Alternative to Mining / Buying Tritium

[Mrat13]

In the past, I made some suggestions concerning the (back in these days) precarious Tritium situation and the unbearable mining grind for any individual CMDR to i.e. fully and autonomously supply the Carrier by Mining only :

• Tritium is a Premium Fuel required to reach specifications (500LY jumprange, 100k/jump Hull Maintenance)
• however, a Carrier could also run off Basic and Standard Fuel instead just as well (reduced jumprange and total range per ton accordingly)
• this would allow Players to sacrifice jumprange (i.e. only 250LY max on low quality Hydrogen Fuel and 2x maintenance cost per jump), but in turn being able to use Fuel mules to scoop at a Sun and transfer it to the Carrier as a cheaper substitute
• a limited investment of Tritium (50%) and mixing it with 50% Hydrogen Fuel would produce "Standard Fuel", offering 75% of rated Jumprange
• that would allow Carrier owners to have a 2nd choice and alternative to using difficult/expensive-to-source Tritium fuel only and being stuck with it exclusively
• tight Fuel Situations locking Carriers into position (ran out of Tritium Fuel) or generally poor supply areas (Colonia or SagA) would be defused to some extent
• one of the most useless Commodities (Hydrogen Fuel) being sold almost everywhere could be given a real in-game purpose
• can't sell Tritium without running risk of emptying your entire Carrier? Well, you could sell Carrier Basic Fuel or Standard Fuel and still be helpful to others - while retaining your Tritium reserves

In short :

• buy/mine Tritium and use it as 100% Premium Fuel : Carrier offers rated performance, 500LY jumprange, 100k/jump maintenance cost
• buy/mine Tritium, mix it 50:50 with purchased/scooped by Ship and Stored into Carrier Hydrogen Fuel : you get Standard Fuel, 75% of rated performance. 375LY Jumprange, 150k/jump maintenance cost
• buy/scoop Hydrogen Fuel only? You get Basic Carrier Fuel : 50% of rated performance, 250LY Jumprange, 200k/jump maintenance cost
• generation of Standard Fuel (50:50) onboard your Carrier : occurs on your command by the Fuel Depot NPC, with respective Hydrogen Fuel and Tritium from Storage

It'd be mostly in line with Synthesis, except you invest Tritium to generate Standard Fuel (50:50 mix Tritium/Hydrogen Fuel) or settle for plain pure Hydrogen Fuel as Basic Carrier fuel (half the range, 2x the jump maintenance)..

If you needed max. possible Range and Jumprange or want to go someplace as fast as possible, nothing would change - 100% Tritium would still be your best friend.
Can settle for 75% performance? Want to sell it without putting all your Tritium on the line? The 50:50 mix consumed or sold as Standard Fuel would be a thing and useful.
Don't need to go to far places? Hate mining with passion? 2x Hull Maintenance and 250LY jumprange is sufficient? Buy or scoop with a Fuel Mule (i.e. large Ship with large Scoop and extra Fuel Tanks) to keep your Carrier moving.

IMHO that'd be a workable solution that fully retains the old metrics (if you desire maximum rated performance) but also offers viable Alternatives, so you don't end up being stuck someplace or go poor filling up or if you're not a friend of Tritium mining at all - and are willing to live with the downsides.

I'd just like to say how frickin cool this idea is. It'll never happen....

 

[here_it_comes]

I myself have thought before that FD missed the chance to add Fuel Tanker as a viable career when FCs were added. It wouldn't be hard to add, and it's not like fuel scooping is any more boring than laser drilling. Make Tritium only scoopable from certain gas giants, would add to ED. While they're at it, add Fuel Siphon Limpets and create another layer for pirates.

 

[Yurika Shirayuki]

It would still be a problem of rewarding players for doing nothing.
The game should reward "engaging" gameplay, not idle gameplay.

Ideally, it shouldn't be boring and repetitive...

I'm with you 100%, nothing should be a matter of sitting idle but it shouldn't be repetitive and boring either, the trick is finding the perfect balance. In the end I or anyone else are just tossing out ideas to see if maybe something better could be put in place, although I don't really see much incentive for FDev to change anything because the current system works (mostly) and if they do change it, it's going to bring down at least 6 months of pain on the player base while they fix all the bugs.

In the past, I made some suggestions concerning the (back in these days) precarious Tritium situation and the unbearable mining grind for any individual CMDR to i.e. fully and autonomously supply the Carrier by Mining only :

• Tritium is a Premium Fuel required to reach specifications (500LY jumprange, 100k/jump Hull Maintenance)
• however, a Carrier could also run off Basic and Standard Fuel instead just as well (reduced jumprange and total range per ton accordingly + higher Maintenance cost)
• this would allow Players to sacrifice jumprange (i.e. only 250LY max on low quality Hydrogen Fuel and 2x maintenance cost per jump), but in turn being able to use Fuel mules to scoop at a Sun and transfer it to the Carrier as a cheaper substitute
• a limited investment of Tritium (50%) and mixing it with 50% Hydrogen Fuel would produce "Standard Fuel", offering 75% of rated Jumprange
• that would allow Carrier owners to have a 2nd choice and alternative to using difficult/expensive-to-source Tritium fuel only and being stuck with it exclusively
• tight Fuel Situations locking Carriers into position (ran out of Tritium Fuel) or generally poor supply areas (Colonia or SagA) would be defused to some extent
• one of the most useless Commodities (Hydrogen Fuel) being sold almost everywhere could be given a real in-game purpose
• can't sell Tritium without running risk of emptying your entire Carrier? Well, you could sell Carrier Basic Fuel or Standard Fuel and still be helpful to others - while retaining your Tritium reserves

In short :

• buy/mine Tritium and use it as 100% Premium Fuel : Carrier offers rated performance, 500LY jumprange, 100k/jump maintenance cost
• buy/mine Tritium, mix it 50:50 with purchased/scooped by Ship and Stored into Carrier Hydrogen Fuel : you get Standard Fuel, 75% of rated performance. 375LY Jumprange, 150k/jump maintenance cost
• buy/scoop Hydrogen Fuel only? You get Basic Carrier Fuel : 50% of rated performance, 250LY Jumprange, 200k/jump maintenance cost
• generation of Standard Fuel (50:50) onboard your Carrier : occurs on your command by the Fuel Depot NPC, with respective Hydrogen Fuel and Tritium from Storage

It'd be mostly in line with Synthesis, except you invest Tritium to generate Standard Fuel (50:50 mix Tritium/Hydrogen Fuel) or settle for plain pure Hydrogen Fuel as Basic Carrier fuel (half the range, 2x the jump maintenance)..

If you needed max. possible Range and Jumprange or want to go someplace as fast as possible, nothing would change - 100% Tritium would still be your best friend.
Can settle for 75% performance? Want to sell it without putting all your Tritium on the line? The 50:50 mix consumed or sold as Standard Fuel would be a thing and useful.
Don't need to go to far places? Hate mining with passion? 2x Hull Maintenance and 250LY jumprange is sufficient? Buy or scoop with a Fuel Mule (i.e. large Ship with large Scoop and extra Fuel Tanks) to keep your Carrier moving.

IMHO that'd be a workable solution that fully retains the old metrics (if you desire maximum rated performance) but also offers viable Alternatives, so you don't end up being stuck someplace or go poor filling up or if you're not a friend of Tritium mining at all - and are willing to live with the downsides.

Another potentially good idea here, keeps all the existing mechanics and brings synthesis into the mix. Even finds a use for that silly hydrogen fuel on the commodities market.

 

[Koben]

It was suggested before for Tritium to be fuel scooped, even send NPCs crew members on missions for fetching Tritium, but it seems Frontier is not keen to have "passive gameplay". They ended up doubling the effectiveness of Tritium as fuel so the whole discussion came to rest.

Current meta is to purchase a full cargo hold of 720t in an iCutter every now an then to refill your main tank whilst keeping a decent amount in your FC storage in case you need to cross the galaxy.