute as a requirement when recruiting frigates, these have all been obtained randomly.

I have a freshly acquired B class Support with 3 slots (-15, -6 and -3).
I've also got plenty of Living Frigates with 1 or 2 fuel slots (none with 3, although it is probably possible).
I also have a few Combat specialists and some Pirate Raiders with decent fuel slots too.
So it's feasible to have a reasonably fresh fleet of frigates with a lot of fuel attributes and end up having expeditions with very little fuel costs (or none at all), right from the start of your experience sending out expeditions.

Obviously as they level up and add attributes, the chances of reducing fuel costs increases.
I've got several levelled up S class Supports with 4 fuel slots, the best one being -15, -9, -9 and -3.

[Mr. Bufferlow]

You might check around your inventories. You are given some "free" frigate fuel when you first set up a command room. It could be hidden below the screen bottom depending on how your freighter slots got set up originally. Also, it may be transferred to your suit (and again in a slot out of immediate sight).

If that is the case, you will eventually run out of fuel and have to craft some more.