Using a LTD hotspot to mine for Tritium...

[ChipStar65]

The reports of tritium hotspots neing nerfed into uselessness are grim. However, I have of late been getting all my Rocket Tea needs from LTD hotspots -- I have taken home a full carrier jump's worth of tritium, about 165T max, with every expedition to an LTD site. The LTD yield has been and still is abysmal compared to previous weeks, but it isn't nothing, either.

My mining kit is an engineered Fed Corvette with 384T cargo cap and 2 lasers, 2 SSD launchers, 1 Abrasion Blaster and 2 Seismic Charge launchers. I once focused on core minng but have since incorporated the other methods, which is good because core mining seems to have been nerf-hammered pretty hard, not just LTD but all core minerals.

I dropped into a single LTD hotspot @ 13:06:07 by ship's clock and wound up the mining and headed home @ 19:43:19. Allowing for coffee and bio breaks that's about 6.5 hours of mining. This is what I brought home:

Again, that's enough to reimburse my last carrier jump with a little interest, which is what I always shoot for. For me the LTDs are just gravy.

I have copious notes I will condense into something intelligible and post the breakout here a little later. Upshot is, if things continue like this, I can continue solo exploration as I always mine to replace my jump's fuel cost after every jump. Using LTD hotspots seems to still work for that.

 

[OldManKnott]

Appreciate the post.
6 1/2 hours for 183 tons of Trit is approx. 28 tons per hour. That's 714 hours to fill my 20K of space I currently have. Shocking figures.

 

[ChipStar65]

Appreciate the post.
6 1/2 hours for 183 tons of Trit is approx. 28 tons per hour. That's 714 hours to fill my 20K of space I currently have. Shocking figures.

Yeah, it's not a recommendation for filling a carrier hold, for sure. But there are also some mitigating circumstances I will include in the breakout, one of which is the time I spent collecting other minerals could have been better used for tritium if I had wanted to maximize return on fuel mining. For me that's not a priority (yet, lol) as I don't feel the need for 20,000T of fuel for a backstop. But, as always, YMMV.

 

[Deleted member 38366]

Yup, Single or even better Double LTD Hotspots are still good for Tritium.

Of course... a top notch Double Tritium remains perfect, although I take it those are a tad hard to come by.

This

still gets you this (current Patch 3) :

 

[ChipStar65]

Breakout:
Total number of asteroids mined: ~65 (some rocks shared various kinds of deposits, of course)
44 rocks had tritium deposits:
(7) rocks had SSDs for a total of (13) veins that yielded a total of ~93T
(4) rocks had SD "scabs" that yielded a total of ~ 3T
(33) rocks had intrinsic (laserable) content that yielded a total of ~ 87T

22 rocks had LTD deposits:
(0) rocks had SSDs
(1) rock had LTD core deposits that yielded ~ 10T (was glitched by lasering out intrinsic LTD @ 10.68%, (9) abrasion deposits not collected)
(21) rocks had intrinsic (laserable) content that yielded a total of ~ 54T

2 rocks had Grandidierite deposits:
(2) rocks had Grandi core deposits for a total of 27T (no abrasion glitches)

2 rocks had Alexandrite deposits:
(2) rocks had Alex core deposits for a total of 25T (one core was glitched by using the abrasion blaster to gather 1 tritium scab before blasting, lost about 7 scabs)

The time taken could be shortened by me laying on a better Collector Limpet module, or more than one, but currently I can only use 3 at a time. This was fine for core mining and even core plus SSD, but with the extensive laser mining indicated above, a lot of time was wasted waiting for the limpets to clean up the fragments. That's also why my hold is not full. Previously I could fill my hold using only around 130 limpets, but the increased need to laser mine requires many more limpets. I took 200 this time around and still ran short. Live and learn.

A team mining this hotspot could of course make much better T/hour of it.

To be honest these numbers do not feel heavily nerfed to me compared to the mining I've done in the previous weeks since FCs dropped. They are neither outstanding nor abysmal, pretty much average for what I've seen. I do not seek out overlaps, but would use them if I found them -- haven't so far.

Perhaps mining non-Rocket Tea hotspots for Rocket Tea is an interim solution for those in dire need of carrier fuel?

 

[Orvidius]

This
...
still gets you this (current Patch 3) :
...

How long did that take?

 

[Deleted member 38366]

How long did that take?

In the slow T10 and distracted by the two Cores.... about 60-70 Minutes.
(actual realtime was longer simply because of breaks taken inbetween)

Basically every glowing Rock had Surface Deposits or SubSurface.
Some of the faster rotating Asteroids with multiple SSDs took the longest time I'd say, since the T10 can't really track those well in motion I had to cycle between SSDs or wait for instead of chasing them.

I went there with 100 Benchmark Limpets (expected low yield due to the reported issues) and returned with >260t Cargo.

 

[FrogsFriend]

To be honest these numbers do not feel heavily nerfed to me compared to the mining I've done in the previous weeks since FCs dropped. They are neither outstanding nor abysmal, pretty much average for what I've seen. I do not seek out overlaps, but would use them if I found them -- haven't so far.

I have to agree, those numbers look about normal to me too. Thanks for the comprehensive report, it's the most useful info I've seen on the subject since the update.

 

[Nightjar]

I was in a double Tritium HS yesterday and was very unimpressed with the yields.
I'll check out a double LTD before I give up.
I've always felt LTDs and Trit go well together.
Thanks for the info above - much better than anything I could do
o7

 

[ChipStar65]

Today I only had about 2 hours to test mining, and the results are pretty much in line with my first test. Same setup, same set of rings, but this time in an Alexandrite hotspot.

13 rocks with tritium: 53T almost exclusively from laser-mined sources -- about 3T from SD scabs, and zero from SSD (that's not good)
EDIT: Tritium % ranged from 5% to 27.96% intrinsic lodes, with the average around 20% -- not bad at all.
1 core of LTD got me 13T with no Abrasion Blaster glitch
1 core of Alex got me 17T, no glitches

That's it. Cores definitely seem hit hard, so few in such a long session. Many of the really bright objects, as bright as the cores, were soggy potatoes -- water and other much less valuable minerals. The duds also take many different shapes, including the "popcorn" form that when very bright used to reliably indicate a core.

I'll be going back to exploring now, since it seems I can reliably mine enough fuel to keep my expedition on its way, though at greater cost of time, which isn't a major factor for me.

 

[Razzerman]

were soggy potatoes

Such a great description. I had a 'soggy potato', with very little tritium, glow much brighter than a 'hard spud', which had quite a bit of trit. Something isn't right somewhere.

 

[Astrometer]

I would just stick to tritium hotspots. I tried another tritium hotspot just now.
I prospected 27 rocks, of which:
22 contained tritium deposits
15 contained tritium sub-surface deposits which I inexpertly mined yielding 168T of tritium from 25 deposits.
4 contained cores (2 LTD, 2 bromellite)

Other tritium hotspots I've tried were the same or better.

 

[ChipStar65]

I would just stick to tritium hotspots. I tried another tritium hotspot just now.
I prospected 27 rocks, of which:
22 contained tritium deposits
15 contained tritium sub-surface deposits which I inexpertly mined yielding 168T of tritium from 25 deposits.
4 contained cores (2 LTD, 2 bromellite)

Other tritium hotspots I've tried were the same or better.

Excellent! Thank you for those numbers, they are quite encouraging. I have been accepting the reports of many others saying the tritium hotspots are dead, but perhaps they have been resurrected recently? As I understand it from others' comments, a server-side fix wouldn't need a patch download, so maybe I'll delay my trip another day and give the tritium hotspot at a neighboring planet a go.

 

[ChipStar65]

Results from one of two tritium single hotpots near my current carrier waypoint:

Duration: 3h 10m; Total rocks mined: 27

Tritium 196T total
Rocks with SSD: 8; SSD veins: 20; SSD tonnage ~ 105T
Rocks with SD scabs: 7; total SD scabs: 19; SD tonnage ~ 17T
Rocks with intrinsic (laser mined):17; total tonnage ~ 74T; majority of intrinsic lodes >15%

LTD 4T total, 1 rock w/19.24% intrinsic

Grandidierite 10T total, 1 rock, Abrasion Blasting glitched by mining tritium before blasting

Not bad for a supposedly dead hotspot.

 

[OldManKnott]

I'm still at the double Tritium hotspot I was at before they broke it. Just tested again. First 10 prospectors fired and not a single % of Tritium.
So no, it's not fixed.

 

[Astrometer]

Laser mining in an overlap is still dead. SSD mining is almost as good as before. I get 120T/hr. That's limited by drilling skill, rather than finding deposits. I go for dimly glowing rocks with no obvious surface deposits. I'm going to avoid cores in future since they don't seem to have much tritium any more.

 

[Nightjar]

I've just come back from a pleasant morning's work. TritX2 HS.
I've switched to SSD mode - only firing prospectors at shiny rocks.
Virtually every one had Tritium (S)SDs.
Zero had Tritium %
Filled my python at a leisurely rate.
I initially had 'problems' - until I took to checking my Contacts every time a prospector hit a roid.
Apparently Tritiumless roids may have multiple (S)SDs

 

[Northpin]

My beta2 results for laser mining tritium (no ssd, pure laser mining): 150t per hour in a single hotspot, 300-310t in a double hotspot (i think it was HIP 13476 13 A Ring)
Ship used: a Conda with 2 prospectors, 9 collectors and 3 medium lasers, 320t cargo + 6t in refinery.

The current results are looking really bad for tritium (and they're even worse for LTD)

 

[OldManKnott]

My beta2 results for laser mining tritium (no ssd, pure laser mining): 150t per hour in a single hotspot, 300-310t in a double hotspot (i think it was HIP 13476 13 A Ring)
Ship used: a Conda with 2 prospectors, 9 collectors and 3 medium lasers, 320t cargo + 6t in refinery.

The current results are looking really bad for tritium (and they're even worse for LTD)

Very similar results here before the latest patch Northpin.

 

[FrogsFriend]

My beta2 results for laser mining tritium (no ssd, pure laser mining): 150t per hour in a single hotspot, 300-310t in a double hotspot (i think it was HIP 13476 13 A Ring)
Ship used: a Conda with 2 prospectors, 9 collectors and 3 medium lasers, 320t cargo + 6t in refinery.

The current results are looking really bad for tritium (and they're even worse for LTD)

Isn't Tritium supposed to be mostly found in sub-surface deposits though?