Like how grade 5 materials magically exist several hundred LY from the bubble, all in the same system (and one in a neighboring system), tritium could magically be abundant in systems that far from the bubble so carriers could have their own super highway with easier tritium mining. It would not affect the rest of the game AFAIK.
What's the most efficient way to mine Tritium?
- Thread starter BradHann
- Start date
Nothing magical, just so happened during generation, we were lucky.
Such things exists other parts but rare other places too.
As for tritium, last spot had no sub-surfaces, it was only surface deposits on each shiny I check. Couple jumps before each 3rd random rock had 30%+ concentration for lasers. So it is sort of "random" too (but I think depends on surroundings though).
unfortunately with mining, there is no getting good at it really. you can't minimize wasted time by eyeballing a system or, once in a ring, by checking out some external cues of the rocks using experience. you have to go up to each one as if it were as likely as the last to be high concentration of whatever you are looking for. the closest you can get is mapping by taking screenshots and editing them so you can create a series to match up and follow over and over again.
what makes up the content within a system is part of the stellar forge, so it's not really random. but there's no cues or hints that a player can use so it might as well be. every hot spot could be great just a equally as it could suck. every roid is the same way. this is what makes tritium mining so bad. since every wasted roid you travel to or have to travel passed in completely wasted time devoid of gameplay and the magnitude of this time sink doesn't play into any eventual reward. spend minutes looking or find a good one in 10 seconds... the game doesn't care. and the game doesn't give you the ability to be better unless you map it with screenshots and play with a second screen to reference and are cool just repeating the same path.
metal is significantly better because you have way less roids offering nothing of value consuming your game session.
to improve tritium mining, fdev needs to make more of the things in ice rings valuable. they don't have to increase credit value. a better option would be giving some new unique ways to assign value to these otherwise cheap mining only ores ( gasp... actual new gameplay that isn't just doing an existing mechanic) . at least making it as rewarding - time wise - as mining the other high value items not in ice rings would be amazing.
they won't of course...i think the best the players can hope for is adjusting tritium fuel use.
or, and I'm sorry everyone but I'm sure this idea will be the first one they listen to from the players because it's so bad,... but they could allow players to unlock a guardian fsd booster for the carrier that is equipped like a carrier service. the unlock will of course require 100 guardian blue prints and only 6000 guardian parts of various types (for sure not everything is available at the same kind of site) and 1 billion credits to purchase once unlocked at guardian tech broker. this module increases jump range to 1000ly for the same fuel cost as 500ly in a normal carrier of the same mass. the fuel use is the same regardless of the jump range between 500 and 1000. below 500, the module's only benefit is negating the negative impact of its own mass on jump cost.
that checks so many boxes for fdev that it's probably considered nsfw in their office.
what makes up the content within a system is part of the stellar forge, so it's not really random. but there's no cues or hints that a player can use so it might as well be. every hot spot could be great just a equally as it could suck. every roid is the same way. this is what makes tritium mining so bad. since every wasted roid you travel to or have to travel passed in completely wasted time devoid of gameplay and the magnitude of this time sink doesn't play into any eventual reward. spend minutes looking or find a good one in 10 seconds... the game doesn't care. and the game doesn't give you the ability to be better unless you map it with screenshots and play with a second screen to reference and are cool just repeating the same path.
metal is significantly better because you have way less roids offering nothing of value consuming your game session.
to improve tritium mining, fdev needs to make more of the things in ice rings valuable. they don't have to increase credit value. a better option would be giving some new unique ways to assign value to these otherwise cheap mining only ores ( gasp... actual new gameplay that isn't just doing an existing mechanic) . at least making it as rewarding - time wise - as mining the other high value items not in ice rings would be amazing.
they won't of course...i think the best the players can hope for is adjusting tritium fuel use.
or, and I'm sorry everyone but I'm sure this idea will be the first one they listen to from the players because it's so bad,... but they could allow players to unlock a guardian fsd booster for the carrier that is equipped like a carrier service. the unlock will of course require 100 guardian blue prints and only 6000 guardian parts of various types (for sure not everything is available at the same kind of site) and 1 billion credits to purchase once unlocked at guardian tech broker. this module increases jump range to 1000ly for the same fuel cost as 500ly in a normal carrier of the same mass. the fuel use is the same regardless of the jump range between 500 and 1000. below 500, the module's only benefit is negating the negative impact of its own mass on jump cost.
that checks so many boxes for fdev that it's probably considered nsfw in their office.
If we speak about ideas - my co-pilot can buy own carrier already. Also carrier's crew gets millions weekly. They could go mine instead me for that money
Difference icy-tritium is because, there are 3 grades: rocky-mixed-metallic rings which cover all that materials in different proportions, while icy takes everything else, so each one in ice is 3 times less concentrated then anything in other rings.
...I see tendency already, for example, tritum spot tends to be far away from the star. So if system has 10 icy rings, you should start from last one for tritium. And most likely it will be best spot if couple rings has it.
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I doubt it just so happened that all G5 raw mats spawned in the same system that far from the main star and someone found it.
You're right, it didn't happen; four G4 types spawned at crystal shards in one system, two more in another system roughly 500LYs away, and one type doesn't drop from crystal shards at all.
(And crystal shards always spawn a huge distance in-system from the star...)
Because that's how it happen IRL. Nothing FDev did.
at the G4 vs G5 correction.I'll let you in on a secret: crystal shards aren't rare. They're just restricted to certain areas of the galaxy, and found on far in-system icy planets that most people don't bother scanning.
Not abundant, but not rare. Restricted by game design, which is basically what I said originally. It's not part of RNG, neither should tritium mining be. There can be abundant zones of tritium, restricted to certain parts of the galaxy, but not rare.
That was after the nerf
I disagree
- For laser mining - the ship type, outfitting and position relative to the asteroid being lasered is extremely important. Fastest mining rig i tried is the Conda using the specific build that makes use of the frontal cargo hatch - since this is significantly reducing the limpet travel time
- For SSD mining, FA Off skills that allow you to orbit the asteroid in sync with it's rotation (and good timing and aiming skills) can make quite a difference in getting the max output from a SSD asteroid in the minimum time.
Mining is quite an art, unfortunately a lost one since they killed mining in the summer of 2020
I mostly laser-mine with my Anaconda, though I've got SSD missiles and an abrasion blaster in case I run across a rock needing those. Takes me around 60 to 90 minutes to fill it up and get back to my FC. Like others, I usually take it easy during mining, firing up YouTube on the other monitor.
the difference in time to mine being as optimal as possible vs just whatever gets you producing chunks the fastest with the least amount of time between rocks is very small.
the best miner can't optimize out of of the wasted time spent due to poor roids. the best miner can't increase the yield of the roids.
to me, i'm less concerned with min/maxing any fun out of the gameplay and more concerned with the amount of time you spend not doing anything that returns value for the time you are expending. the vast majority of tritium mining is not spent collecting rocks... it's in getting to roids to eventually get enough rocks.
as above, the issue is not efficiency at the point of collecting. that's gameplay... as simple as it may be. it's the time sink around that.
well, you said one cannot get good at mining, but they can and the difference can be quite spectacular
sure, if you complain about eyeballing a system, probing the ring and diving in the hotspot - it's the same as researching a trade route and getting there
point is, if one really wants to drag a carrier out in the black, they better gid gud at mining instead of complaining about low mining rates and demand tritium to scooped from stars or removed altogether
I find the exact opposite which why tritium is now the only thing I will mine.
well, you said one cannot get good at mining, but they can and the difference can be quite spectacular
sure, if you complain about eyeballing a system, probing the ring and diving in the hotspot - it's the same as researching a trade route and getting there
point is, if one really wants to drag a carrier out in the black, they better gid gud at mining instead of complaining about low mining rates and demand tritium to scooped from stars or removed altogether
Regardless of skill I can mine Plat in a plat hotspot faster than I can mine trit in a trit hotspot. Improved technique makes both faster, because the same techniques and equipment apply. If anything plat requires less skill & equipment because I can just laser mine plat & get an (imo) acceptable rate of progression compared to trit.
I only mine two things, plat & trit. I'd be happy to fuel my carrier with plat if it'd accept it because the rate of progression is more reasonable to me. I don't mine because I enjoy mining but as part of the cost of travelling by carrier.
nobody is complaining about the actual action of mining. what is being complained about is the rng time sink all around it. there is no getting good about that. you basically leave it to chance or you refer to out of game guides.well, you said one cannot get good at mining, but they can and the difference can be quite spectacular
sure, if you complain about eyeballing a system, probing the ring and diving in the hotspot - it's the same as researching a trade route and getting there
and this is nothing like trading. at least the game gives you the option of buying trade data in game and trade is utterly predictable. there's no chance for the station to randomly not buy your goods and not tell you till you land.
the only way you can get parity with trading is by mapping roid fields (out of game) and repeatedly going thru the exact same route.
that's like suggesting the way you should do surface base stuff is to relog.
I'm not sure why you're trying to defend a weak time sink excuse for a game mechanic that nobody would mistake for good.
the only options aren't just "sucky time sink loop" or " automated non-gameplay circumvention". i mean, that may be the level of faith in fdev some may have. but there are a massive number of alternatives to a game loop that relies on dead time where the player is doing nothing for a reward they can't predict will be worth the time. and that is what tritium mining is.
Ofc, but the thread is about fueling a carrier in the black where mining platinum then selling and buying tritium is not an option
I'm well aware that platinum can be mined twice as fast (at least) and 1t of platinum can buy 5 tons of tritium, so getting tritium by platinum is like 10 times faster than mining tritium alone.
And generally speaking i woudnt mind if they would make carriers run on platinum, but they could as well improve fuel efficiency once more.
If they double it again, we could jump 16 times on a single tank but then again, why stop here? they can double it again and we could jump 32 times on a single tank
and so on.
No, i'm not defending it, i'm just pointing out that git gud is valid for mining too, not only for surviving in Open.
So carrier refueling it's FDev's design choice for carriers.
I dont see it as a weak time sink - just a gameplay mechanic to balance (the extremely powerful) carriers by incurring some downsides when someone moves a carrier out of the bubble.
They're huge mobile bases that imo were supposed to stay in the bubble initially - just remember they had no UC and the initial range was like 2 jumps per 1000t of tritium
And they caved in by improving considerably the fuel efficiency (they doubled it, then they doubled it again)
You complaining about this would be like complaining about military fuel in old Elite games, with the mention that you could not mine military fuel in FE/FFE
It's been a while since I took my FC out for a long trek, but for me, I just set a lucrative buy order for Tritium on my FC, and fill it up for the entire round trip including a comfortable extra amount to allow for taking side trips with no worries. Credits are so easy to get, and after a while, you can't spend them all no matter how hard you try. Yes, a heavy FC uses more fuel, so just pay the people who fill it for you. That's the most efficient way for me because I don't have to spend time doing it.
Of course it's possible to "git gud" at mining. Perfecting your ship build, understanding limpet behaviour, understanding types of deposits and trading-off travel time with mining time, knowing what sells and where; all these things develop with experience.
Just one example: setting seismic charges is the only game activity where you have to aim slow projectiles at moving targets without the help of "leading sights"!
What if I said, "There's no skill in combat, it's just pressing fire buttons"?
Just one example: setting seismic charges is the only game activity where you have to aim slow projectiles at moving targets without the help of "leading sights"!
What if I said, "There's no skill in combat, it's just pressing fire buttons"?
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Do you park your carrier in a system that sells Tritium or do you just set the price to compensate for the jumps?