I'd like to bounce some ideas around.
In a somewhat casual space game (though my design has been slowly creeping away from 'casual'...) I am looking for an alternate fuel mechanic.
The way it works now:
Each ship has an allotment of fuel points. When you want to move, you spend a point and move as many spaces as your speed allows. When you land at an inhabited planet your fuel is replenished.
• You don't have unlimited range.
• Different ships have different fuel capacities.
• Some weapons/items can be activated by using fuel points.
• It is possible to run out of fuel and become stranded. (other players can help you and gain victory points)
It just seems a bit clunky to have to pay a fuel point every turn, and then sometimes get filled right back up again because you are going planet to planet.
I'm thinking about eliminating fuel for moving altogether, and just let it be used for special weapons and stuff.
Right now, I'm finding that players have plenty of other incentives to frequently visit planets, such as trading commodities and buying ship equipment. And about the only time a player can reasonably run out of fuel is from combat - and there are still other ways to become stranded from combat.
However, I wonder if anyone has some other ideas?
Another model is that ships 'warp', or teleport, from one location to another, which being fictional can work however you want it to work. This allows you to ignore the effects of huge distances between planets (journeys taking hundreds of years).
Most of the time it seems that people's science-fiction universes are imagined as if the planets were islands and the spaceships were actual ships, in pre-modern times: journeys from one planet to another are possible but dangerous, and take a 'normal' amount of time without any strange relativistic effects: there's inter-planetary trade and colonisation, spaceships can be marooned, they can battle each other, there's the possibility of piracy, there are uncharted planets, and so on. It might be easier to just set it on a series of islands...
My image of the game is to mimic the sort of things commonly seen in retro space stories. Space opera type material. This can be further imaged as very cartoony, or like a child's imagination, or perhaps more like the era of sci-fi pulp. More whimsical, less hard-core.
In this regard, yes, I suppose you could re-brand this to take place in the days of sail. But as you said, you could probably re-brand all of retro space opera sci-fi this way as well, the very genre I'm paying homage to. Do I detect a hint of disdain for such material?
At any rate, I tried some solo testing with and without fuel for normal movement, and I have to say it is much improved saving fuel (energy) for special situations. I also like the idea of spending energy to move extra spaces, but then I realized that I already had that mechanic! However, it wasn't a default ability, it only appeared on certain items as a special use.
As to being stranded, game turns are pretty quick. Getting stranded hurts more because someone else probably got points for stranding you, rather than missing a lot of play time.