Stars as Fuel Source (Fuel Scoop)

Borgkube

Borgkube
NoCarrier said:
I don't know about that. People buy fuel scoops so they won't end up stranded in the middle of nowhere, and if you prevent fuel scooping off white dwarfs, people might end up that way if they find themselves in a white dwarf system without any gas giants.

If the devs want to make a point of this, I'd suggest that the fuel scoop would be able to scoop up trace amounts of hydrogen. After doing this at supercruise speeds, the player would be able to gather just enough hydrogen to make another jump to scoop a main-sequence star.
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I believe that the primary fuel used in Elite is hydrogen. White dwarfs have burned off most of their hydrogen and so are not ideal for fuel scooping, I am thinking. Perhaps you could be allowed to scoop at a MUCH reduced rate to reflect the low amount of hydrogen available. I like the idea of scooping trace amounts of hydrogen while in supercruise! I would also imagine that not all gas giants would useful for scooping fuel as I am sure many of them don't have abundant hydrogen.:D
 

NoCarrier

NoCarrier
Borgkube said:
I believe that the primary fuel used in Elite is hydrogen. White dwarfs have burned off most of their hydrogen and so are not ideal for fuel scooping, I am thinking. Perhaps you could be allowed to scoop at a MUCH reduced rate to reflect the low amount of hydrogen available. I like the idea of scooping trace amounts of hydrogen while in supercruise! I would also imagine that not all gas giants would useful for scooping fuel as I am sure many of them don't have abundant hydrogen.:D
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Actually, I haven't seen a gas giant yet without a hydrogen-rich atmosphere. There are also many planets with atmospheres with trace amounts of hydrogen in them, so it would make sense if players could even fuel scoop those if they kept at it.

And yes, the way I understand it, white dwarfs have actually blown off all of their gas layers into a planetary nebula, so if there was any hydrogen left, it would be found in the gas clouds around the white dwarf.
 

Zenicetus

Zenicetus
BBRodriquez said:
Imo you refill pretty fast no need for taking damage.
Stars as a fuel source is strange for me, I would like some scientific explanation how it should work.
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I wouldn't recommend looking to closely at the science here. :) As mentioned above in the thread, we're probably scooping somewhere inside the ultra-hot corona of these stars, where our ships shouldn't be able to survive. Not if they can be so easily toasted with a puny laser. It's a risk/reward game mechanic, which is why we're doing it here instead of gas giants where it would be safer.

Gas giants might also have more atmospheric impurities to deal with, compared to relatively pure hydrogen in the outer layers of a star. Jupiter and Saturn have helium as well as hydrogen, Neptune has a bunch of stuff like acetylene, methane, ethane, and so on. The chemistry might be even weirder in extrasolar planets. So there's a semi-scientific rationale against gas giant scooping, I guess.
 

Witzo

Witzo
Binky said:
The atmosphere of stars extend out quite a long way from their 'surface' and are, at least for Sol, 90% hydrogen. So its an abundant source of fuel.
Unfortunately, and weirdly, the outer layer of a stars atmosphere is the hottest bit. The surface of Sol is a balmy 6000 degrees or so, but its corona (the outer most layer) is 2000000 degrees*...
Hot enough to vapourise ... well, everything.
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Very hot but very thin. So I think those very fast but very few hydrogen molecules wouldn't transfer enough heat to your ship compared to the direct radiation.
 

NoCarrier

NoCarrier
Zenicetus said:
Gas giants might also have more atmospheric impurities to deal with, compared to relatively pure hydrogen in the outer layers of a star. Jupiter and Saturn have helium as well as hydrogen, Neptune has a bunch of stuff like acetylene, methane, ethane, and so on. The chemistry might be even weirder in extrasolar planets. So there's a semi-scientific rationale against gas giant scooping, I guess.
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Yeah, it would be extremely cool if a player could play it safe, scoop gas giant atmosphere, and thereby pollute the hydrogen fuel on-board which would necessitate an increased fuel flow. If the devs would increase the risk of star scooping (let's face it—despite all the hand-wringing in the fiction, at the moment it's ridiculously easy), the player would have a real choice!
 

Zenicetus

Zenicetus
The other conundrum is how we're able to scoop at all in Supercruise. I thought we weren't really moving through normal space, just folding space around the ship. In which case, you would never scoop any more paltry hydrogen atoms than were already floating inside the SC bubble around your ship.

Best not to think about it, I guess.
 

Thogapotomus

T
Fuel scoops seem to be in a really good place right now, for me at least. In my type-6, I usually top off each jump or every other depending on the distance.

As soon as you enter the system, target your destination and go the opposite way around the star. I dive in at .33C and hold a tight line at the very edge of the star. My scoop maxes out at 54 whatever per second. Usually one loop around the star is enough to top off before pulling out towards the destination.

The type-6 doesn't start taking damage until 150% heat, and with an upgraded reactor you can stay deep for a decent amount of time. If I haven't fueled up in a while, I'll shut down shields, cargo door, life support, the power converter thingy and I can gather around 8 tons (half the tank) quite quickly.

When I first started, I'd stay high and slow, but you gotta go fast and deep. You can gather 4x more fuel per second and have the speed to get out right before you take damage. Cool off for a few seconds and repeat. It feels dangerously satisfying looping around a star at .33C and blasting back out of it's atmosphere with a full tank and your ship nearly on fire. I'm gonna die of lung cancer from breathing in all the smoke that pours out of the cockpit each time lol.
 

excalibus

excalibus
i think the idea of different qualities of fuel scooped (possibly adding wear and tear to your drives and scoop) with different effeciencies is a good variation :) as for those stuck at a system with say just a white dwarf then easily it could be the lowest quality fuel available and taking a long time to scoop up a full tank and still allow a player not to get 'stuck' or it could be that you cannot scoop up at all from stars that contain no hydrogen and instead have to use a distress beacon...
 

FoxTwo

FoxTwo
I've only played the original 1984 Elite, and scooping fuel from stars is "normal" to me. Scooping fuel from gas giants however, is a "new thing" to me :)

That said, I've tried scooping from various types of stars and I noticed that the scooping seems to work only for orangey kind of stars (like our sun). White dwarves or dull purple/red ones don't trigger the scooping.

Also, I have (I think) a C2 or C3 scoop and I get approximately 60 units per second at around 95% heat. I think I can go higher, but I don't want to exceed 100% heat. So I'm happy with 60 units per second.

All things considered it's pretty fast. But whenever I get interdicted while scooping fuel I just go along with the interdiction and fight it out at the sun rather than to try evading the interdiction and possibly burning myself up :D
 

CMDR Blagbyrn

C
It would be cool if they added the possibility for some environmentally driven catastrophic failure that seriously damaged or killed your ship, like a flare.
 

Retu81

R
Witzo said:
Very hot but very thin. So I think those very fast but very few hydrogen molecules wouldn't transfer enough heat to your ship compared to the direct radiation.
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But you are still scooping literal tons of the stuff. The ship would still need to get rid of the heat somehow.
 

NoCarrier

NoCarrier
FoxTwo said:
That said, I've tried scooping from various types of stars and I noticed that the scooping seems to work only for orangey kind of stars (like our sun). White dwarves or dull purple/red ones don't trigger the scooping.
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Those "dull purple/red ones" would be so-called brown dwarfs. They are basically failed stars—stellar objects that are more massive than regular gas giants but not massive enough to start hydrogen fusion and ignite as a red dwarf.

I feel you should be able to scoop those as well, like gas giants, offering low-grade fuel.
 
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