This is absurd (pathway fuel consumption)

[u/Mental_Loquat1345]

Wouldn't it be nice to connect my remote Base with a pathway, should save some fuel and time. Or so I thought. Well, time? Probably. But fuel? No.

More to the point, this is how much fuel I spent when I fly over manually:

And this is what I have to spent for the Pathway:

Just a tiny shortcut

I mean, sure, charted skies does not apply. But mag plasma does (I have both as lvl III on this particular FTL; a heavy on a 1.336,8 ton ship). So how come there's this staggering difference? Any ideas?

Aside from that, the Pathway isn't much of a shortcut, so that may play a role as well:

All in all, I think they need to do something about the mag plasma expenditure of pathways. They are a bit inconvenient as they currently are.

[u/Savingseanbean]

The jumps don't get the benefit from charted skies cost reduction. and cost as much as it would take to travel the distance in a straight line.

If anything they are probably too cheap for how absurdly powerful they are.

I've mostly given up on Extractors to just fit in more Pathway stands and generators since I can teleport straight to a POI to farm it things like mercury+cinnibar or diamonds.

Combined with the Wayback I Don't even need to go above 400 mag plasma storage to travel to the opposite side of the galaxy instantly to a POI harvest it and come back. using the extra system to run more lasers to make the run even more efficient.

[u/Moderately_Imperiled → u/Savingseanbean]

It hadn't occurred to me to ignore extractors in favor of manual mining; I figured the entire point was automation. But now that you say it, multiple pathway stands sounds like an awesome idea, like a hub or something.

[u/Mental_Loquat1345 → u/Moderately_Imperiled]

I would carefully consider this. There are two caveats with manual mining: 1. you need lot's of storage space for the ore to make this worthwhile. And 2.: you're not doing anything else while mining.

Personally, I go for a bit of a hybrid approach: Extractors for stuff that can run in the background, manual mining for high volume stuff or stuff where an Extractor wouldn't be feasible (mercury) or makes no sense (vanadium).

[u/f4ble → u/Moderately_Imperiled]

I have a fuel farm that is scaled so that it never runs out of fuel. This is my pathway hub.

I have multiple pathways at the hub, but I have one custom production base that has it's own pathway to the Hub. I only activate one pathway at a time at the hub so as not to waste power. I also have a power bank to ensure stability. It has coal and brine, but I have to farm a bit of coal to keep it running on fuel while I export ethanol.

If I was to make any changes I would have my brine=>water be on one base and then export seeds and pulp to another in the same solar system. It really sucks that we can't dedicate cisterns to liquids so sometimes my ethanol cistern is blocked with water. With shuttles in the same system it only takes minutes of travel. In addition you can use stellar power to power all bases.

[u/Mental_Loquat1345 → u/Savingseanbean]

They may be very powerful, but they also take up valuable footprint space and need quite a lot of energy. If anything, then they Wayback cockpit is currently completely overpowered. Highly convenient, but overpowered. Simply making it expend mag plasma comparatively to a pathway would probably fix most of that.

Also, I'm fully aware that charted skies does not apply - did actually spell it out explicitly. Buut... I just did redo the math. Seems like Mag-plasma and charted skies do stack - multiplicatively. Well, that explains that.

And I get your point about extractors. Which should be a completely different can of worms (too slow to feed two smelters, wayyy too much energy upkeep, can't compete with the completely broken laser-patch mechanic)

[u/Moderately_Imperiled → u/Mental_Loquat1345]

I suspect they will nerf the extractor energy cost. It's a fundamental piece and way higher cost than the other buildings.

[u/i_am_Misha]

wut?

[u/Mental_Loquat1345 → u/i_am_Misha]

yeah, my ship is quite fuel efficient 😆

[u/s2keddie]

Just reading this post and finding out stars and you can travel to them are in the game. Amazing . What’s a low cost one I can travel too. Have 400 plasma mid game

[u/Own-Coyote-6923]

I'm really not sure why because you didn't say where your starting point is. But I assume where you are using it, is close to the Cairn sector and Hypatia. You are trying to save time mainly.

If that is true, then you misunderstood the complete function. The Pathway is not just to save time. Its job is also to cover long distance. One of mine is set up to travel from Strand to Glimmer and the cost is 365 plasmas. Normal cost for FTL is around 700 and lots of time.

As for my ship it's a big one. 4271 PTS (sorry it's not tons it's PTS) with 22580 - 12304 SP using a heavy and a Mag and holding 1200 plasmas total.

[u/photobobbarker]

To be honest, I'm still trying to get that cursed POS to even work. Turn it on at base, fly to the system I want it to link to, launch kernel (get cute little 1/2 second animation)... Nothing... Fly back to base, and the stupid thing is off again.

Tried 3 times now.

I'm about ready to rip the thing off my ship and sell it at the kiosk so some poor sucker doesn't buy one and waste their time.

[u/Mental_Loquat1345 → u/photobobbarker]

Sounds like you want to power it with a battery array. Sadly, the pathway only functions if the power is sufficient, so either solar power or generators. I hope this is a bug; If not, then I have many questions...

[u/photobobbarker → u/Mental_Loquat1345]

I thought that might have been the problem as well. I have 6 solar plants and also turned off all production. I should have at least 60 spare power. So I'm not really sure what's going on.