Hydrites Boost

Tzebra

Tzebra

Fleet Carrier Fuel Upgrade: Hydride Jump Enhancement (Simple Dwarf Star Scooping)​




Summary:​

Introduce Hydride Fuel — a high-efficiency cargo commodity — harvested by normal fuel scooping at dwarf stars (white, brown, etc.).
No new mechanics, no new modules, no HUD changes — it behaves exactly like regular scooping.

Hydrides can be stored on carriers to enable longer-range, more efficient jumps.



Gameplay Mechanic Details:​

  • Scoop Mechanics:
    • Use a standard fuel scoop.
    • Approach a dwarf star (no new star types needed).
    • Scooping fills cargo racks with "Refined Hydrite" instead of fuel tanks.
    • Requires empty cargo space — 1 ton of Hydrite = 1 cargo unit.
    • Heat mechanics work exactly the same as normal fuel scooping.
  • Storage Requirements:
    • Ship must have cargo racks fitted (instead of additional fuel tanks).
    • Fleet Carrier must have available cargo space to store collected Hydrites.
  • Carrier Usage:
    • To trigger a Hydride-boosted jump:
      • Must have 50 tons of Tritium and 50 tons of Hydrite in carrier storage.
    • Consuming both allows the carrier to jump up to 1,000 LY in a single jump.



Unlock Requirements:​

  • One-time carrier unlock via engineer-style turn-ins:
    • Guardian Tech Components
    • Blueprint Fragments
    • Pattern Obelisk Data
    • Meta-Alloys
  • Similar to unlocking Guardian FSD Boosters — immersion and commitment required.



Balance and Benefits:​

BenefitBalancing Factors
2x Jump Range (1,000 LY)Need Tritium and Hydrite
50% Less Tritium use per LYExtra exploration and scooping effort
No new modules neededCargo space tradeoff
Fits current scooping behaviorDwarf stars run hotter; risk/reward



Lore Integration:​

  • Hydrites are ultra-dense hydrogen compounds naturally found in dwarf star plasma.
  • Guardian technology enables stabilization of hydrites for megaship jump drives.
  • Human megaship engineering adapted the tech for fleet carriers.



Simple Flow for Players:​

  1. Equip a ship with fuel scoop and cargo racks.
  2. Fly to a dwarf star.
  3. Scoop Hydrite Plasma (same process as normal fuel scooping).
  4. Hydrites fill your cargo hold, not fuel tanks.
  5. Return to carrier, transfer Hydrites to carrier storage.
  6. When carrier holds 50T Tritium + 50T Hydrite, enable a 1,000 LY jump.



No new mechanics, no new tech trees, no confusing systems — Just pure Elite Dangerous exploration, planning, and skill, offering new depth for carrier owners.

It would reward careful commanders and explorers, without making Tritium mining obsolete, and fits perfectly into the Elite universe.
 
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Reactions: ]M[

GroG79

G
Not that I dislike the suggestion.. But this just cuts fuel costs

You always use Hydrites. Jump 1000 Ly while using hydrites for 0 credits and 50 tritium. That is a huge discount on a normal 1000Ly distance. Which uses about 250-270 Ton of tritium.
 

SlickPBW

S
I would only support something like the OP if it was significantly more costly in fuel than less, as it currently is proposed. The in-game example is that ship jumping fuel usage is roughly proportional to jump distance squared. So to double FC the distance of a single jump, fuel usage should at least increase by 4x. And if there’s gong to be additional fuel components, that should at least be added to the 4x Tritium cost.

On the positive side, I think that something like this might help the traffic situation that clogs going to/from Rackham’s Peak. So I think there may be a viable, but properly implemented way, to increase FC range at a high enough cost to make it usable for specific needs but prohibitively costly to simply use for every jump.
 
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ꝁestrel

ꝁestrel
I'd support this. Agree with others about cost.

I'd like it if this fuel would only permit jumps 500-1,000ly. That way you'd still need Tritium for "short" jumps.
 

Tzebra

Tzebra
SlickPBW said:
I would only support something like the OP if it was significantly more costly in fuel than less, as it currently is proposed. The in-game example is that ship jumping fuel usage is roughly proportional to jump distance squared. So to double FC the distance of a single jump, fuel usage should at least increase by 4x. And if there’s gong to be additional fuel components, that should at least be added to the 4x Tritium cost.

On the positive side, I think that something like this might help the traffic situation that clogs going to/from Rackham’s Peak. So I think there may be a viable, but properly implemented way, to increase FC range at a high enough cost to make it usable for specific needs but prohibitively costly to simply use for every jump.
Click to expand...

In fusion physics, hydrides help moderate neutrons, allowing the system to harvest energy more effectively, control the fusion burn, manage plasma temperature, reduce radiation damage, and improve overall efficiency.

So why pile more penalties onto the player by ratcheting up the cost for no good reason?
GroG79 said:
Not that I dislike the suggestion.. But this just cuts fuel costs

You always use Hydrites. Jump 1000 Ly while using hydrites for 0 credits and 50 tritium. That is a huge discount on a normal 1000Ly distance. Which uses about 250-270 Ton of tritium.
Click to expand...

That's the point, efficiency and better performance, backed by the real-world physics.
I added in the additional, Unlock and Lore to give it a bit of spice.
ꝁestrel said:
I'd support this. Agree with others about cost.

I'd like it if this fuel would only permit jumps 500-1,000ly. That way you'd still need Tritium for "short" jumps.
Click to expand...
Tritium would still be a requirement. You could use the Hydride injections if you wanted to get to a region faster and more efficiently. From there it would be as it is now.
 

SlickPBW

S
Tzebra said:
In fusion physics, hydrides help moderate neutrons, allowing the system to harvest energy more effectively, control the fusion burn, manage plasma temperature, reduce radiation damage, and improve overall efficiency.

So why pile more penalties onto the player by ratcheting up the cost for no good reason?
Click to expand...
Believe it or not, and I am not going to prove this so don't even ask, I worked as a nuc engineer for 30+ years before retiring, so let's just say that there's no need to try to school me on nuclear physics.

As far as "...piling on more penalties onto the player...", essentially your OP is just requesting that the game to be made easier and I don't agree with that. You are requesting a longer FC jump range for even less fuel than it would take now. I don't support that, plain and simple. ED does not use our physics; there are many examples of things that our current physics considers impossible, but they exist in this game to create a fantasy world where we can fly space ships throughout the galaxy for FUN, which is the entire point of a video game. But we all accept the fantasy physics in ED. So the answer to your "why" is that I don't believe that the game should be made any easier, in fact I would like to see it harder in many areas, but that's a separate discussion. And I believe that this position IS a good reason because it has been shown time and time again that when suggestions to make the game easier are adopted, for the most part it just takes away from the fun and challenge. And frequently players in general don't like the removal of a challenge. The galaxy is a huge place and traveling huge distances by implementing ever increasing jump ranges just makes the galaxy smaller, and I don't support that. Don't worry, my opinion doesn't count any more than yours. The size of the in-game galaxy needs to stay huge, in my opinion.

Specifically, with respect to alleged "penalties": why shouldn't a FC use the same in-game FSD physics as ships, i.e. doubling the jump distance increases fuel consumption by 4x? That's not a penalty, that's the way it is for ships currently. We already know, that increasing the mass of a FC costs more fuel:

how much the fleet carrier consumes for LY?

hi, does anyone know how much the fleet carrier consumes for LY? Thanks Ciao
forums.frontier.co.uk forums.frontier.co.uk

And we already know that FC fuel consumption varies approximately linearly with jump distance (not a x^2 relationship). You can test this in the FC jump screen or view research here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/EliteDangerous/comments/hlvp2e/fuel_consumption_of_a_fleet_carrier
Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/EliteDangerous/comments/hlvp2e/fuel_consumption_of_a_fleet_carrier/?rdt=34946


If you want to introduce a new fuel additive, or whatever fantasy physics name Hydrides would have, then great, like I said in my post above I would support that and I agree that there would be some positive aspects added to the game. BUT, I believe that it should come at extra cost so that it doesn't suddenly become the new way that FC's jump and THAT would just make the game easier. My example would increase the fuel consumption per LY when jumping beyond the normal max range to use an x^2 relationship, just like ships. That's just one possible method and I didn't spend a lot of time calculating a full dissertation.
 
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metatheurgist

metatheurgist
I can't believe people keep trying to use logic and reason to justify the mechanics they want in a game where wars last 4 days, handfuls of pilots control billion pop star systems and "colonisation" can double the size of the bubble in 2 weeks.
 

ꝁestrel

ꝁestrel
SlickPBW said:
The galaxy is a huge place and traveling huge distances by implementing ever increasing jump ranges just makes the galaxy smaller, and I don't support that. Don't worry, my opinion doesn't count any more than yours. The size of the in-game galaxy needs to stay huge, in my opinion.
Click to expand...
Even at 1k Ly per jump a Fleet Carrier wouldn't be faster than jumping manually. So it wouldn't make the galaxy smaller.
 

Rat Catcher

Rat Catcher
Tzebra said:
That's the point, efficiency and better performance, backed by the real-world physics.
Click to expand...
I agree, when real world physics has FTL long-distance jumping vessels, then real world physics can make them more efficient!

It was mentioned, when FCs were first introduced, that, sooner or later, players would be asking for even greater jump distances, it didn't take long for the first suggestion...
 
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