Fleet Carriers, The Easy Button, and the End of Trit Mining

[avow555]

The mining mini game is an absolute shambles.
Why carriers got dragged into mining was just laziness on the devs part.

 

[marx]

The ability to purchase Tritium should be based on the amount player's actually mine and sell on the market. Thus if no ones mines it or sells it. There isn't any available causing one to mine it them selves.

That's pretty much what goes on in Colonia right now. The supply of tritium on the "NPC market" is practically zero, and at current prices, the demand from players far exceeds the mined supply from players.

This should come as no surprise, however. In order to make tritium mining for the carrier market attractive to players, carriers would have to set purchase prices that would make mining them more profitable than mining painite / LTDs / whatever the flavour of the month is. That money also has to come from somewhere, so in an end-game where millions of credits per hour get thrown around, that's not a very attractive prospect to the owners.

Now, I don't think I'm very up-to-date about the current mining profitability after the nerfs, but I'm fairly certain it's actually impossible to reach, thanks to the maximum price limit of 1000% of the galactic average. You see, a carrier can only buy tritium at 425 kCr, tops. Let's go with 150 tritium mined per hour, and then we end up with 63.75 MCr / h. I'm fairly certain that goldrush mining hasn't been nerfed that hard.

So, in order to make player tritium mining competitive with goldrush mining, you'd have to pay much more for tritium, which would also rule out random players just popping on your carrier and selling you stuff: in order to go above that 425 kCr limit, you'd have to arrange manual transfers of credits too. ("I'll set the carrier to buy the 425 kCr, and pay you the rest another way.") Which, unfortunately, would be rather bad because of the quantities of cargo generally involved.

How could all this be solved then? Let's see:

1. Severely bring down gold rush profitability: yeah, that would go over well. (I'm being sarcastic, of course. And would only work until the next time somebody discovers a new method. So... a month or two?)

2. Raise the galactic average price of tritium to better reflect its value: this would be shafting carrier owners who wish to fuel up at the bubble, so basically, around 90% of the total carrier owner population.

So yeah. There aren't really any solutions which wouldn't be severely to the detriment of other players, and to many more of them then there might be player-market-tritium-miners.
And none of the above even assumes carriers buying tritium far from the bubble(s), where they'd have to pay even more to make the trip out to them worth it.
All this assumes that credits are all that matter to the miners though. In reality, other goals such as expeditions, rescues et cetera often also do. In those cases though, it's not really about independent miners who'd only be interested in the profits to be made.

In the end, you can either make player market for-profit tritium mining viable, or you can make purchasing tritium at sensible prices easy and viable. Seems to me like Frontier decided to go with the latter.
And honestly, I wouldn't like paying forty billion credits for a full tank of 20,000 T of tritium either.

 

[Old Duck]

In practice that would probably mean far less Tritium, not more.

Notice the nuance in my words compared to Nemo's suggestion. I'm talking "influence" rather than a 1:1 direct effect. The idea is that if players are selling Tritium in a system, that system should have way more Tritium than it would if players were not selling Tritium there (and reverse for buying). And even this should take NPCs in mind (again, reread my very short post) since if fleet carriers are swarming a system, it is logical that NPCs would go there to sell their Tritium, assuming NPC miners think like CMDRs. But if NPCs are indeed doing this, I'd like to see it reflected in my gameplay, which means lots more NPC T9s loaded with Tritium. And on that note, make pirated Tritium a valid fuel source! Why does my reactor refuse to burn stolen Tritium?

 

[Havvk]

Since I weighed-in on patches 3 and 4, thought I should probably reply to today's Tritium Efficiency Update, as well.

The forum reactions are notably mixed and fall into two camps:

• Yay, Fdev fixed the problem!!
• Salty, Fdev just ruined the game!!

I actually agree with both, here's why…

Today, FCs were handed an "easy" button. Range is doubled. Most of the galaxy is reachable for round trips on a single fueling. Deployment of future DSSA carriers just became easier. Logistics and the necessity to mine Tritium deep in the black just went away. The bar has been lowered and not a single DSSA fleet carrier will need to be fueled enroute.

As DSSA CMDR SpaceTrash67 noted in FleetComm Discord this afternoon, "So with range doubled - I have more than enough fuel already on board...aside from some last minute outfitting/engineering- I am ready to launch."

He is absolutely right.

And more broadly, I think deep space just became much more accessible to many more fleet carriers. This is especially good for solo FC owners, who can buy the fuel they need in the Bubble and head out to areas they otherwise could not have reached.

That said, we don't all play the game the same way.

If you caught yesterday's livestream on the DSSA, you heard my pitch for emergent, player-driven game play based on the new meta for exploration – the search for overlapping Tritium hotspots. The too long; didn't listen is that up to patch 3, overlapping Tritium hotspots in the black were extremely valuable discoveries. Fleet carriers would go well out of their way to stop at one for necessary refueling, hence the search to locate them in strategic areas.

That refueling is no longer necessary. The overlaps have been nerfed. Hotspots are relatively homogenized. Group-driven, organized, game play that centered on finding overlaps is, I suspect, a thing of the past. The notion of DSSA-based Tritium depots is shelved for lack of need.

Tritium mining in general, at any kind of hot spot, doesn't make a lot of sense anymore. Thoughtful CMDRs will skip Tritium altogether, mine for credits in the Bubble, then buy all their Tritium on the market for far less effort than actually mining it.

As Erimus Kamzel noted in FleetComm Discord,

Its pretty bad for miners as there's very little reason to take mining teams along on deep space Carrier events now, unless someone is planning to circumnavigate the galaxy or something. As far as the DSSA is concerned, any Carriers that are still yet to deploy have no practical reason to do it as an expedition with players signing up to help out. Carrier Commanders can solo their way out to whatever region they're destined for.​

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Its a big blow for a potential DW3 too since the expedition would have had logistical support for the DSSA as one of its core aspects. Mining, prospecting, hauling are roles that would have fostered teamwork, which help bind a large scale event together. With them effectively being made obsolete, we're in a bit of a quandary.​

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l think we're solely relying on Odyssey to offer something for exploration and expeditionary events to work with now.​

So, where does that leave things?

The DSSA is probably better off in the sense that it's now easier to deploy FCs to the furthest reaches of the galaxy. I anticipate, too, that FCs may play a role as ferries taking CMDRs and their ships/modules out and back again (on a single load of fuel) to various DSSA sites.

I can't help feeling, though, that a lot of compelling, small-group oriented game play just disappeared. And that's actually a real loss for the game. It's the downside of the "easy" button.

The problem was that too many CMDRs bought FCs soley to keep them "stock" and fill all 25k tons of cargo with nothing but tritium.

I think what FDev here is trying to do, is subtly encourage us to actually outfit our carriers with more than UC and outfitting/repair/refuel. Mine, for example, is fully kitted out with even a stock of standard multirole ships(Cobra/sidey/viper III and IV) and outfitting stock that one might need for ANY occasion out in the black. I plan to use her as a mobile ma and pa type trader hub/explorers camp.

 

[Junagu]

Double edged sword isn't it.
I've just parted ways with another FC that went back to the Bubble because the mining grind just to move their carrier (they had one other active crewmember pitching in) was leaving them very little time to do anything else. They managed to get into the Formidine Rift and then onto Kepler's Crest before giving up. So it seems to me that even with the extended range there is still a very great need for Tritium caches in the wilds. Ferrying Tritium out from the Bubble/Colonia to DSSA ships on the fringes is still going to be difficult in the quantities needed to supply all the FCs knocking about. Basically, there's still a strong need for mining crews out in the depths.
The Rock Rats, though they are running 3 of the DSSA ships are a tiny fraction of the bigger picture. I've found one other mining organisation. Is there any tally of mining groups going? Could do with a chat.