Fuel scoops - reality check required.

Granted I'm doing just trade runs / exploration trips I equip my ship according to role. For pure trading I tend to stick to certain space, within no scoop jump range and I refuel at every station. Just accept mission, make a jump or two to the destination, hand in, refuel. Rinse and repeat. No need of fuel scoop.

When I need to get somewhere I install the biggest one I have. Luckily most of my ships can share one scoop so one time purchase and I'm good. Just swap one internal and I can travel across the bubble, hunt guardian BP or do some engineering.

While exploring - I take the biggest and fastest. Shaving few seconds on scooping saves lots of time in a long run when going bubble - Colonia. At least for me. Got the best FS for my Clipper and that gave me ability to fully refuel at full speed while passing the star and aligning with next jump target. Pretty convenient. Right now I'm stucked with smaller scoop in my Cobra while trying to reach Sag from Colonia. I'm what... 500 LYs from Colonia and already tired with slow scooping. Been sitting in one system for 2 months already and not willing to launch ED. Thinking I must endure whole journey and back with slow refuelling... naah. When I log in I'll get back, switch to my fast Clipper and then continue.

So - bigger and faster, in that case.
 
Am I being unreasonable to "need" to scoop so quickly?
Do other people accept that they might have to take 2 or 3 swipes at a star to refuel?
Do most people just fit whatever size scoop they can squeeze into a build or is it important?
You're not being unreasonable spending as little time as possible surfing a star, these things are hot, unpleasant and would rather have it you'd not be there.

Absolutely not, one swoop, one scoop.

It's the most important optional module for me, biggest slot gets the scoop, second biggest gets the shield.
 
I'm currently bringing my stripped out prismatic Cutter with a g5 overcharged powerplant to Colonia, and I fitted an 8B fuel scoop (Scrooge McDuck, remember?)
It somehow works, but you constantly have to be watching your heat. My last run to Colonia was in a dead-cold DBX and the run before that in a g5 low emissions Anaconda with an 7A scoop. Guess which of the three was the least fun?

Coincidentally, the Cutter is a ship that helped me form an opinion on what scoop to fit.

I'd rolled my Cutter in weapons and defences then overcharged the PP and it was just terrible with a 6A fuel scoop.
The only way to do it was to either sit just inside the scooping zone - but still outside the red-zone - and let it scoop slowly or dive in and out repeatedly to let it cool down.
In the end, I bought an 8A scoop and fitted it for travelling and then dumped it and replaced it with other stuff as required.

I know this is a subjective, RP, thing but I like my ships to be autonomous.
I like to feel as though they'd be viable spaceships if they were real.
To me, a ship like the Cutter should be able to cruise around the galaxy independently, not relying on having modules posted around the galaxy to support it and make it work.
Even when I'm building a combat ship, I build it and that's the way it stays - no fitting fuel-scoops and then transferring HRPs/SCBs to it for combat.

In the end, I only "solved" that problem by converting my Cutter into a cargo ship, with much lower power requirements, and then I could get away with a 6A scoop.
Course, then we also got nu-engineers and I could start applying all sorts of mod's and XFX to all my modules, which improved things even more.

At the other end of the scale, I've just finished rebuilding my Vulture and I found I had almost the same problem.
It had a 2A fuel scoop "for emergencies" but it proved almost impossible to use, in practice, because the ship overheats before you can scoop a useful amount of fuel, which made travelling a really irritating experience.
I went back to the drawing board (or, Coriolis, at least) and ended-up with a build that is really nice but still allows me to fit a 4A scoop, which means I can happily fly my Vulture wherever I want - albeit, at only 20Ly per jump.
 
I periodically just park a distance inside the corona and let the scoop do its thing, heat management is just a matter of maintaining distance while scooping so I never overheat. I never heard of that 1 size smaller than your fsd before, I put as large a scoop I can carry on my exploration vessel so I'm not sitting to long but typically I'm also using fss at the same time so its not really a problem to pause for a few minutes. On my trade python I have a smaller scoop but same principle as exploring I just pause a moment on the way to my destination as long as no mission pirates are chasing me in the system. I don't worry about the scoop at all on the combat ship simply because I'm not going to be flying long distance and don't need the fuel.
 
I use the biggest slot and an A scoop on my exploration, scout and taxi vessels.

I aim for ~50 seconds or less refuel time on passenger ships and my other ships that carry scoops.

Freighters that do A-B-A fixed trade routes don't get scoops at all.
 
Depends on the build.

Exploration / Long range passenger : Biggest possible.
Combat / Cargo : A small one, since I'm going to be near a base, or near enuf to refuel on a regular basis. But a small one, just in case.
Parts/Mats chaser or in bubble commuter : Match to the FSD.
 
Oddly, I don't have scoops on most of my ships--they're on my two exploration ships, my sidewinder DBX taxi, and my long range smuggler, but on nothing else. But combat, mining, and trade ships don't get them because they don't need em. The only place that's trouble is the mining ship since it's a T9 and has long distances to cover between mining jaunts. Needs some engineering love, as it's only going maybe 700 ly on that tank of fuel. But again, that's why I have the taxi.

I do keep a number of scoops of various sizes in storage for quick reconfiguration of my fleet as needs change.
 
I guess I just use one that feels big enough to me. I have the class 5 scoop on my Krait MKII, and I've flown out to Colonia and done a bunch of exploration in it. I've never felt the class 5 was too slow. But if I did, sure, I'd bump it up to a 6 because I want my ships to feel right for me.
 

Deleted member 110222

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My rule is two classes smaller than fuel tank = minimum, one class smaller = standard, same size/bigger = oversized.

In the bubble you do not need a fuel scoop at all. As much as this may shock people, many stations offer a service allowing one to buy fuel with credits. It is a service inspired by the following 21st century establishment:


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Very effective. It does require the pilot to pay attention to his fuel, but if he's a legend like me then he will never need a fuel scoop.
 
When I'm just farting around in the bubble (oops that slipped) ... doing missions, I don't fit a fuel scoop on any ships. Like I said before, I use fuel tanks if I need to go very far in the bubble in any ship. Exploration or a long range venture, I install the biggest I can fit w/o compromising my build too much.

GL HF
 
Here is how I fit the scoop:
cargo Short - medium range : Have a small one, just in case
Cargo Medium to long range : Maybe something bigger, as long as I don't have to sacrifice too much cargo space.
Passenger short to medium: fill the big slots with cabins, add a small-medium scoop and off ya go.
Passenger Medium to long: Big scoop
Travel Short - long : biggest scoop possible
 
Just wondering what folks usually do for fuel scoops.

The conventional wisdom was always "one size smaller than your FSD is fine" but, I gotta say, I think that falls down for a variety of reasons, especially now engineering is a thing.
If you've got a ship that's heavy on power and you fit a "one size smaller than your FSD" fuel scoop, you're going to get toasted when you try to scoop.
Also, subjectively, I usually find scooping with a "one size smaller than your FSD" fuel scoop excruciatingly tedious.

Just built myself a Krait Phantom as a bit of a "heavy scout ship" and I automatically stuck a 6A scoop on it, which means I can only fit a 32t cargo rack.
I could swap those around and double my cargo capacity but I just don't fancy taking the extra time scooping fuel.

Which is why I was wondering what other people do.

Am I being unreasonable to "need" to scoop so quickly?
Do other people accept that they might have to take 2 or 3 swipes at a star to refuel?
Do most people just fit whatever size scoop they can squeeze into a build or is it important?
Etc.

o7 CMDR! Where did you get that advice? It’s wrong if you’re out for exploring. Buy the biggest one you can afford! Life is much much easier then. o7 CMDR. May your boost be permanent!
 
I use the second C6 slot on the Challenger for one, but I live out of the damn thing and don't use a taxi, so if I were lookin' to optimize further for combat that'd be a C5 MRP/HRP instead.
 
I fit heat sink launchers and carry loads of materials for resupplying the heatsinks, then I fit the biggest scoop I can, and full throttle around suns to scoop at max speed, and charge my FSD as soon as I can, and dump heat sinks when I start to melt.

Yes, I am impatient.
 
The Scoop is situational. If I am out exploring, biggest I can fit. If I am trading, meh, anything that won't have me sitting at a star waiting for pirates. Combat... not really needed.
 
7A on a Clipper? That's like a portable hydrogen fuel processing plant you are flying. My Clipper jumps 25ly unladen and 4A is enough to fill entire tank in a spin.

Eight second FSD cooldown, two of those eaten up by approach, and maybe two or three seconds of scooping while moving away from the star if I don't want to melt.

That's how much time I have to scoop.
 
o7 CMDR! Where did you get that advice? It’s wrong if you’re out for exploring. Buy the biggest one you can afford! Life is much much easier then. o7 CMDR. May your boost be permanent!

Agreed. There’s no need to make it complicated by saying, “Oh, it needs to be 1 size smaller than your fuel tank”, or “this size for exploring and another size for trading, then pie r squared divided by the Planck Constant.” What a load of nonsense. :ROFLMAO:

Buy the biggest one you can afford/fit. They have no weight to affect your jumping distance.
 
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I have to disagree with most, providing you run a cold Power Plant.
I run a Phantom with size 5 fuel scoop and a cold ship(PP is Low Emissions/Thernal Spead). Just did over 90000 LYs going to Beagle Point(in a roundabout way) and not only does it scoop fast enough to honk-scoop-jump(which I did about 20% of the time), but at max scoop rate my heat never hit 70%, even if I stop dead by the star.
p.s. My scoop method is skim round star at max throttle
 
Rather than a scoop I tend to put a Guardian FSD Booster into my ships for normal operations. This allows a Cutter with 720t and 30Ly range fully loaded, and when do you really need more than 200ly range before having to dock anyways?
 
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