I've noticed fuel economy doesn't seem to be a priority among many Dumpshockers when modifying their vehicles.

How do you deal with the costs and availability of acquiring fuels of various kinds?

Probably because most of the games take place in the city, and gass stations/recharging station arn't to far away. Not to mention Sunlink and City Grid backup systems for just cruising around so that you don't have to burn fuel.

Generally speaking though in my game, I factor fuel into the lifestyle for the mont. Unless they do a lot of cruising then I might make them pay for it, about 4nuyen a gallon.

Judging from the replies on this board, a good third of the runs involve going well outside The City ... which should theoretically bring up the question.

And then there's those who listed aircraft as their favourite mode of transportation - surely fuel availability and cost would be relevant?

A good point. You'd be surprised how far you can and cannot go over open/wild terrain with only three 55-gallon fuel drums in the back bed.

"Wilderness" runs like these make for some great role-playing opportunities when "city" runners are expected to cut it as "wilderness" runners. ("But you said there was a sign indicating the next gas station was in 35 miles. We've gone 35 miles! What do you mean it's not there anymore? He sign was how old?")

As a related comment, it would be rather interesting, I think, if riggers could attempt a control roll to "improve economy." Sure, the actual energy output of an engine is limited by a number of technical factors, but surely through smart materials/subtly altering the vehicle's profile/reducing energy flow to a variety of non-essential systems/etc. a rigger could squeeze a few more clicks out of a T-bird that's running on vapors, no?

For a car this can be pretty easy doing things like shifting gears at the most economical time, running at the most economical speed, avoiding breaking (and thus the need to rev the engine again) and so on. With aircraft there are a few less tricks. For planes, they typically have an optimun angle of attack, engine RPM, and altitude for fuel economy. I am not really sure about choppers, though there may be a few tricks. For vectored thrust vehicles, it would involve staying close enough to the ground ( ~ less than 10 feet) to get a 'lift effect' from air 'reflecting' off the ground.

I get 1,300 klicks from a single tank; as long as I keep it topped off when I can, I have nothing to worry about.

~J

I have never gotten as satisfying a glare from one of my players as when I told him that, after his character "drove non-stop west from Denver, and won't stop for any reason," he ran out of gas on Highway 24 somewhere in the Rocky Mountains. Maybe it was worse because I decided that in my SR world, the ski resorts had long since closed up when the caucasians got out of Pueblo. So out of gas, in a snow storm, in the middle of the Rockies, because he decided not to check his economy.

It was really satisfying.

On a side note, any pilot is trained to be very aware of his or her fuel. You can't pull over on the side of the road in a plane. The only time a plane has too much fuel is when its on fire.

Or when it's too heavy to land on a short strip.

~J

I house ruled that all 2060 cars had a readout of "projected milage at worst fuel consumption based on current petrol level" but i also enforced it with an iron fist.

When I've run, the playerws have been really good about their upkeep on all their equipment; they are far too paranoid to do anything less.

In my mind, the economy stuff is there more for long-haul smuggling or fleeing attempts. After all, even though Seattle is huge, it is relatively well-stocked for commuters.

One thing I do enforce heavily, though, is fuel economy on drones. Cuz those suckers can't go anywhere near as far, and they do have an idle economy.

Athenor

Upkeep, standard city driving included in lifestyle, and drone fuel economy have been mentioned - but this still doesn't cover the cross-country trips and possible dearth of accessible fuelling stations. (They could well be armoured and otherwise protected even more heavily than banks!)

Pilots and truckers may be trained to be aware of their fuel - but where and how do T-bird smugglers and other illicit types get it? and how much do they pay? I'd assume that isn't covered in upkeep or lifestyle! (That VTOL took up how much of our fuel reserve?) Is there (or should there be) a distinction between price or availability of multifuel v. standard IC? If not, why would anyone choose the multifuel option?

I never really bother with gas. I'm not keen on getting my game down to the level of 'okay, now I'm tying my shoes... now I'm doing my belt and zipping up my pants...' MAYBE if they said something stupid like Seville's player or if they were REALLY going out in the booneys and I had asked for a detailed equipment list... but who enjoys calculating their gas mileage? Might as well ask them to balance their checkbooks.

I'd like to contradict Bob back there about planes. With passenger planes especially, it's pretty easy to save a lot of gas. Extend your flaps and you can slow your engine well below normal stall speed. You'll get there a lot slower, but you'll get a lot farther too, since you're now more of a glider than a plane.

VTOL would be a different matter, since, from what I understand, the ONLY form of force keeping the craft going in the right direction is its own power. A helicopter can 'glide' but only for a few minutes, if its lucky. I don't think a t-bird could even manage that.

I'd assume t-birds and what not use the same power sources as aircraft. While airplane fuel is expensive and not something you see advertised often, I don't think it would be too hard to get. I don't believe it's a restrict substance, and there's going to be plenty of people who are willing to sell it to whoever has money, especially now that society isn't based on gas guzzling like it once was. It'll be a lot harder than buying car gas, but once you get the system set up it shouldn't be much harder than buying anything else illegally. Of course, I know nothing at all about purchasing aircraft fuel, so this is only an educated guess.

A T-Bird can glide much the same way a brick does.

~J

I base it on the fact that most of the basic consumer cars listed in either of the books are electric or use methol. We'd still use oil for plastics and what not, and granted I'm totally ignoring the third world. However, since we've been producing electric cars for thirty years, more or less, I'd wager that the average Joe (here or overseas) doesn't use gas any more. Throw in that engines have been getting more fuel efficient over the last hundred years and I have no question that it'll continue too.

An interesting bit of sociology and economics, nezumi. Oil is seldom mentioned as a hot commodity in sourcebooks, no? Though it is certainly present as a fuel source, there seem to be much larger economic issues at stake than oil.

Or, given that in 2000 the Earth had about 40 years of oil (at current consumption rates) of moderately-easily exploitable reserves left, maybe by 2063 society has become less gas-guzzling out of neccessity. *Goes about his geological way*

Right, but the difference being that the pool of jerks who can afford to do that will be much smaller.

~J

Some more aircraft fuel management info:

The sensors on some aircraft can be notoriously inaccurate. One of the biggest reasons is that when you have large fuel tanks and mechanical sensors on a fast moving vehicle, the sensors just don't work well when they get low. Now, some planes have other, more accurate measurements, but really, most pilots that I know don't have any great trust for fuel gauges.

Instead, fuel is measured in terms of time as well as gallons (or pounds). A lot of pilots of jet aircraft will set power (i.e. set the throttles) by their fuel-flow gages because it is less variable and responds almost immediately to pilot inputs. This results in most jet pilots will have a relatively good idea of how much fuel they should have burned in x amount of time, how much they should have left, and will trust their own numbers if the gauges seem to be malfunctioning (although one would usually err to the more conservative number). On larger airplanes, such as Fred (the C-5), the flight engineer checks all 12 fuel tanks (hundreds of thousands of pounds of fuel) regularly, and constantly monitors it against the charts for fuel consumption at altitude. On the B-52, the co-pilot does this. On smaller, single engine aircraft, they have forms that say exactly how much they should have a certain point.

Regardless, running out of fuel in an airplane will ruin your day, unless your flying a small prop that can land in a farmer's field. By the way, helo's can't glide, they autorotate to slow their descent rate immediately before impact. T-Bird (although aerodynamically not possible) would likewise glide like a brick.

Finally, all aircraft have a maximum L/D which maximizes endurance (or range, depending on the type of engine). Regardless, every tech order or owners manual will tell you how to achieve max endurance, and you would never put flaps out to get there (too much drag. I don't know, airplanes are crazy things, there might be a plane out there that maximizes endurance at a partial flap setting, but it would be the exception, not the rule). Flaps can increase lift, but usually what they do is lower the stall speed, and change the chordline of the plane for visibility. However, they generally add more drag than they do lift, which is why you need more power with flaps extended. Most planes climb (in terms of altitude vs. distance) flaps, but again, an increase in drag will result in a loss of airspeed, but also an increase in lift at that airspeed, resulting in a steeper climb.

But if the price of maintaining one increases significantly, the middle class men won't be able to afford it unless they desperately need to send the lion's share of their paycheck into compensation for small size elsewhere, leaving the wealthy as the most common owners.

~J

When I think of the rigger's relationship with a vehicle, I cannot help that fuel could only be felt two ways:

1) You know when you're hungry... and when you're really, really, really hungry.

2) Sort of like physical exhaustion with a long run-- not limb pain, but fatigue, to the point that you can run no more.

Well there obviously has to be a readout on a simulated HUD involved ("I was distracted from flying the plane by my intense hunger" doesn't make a good crash excuse).

I'm just saying that considering the state of sensor technology for things outside the vehicle that monitoring fuel would seem to be comparatively simple.

I'm not sure that it would necessarily translate as hunger; more there would be a new sensation of... not having fuel or something.
Gah. We need VCRs.

~J

I agree that ASIST technology would revolutionize air travel, and probably result in the elimination of yet more crew positions. (A C-5 needs at least 6 people to fly a mission, and usually carries 12, up to the low twenties. The C-17, which takes full advantage of the glass cockpit, needs three with an augmented crew of five). It will be safer and easier to fly an airplane. However... it is ridiculously easy not to run out of fuel, and almost everyone has been scared of it at least once, and it still happens from time to time. But its generally not the C-5 or C-17 or military or commerical plane that runs out of fuel. It is the people who are out for a joyride, or flying him or herself, or anyone who can basically "kick the tires and light the fires."

Flying is made safer by training and discipline, with help from technology, not the other way around. The rigger who "gets hungery" when he is low on fuel is going to be the one who crashes, because he doesn't need to learn how to think ahead or be concerned with fuel until he already has a problem.

Besides all the gas-guzzlers, the SR world still does have paved roads (asphalt), as well as plastics and clothing synthetics, a surprising number of which materials are oil-based. Anyone got the stats on what fraction of today's total oil consumption vehicular gas consumption accounts for (in whichever political environment you find most relevant, for they will differ)? I can't see that the SR world would be so very different, a few wageslave electrics notwithstanding. (After all, the corporate movement is toward arcologies - which won't require wageslaves to step outside the corporate environment at all.)

But never mind hummers for the moment. How do you deal with refuelling aircraft? and how do you cost it?

I can't vouch for how accurate it is, but I found this in two seconds on google:
http://www.apme.org/media/public_documents...50634/AEC1A.pdf

For those of you (like myself) who are lazy, it pretty much says the following:
The use of petroleum products in Western Europe in 1999 had the following break up
Energy & Heating 46%
Transport 29%
Other 14%
Petrochemicals 7%
Plastics 4%

Insulation and alternative heating methods are being developed all the time. Hopefully that number will go down significantly. Transport is probably much lower than in the U.S. (Europe charges more tax on their gas, encourages deisel use, has better mass transit, sell more efficient cars and average shorter commutes).

Thanks, nezumi. That's close to what I remembered: especially the transportation percent accounting for about half of heating/energy production and about a quarter of the total. (Pleading guilty: trying to catch up on threads, so minimising anything non-Dumpshock until caught up.)

Transport is about 2/3 of heating, not 1/2.

~J

Like I said, close to what I remembered ~J

One reason I'm so curious about how aircraft - and watercraft - fuelling is treated in various SR games is because it's about to become extremely relevant in ours on a long-term basis ... and I haven't a clue how to go about costing it and defining its scarcity. (I do know that I'm definitely not going to be including it under Lifestyle!)

2 things will help stave off the energy crisis. Resource rush, there can be new oilfieds tapped. Currently, some figure the north slope has as much oil as Saudi Arabia. SR-wise, orbitting solar collectors that microwave energy to about any point on earth, supposedly making energy very cheap.

Using the cheap solar energy for about everything frees up a lot of demand for petroleum fuels.

Not if they're using alcohol or electricity, like most of the vehicles listed : P

Thanks, Random Voices.

Also, Iceland is experimenting with creating a hydrogen-based fuel cell vehicular infrastructure ... but the odds that the existing technology is going to transfer readily over into other markets are less than promising. There seems to be a sharp gap between what's possible and what suppliers are willing to do; and then there's that powerful N. American car culture all based around the I/C.

Apart from Shadow's 4 nuyen a gallon (cheap!!!? it's encroaching on $2 a gallon currently in the United States, and that's among the cheapest prices in the world), there's been no other estimates of price that I caught. (If I missed one, I'm sorry.)

Would there be a difference in price and/or availability between standard petrol and multifuel? If yes, by how much? If not: why would anyone use a multifuel engine? (If pollution is the issue, why not just go electric + solar panels?)