Tritium Mining should be worth doing.

[DemiserofD]

Current peak Tritium mining rates are about 200/hour. That's about 10m/hour.

Lets consider a bad scenario; you're 10k from the bubble. You'll end up spending about 5 hours jumping your carrier to the bubble and 5 hours jumping back out. You'll consume 2000 tritium going both ways, or 4000 tritium total. Then you buy, say, 20000 tons of tritium in the bubble. It takes about 6 minutes per 800 tritium, so it'll take you about 2 hours to load up your carrier.

This means your total costs are 12 hours and 1b credits. That costs you about 5 hours of mining, for a total of 17 hours invested, and at the end of it, you're back where you were with 18000 tons of tritium in your hold.(assuming, of course, that you don't jump back to the bubble in advance of your carrier and start mining early, which would make this calculation even more unfavorable to mining tritium)

In 17 hours, you would have mined 3400 tritium. 18000/3400= ~5.2

That's right, it's five point two times faster to jump 10000ly back to the bubble, mine platinum for credits, buy a load of tritium, and jump 10000ly back, than it is to actually mine tritium yourself.

Needless to say, I'd like to see Tritium Mining rates increased by between 3x and 5x. I don't want them high enough to beat out other competitors, but it would be nice to make it worth it in at least some scenarios.

 

[Schmack]

There are plenty minerals that don't pay well to mine. It just so happens Tritium is a valuable fuel source though. The fact you can jump 10K LY and buy it faster than you can mine a full carrier load (solo) makes no difference and making it more expensive doesn't change that fact. Many in this game don't equate time to money, but if I was going to do that I wouldn't mine Tritium for profit. Since I own a carrier though, I routinely grab tritium if I am out mining. Also others can donate it so a few commanders working to fill a carrier would be better efficiency than returning to the bubble to refill (because you'd use it all to get back to where you were to begin with)

 

[DemiserofD]

There are plenty minerals that don't pay well to mine. It just so happens Tritium is a valuable fuel source though. The fact you can jump 10K LY and buy it faster than you can mine a full carrier load (solo) makes no difference and making it more expensive doesn't change that fact. Many in this game don't equate time to money, but if I was going to do that I wouldn't mine Tritium for profit. Since I own a carrier though, I routinely grab tritium if I am out mining. Also others can donate it so a few commanders working to fill a carrier would be better efficiency than returning to the bubble to refill (because you'd use it all to get back to where you were to begin with)

The fact there are minerals that are never worth mining is actively bad game design. We obviously don't mine everything in the asteroid, not by a long shot, so if we already ignore the parts that aren't valuable, we should also ignore the other parts that aren't valuable.

So that's not a good criticism. Just because one part of the game isn't designed well doesn't justify other parts also being poorly designed.

Ultimately it comes down to this; would the game be better or worse with this change?

And if you honestly believe the game would be worse with faster tritium mining, I don't know what to tell you.

 

[gorankar]

I would not mind if they gut the gal average by 25% on Tritium, but quadrupled the drop rate. It would make it worth it to mine to fuel your FC time wise, without making it the next credit meta.

 

[metatheurgist]

I would not mind if they gut the gal average by 25% on Tritium, but quadrupled the drop rate. It would make it worth it to mine to fuel your FC time wise, without making it the next credit meta.

This is far too sensible.

 

[fu9ar]

The fact there are minerals that are never worth mining is actively bad game design.

Nope. You just have poorly calibrated expectations because of YouTube clickbait videos.

 

[DemiserofD]

Nope. You just have poorly calibrated expectations because of YouTube clickbait videos.

99.99% of players ignore things like Water or Bauxite when mining. At that point, they're just causing additional lag on the system for no benefit.

That's called bad game design.

If for some insane reason it's relevant, I've got 11 billion credits and have mined virtually every mineral in the game extensively, including mining nearly 1000 tons per hour, so I'd say I'm fairly experienced when it comes to mining, and may be qualified to talk about it's weaknesses.

 

[DemiserofD]

I would not mind if they gut the gal average by 25% on Tritium, but quadrupled the drop rate. It would make it worth it to mine to fuel your FC time wise, without making it the next credit meta.

I don't even really care if it's more efficient to make money other ways and buy tritium; I certainly don't think anyone should be forced to mine. But it should at least be somewhat comparable.

As-is, platinum is mined 50% faster and is worth 6x more, so it's pretty much an order of magnitude better, which is ridiculous no matter how you look at it.

 

[cmdr milesred]

those are poor prices for profit making..
argo or silver or cobalt..heh

you remember that it was once very pricey, right?

mostly what's already been said.
It's a fuel, not something to mine unless I absolutely NEED to.
I don't mine, or very very rarely mine
but paying current price as a fuel is ok.
tbh I was buying before they nerfed it
and due to the balance that made, I could buy occasionally at some big station in drought, or at outposts for crap amounts..
either way, for me for the sake of just using my carrier, again its easier and faster to buy no matter the cost.

its meant as a fleet carrier for your fleet, chances are if you can afford one without having done the grind for it, you can afford to fly it.

in a case like tritium, to me , mining it for profit is similar to some guy drilling for oil to try to make money. he will but unless he has a huge fleet etc.. he will find out fast that is isn't worth it.
even though I get the reason for the question and my analogy bites

if you are mining because you want to, why not mine for something with sort of longstanding large profits?

or mine everything and sell from your carrier..

fwiw, I will happily regularly buy certain mining materials from you.
many things not sold at stations have a value.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

I think part of the problem is that if you're making 200t/hour now, to make 5x that at 1000t/hour ... bearing in mind you can't carry 1000t at once, so you're going to lose efficiency having to return to your carrier to dump what you've got ... is probably beyond what's actually possible without doing something like "every asteroid in a Tritium hotspot has 100% Tritium content and lots of SSD attachment points".

Even then, when a lightweight carrier can already get most of the way to Beagle and back on a full initial hold, it'd be tough to make mining the attractive option for all but the longest trips.

(For Tritium mining to be properly balanced, the cargo capacity of the carrier would need to be much smaller - 2500t, say - so that if you were 10000 LY out returning to the bubble to refuel wouldn't really get you anywhere, and wouldn't be possible much further out than that. And obviously that's not something which can be changed now)

 

[aRJay]

99.99% of players ignore things like Water or Bauxite when mining. At that point, they're just causing additional lag on the system for no benefit.

That's called bad game design.

If for some insane reason it's relevant, I've got 11 billion credits and have mined virtually every mineral in the game extensively, including mining nearly 1000 tons per hour, so I'd say I'm fairly experienced when it comes to mining, and may be qualified to talk about it's weaknesses.

Having the only things available to mine be either useful or profitable strikes me as poor world design.
It would eliminate from the game the chance to make mistakes when mining.

 

[DemiserofD]

Having the only things available to mine be either useful or profitable strikes me as poor world design.
It would eliminate from the game the chance to make mistakes when mining.

Depends what your threshold for mistakes is.

Personally, I don't think anyone should be able to screw up to the extent of mining commodities that can be purchased for a few hundred credits, and in large enough quantity to never be relevant to mine.

Accidentally mining something that's not quite as good is fine, but it would be demoralizing to mine for a few hours only to come back and find what you mined was worthless. There's a fine line between doing something wrong that makes you want to keep play, and doing something wrong that makes you feel like your effort was wasted and you would be better off quitting.

 

[DemiserofD]

I think part of the problem is that if you're making 200t/hour now, to make 5x that at 1000t/hour ... bearing in mind you can't carry 1000t at once, so you're going to lose efficiency having to return to your carrier to dump what you've got ... is probably beyond what's actually possible without doing something like "every asteroid in a Tritium hotspot has 100% Tritium content and lots of SSD attachment points".

Even then, when a lightweight carrier can already get most of the way to Beagle and back on a full initial hold, it'd be tough to make mining the attractive option for all but the longest trips.

(For Tritium mining to be properly balanced, the cargo capacity of the carrier would need to be much smaller - 2500t, say - so that if you were 10000 LY out returning to the bubble to refuel wouldn't really get you anywhere, and wouldn't be possible much further out than that. And obviously that's not something which can be changed now)

I don't think that sort of capacity balance is really needed. There's nothing wrong with buying tritium, and I see no reason why players should feel obligated to mine it if they don't want to.

The only point is that, if players do want to mine tritium, that should feel viable, too. It can even be a fair bit less profitable than mining platinum, because you still need to convert the platinum into credits and then buy the tritium, which leads to inefficiency. But players shouldn't feel like they're wasting their time mining tritium, as that diminishes their enjoyment of mining even if they normally like it.

 

[avow555]

If Hydrogen fuel was as awkward to collect as Tritium this game would have died a long time ago.

Tritium needs to be cheap and plentiful and mining was not the way to collect it.
Scooping from a gas giant could have been an interesting new game mechanic for example.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

I don't think that sort of capacity balance is really needed. There's nothing wrong with buying tritium, and I see no reason why players should feel obligated to mine it if they don't want to.

The only point is that, if players do want to mine tritium, that should feel viable, too. It can even be a fair bit less profitable than mining platinum, because you still need to convert the platinum into credits and then buy the tritium, which leads to inefficiency. But players shouldn't feel like they're wasting their time mining tritium, as that diminishes their enjoyment of mining even if they normally like it.

Agreed.

Possibly - and impossible to justify in lore, but never mind - the solution would be to make carriers dual-fuel: "Carrier Fuel" which can be bought from starports at the current price of Tritium ... and "Tritium" which becomes mining-only, but also 5x (or perhaps even 10x) as effective per tonne at moving the ship.

Then you don't need ridiculous strip-mining rates to make mining Tritium the better option, but people who just want to buy a pile of fuel and use it that way can still do that.

 

[fu9ar]

doing something wrong that makes you feel like your effort was wasted and you would be better off quitting.

Because you had poorly tuned expectations from grindlords trying to make a living off of YouTube clickbait videos. The problem is the grindlords, not the game.

This has been a trend all over Elite development for the past few years. People in the community screech and whine because massacre missions have a chance of failure due to BGS states not providing RES or pirates, so FDev adds in the mission specific signal sources so that now we all have basically no chance of ever failing a massacre mission.

Why not remove all of that entirely and just play Spaceship Fight? Just pick a loadout and spawn into a big deathmatch? Hell, why not remove the space ships and we can all go back to playing Quake 3 Arena rails only? That would be perfectly balanced!

 

[alexzk]

I think problem is they set fixed prices. No matter what you mine u will get 200t/hr at best. Even water (I tried!).
I think proper way would be change tonnage per hour depending on rarity of material, for example water could be 2000t/hr and then set prices related to those rates.

 

[cmdr milesred]

o well everyone has different reasons..
again though, I will happily pay or trade tritium for the things I want. maybe both
another person mentioned it sort of.
are you after credits or is it just tritium,
or is it all about tonnage per hour?
if so I cant do anything there, nor care to.
but if you want profit for your mining...as part of the game whats wrong with being a miner/vendor and negotiating some contracts with some cmdrs that have needs they do not wish to fill themselves.

I can generate a billion a day without mining. I can increase that by 50% easily if I had some miners I could buy or trade with.
for me its not about the credits, even though that's all good, I play the BGS, and I have a void in my markets because I don't mine.
Having this void means I do not have full control. You could help change that.

 

[Tryst]

If it wasn't profitable to mine Tritium unless you have a carrier, mining could be as fast as you want it to be. They could cut prices by 75% and make asteroids drop 10x as much.
Selling price doesn't matter, stations could buy at 250 credits per ton and sell for 1,000. Either way, it makes mining it yourself a lot faster and cheaper.

Carrier owners can increase the buy price and decrease the sell cost to make it more profitable for themselves to trade in Tritium.

 

[Ettanin]

That's right, it's five point two times faster to jump 10000ly back to the bubble, mine platinum for credits, buy a load of tritium, and jump 10000ly back, than it is to actually mine tritium yourself.

No, tritium is at the right spot with 40k to 60k a ton station value. If it was worth ~200 to 300k a ton like painite, platinum and osmium, prices would become much worse with regards to carrier demand and woe to you if you are out in the deep black without a mining ship.

Do this and you'd effectively force carrier owners to become miners because other activities, while buffed, not nearly come close to similar efficiency (bar some exploitable generation rule edge cases). Because if stations would pay that price, they will charge you way more to buy it.