All ships should have a dedicated fuel scoop slot built-in.

[Eidolon]

I don't think ships should come with a fuel scoop OP.
It is an expensive (or can be) and specialised piece of kit.
Having said that I think the Eagle and Imp Eagle would greatly benefit from a couple of extra slots, maybe a size 2 and a size 1.
Might as well give one to the viper too eh?

 

[CMDR Corlas]

Dedicated fuel scoop slots would cause a slippery slope so steep it would destroy the universe.

I mean hey, if you're going to straw-man, you might as well dress him in a tuxedo.

You're misunderstanding what those fallacies are.

It's not a strawman or a slippery-slope fallacy when I've demonstrated it already happening: Eagle had 3 slots. Then it became 4 so people could SRV without compromising as much. Now people want another one because that addition wasn't enough. That is not a fallacy, that's what took place.

The idea of a slippery-slope is not a fallacy - slippery-slopes can and do exist. The fallacy is in claiming it is unavoidable, or will lead to unreasonable extremes: "We can't allow a new slot on the Eagle, because eventually we'll all have Eagles with 10,000MJ shields and 30 C4 hardpoints!"

The problem with this reasoning is that it avoids engaging with the issue at hand, and instead shifts attention to extreme hypotheticals. Because no proof is presented to show that such extreme hypotheticals will in fact occur, this fallacy has the form of an appeal to emotion fallacy by leveraging fear.

https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/slippery-slope

That's not what I did. I presented proof - it already happened with the Eagle - and supported that proof with another example of the same thinking being unsatisfied when it got what it wanted. I even addressed the issue at hand by suggesting a c1 shield.

If we're already on a slope. It's not a fallacy to point that out.

/learn what logical fallacies are before you try to use them to "win" an argument, and you won't fall into the Fallacy Fallacy, like you tried to here.

 

[CMDR Corlas]

Indeed. Why even bother to discuss the pros and cons of fuel scoops when we can just make up any straw man argument we want and plug away at that?

No, that was specifically a slippery-slope argument. He took the request for one more slot and made it into 9+, and extreme, and cited no evidence to support that.

And, critically, he's not wrong because it's a slippery-slope argument. It's just a weaker argument because of it. It's less convincing. And it might be wrong too, yes. (clearly, I don't think he is) But it is right or wrong for reasons beyond it being a slippery-slope.

 

[Majic-12]

/learn what logical fallacies are before you try to use them to "win" an argument, and you won't fall into the Fallacy Fallacy, like you tried to here.

A splendid lecture, but irrelevant, like the assumption that dedicated fuel scoop slots would necessarily constitute a continuation of a slippery slope that doesn't actually exist (the Eagle is not a representative case for all ships), or that I was speaking to you specifically when I wasn't replying to you specifically.

If you don't think dedicated fuel scoop slots make sense, more power to you. I'm agnostic on the question myself, and can see both sides of the argument -- when the argument actually pertains to the question of dedicated fuel scoops.

Alas, so many of the responses in this thread challenge my own posts for absurdity, which is my point. If you're not seeing it, please do take a moment to have another look and marvel at just how hyperbolic that slope can be.

Ironically, all this nonsense has me questioning why fuel scoops, which have no mass and ostensibly operate on the outside of ships, would require internal slots in the first place, where I wouldn't have given it a second thought before.

Are dedicated fuel slots a good idea? I don't know. But I do think a good solid argument against them wouldn't rely on tangential speculation or misrepresentation of the proposal.

Please be assured that I mean no offense to you or anyone else, but I do think much of what is being bandied about in this thread bears no reasonable resemblance to the proposal being made, and that seems patently unfair to me, hence my admittedly obtuse methods of illustrating the point ad absurdum, as is my custom.

 

[CMDR Corlas]

Ironically, all this nonsense has me questioning why fuel scoops, which have no mass and ostensibly operate on the outside of ships, would require internal slots in the first place, where I wouldn't have given it a second thought before.

I'm fairly certain that I've seen a dev post somewhere that basically said that scoops not having mass was an oversight, but it had been so long that they weren't going to bother adding mass on them, to avoid the explorer backlash. I mean, it makes sense that there would be some machinery there to, at the least, condense and compact free hydrogen to whatever state our ships use it in.

Perhaps dumbly of me, if the original argument was something like fuel scoops, by definition, have to exist on the outside of ships and are evidently built in to the hulls - no visible scooping apparatus gets installed, no new weak point on the hull, etc - this external scooping-mechanism is a designed part of the hull, and therefore they should have their own dedicated slot... I'd be on board with that.

I'm not against scoops, just against the "I dislike compromise, so ships need more internals" logic that was used.

 

[Pville_Piper]

I got a better idea... Why don't we just have the same ship, but we put different skins on it... That way, everybody can get what they want, and the look they love! The galaxy will be totally universal!!!

[wacko]

 

[Majic-12]

I'm fairly certain that I've seen a dev post somewhere that basically said that scoops not having mass was an oversight, but it had been so long that they weren't going to bother adding mass on them, to avoid the explorer backlash. I mean, it makes sense that there would be some machinery there to, at the least, condense and compact free hydrogen to whatever state our ships use it in.

Perhaps dumbly of me, if the original argument was something like fuel scoops, by definition, have to exist on the outside of ships and are evidently built in to the hulls - no visible scooping apparatus gets installed, no new weak point on the hull, etc - this external scooping-mechanism is a designed part of the hull, and therefore they should have their own dedicated slot... I'd be on board with that.

I'm not against scoops, just against the "I dislike compromise, so ships need more internals" logic that was used.

I can't argue with that. [smile]

 

[Grisnir]

You do not a fuel scoop at all if playing within the bubble.

Outside the bubble, most modules are useless.

Unless you do dull A<>B trading in a 60ly range or love to dock after 5 jumps you need one, and yes all my ships have one

 

[Winterwalker]

I'm fairly certain that I've seen a dev post somewhere that basically said that scoops not having mass was an oversight, but it had been so long that they weren't going to bother adding mass on them, to avoid the explorer backlash.

Have regularly been reminded, to wonder about that! +R

Reply to the OP ... imo, nah.

 

[Jex =TE=]

I agree, it seems very illogical that a module responsible for scooping hydrogen from outerspace would be mounted inside a ship. So having it occupy an Internal Compartment makes no sense. Logically it would have to be some kind of vent that opened up on the outside and took in more fuel the greater the area it covered. Since it adds zero mass, it should just be some kind of door or hatch, or series of doors or hatches with magnetic funnels leading towards the fuel tank. As you can see from the ship design, pretty much every ship has forward mounted exhaust, or retrograde thrusters which could double as fuel intakes.

From a gameplay point of view, I get that making outfitting priorities creates some much needed "tension" and sensation of player agency when outfitting your ship. However, I also think that since we have specialized Military slots and Commerce Slots, then why don't exploration ships have specialized Science Slots for fuel scoops and sensors? All of which should be externally mounted? I mean seriously, having internally mounted sensors makes as much sense as taking pictures with camera that never leaves the trunk of your car.

Well logic and FDev never did get on that well unfortunately. In a universe filled with an abundance of free fuel, where scooping fuel is easy and where if you run out of fuel you literally have no rescue, you would think a fuel scoop would be a standard fitting on every ship.

 

[Iskariot]

Preamble:
Let's start with what started out as my favourite ship way, way back when it was first added: Eagle MK II. Before Horizons, it was a workable if underpowered (especially: too slow) ship. Enter Horizons, enter the SRV. Let's not kid outselves, an SRV is mandatory for so much content. So, we could squeeze one into the Eagle, leaving us with a puny size 1 slot for a fuel scoop.

Has anyone else ever tried moving around with an Eagle at ~18Ly jump range, fuel for 3 jumps, and a size 1 fuel scoop? An FDL (able to use a class 4 fuel scoop on a class 3 tank) feels like the most majestic explorer in comparison.

So besides bringing it out from time to time to hunt a bit in some nearby RES and then put it back to storage and fly a "real" ship, the ship is dead.

And I haven't even put discovery scanners into the equation: with a huge proportion of even the bubble starting out as unexplored, not having an ADS at the very least feels crippling even while inside the bubble. Yes, it is workable - you can buy map data, you can use the nav beacon etc., but it all feels like using crutches and workarounds for what should not be an issue in the first place inside the bubble.

Other ships that suffer from this problem are the Sidewinder and the Imperial Eagle. Most other small ships have at least enough compartments of sufficient size to squeeze in a workable selection of modules, which I would define as shield generator, SRV bay, and a fuel scoop of at least the same size as the fuel tank.

This brings me to my solution for this issue: give every ship a dedicated fuel scoop hardpoint in addition to what they already got, which should always at least have the size as the fuel tank, preferrably however one larger. Especially ships with low jump ranges and small tanks can offset this a bit with a 1 class oversized fuel scoop, and while still being much slower in terms of interstellar travel times, at least not cripplingly slow; I am looking not just at the smaller ships like the Eagle here, but also the FDL and the Federal Corvette.

Someone proposed that all ships should have a small slow emergency fuelscoop.
If you want to do some serious scooping you would still have to add a bigger scoop .
I would support that idea.
I am against all ships having a standard fully functional fast and convenient fuel scoop.

 

[Old Duck]

In defense of the OP, I read somewhere that the reason the fuel scoop adds zero mass is that it replaces part of your hull, thus zero-sum mass. Of course we don't actually see it, so I'm not sure if this is "lore" or not, but it begs the question, why does something that has zero mass take up volume (potentially a HUGE amount of volume) inside our ship? And then there's the AFMU, but that's an entirely different mystery to me...

-- NINJA'D in slow motion --

 

[SAB380]

Fuel scoops and docking computers are two of the more bizarre modules.
Both should be in the utility slots IMO

 

[RamirezKurita]

While I don't agree with a specific slot for scoops on ships, I do feel like there is design space for engineer modules or variant modules that come with inbuilt emergency scoops. For example, there could be an engineer mod for drives with inbuilt scoops, with the scoop being equal to a class half of the drives when fully G5ed (so a maxed G5 class 6 FSD would have the performance of a 3E scoop). Such scoops would be mostly useless for actually getting around due to their low performance, but would reduce the reliance on the fuel rats somewhat as players would have the option of camping out at a star for a while to refill. Similarly, military ships or very small explorer ships that can't afford to spare additional internals could use such a scoop to maximise their slot efficiency, but at the sacrifice of player time due to scoop performance.

 

[Spandexxx]

Nah. Lose the SRV. Only a few of my ships carry them anyway. If you need one for some reason then pop into an outfitters and fit one. Even in my early days when running 1 ship I didn't always run with one.

 

[Vasious]

I always wondered the opposite, like how it was in FE2, only certain ships could fit fuel scoops.

What it only the Scouts and Explorers and Liners could fit fuel scoops at all, and the rest were limited to fuel tanks

 

[Vasious]

Pretty sure the Eagle originally had three slots, and got a free fourth added specifically for SRV flexibility when Horizons came out.

Correct, the Sidewinder, Imperial Eagle and Federal Eagle received an additional size 1 slot with Horizons to facilitate the SRV in the Size 2 and not hamstring them.

The Imperial Eagle and Federal Eagle has since also received a Size 2 Military slot

 

[Vasious]

I'm fairly certain that I've seen a dev post somewhere that basically said that scoops not having mass was an oversight, but it had been so long that they weren't going to bother adding mass on them, to avoid the explorer backlash. I mean, it makes sense that there would be some machinery there to, at the least, condense and compact free hydrogen to whatever state our ships use it in.

Yeah, they said both Scoops and AMFUs were not supposed to be mass-less

 

[Maka Gucci]

I always wondered the opposite, like how it was in FE2, only certain ships could fit fuel scoops.

What it only the Scouts and Explorers and Liners could fit fuel scoops at all, and the rest were limited to fuel tanks

I like

 

[Deleted member 110222]

Unless you do dull A<>B trading in a 60ly range or love to dock after 5 jumps you need one, and yes all my ships have one

Exactly. You can dock at a station halfway through your route to buy fuel.

But how dare I suggest that people buy fuel! Am I mad?!

No, I'm not. You'll find those "dull a<>but routes" might just be a little less dull if you start having to navigate.

Yeah, they said both Scoops and AMFUs were not supposed to be mass-less

I still wish they had mass.