Tritium as a fuel for the FC is not in itself a real problem unless you compare it to what we have known for years in terms of fueling all our other ships.
For the FCs working in the bubble I suspect the most common path to fuel an FC:
Fueling a ship is simple and predictable and repeatable.
Fueling the FC within the bubble is essentially a procedure invoking the RNG gods in high value mining
Fueling the FC in the black has three levels of RNG:
1. Finding the gas giant and ring type
2. Finding an overlap—not guaranteed
3. Fumbling around in the ring to collect enough Tritium.
If I were an explorer out in the black my consideration would be in terms of the time required to collect enough fuel for the next jump. Let’s say for sake of discussion the amount required is 300 tons. How long does it take to collect 300 tons of tritium? Let’s assume you find a hotspot within an hour of exploring a new area. It takes 3-6 hours to collect 300 tons of Tritium assuming a rate of 50-100 tons/hour.
To put this Tritium collection thing another way:
Assume you have a car and a truck and both need fuel. The car takes gasoline and the truck takes diesel.
To refuel the car (like a ship) you head into town and look for a filling station. You stop and fill up.
To refuel the truck you have to survey the filling stations in town as not all of them have diesel and when you stop you can only get a small amount at a time. Having learned this you drive around in your car to these stations taking fuel to your truck a liter or two at a time until you have had enough of this little mini game….
The tweaks FDev made to various numbers during the Beta phases indicated there is some willingness to receive feedback from the community. The recent patches to mining probably came from the realization they had borked high value mining and that it had become too generous….
I suspect they were a bit surprised that there would be 12k+ FCs in the game within weeks of its release and that 85% of them were the direct result of high value mining.
I argue the recent changes perhaps should have not impacted Tritium. Many have made very good cases for alternatives for Tritium or how it should be gathered. I don’t believe there will be any significant changes to the FC in the near future or at all. This phase of the project is in the “Mission Accomplished” folder and that may be disappointing for some but that is the “release and forget” model we have seen in the game so far.
However I do believe the values in the spreadsheet for Tritium mining are still up for discussion as we have just recently seen.
I would suggest the following tweak for the sake of the explorers:
A Tritium hotspot should be rife with large amounts of Tritium. That said I know there is lots of Tritium in hotspots. What I really mean is the yield per rock could be truly impressive. Typical yield per rock is roughly 8-15 tons? What is wrong with higher yield like 20-30 tons? The RNG is in place as not every rock has Tritium but when you do find one you actually get something for the time invested.
This doesn’t solve the problem entirely, but it does reduce the effect the multi-step RNG has on the process for those out in the black.
For the FCs working in the bubble I suspect the most common path to fuel an FC:
- Mine a high value commodity
- Sell high value commodity
- Haul Tritium from a station with an acceptable price
- Honk and then ring scan gas giants, find none move on to next system (repeat as necessary)
- Identify appropriate ring type
- Perform surface scan of ring(s)
- Identify Tritium hotspots, pray for an overlapping one
- Call in FC, transfer to mining ship
- Poke and hope around hotspot for hours
- Rinse and repeat next session(s) until enough Tritium has been collected for upcoming jump(s)
- Swing by a station, pay a paltry amount
- Supercruise around stars with a KGBFOAM classification until fuel requirements are met
Fueling a ship is simple and predictable and repeatable.
Fueling the FC within the bubble is essentially a procedure invoking the RNG gods in high value mining
Fueling the FC in the black has three levels of RNG:
1. Finding the gas giant and ring type
2. Finding an overlap—not guaranteed
3. Fumbling around in the ring to collect enough Tritium.
If I were an explorer out in the black my consideration would be in terms of the time required to collect enough fuel for the next jump. Let’s say for sake of discussion the amount required is 300 tons. How long does it take to collect 300 tons of tritium? Let’s assume you find a hotspot within an hour of exploring a new area. It takes 3-6 hours to collect 300 tons of Tritium assuming a rate of 50-100 tons/hour.
To put this Tritium collection thing another way:
Assume you have a car and a truck and both need fuel. The car takes gasoline and the truck takes diesel.
To refuel the car (like a ship) you head into town and look for a filling station. You stop and fill up.
To refuel the truck you have to survey the filling stations in town as not all of them have diesel and when you stop you can only get a small amount at a time. Having learned this you drive around in your car to these stations taking fuel to your truck a liter or two at a time until you have had enough of this little mini game….
- Is this what FDev really intended?
- Have they tried to fuel an FC out in the black?
- Is busywork the same as gameplay?
The tweaks FDev made to various numbers during the Beta phases indicated there is some willingness to receive feedback from the community. The recent patches to mining probably came from the realization they had borked high value mining and that it had become too generous….
I suspect they were a bit surprised that there would be 12k+ FCs in the game within weeks of its release and that 85% of them were the direct result of high value mining.
I argue the recent changes perhaps should have not impacted Tritium. Many have made very good cases for alternatives for Tritium or how it should be gathered. I don’t believe there will be any significant changes to the FC in the near future or at all. This phase of the project is in the “Mission Accomplished” folder and that may be disappointing for some but that is the “release and forget” model we have seen in the game so far.
However I do believe the values in the spreadsheet for Tritium mining are still up for discussion as we have just recently seen.
I would suggest the following tweak for the sake of the explorers:
A Tritium hotspot should be rife with large amounts of Tritium. That said I know there is lots of Tritium in hotspots. What I really mean is the yield per rock could be truly impressive. Typical yield per rock is roughly 8-15 tons? What is wrong with higher yield like 20-30 tons? The RNG is in place as not every rock has Tritium but when you do find one you actually get something for the time invested.
This doesn’t solve the problem entirely, but it does reduce the effect the multi-step RNG has on the process for those out in the black.
![[Diplomacy] Carnegie](https://forums-cdn.zaonce.net/data/avatars/m/123/123809.jpg?1553527149){kind=avatar}
I was getting a few 33+% Trit asteroids in a single hotspot - I'd never even bother mining a 7% 'roid
![[PS4] Lorenzo Waringos](https://forums-cdn.zaonce.net/data/avatars/m/234/234580.jpg?1612617334){kind=avatar}
