If you can find it...
If you can find it...
Waste is the optimal word there. You were not forced to buy a carrier and the caveat that special fuel was needed was explained.
See, this is all just a simple case of economics. Supply and demand. Carriers need fuel, suppliers can provide it. If there are too many demanders and not enough suppliers, the supply goes down, the cost goes up. If there are too many suppliers and not enough demanders the price goes down, the supply goes up. In the end it all balances out. More miners making money and fewer FCs. Aint saying it's right or wrong, it's just the way things go.
How you fix it is, lower the commodity value, as seen with the painite adjustments it's doable, with the hotspot distribution they are governed by certain rules about where and when they appear and what conditions, you gameify those conditions, like they appear only around white dwarf stars or of a certain star class and above, like O, B, A types for example. That doesn't mean there at EVERY white dwarf or every O, B, A star, but you communicate to the community thats where they WILL spawn if they spawn at all. You adjust the distribution itself so that in Trit hot spots, they pop, 50-60 even 70% asteroids, something borderline ridiculous but again, it would only be for trit hotspots, this wouldn't effect the money ores.
So by having a lower sale price, and high distribution rate, it makes it so that if you are mining it, you're not doing it for the money, but doing it because you need to consume it. the rarity of the hotspots themselves makes it a bit of a quest to find them, but you want them common enough to form a series of Oasis in the galactic desert. And what will happen is then people will map routes based on where they are found, and create a "Silk Road" of sorts in the galaxy. In fact read up on the history of the Silk Road and the REASON why it came into existence is precisely this a bunch of Persian, Assyrian and Babylonian traders would go from Oasis to Oasis through the desert, little towns and villages popping up around these Oasis and eventually that created a network of "roads" or routes that you used to get anywhere.
Certain roads were well traveled, some not so much, so while you COULD go off the beaten path, not everybody did this, and so that's where some treasures were hidden in the "wilds". All Fdev has to do is change the prices, update the distribution of the tritspots and up the mining amount in said spots, and let nature take it's course, the exploration and mining community would naturally team up and start mapping the routes, to which Fdev can watch this on a heat map and thus know where to plop mysteries, explorables and other content along the way.
This will especially be needed if player built colonies or outposts ever make it into the game, now I know what you're thinking, Fdev said they have no plans. Well they said the same thing about Oddysey and well here we are. So I take "We have no plans" to mean "We havent started work on it yet." So I say, let's think ahead and lay the ground work for it now, if it doesn't really become a thing, then ok, but at least we laid the roads. If it does, then hey, Fdev will be ahead of the game for once in having players already thinking in that way.
I would say that's true for right now, but I suspect that is going to change in the months and years to come, they need to add functionality to carriers yes, desperately, but part of the reason why people aren't spread out more, and I mean even across a 500-1000 LY range which is 1-2 jumps is precisely because of fueling the things. Most carrier owners, at least by now have socked away years of upkeep, so that should be a none issue. But fuel is an every present issue, that and what you said, what's the desire to leave the bubble.
i'm not sure, how you don't find it - assuming you don't adhere from using third party sites.
eddb.io lists literally hundreds of stations with >25 000 tons of supply.
exampel given: the system of Coriccha has alone ~1,3 mio (!) tons at L-pad stations.
for, yes, 50K cr/ton.
but saying there isn't tritium to buy at l-pad stations doesn't compute.
Mining mostly, and non-exploitatively either. I played for a straight month everyday after work for 4-6 hours a workday grinding cash until I was able to afford one, then about 2 weeks after that to get all the modules, then 2 weeks after that for about a year's worth of upkeep.
I found out real quickly that when you start getting to that level, money becomes less about amounts and more about rates, how much money per unit of time is the carrier spending vs how much money per unit of time are you making. You then start plotting out the margins, your costs vs your income and projecting out from there, and it becomes more a question of TIME being the valuable commodity here then actual credits. If the curve is flat or near flat you are spending alot of time and not making much progress, if the curve is steep you're making ALOT of progress and spending little time.
The focus on costs of the tritium is less in terms of spending the money and in terms of thinking how much time that tritium is worth, as it stands it costs 10 times as much time to mine it yourself then it is to mine a money ore for an hour or now because of the balance pass, how much in combat bonds and/or bounting hunting per 1000t of Trit.
FC Owners want to limit the time spent fueling, which in turn becomes a focus on actual cost of trit. Read up on a previous post to get what I mean, I explained this to another poster.
Now people have said "Oh good god, that's not what this game is about, looking at costs and projections and etc." Well this is what Fleet carriers are at some extent, SOMEbody has to take care of the damn thing, someone in the squad has to worry about it, it's not all fun and games. Anybody who's been a guild crafter in other games knows what I'm talking about. While your buddies are marveling over this epic sword, you are focused on how much time, effort and a bit of a PITA it was to make the damn thing, but you also get excited when you see your epic sword slay the big bad monster, so you make your own fun and get your feel goods where you can.
The funny part is Yamiks predicted this in one of his videos, that on some level FCs will be this reminder chore of things you need to get done, Upkeep is the right word for it alright. And if you want to move it, you need to have a little bit of space in your mind dedicated to knowing where to get fuel for it at any given time.
But honestly, even with the sense of a chore in it, I love my FC, I love being able to provide for people. I have my carrier open to all pilot's and I have my outfitting, shipyard and maintenance open to all, and at a mere 10% tarriff too, I could be an a**bag about it but I don't want to, with this nerf to mining, and it IS a nerf, I can't be AS generous as I want to be.
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Reminds me of a scene in one of my favorite movies "The Treasure of The Sierra Madre"
Howard: Say, answer me this one, will you? Why is gold worth some twenty bucks an ounce?
Flophouse Bum: I don't know. Because it's scarce.
Howard: A thousand men, say, go searchin' for gold. After six months, one of them's lucky: one out of a thousand. His find represents not only his own labor, but that of nine hundred and ninety-nine others to boot. That's six thousand months, five hundred years, scramblin' over a mountain, goin' hungry and thirsty. An ounce of gold, mister, is worth what it is because of the human labor that went into the findin' and the gettin' of it.
Flophouse Bum: I never thought of it just like that.
Howard: Well, there's no other explanation, mister. Gold itself ain't good for nothing except making jewelry with and gold teeth.
Howard: Say, answer me this one, will you? Why is gold worth some twenty bucks an ounce?
Flophouse Bum: I don't know. Because it's scarce.
Howard: A thousand men, say, go searchin' for gold. After six months, one of them's lucky: one out of a thousand. His find represents not only his own labor, but that of nine hundred and ninety-nine others to boot. That's six thousand months, five hundred years, scramblin' over a mountain, goin' hungry and thirsty. An ounce of gold, mister, is worth what it is because of the human labor that went into the findin' and the gettin' of it.
Flophouse Bum: I never thought of it just like that.
Howard: Well, there's no other explanation, mister. Gold itself ain't good for nothing except making jewelry with and gold teeth.
So that was YOU I was competing against!
Same, I did enjoy refuelling. I never even got to really meet the cmdrs I was refuelling for but wonder what they thought when they come back to a topped off carrier full of tritium. Got to see a lot of the bubble that way too. Heck, I would park my carrier fairly central to the bubble and take a long range Cutter hauler and do long range deliveries even, complete with a collector limpet and killing pirates along the way and scooping up free mats.
I mostly enjoyed the time when tritium could be found cheap but that was a rare occurrence, and tritium fuel efficiency was half what it is now. Supply was tight, demand was high, and refuellers had a decent gig if they knew where to look.
Eggsploiter exposed
No seriously, finding low priced tritium was a fun little part of bulk trading,
and FD killing it off is sad.
I have to agree here. Trying to locate a source a supply of 4k Tritium and grab up as much as possible before the inevitable wave of competition showed up was awesome. A mad dash against time while trying to remain cloaked in secrecy. It was the hunt and the race I enjoyed.
Cheap tritium may have disappeared since the market volatility update however, you can still replicate this type of game play with Palladium, Gold and Silver. Still a race to locate it first and grab as much as you can before a swarm of FCs descend.
I don't think this would work. Sure, it'd make mining for Tritium much easier ... but: a hotspot where every single asteroid contained 70% tritium would probably get you a tonne a second, give or take. So - allowing for flight time to the carrier and back to restock limpets, since you can't hold that much even in a T-9 or Cutter - probably about 2500t an hour.
Or you can haul it from a suitable bubble station at >4000t an hour (and it's now dirt-cheap, so this doesn't cost anything worth mentioning) ... and then travel 100kLY in a reasonably lightweight fit on that. Sure, if you did run out it wouldn't take long to restock ... equally, if you did run out, someone could run another 10,000 tonnes of Tritium out to you on a disposable tanker carrier pretty easily.
You can't get any sort of "silk road" network going on in a situation where a fully-fuelled carrier in a lightweight fit can go from any A to any B in the galaxy without needing to refuel in-between (in the same way that modern cargo planes mean the Silk Road is a bit obsolete). Even if they mine to refuel at the nearest hotspot when they get there, they can go anywhere they like afterwards with fuel again no object (and actually, at this point, it would just be easier to remove Tritium from the game and up the credit cost of a jump to 1M credits).
It might, just about, have worked with the original Tritium efficiency. Now? No point.
If they could increase the yield of Tritium to the same levels as Painite or Platinum are in their respective metallic hotspots and maybe increase the price a little it would encourage more to mine for re-sale.
We could also do with an update to allow Carrier owners to set a buy and a sell price at the same time so that several miners could mine from the same carrier while it is available for selling on to other carriers, if the sell/buy prices are set right everyone would make a fair profit.
i like this kind of fantasy (people will mine for tritium owners to make CR). i think it is highly unlikely. i might do a mining run a months with one of my accounts who don't have (and don't need) a FC.
the idea that there are many out there who love to mine day-to-day and sell it to make even more CR is imho wrong. i might go mining extra for a good cause - a DSSA carrier needing refuel for exampel. but for CR? on any account i have more than i need.
my uneducated estimate from pre-mining frenzy (pre-last 18months) is, around 1 promille of the ED population are dedicated miners. there are some, the community has always been impressive, but the numbers are few. and those who are, those will be beyond rich.
the idea that there are many out there who love to mine day-to-day and sell it to make even more CR is imho wrong. i might go mining extra for a good cause - a DSSA carrier needing refuel for exampel. but for CR? on any account i have more than i need.
my uneducated estimate from pre-mining frenzy (pre-last 18months) is, around 1 promille of the ED population are dedicated miners. there are some, the community has always been impressive, but the numbers are few. and those who are, those will be beyond rich.
i'm always wondering, why people are not coming forward with that more often.
i would never have intended to fill my FC by mining after the beta experience, it was always buying. i never bought tritium cheap, i priced it in to jump costs of my FC. still - you have to take a t9 to bring it to your FC.
if you don't like that, it would be much better to advocate for getting rid of tritium and raise the jumpcosts.
adding jumpcosts will make it harder to use it for solo-exploration, though.
I'd definitely be opposed to raising the price of tritium "to make it economically viable to mine and sell it". That would be penalising Carrier owners to assist miners.
It was made clear prior to the release of Carriers that we could either mine the fuel, or buy it at stations. And it was generally assumed that mining it would be the fallback option if you didn't have access to a station.
Free, mined tritium has always been the most expensive option in real terms, when you allow for the player's loss of income during the time spent mining it, when he could be earning money elsewhere (some of which could be used to buy tritium). Though admittedly the mining of tritium at the same time as other materials does complicate that assessment.
We could end up with a situation where tritium is priced to match whatever the current cash-cow / borderline-exploit currently is, to "encourage players to mine tritium instead" and "discourage buying at stations". No thanks.
If miners want to make a living while mining tritium, they can mine and sell whatever else they find while they are doing that (or try to sell tritium at inflated prices in Colonia and see what the market will bear). And it's entirely resonable to suppose that the large quantities available in stations is mass-produced rather than directly mined anyhow (e.g. from bombardment of lithium). Especially as it's being sold in Refinery rather than Extraction economies.
It was made clear prior to the release of Carriers that we could either mine the fuel, or buy it at stations. And it was generally assumed that mining it would be the fallback option if you didn't have access to a station.
Free, mined tritium has always been the most expensive option in real terms, when you allow for the player's loss of income during the time spent mining it, when he could be earning money elsewhere (some of which could be used to buy tritium). Though admittedly the mining of tritium at the same time as other materials does complicate that assessment.
We could end up with a situation where tritium is priced to match whatever the current cash-cow / borderline-exploit currently is, to "encourage players to mine tritium instead" and "discourage buying at stations". No thanks.
If miners want to make a living while mining tritium, they can mine and sell whatever else they find while they are doing that (or try to sell tritium at inflated prices in Colonia and see what the market will bear). And it's entirely resonable to suppose that the large quantities available in stations is mass-produced rather than directly mined anyhow (e.g. from bombardment of lithium). Especially as it's being sold in Refinery rather than Extraction economies.
Right, cos overworked, impoverished, miners need a leg up, amirite?
By way of analogy, this is like going to Saudi Arabia to drill for oil, cos it's easy to obtain there, and then expecting to be able to sell it IN Saudi Arabia for the highest possible price.
That's not how the world works.
If you want to make a profit from Oil, you need to obtain it where it's plentiful and then transport it to places where it's incredibly scarce and/or there's a huge demand for it.
Wouldn't be opposed to the application of a bit more "supply & demand" in ED though.
FDev can look at the type of system, and the population, and come up with a "supply factor" for each commodity in each system and within a localised network of systems.
This might result in Tritium prices out in the boonies being high and prices in Colonia being slightly above average but, let's face it, Tritiuim supply within the bubble is always likely to meet demand (unless, perhaps, the 'goids or rival factions started attacking Tritium supply sources) so prices in the bubble are always likely to be reasonable.
Miners should be able to find remote places where the demand for Tritium is reasonable, and the cost is high, and sell Tritium there for a decent profit.
They'd need to be careful not to flood the market, though, or prices will drop.
(And, yes. I'm aware that the BGS does already do a lot of this stuff - if not always as dramatically as people might hope for)
Course, with 17 different Commodities currently selling for >Cr100k/tonne, 6 of which can be laser-mined by a chimp, quite why Miners would insist Tritium should be more profitable too is anybody's guess.
My guess is that they're hoping to make a killing from the "Player Economy" rather than having to sell stuff to the "NPC Economy".
If that's the case, I guess they need to find a commonly travelled route, park their FC somewhere along it, mine Tritium and then try and flog it to other passing FC's.