Fleet Carriers use tritium as fuel source, you can mine tritium from icy planetary rings. This is a space exploration story about searching for resource rich tritium rings.
Last time I played Elite Dangerous was when low temperature diamond mining was going on in col 285 back in july 2020. I was thinking of returning to elite when odyssey is released with new planetary textures, new somewhat landable atmospheric planets and of course walking outside your ship.
Last time running Elite was last summer on 2020-07-15 then v3.7 fleet carriers patch 3 (v3.7.3?) killed LTD mining and carrier business.
2021-03-21T11:05:00Z Started elite launcher and pressed upgrade.
2021-03-21T11:07:00Z Upgraded.
Then started actual elite game, saw that I had 87k credits in my personal account and ship was black paint lakon type-9. Had no clue about HOTAS buttons so to be safe I started navigation training tutorial, it went through alright :)
2021-03-21T11:21:00Z Started elite and logged in on solo play. Was in PMC Wanderer (fleet carrier) on PMC Miner 2 lakon type-9 ship. Had 4 inbox messages waiting.
But first I started EDMC. I was running v4.0.1 and there was v4.2.3 upgrade waiting, so I upgraded.
2021-03-21T11:28:07Z And started EliteLog, now I'm running in my basic setup and should be able to normally play elite :)
Hey at least I can get easier UTC timestamps copy pasted here ;)
Those four inbox messages were fleet carrier PMC Wanderer weekly upkeeps. They were 7.950 million each. There was only four of those because the messages auto delete in 30 days. Would have been interesting to see how many millions, meaning weeks, it was since I last logged in on 2020-07-15 when patch 3 destroyed LTD mining and fleet carrier business.
Anyways.
Fleet carrier is fully fueled 1000t in tritium fuel depot. Carrier balance is 48.614 billion.
Unfortunately I cannot remember what carrier balance was on 2020-07-15, got no memory of the values, have no screenshot or diary text written down, so that information is now officially lost.
PMC Wanderer installed services: 1050 units, free space: 23950 units. So actual free CARGO space with this outfitting is 22900 units.
I activated suspended services so we are back in business.
I was in Col 285 Sector CC-K a38-5 system, it was really sad to see only 8 carriers next to PMC Wanderer and PMC PapaBear, times have changed since the low temperature diamond mining craze of 2020 :(
Inventory of PMC Miner 2 I had 15 LTDs, 21 tritium and 78 limpets, hmm wonder where I got these as I surely didn't mine them at the last day, oh well.
2021-03-21T11:57:39Z Switched PMC Miner 2 to PMC Explorer in anticipation that I need to go scan some systems soon.
Set PMC Wanderer to jump towards Snake sector, lets go do quick test trial exploration tritium mining journey.
I want to learn for 2021 Elite v3.7.11 patch how bad is tritium mining for fleet carrier refueling. Also I want to test PMC mining and other ships in action. Its better to do such small hop test trial before committing into some 30k+ extremely long exploration journey.
Not that I'm planning on such trip right now, but its good to test your equipment for future use.
2021-03-21T12:23:22Z Docked at Col 359 Sector SC-K c9-14/Q1L-19Z. Tritium fuel depot now 928t.
Departed from the carrier with PMC Explorer, need to go find a suitable tritium mining ring system :)
Then used galaxy map to filter non-visited star systems, oddly found several Snake Sector systems visited stars cache claims I have not been yet.
2021-03-21T12:49:31Z Found tritium hotspot in Snake Sector QI-S b4-3 system.
2021-03-21T12:55:49Z Found another tritium hotspot in this system so plotted PMC Wanderer to jump here. I'm going to try some tritium mining :)
2021-03-21T13:12:06Z PMC Wanderer arrived. Time to dock and switch to PMC Miner 2, or whatever ship had sub surface deposit and laser mining capability.
2021-03-21T13:18:12Z Switched to PMC Miner 3 which is sub surface deposit and laser mining python, shield-less of course.
2021-03-21T13:21:18Z Dropped into the ring on tritium hotspot. First rock prospected had surface deposits and 29.79% tritium content. Started to laser mine it.
2021-03-21T14:05:27Z Both monitors went black suddenly, didn't get any nvidia driver crash dialog but this was clearly the same issue. Elite was running on the background because I heard engine noise and it even received controls from my HOTAS so I could use thrusters, but screen was all black. No amount of ALT-TABbing helped. So had to task manager kill elite process.
Restarted elite. Current status is 60% hull damage from collision with ice cube due black screen, 117 tritium and 107 limpets onboard.
So on rough estimate would be that sub surface deposit and laser miner python gets 100t tritium in 40 minutes.
2021-03-21T14:55:53Z Cargo hold and refinery hoppers are full, 224t of tritium onboard.
Found TWO ice cubes with four tritium sub surface deposits right next to each other.
Distances to hotspots: tritium 967km, snake sector qi-s b4-3 a 744ls, grandidiere 0.75ls, alexandrite 0.92ls, LTD 1.04ls, LTD 1.09ls, alexandirite 1.35ls, alexandirite 1.41ls.
I probably wont find this ever again, but at least those values are now documented and screenshotted. This would be great place to farm tritium by doing these slow rotating ice cubes, then relogin and doing it all over again (assuming relogin would respawn them).
2021-03-21T15:03:07Z Docked at Snake Sector QI-S b4-3/Q1L-19Z. Put 104t tritium to fuel depot and rest 120t to carrier cargo, then refinery hopper produced 7t of tritium which I also put to carrier cargo. That cargo now 148t tritium and fuel depot 1000t full.
Now I'm going to shut down elite and take a lunch break.
2021-03-21T16:01:33Z Lunch break over, back in-game and transferred all limpets from PMC Wanderer to PMC Miner 3. I'm going to check out if I can find those two ice cubes with four tritium sub surface deposits.
Found another 4 sub surface deposit tritium ice cube, distance to tritium hotspot 959km.
2021-03-21T17:45:10Z Cargo hold and refinery hoppers full of tritium 224t + refinery ;)
2021-03-21T17:48:26Z Docked at Snake Sector QI-S b4-3/Q1L-19Z. Then offloaded 224t tritium to carriers cargo, then 8t from the refinery. Carrier now has 380t of tritium plus the previously full tritium fuel depot.
2021-03-21T17:50:33Z Shut down elite, time to call it a night. Was fun doing few exploration jumps and then few hours of tritium mining, but remains to be seen what do I decide to do with my near future elite time, do I continue playing elite or go back to FS19 terrain editing... just not sure at this moment.