Fuel scoops, a hard lesson learned and some advice please...

Lucky Shaw

Lucky Shaw
You know what I'm going to say don't you.

I am digging on the explore thang. In fact I have slowly started to grow a rep for it. I am a 'Scout'. Probably one step off the bottom and the rummaging around the systems equivalent of 'Mostly harmless' (which I am also).

And that's nice. I seem to have a knack for it and I don't leave a system until I have everything I can get.

But the run of poor luck (read 'stupidity') seems to have dogged my tracks the last three nights. My eagle suffered catastrophic damage on a few occasions with a lot of exploration data under my belt and not cashed in.

Tonight is me pushing my luck (they don't call me Lucky Shaw for nothing!) and with 4 system's worth of data in my hand and a good few interdiction kills in the bag with it I run out of fuel in a podunk system with no stations at all.

Oh shut-up! I know. I KNOW! Just deploy the fuel scoops and be on my way like a competent professional explorer would do.


Annnnyyyywaaaaayyyyy! I have to kill myself by crashing into the sun and immediately spawn and buy and fit a fuel scoop.

"Ha! I'm fully rigged up like the professional explorers now" says I. It must be the Amstrad branded FS because it cost me about 4 credits!

And now, on my first skim around a nice bright shiny star I can't deploy the scoop! I can deploy my bloody cargo scoop. Braben knows why, I have no cargo hold! I check the modules to see a fuel scoop fitted. It is!

look down my list of key option and I can see a key to activate the cargo scoop but none for the fuel scoop and no option to allocate a key to it!

Why must you taunt me oh Braben, Why!?

So, lesson for budding explorers.

1. Buy a fuel scoop.
2. Know how to deploy it and work it.

I've got 1. sorted.

I'm darned if I'm getting anywhere with 2...
 

KillaALF

K
Scooping starts automatically once you are near enough to a star, there is no need to do anything else. That said, not all stars are scoopable, like brown dwarfes for example.
 

Tactless

T
It auto deploys. Not every star can be harvested.

What can be harvested? Mostly main sequence stars that have a corona.
 
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Jackie Silver

Jackie Silver
Yes. Be careful of that.

You can't scoop T Tauri stars, Herbig AE/BE stars, Neutron Stars, White Dwarfs or Black Holes, or L / T / Y brown dwarfs.

Dunno about WR stars?, or what else is out there.

When you're out exploring it's possible to run into large stretches where most of the stars are T Tauris or otherwise unsuitable, and you need to hunt for an "M" dwarf or whatever among a forest of useless stars.
 
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Grayman

G
In Supercruise. Just fly up to the star and watch the temp. You can find a nice stable zone where you can sit indefinitely on most stars and even some that can't be scooped can actually be scooped you just have to do it in bursts or you'll burn up.
 

Jackie Silver

Jackie Silver
While in supercruise.

When you come out of hyperspace in front of a star, point towards it and head in slowly - at some point you'll see a box in the centre of the HUD saying that fuel scooping has started.

The closer in to the star you are, the more fuel you will scoop (up to a maximum depending on the size and quality of the scoop, e.g. a 4C will scoop 245 per second, a 4B will scoop 294 per second) but also the temperature will rise quicker.

You should be able to find a spot where the temperature is steady at around 100% (or higher if you're feeling daring, hull damage will start at 150%) and scoop away.

Alternatively you can fly by the edge of a star, scooping as you go.
 

Dablin

Dablin
In an empty system with no other ships flying around I recommend flying towards the star as slow as possible. I found pointing directly toward it slows the temperature raise down eventually even leading to a gradual drop in temp. I guess that is because of the lower hull surface profile you exhibit toward the star.

The only catch is you have to keep your speed low especially as you get closer to the sun, ie. 30 kmps, the fuel draw isn't that great and the risk of interdiction is greater.
 

SP45M

SP45M
Lucky Shaw said:
Wow that video makes it look so easy and yet with my 'my first fuel scoop' I have failed on both occasions to activate it and burned to death...
Click to expand...

Can't be sure because I haven't done a whole lot of fuel scooping but I suspect that maybe you are short on power if your scoop is not deploying and your burning up. You might need to have a play with your power management. Also I found that once I found the sweet spot for harvesting I just stopped my ship, still in supercruise and looked at the pretty scenery. It seemed to have no effect on scooping amount.
 
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