Fuel Scoop Engineering

DemiserofD

D
There is no useful fuel scoop engineering at the moment. This would be a great opportunity for some options that are really game-changing, since there's no existing balance to get in the way.

Here are a few ideas.

Thermal Radiating Fuel Scoop: -2% Scooping Speed per level, -10% Solar Heat per level

Overcharged Fuel Scoop: +20% Scooping Speed per level, +40% Solar Heat per level

Specialized Fuel Scoop: -8% Scoop Speed per level, can scoop from one additional unscoopable star per level. Level 5 can scoop from anything, including some gas giants.

Solar Sail Fuel Scoop: -5% Scoop Speed per level, Up to +5% FSD speed per level when traveling directly away from a nearby star, reducing in strength the further away the star is.

White Dwarf Specialized: White Dwarf boosts last +1 jumps per level. Max: 5.

Experimental Effects:
Coronal Stealth Overlay: -15% Scooping Speed. Camouflages player in the sun's corona, player cannot be detected during or briefly after fuel scooping.
Overscooping: Fuel Scoop can temporarily store up to FSD fuel capacity in spare fuel. This fuel is immediately used to fill tank when a jump takes place, allowing the player to arrive at the destination with a full tank.
Infinite Flow: -25% Scooping Speed, Scooping Limit removed and improves constantly the closer you get, until you reach the exclusion zone.


These would give players a nice set of choices for engineering their fuel scoop.
 
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coca_fr

coca_fr
There would be no insensitive to equip a higher Fuel Scoop over a smaller one.

Fuel Scoop are already ok as they are right now imo.
 

DemiserofD

D
Lugh said:
Let's take one of the only balanced modules left and break it with engineering
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The idea would be more about tradeoffs than outright boosts. So you'd get less heat, but less scooping too. Or more scooping but more heat too. And so on. Hopefully taking a module that's currently very boring and making it more variable and interesting.
 

zikolach

zikolach
Fizzatron said:
I would prefer Tritium, for reasons..
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I see. Collecting tritium from gas giants would be nice. Some minigame like keeping altitude/pressure within certain threshold while switching on and off collection depending on current atmospheric gas composition and avoiding clouds causing caustic damage would be great.

From my first time in Elite I was thinking of something like variable prices for fuel - so that fuel scooping would be more widely used. And ability to scoop and sell excessive fuel at the stations having more need and better prices (e.g. in CG).
 

Fizzatron

Fizzatron
zikolach said:
I see. Collecting tritium from gas giants would be nice. Some minigame like keeping altitude/pressure within certain threshold while switching on and off collection depending on current atmospheric gas composition and avoiding clouds causing caustic damage would be great.

From my first time in Elite I was thinking of something like variable prices for fuel - so that fuel scooping would be more widely used. And ability to scoop and sell excessive fuel at the stations having more need and better prices (e.g. in CG).
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As it is Fleet Carriers offer fuel from an infinite supply that seemingly spawns in as is necessary. I think it would make more sense if a fuel scoop attached to a refinery type module could catch and store hydrogen to keep supplies up, but I would also imagine there would be lots of gnashing of teeth if Fleet Carrier owners had to manage that manually.. There's enough fuel to be gotten from stars, gas giants were suggested by the community(tm) as a means to scoop tritium for carriers but FDev went the mining route.
 

AWACS_SkyKnight

AWACS_SkyKnight
DemiserofD said:
There is no useful fuel scoop engineering at the moment. This would be a great opportunity for some options that are really game-changing, since there's no existing balance to get in the way.

Here are a few ideas.

Thermal Radiating Fuel Scoop: -2% Scooping Speed per level, -10% Solar Heat per level

Overcharged Fuel Scoop: +20% Scooping Speed per level, +40% Solar Heat per level

Specialized Fuel Scoop: -8% Scoop Speed per level, can scoop from one additional unscoopable star per level. Level 5 can scoop from anything, including some gas giants.

Solar Sail Fuel Scoop: -5% Scoop Speed per level, Up to +5% FSD speed per level when traveling directly away from a nearby star, reducing in strength the further away the star is.

White Dwarf Specialized: White Dwarf boosts last +1 jumps per level. Max: 5.

Experimental Effects:
Coronal Stealth Overlay: -15% Scooping Speed. Camouflages player in the sun's corona, player cannot be detected during or briefly after fuel scooping.
Overscooping: Fuel Scoop can temporarily store up to FSD fuel capacity in spare fuel. This fuel is immediately used to fill tank when a jump takes place, allowing the player to arrive at the destination with a full tank.
Infinite Flow: -25% Scooping Speed, Scooping Limit removed and improves constantly the closer you get, until you reach the exclusion zone.


These would give players a nice set of choices for engineering their fuel scoop.
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I think you are overthinking it. All this heat vs scoop speed engineering would just result in players using one and only one modification. If the overcharged fuel scoop melts your ship, it would result in less scooping time and will therefore be inferior. Not to mention scooping something that isn’t hydrogen or tritium would break the established lore

I would just keep it simple. G3 Efficient, G3 Oversized Scoop. Things like sensors don’t have experimentals, why would scoops?
 

DemiserofD

D
AWACS_SkyKnight said:
I think you are overthinking it. All this heat vs scoop speed engineering would just result in players using one and only one modification. If the overcharged fuel scoop melts your ship, it would result in less scooping time and will therefore be inferior. Not to mention scooping something that isn’t hydrogen or tritium would break the established lore

I would just keep it simple. G3 Efficient, G3 Oversized Scoop. Things like sensors don’t have experimentals, why would scoops?
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Which of the choices do you think people are going to use all the time?

Ideally they're all valuable for different situations. I might use the lower heat one for my beluga, or I might bring a heat sink and instead plan to fuel up as fast as possible using overcharged.
 

AWACS_SkyKnight

AWACS_SkyKnight
DemiserofD said:
Which of the choices do you think people are going to use all the time?

Ideally they're all valuable for different situations. I might use the lower heat one for my beluga, or I might bring a heat sink and instead plan to fuel up as fast as possible using overcharged.
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Well, let’s compare them

Thermal Radiating:
Quite useful. Would probably see use on ships with undersized fuel scoops, or especially high heat (Type 7)

Overcharged:
Useless. %40 more heat means most ships will simply be unable to scoop with this mod. You might be able to scoop a little faster, but would end up scooping less over time and with destroyed modules. Extra cold ships like the Dolphin would probably be the only ones to be able to use this to fill a fuel tank and survive. You could use heat sinks, except their ammo is limited, so you would be out of luck once you run out.

Specialized:
Explorers already filter by OBAFGKM+NS
There is an abundance of scoopable stars everywhere, so I don’t see why you would sacrifice scoop speed for stars you usually don’t need anyway. It’s also strange how it scales like some sort of experimental effect (Next tier unlocks a new star), not to mention the elements from those stars are incompatible with the FSD

Solar Sail:
Not really sure why you would need this, let alone sacrifice scoop speed for it. If it was designed to escape a star that is burning you, why not just take Thermal Radiating instead? Far more utility and helps prevent overheating in the first place

White Dwarf:
White Dwarf Stars are notoriously dangerous and provide a minimal boost compared to Neutron Stars. However, with this mod, stacking their boost would ultimately make exploration more interesting. The explorer would have to decide if going into a hazardous WD Jet Cone would be worth the juicy multi-boost it offers, and would give people a reason to not just go for neutrons

I personally don’t think the experimental effects are necessary. They are good, but how good does the scoop need to be with the boost given by the standard mods?

Ultimately, Thermal Radiating and WD Scoop would be the only ones people would go for. The benefit of thermal radiating is too good to pass up and the White Dwarf scoop would be a lot of fun for exploration. Even if you did rebalance Overcharged, the thing is that one mod will always have a higher scoop bonus over time than the other when considering heat, and people will get the one that saves them the most time. Fuel Scoop isn’t like shields where you want to have a nice balance of strength and resistances; you just want to scoop fuel as fast as possible (without dying though). You will notice this with Weapon engineering, where there is often one and only one mod that people use because it has the highest DPS
 

DemiserofD

D
AWACS_SkyKnight said:
Well, let’s compare them

Thermal Radiating:
Quite useful. Would probably see use on ships with undersized fuel scoops, or especially high heat (Type 7)

Overcharged:
Useless. %40 more heat means most ships will simply be unable to scoop with this mod. You might be able to scoop a little faster, but would end up scooping less over time and with destroyed modules. Extra cold ships like the Dolphin would probably be the only ones to be able to use this to fill a fuel tank and survive. You could use heat sinks, except their ammo is limited, so you would be out of luck once you run out.

Specialized:
Explorers already filter by OBAFGKM+NS
There is an abundance of scoopable stars everywhere, so I don’t see why you would sacrifice scoop speed for stars you usually don’t need anyway. It’s also strange how it scales like some sort of experimental effect (Next tier unlocks a new star), not to mention the elements from those stars are incompatible with the FSD

Solar Sail:
Not really sure why you would need this, let alone sacrifice scoop speed for it. If it was designed to escape a star that is burning you, why not just take Thermal Radiating instead? Far more utility and helps prevent overheating in the first place

White Dwarf:
White Dwarf Stars are notoriously dangerous and provide a minimal boost compared to Neutron Stars. However, with this mod, stacking their boost would ultimately make exploration more interesting. The explorer would have to decide if going into a hazardous WD Jet Cone would be worth the juicy multi-boost it offers, and would give people a reason to not just go for neutrons

I personally don’t think the experimental effects are necessary. They are good, but how good does the scoop need to be with the boost given by the standard mods?

Ultimately, Thermal Radiating and WD Scoop would be the only ones people would go for. The benefit of thermal radiating is too good to pass up and the White Dwarf scoop would be a lot of fun for exploration. Even if you did rebalance Overcharged, the thing is that one mod will always have a higher scoop bonus over time than the other when considering heat, and people will get the one that saves them the most time. Fuel Scoop isn’t like shields where you want to have a nice balance of strength and resistances; you just want to scoop fuel as fast as possible (without dying though). You will notice this with Weapon engineering, where there is often one and only one mod that people use because it has the highest DPS
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It's interesting that you see Overcharged as the least useful of them, as I designed that with my own desires in mind, so it's probably the most useful to me.

I tend to run many ships with very undersized fuel scoops, and overcharged would allow me to refuel in a realistic time frame, just by using a heat sink as I do so. It would be particularly useful for overcharged combat builds, or my beluga. I might even run Infinite Flow and use multiple heat sinks at once, just sitting right next to the exclusion zone and gobbling up fuel as fast as possible. It would be neat to have a reason to risk getting too close and crashing!

So at that point we've got three different viable choices. I personally find that a quite decent set of choices!

The experimentals wouldn't be strictly necessary, I suppose. I just figured that I should have some, and tossed in ideas that would work. You could theoretically throw 'specialized' in there, instead, too, but I feel like that might be TOO useful for explorers, especially those who don't want to bother with filters. A notable benefit of it would be allowing players to scoop off Neutron Stars, which means you'd never need to stop to refuel; you could just jump and jump and jump, indefinitely.
 
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