Patch Notes Fleet Carriers Update - Patch 4 Patch Notes
- Thread starter Bruce G
- Start date
Tritium mining is still unfortunately more or less a meaningless and tedious grind. Making the fc:s rather meaningless if you want to use them for deep space exploration. Sure you could max out the storage but that still most likely would be a one way trip unless you want to spend countless of hours searching for systems and then mining. In a bit over one hour I barely got 100 units in a single hotspot. Surely this can't be what the FD devs had in mind when they advertised the carriers and told us how we all could choose whether we wanted to be pirates, traders or explorers.
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I believe I was reliably informed that an FC with full tank and reserves can manage a distance of 60,000ly. I mean, that is pretty far.
No, as I recall, it is dependent on services installed but I think I was quoted 'the average build'. I wish I could remember who on here told me, it was someone I trusted a lot.
Not a fixed distance. Fuel consumption increases the more modules you have but also how full your cargo hold is.
The max capacity of the FC is 25000K. Installed modules count to the occupied capacity just like cargo, so the more services you install, the less Tritium you can have (the difference is really not that big between having all or no services installed, so the max range will likely only be affected by a couple thousand LY). A completely filled with Tritium FC will be able to travel around 55K/60K before running out of fuel. It spends more fuel while it's fully loaded, and consumption starts decreasing while the carrier becomes lighter.
IMO, if fuel was available at Colonia, this would be "just right". Carriers could travel out (and return) on purchased fuel in 25/30K ly radius around the bubble and colonia (and everything in between), which is a very large part of the galaxy already, but still leaves out big chunks of the far reaches of the galaxy (about half of the whole "north" section, plus all the rim outskirts) where one could still only travel either by parking the carrier mid-way and deploying a regular exploration ship to proceed outwards, or by relying on mining to reach the far outskirts.
Mining would still be the only way to reach previously innacessible systems that can only be visited making use of the 500ly jumps, if anyone wants the "big prize" of reaching the previously unreachable, then they have to go the extra mile and mine their own fuel to be able to get to the big prize. I wouldn't be willing to do it myself, but it feels to me like a fair reward for the ones who are.
Yes, what you say (fuel consumption) makes perfect sense. I agree entirely with the last paragraph. Spot on.
You would think no dev in his right mind would expect that kind of grind to fuel an FC, wouldn't you? But we're talking FDEV here... if something can be fun and done in an hour, they'll do their damndest to find a way to strip out the fun and make it take 10 hours because grind is the end-goal.
The difference gets bigger if you - next to the services - also want to offer ships and modules, which packages aren't lightweight.
All services and some packages and your free cargo space is just around 10k.
And as it's generally heavier you don't get your fuel consumption that low as a lightweight carrier on fumes (~160t / 500ly I think!?)
... and that's fine. As an FC owner primarily interested in exploration, I fully expect to be self sufficient out in the black, splitting my time between exploration and mining to keep the FC moving, but at the seemingly average rate of 100T/hr of tritium it's 10 hours to fill the tank ONCE. To go any great distance requires multiple tanks of fuel. It's simply not worth the time investment at the current availability of tritium, so my FC is parked in the bubble (well, just outside, actually).
I'm curious what FDEV thinks FCs are actually for: we can't really use them for exploration because mining is nerfed and the large quantities of tritium requires a very significant time investment, we can't really use them to fast transit the populated systems because it's 15 minutes between jumps, so they aren't really useful for combat where being able to get somewhere quickly might be important, they're useless for trade because they're slow and there are no missions (barring maybe wing missions) that require such large amounts of cargo, so their only real use at this point is to store mined materials for people waiting to get optimal prices when they sell, effectively clogging up systems and causing timeouts for people. What is it, exactly, that FDEV intends these things to be used for since they seem to want to cut off any real utility gained by owning one?
The difference gets bigger if you - next to the services - also want to offer ships and modules, which packages aren't lightweight.
All services and some packages and your free cargo space is just around 10k.
And as it's generally heavier you don't get your fuel consumption that low as a lightweight carrier on fumes (~160t / 500ly I think!?)
Correct, I had completely forgot about being able to sell ships and modules.
An excellent point, but in the conversation about using an FC to travel distances, who is hauling a ship shop out 20,000ly? Who do they think they're going to sell ships to?
I get that but if you started in the Bubble, you could have purchased a stack of reserve Trit to put in the cargo hold.
In very basic terms, the clue is in the name. Carry your fleet. Lets say that once a year or so, you like to move from the Bubble to Colonia, then the next time, back again, then this is a good way to do it. You get to take all your modules and ships and just haul it across the void. In the meantime,. you could uninstall or switch off all services (keeping upkeep costs to a minimum), and you wouldn't even know you have one.
Also, I believe exploration is possible in one, but why would anyone need to haul every ship they own (including 6 different combat ships) out into the black? A couple of services, some reserve Trit, you soon get into undiscovered land. Park up, discover the hundreds of systems that surround the one that your carrier is in. This could be done over weeks. You have jumped once. Jump it again, repeat. If people want to travel over 60,000ly to explore, then it seems silly to take an FC. You won't need half the stuff on it once there.
They were, as everyone likes to point out, originally conceived for multiple CMDRs to sit on. So you and five mates decide to go out out on and explore, you each take an exploration ship and a mining ship. When needs must, you all go mining for an hour, 500t of trip right there.
Yes, that's true -- and I DO have a lot of tritium in my hold - whenever there is a dump of cheap tritium, I buy it. Whenever I'm mining, I grab a few tons, but the whole point of a ship like this is not to be dependent on populated systems, it's to be able to go large distances and be self sufficient.
Yes, obviously, the clue is in the name; the question isn't about what it does, but WHY it does it. WHAT AM I DOING with those ships? If I use an FC to explore, then I need an explorer and a miner (I also want a fast little canyon runner if I find an interesting planet). If I'm engaging in combat, I want to be able to transport squadrons of combat ships somewhere for battle. If I'm hauling cargo, then I'm probably not even interested in a lot of ships, just a couple for transporting to stations (a cargo-laden python for medium pads and a cutter for large pads, for example).
Yes, these are, absolutely, a best fit for groups of people, and that is what I intend to use mine for, but we still come back to the fact that the time investment simply isn't worth the reward with the scarcity of tritium, and that leads me right back to the original question: WHAT IS IT that FDEV expects these things to be used for? What purpose do they have? What game mechanic do they drive forward? It seems like they looked at MMOs and saw guilds and guild-halls and then did a half-arsed job on squadrons (guilds) and FCs (guild halls), a pattern that seems to be repeated over and over: "here's a bunch of things tossed into space, figure out what you want to do with them, but don't expect us to put in any effort driving the game forward."
Initially, the players DID figure out new and emergent ways to use these carriers and a community was developing organically around mining and trading. Then FDev smashed this into oblivion with their nerf hammers. I can agree that the egg needed to be smashed. I can agree that the credits were flowing too easily and should have been scaled back. It just seems to me this could have been more easily accomplished by changing buy and sell rates and/or spreads, rather than changing up well established game mechanics with supply and demand and hotspots so much.
It's a bit sad and disappointing. And sure, if they don't for various reasons want to make the fc:s more fuel efficient or make tritium mining easier, they could at least make i available for purchase at Explorers Anchorage. Quite strange that an outpost dedicated to science and exploring don't sell it.
Understandable as it's not very common
I wanted to offer some suicidewinders, so I equipped the Hauler/Adder package. Even sold one Hauler 15 Kylies out
But dropped it later as that package was imo too heavy compared to its usefulness and I preferred some more cargo space to play around with (and increase the FCs range)
I generally agree that "crippling" FCs without any comment "WHY" is more or less like showing middle finger to the community.
Still... 100t/h ?!
I made several Tritium mining runs while I travel with my FC and always get 200+- hourly yield.
In ANY Tri hotspot I drop to.
Even when I am mining in Tri/LTD or Tri/VO overlap,
then it ends with 160-180 Tri + 30-40 other resource.
Unless...
Is anyone STILL using lasers to mine Tritium?
Well, if you are xx.xxx ly from nearest station and no SSD launchers onboard - I can only feel sorry.
But if someone CHOOSES to use LESS EFFICIENT tool and then complains about yields....
Well, it's your choice
PS: no Tritium to buy outside the bubble is part of "showing middle finger to the community" by FD.
Still... 100t/h ?!
I made several Tritium mining runs while I travel with my FC and always get 200+- hourly yield.
In ANY Tri hotspot I drop to.
Even when I am mining in Tri/LTD or Tri/VO overlap,
then it ends with 160-180 Tri + 30-40 other resource.
Unless...
Is anyone STILL using lasers to mine Tritium?
Well, if you are xx.xxx ly from nearest station and no SSD launchers onboard - I can only feel sorry.
But if someone CHOOSES to use LESS EFFICIENT tool and then complains about yields....
Well, it's your choice
PS: no Tritium to buy outside the bubble is part of "showing middle finger to the community" by FD.
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You're missing the fact that there are several systems out there that are only reachable with the fc:s range of 500 ly.
"believing" is your right, but I prefer something more reliable.
Like math
I put numbers of "my" FC :
Capacities
modules: 3.000
market: 22.000 (21.000 Tri, 1000 some other stuff)
depot: 1.000
which is pretty "typical" setup - most of services, just no shipyard,
into Fleet Carrier route planner, to track fuel usage:
Elite: Dangerous Index
spansh.co.uk
It looks like my FC would be empty after ca 53.500 ly (107 jumps)