Since the idea of hyperspace technology affects the cargo capacity is accepted almost all properties of a ship are affectable with a research, only the fuel usage is left.

An overview:
Structural integrity --> armour tech
Shield strength --> shield tech
Attack strength --> weapon tech
Speed --> combustion/impulse/hyper drive
Cargo capacity --> hyperspace tech
Fuel usage --> ???

As miner I "hate" to say it but the fleeters deserve a research for this. I would say we can choose between laser tech and graviton tech, because these techs are left without further benefit. Since fuel costs are made by escaping a planets gravity influence I would say graviton tech is the best tech to use for this.

Because we don't want that ships can fly without deuterium costs I think an exponential formula is needed here. A linear formula is impossible because when a player pays for example 10% per level less he could reach the 0% of fuel costs. I would say (but we can discuss about it):

Fuel costs = 1 + round ((base cost x distance x 0,95 ^ graviton tech) / 35000 x (speed / 100 + 1)^2)

The formula is based on this one: ogame.wikia.com/wiki/Fuel_Consumption
Distance is defined here: ogame.wikia.com/wiki/Distance
Speed is the percentage of flight time chosen by the player at the fleet screen.

So basically what players see at the techinfo of a ship is: fuel usage (deuterium) = base cost x 0,95 ^ graviton tech --> number what players see.

So at a large cargo where the base cost is 50 now, with a graviton tech of 1 it will be: 50 x 0,95 ^ 1 = 47,5. So players will see a base cost of 47,5 in the techinfo of a large cargo.

I think we can discuss about that 0,95 in this idea.

Anyone?

Players who use DM (Dark Matter) have an advantage in almost everything. Buying resources, faster building, faster researching etc. That's also the meaning of DM, why would they else buy it? I think every idea which want to give graviton a purpose would have this problem since players can always build those satellites fast.

Is this read thread by the developers and could it get the label accepted/maybe/denied? I still think this is a good idea since we're looking for a way to decrease fuel costs and leave it alone to a universe setting is a bit crappy to me. Everybody had the same (dis)advantage. Researching higher levels of graviton should be rewarded with something special like this.