Fleet Carrier FSD Supercharge - Enriched Tritium!

[DemiserofD]

Mining Tritium has always been pointless, because of how slow it is. Somewhat enjoyable for roleplay, but pointless from any practical standpoint. In time time it takes to mine 100 tritium, you could have purchased 2000. There is literally no place in the entire galaxy where it's faster to mine tritium than to jump back to the bubble and buy some. But mining it faster isn't viable, because that would make tritium mining obscenely profitable.

I have an alternative option!

Enriched Tritium​

Mined tritium should have a TEMPORARY status buff. For about an hour after being mined, it should give a 10x amplification in jump efficiency, and a 100% buff in jump range. In other words, it only takes 20 tritium to jump 1000ly, rather than 100 tritium to jump 500ly.

Why? Tritium is mostly formed by cosmic ray interactions, and has a relatively short halflife. It's quite rare on earth, and needs to be produced in nuclear reactors. Out in space, Tritium would be constantly produced(due to the constant cosmic ray bombardment), but once you bring it inside your ship, that would stop, and your tritium would begin to decay down into Helium. The introduction of helium would moderate its efficiency as fuel; you could separate it out, but it would take equipment that slows the reaction.

IE, less jump range.

But with naturally enriched Tritium, you could bypass that step, and use your Carrier's FSD at maximum efficiency!

This means that a player could mine just 10 tritium and have enough fuel to make a substantial jump, and it would mean players could actually justify mining their way across the galaxy! In fact, it would encourage jumping from ring to ring, so they can mine at each step! If they could undock, fly down, mine 20 tritium, and get back up in time, they could significantly increase their travel speed!

But wait too long, and the Tritium would begin to decay into Helium, the fuel purity would fall too low, and the status buff would go away.

So what do you think? Cool or nah?

 

[Fixitman]

There is literally no place in the entire galaxy where it's faster to mine tritium than to jump back to the bubble and buy some.

Interesting, but misguided idea. It is indeed faster to mine tritium in most of the galaxy. Flying back to the bubble with maximum cargo space to buy tritium could take a few hours to a few months. Filling that same ship via mining would definitely be faster well outside the bubble.

There is nowhere in the bubble where mining is faster, but the bubble is a very small part of the entire galaxy.

 

[DemiserofD]

Interesting, but misguided idea. It is indeed faster to mine tritium in most of the galaxy. Flying back to the bubble with maximum cargo space to buy tritium could take a few hours to a few months. Filling that same ship via mining would definitely be faster well outside the bubble.

There is nowhere in the bubble where mining is faster, but the bubble is a very small part of the entire galaxy.

Fortunately, I've crunched the numbers for just this occasion!

The furthest you can get from purchasable tritium is about 45000ly - the distance from Beagle Point to Colonia. That takes about 45 hours there and back. (Most of that time can be spent doing something else, but for the sake of argument we'll ignore that.) Then it'll take about 5 more hours to load your carrier up to the brim.

You can mine about 250 tritium per hour, counting travel time. So in 50 hours, you could mine about 12500 tritium. By contrast, jumping back to beagle point, stocking up, and jumping back to beagle point would get back with about 14,600 tritium on board!

All this is a bit beside the point though. Tritium mining is painfully slow, even if you did feel justified in doing it out by Beagle Point. What do you think of the idea just in general?

 

[Fixitman]

It's only faster to return to the bubble if one's carrier is already stocked with enough tritium to get there. I personally like to keep my carrier's weight down to reduce fuel usage.

I can see this as being very useful, if the destination is the primary focus. It could save quite a bit of time for those in a hurry (nothing wrong with that).

For exploration, this would pretty much be useless. Exploration isn't about the destination, it's about the journey to get there. Rushing increases the likelihood of missing things, or making costly mistakes.

When I explore with my carrier, I always scout ahead to each waypoint with my long-range DBX. Once I reach the next waypoint, I call in my carrier to a suitable location. Upon it's arrival, I can sell off any data I've collected over the last 7-9 jumps, then head off to the next waypoint with my ship. That brings in enough funds to keep the lights on.
If my carrier's fuel gets a little low, I find a place to mine for awhile. If it takes a week to refill the carrier, so be it. That's just part of the very relaxing experience of exploration.

I personally don't like the idea, due to my playstyle, and (IMO) excessive complexity.

 

[DemiserofD]

It's only faster to return to the bubble if one's carrier is already stocked with enough tritium to get there. I personally like to keep my carrier's weight down to reduce fuel usage.

I can see this as being very useful, if the destination is the primary focus. It could save quite a bit of time for those in a hurry (nothing wrong with that).

For exploration, this would pretty much be useless. Exploration isn't about the destination, it's about the journey to get there. Rushing increases the likelihood of missing things, or making costly mistakes.

When I explore with my carrier, I always scout ahead to each waypoint with my long-range DBX. Once I reach the next waypoint, I call in my carrier to a suitable location. Upon it's arrival, I can sell off any data I've collected over the last 7-9 jumps, then head off to the next waypoint with my ship. That brings in enough funds to keep the lights on.
If my carrier's fuel gets a little low, I find a place to mine for awhile. If it takes a week to refill the carrier, so be it. That's just part of the very relaxing experience of exploration.

I personally don't like the idea, due to my playstyle, and (IMO) excessive complexity.

What if you changed your approach a little bit, and instead jumped into entirely unexplored space each time?

Imagine you used the carrier to jump 1000ly ahead, into an area you've not yet explored. Once there, you can begin to scout around the nearby systems for a suitable longer-term locale, with a tritium ring, and make a micro-jump there. Then, after exploring enough of the local area, you can head back to the carrier, mine 25 tritium, and jump on to the next place!

It would take a minor adjustment to your playstyle, but it would let you benefit from this just as much as the people who want to travel further!

 

[Untilting]

What if you changed your approach a little bit, and instead jumped into entirely unexplored space each time?

That's exactly what I'm planning to do with my alt. Stock up on tritium, head out into the black (making sure I use less than half the fuel) then just pootle/explore around the carrier, with the occasional jump to a new area. Can mine bits of tritium when I'm in the mood, and would always have enough to get back to the Bubble if needed. Ongoing costs funded by exploration & bio data.

Not exactly hardcore exploration I know, I just wanted the option to do Bubble things on my main and switch instantly to the pristine black on my alt.

 

[GroG79]

Sneaking in a 1000ly jump... Scope creep alert!!!

So 30 ton trit for 500 ly


Ty

 

[Fixitman]

What if you changed your approach a little bit, and instead jumped into entirely unexplored space each time?

Imagine you used the carrier to jump 1000ly ahead, into an area you've not yet explored. Once there, you can begin to scout around the nearby systems for a suitable longer-term locale, with a tritium ring, and make a micro-jump there. Then, after exploring enough of the local area, you can head back to the carrier, mine 25 tritium, and jump on to the next place!

It would take a minor adjustment to your playstyle, but it would let you benefit from this just as much as the people who want to travel further!

Imagine jumping into a system 1000ly ahead, finding no systems within 500ly, and no way to mine tritium for a 1000ly jump back. There are countless areas where that can happen.

That's about the only way I can think of to reach end-game in ED.

I'll take risks with my easily replaceable ships. I won't take risks with my carrier full of ships.

 

[Ameeleean2]

I have only two things to say:
1. Tritium is already enriched fuel and I'm assuming ED ship power source is fusion, not some kind of matter to energy conversion which uses really heavy but still relatively stable element
2. I would rather have option to enrich regular hydrogen (which can be scooped by regular ship) or... use regular hydrogen to execute jump- for example to burn entire tank of 1000t of hydrogen to execute one 500ly jump.

 

[DemiserofD]

Imagine jumping into a system 1000ly ahead, finding no systems within 500ly, and no way to mine tritium for a 1000ly jump back. There are countless areas where that can happen.

That's about the only way I can think of to reach end-game in ED.

I'll take risks with my easily replaceable ships. I won't take risks with my carrier full of ships.

Well, I think any wise explorer would avoid doing supercharged jumps too close to the edge of the galaxy. But to be frank, 99.9999%+ of stars are not where there's any risk of this happening. For the vast majority of cases, this would not be a concern.

I have only one two things to say:
1. Tritium is already enriched fuel and I'm assuming ED ship power source is fusion, not some kind of matter to energy conversion which uses really heavy but still relatively stable element
2. I would rather have option to enrich regular hydrogen (which can be scooped by regular ship) or... use regular hydrogen to execute jump- for example to burn entire tank of 1000t of hydrogen to execute one 500ly jump.

No reason things can't be double-enriched! Take whisky, for example; it's been distilled, but you can distill it further into vodka or pure alcohol!

I don't think there's a good chance of having Fleet Carriers work off hydrogen, though. Completely different technology. Besides, the main goal of this suggestion is to make Tritium worth mining, not to render it irrelevant completely!

 

[Ameeleean2]

Well it would be nice to equip Type-9 with best fuel scoop, lots of fuel tanks and hydrogen enrichment plant (ship or FC module) which would convert hydrogen into tritium at a rate that wouldn't case ruckus from all players who say this can be abused to earn free money in game.

 

[DemiserofD]

Well it would be nice to equip Type-9 with best fuel scoop, lots of fuel tanks and hydrogen enrichment plant (ship or FC module) which would convert hydrogen into tritium at a rate that wouldn't case ruckus from all players who say this can be abused to earn free money in game.

Yeah, but...why not just mine it?

 

[Ameeleean2]

Yeah, but...why not just mine it?

Scooping hydrogen from star is a form of mining. Using part of that scooped hydrogen to refine it into tritium makes more sense to me than mining it from other sources in quantities sufficient to fuel large ship such as carrier. Just keep in mind I'm one of those guys who know a little about science (but I am not an expert) and cannot help but wonder why radioactive isotope of tritium with half-life of 12.3y can be mined and stored in large quantities (keep in mind there is such thing like critical mass for nuclear chain reaction too) instead of deuterium.

If I were do design this I would make it as follows:
1. Unrefined hydrogen- regular fuel with regular efficiency (as it is now).
2. Deuterium as primary fuel for FC and optional fuel for regular ships.
3. Tritium as primary military type fuel.

It would be also possible to use refining module to simply separate protium/deuterium/tritium from mined water or scooped hydrogen.
I would also change how fuel scoop works. Regular one would scoop hydrogen. Advanced one would scoop only deuterium (slow) or tritium (very slow) from star hydrogen, dumping waste back into star heliosphere. So there would be a choice of more efficient fuel vs easier and faster fuel scooping.

The main difference between each fuel type would be increased efficiency (less fuel for the same jump range) and different type of fuel storage tank for tritium (since it is radioactive after all) or fuel tank shielding which could be installed in restricted (military) type optional internal slot. I would also add Hydrogen enrichment optional module (power hungry, which would require good thermal efficiency of ship reactor) and also Deuterium enrichment optional module. Both usable only on large optional internal compartments or even exclusive to fleet carrier only.