Fuel miscalculations

How come I arrive in a system with 3 planets but it takes as much fuel to fly to the planet next to my ship as it takes to fly to the one furthest away? This doesn't seem right really as surely the closer planet would use less fuel to arrive at as the distance is shorter. Maybe it would be ok using the space folder as the process of folding space instantly brings any destination to you so all systems could theoretically be the same distance apart but it just doesn't make sense in the systems themselves or am I missing something?

Stumpyjay wrote:
How come I arrive in a system with 3 planets but it takes as much fuel to fly to the planet next to my ship as it takes to fly to the one furthest away? This doesn't seem right really as surely the closer planet would use less fuel to arrive at as the distance is shorter. Maybe it would be ok using the space folder as the process of folding space instantly brings any destination to you so all systems could theoretically be the same distance apart but it just doesn't make sense in the systems themselves or am I missing something?

You are missing something. Here on planet Earth, constant thrust equals constant velocity, because friction and wind resistance slow you down if you turn the engine off. Therefore you need to consume fuel continuously in order to reach your destination, and thus further destinations require more fuel to reach.

In outer space, there is no friction or resistance to forward motion. Constant thrust equals constant acceleration. You only need to run the engines until you're up to your desired traveling speed, and then you can shut them off and drift until you reach your destination. An additional thrust in the opposite direction will be required to slow down again when you get there. Assuming you have a specific speed you like to travel at, the amount of fuel required to travel (speeding up and slowing down) will be constant - regardless of how far you need to travel in between the start and the end - because you aren't using fuel continuously.

Therefore, the fact that it costs the same amount of fuel to reach any given planet is actually a very accurate representation of sub-light space travel in this game.
FTL travel is, of course, still science fiction, so the rules that apply to that are completely open to artistic interpretation.