Edward Fuller · Lead Designer, Mission Features

Yeah, so refueling has been with us for quite a while now, but it is still a player-on-player mechanic. When refueling was first being designed, there was an effort, AI had priority to be looking at ways for AI to reciprocate and be the refueled. And then, shifting of priorities and people moving around, and refueling changed a lot, came out, and the prototype work of what refueling is for an AI didn't get maintained to be matched with it. Right now, priorities for AI don't put them in alignment with working on that particular feature to bring it up. So basically, AI designers and AI engineers would need to come back and look at that particular behavior for them to cooperate with a player refueling them, and then it would be possible. Once they make a behavior, then it would be something that I think we'd probably put in service beacons. So it'd be a spoofed NPC beacon where they ask for refueling and you refuel them. And then after that, it would actually be something that we could put in a mission, because we could make a module around it. But you see how we are downstream of a sort of downstream. So it's not like no one's thought about it.

Jared Huckaby · Host, Community

It's just layers. There's also the chicken and egg problem, where you generally want to prioritize work that affects the largest percentage of people. And not everybody owns a refueling ship; probably most players don't. So that becomes kind of a niche. But the chicken and the egg thing is, well, if you made missions for it, then maybe more people would get refueling ships. So it's hard to balance that.