At what point, if any,

[arbitraryfrog]

does hydro become a problem in this universe? there seems to be lots of it swimming around for me so far but curious what the situation is like when the fleets are a bit bigger?

[commander abаб]

It's not much of a problem, just build up your hydro mines and storage.  Plus build up your mines on the territories, so they are producing resources while you are holding them.  On the planets, be sure to build the resource dens to keep your resources safe!  Remember, you don't need much hydro to deploy your ships on a nearby territory held by a distant planet, then lifting the ships and resources, abandon that territory, then recall.

[jc]

depends what you mean by problem. when you're hitting the bigger NPCs you'll have to use the merchant but I can get by with 1 or 2 trades a week. Hitting them is reasonable cheap as you can warp to a terri. Even better if it's in the same system as the NPC

[commander abаб]

What are LALs?

[Pantin]

large abandoned leviathan (seeker)

[jc]

When you say the bigger ones, I assume you are referring to the LFCs? I notice there is a different balance in res depending on which type of NPC you hit. LALs for example, do they not provide a good enough hydro return to avoid the trade merc?

seekers dont have any ships in this uni so they're not really worth hitting anyway. Enemy fleets large and small can still be hit for a hydro profit but if you want to grow you need to hit the LFCs and they almost never return a hydro profit. I usually spend 10 times more to hit them than I get back in plunder

[jc]

The biggest ones are over 500b debris and take over 200m Athenas.  I hit one yesterday for 200b 2 systems over with 100m Athena which was about 5b hydro. 

[Blue]

Hydro is the one drawback, in this uni.
There is not one target out there that will bring a hydro profit, for my fleet.
Targets do bring a huge profit in Ore and Crystal. They are producing in the trillions now.
However, I spend between 50 billion and 100 billion hydro, to get it.