53.59ly from a Mandalay? Really?

Tifu

Tifu
Cmdr Snuffler said:
A lot of builds you see for explorers are paper thin, which is "ok" for solo or PG.
Like others have mentioned, I also build explorers to be a bit more sturdy while sacrificing a small amount of jump range.
I don't see bi-weaves being useful for exploration, much prefer to use a smaller prismic, reinforced, with an e rated thermal booster. Generally equates to much, much, tougher shields.
Same for hull, Lightweight Reactive, with a single HRP engineered for thermal.
Also, almost all of my non combat ships use Engine enhanced engineering on the PD, which means I can always boost after 5s even with a smaller PD. No idea why people use charge enhanced, unless I'm missing something.
A rated engines are also a must, mainly because I don't want to fly like a snail when on a planet, plus has the added benefit of escaping an NPC or PvP combat scenarios.

As an example, taking Ian Doncasters Krait Phanton builds above, I would go for more something like this: https://s.orbis.zone/qAlD
Sure, it's lost 6ly jump range, but huge gains in shields, hull, top speed and boost. More survivable, certainly in Open mode.
At the end of the day build and engineer a ship that suits your flying/playing style. No one build is right, or wrong.
Click to expand...

Neat trick with the prismatic shields, may adopt this technique - thank you :)

I've always thought the assumption that anything outside the Bubble is safe was at best only true in the medium term. Let's see what the Ascendancy patch brings 🤞
 

Silalus

Silalus
Cmdr Snuffler said:
Also, almost all of my non combat ships use Engine enhanced engineering on the PD, which means I can always boost after 5s even with a smaller PD. No idea why people use charge enhanced, unless I'm missing something.
Click to expand...
G5 charge enhanced is +45% engines recharge speed, -5% engines capacity. G5 engine focused is a slightly lower +44% engines recharge speed but +60% engines capacity. Super conduits as an experimental gives an additional +4% recharge speed in exchange for -4% capacity.

So, charge enhanced is always slightly better for time between boosts until you hit the 5s cap (and as an ancillary benefit, doesn't compromise shield recharging ability). But engine focused can be a reasonable choice for undersized PD's that otherwise wouldn't be able to boost at all with CE/SC.

In practice, that use case is rare if you want to get to the 5s boost cap. For example, the smallest PD that can get to <5s for the Phantom is the 8T 5D PD. It will get to <5s whether you apply CE/SC or EF/SC, so personally I would always go for CE/SC as a slightly more versatile option. But if you are ok with being slightly above the 5s boost cap and prioritizing mass, it can be helpful. For that same Phantom, the 2T 3D PD can't boost at all with CE/SC. However, you can get it to boost every 8.7s with EF/SC. Not <5s, but not terrible for some use cases with a 6T weight savings. (Though if you're willing to go up to 9.0s between boosts, you could achieve that with charge enhanced and stripped down, and also save another 0.2T of weight.) A very similar situation exists for the DBX.

I'm curious, only because I can't think of one offhand, is there a build where you can achieve a boost at the 5s cap using an engine focused PD but couldn't achieve the same performance at the same weight of PD using charge enhanced instead? I've only ever found builds where EF makes sense when I'm willing to have a boost less often than 5s, but I could be forgetting or not thinking of one.
 

Northpin

Northpin
Silalus said:
G5 charge enhanced is +45% engines recharge speed, -5% engines capacity. G5 engine focused is a slightly lower +44% engines recharge speed but +60% engines capacity. Super conduits as an experimental gives an additional +4% recharge speed in exchange for -4% capacity.

So, charge enhanced is always slightly better for time between boosts until you hit the 5s cap (and as an ancillary benefit, doesn't compromise shield recharging ability). But engine focused can be a reasonable choice for undersized PD's that otherwise wouldn't be able to boost at all with CE/SC.

In practice, that use case is rare if you want to get to the 5s boost cap. For example, the smallest PD that can get to <5s for the Phantom is the 8T 5D PD. It will get to <5s whether you apply CE/SC or EF/SC, so personally I would always go for CE/SC as a slightly more versatile option. But if you are ok with being slightly above the 5s boost cap and prioritizing mass, it can be helpful. For that same Phantom, the 2T 3D PD can't boost at all with CE/SC. However, you can get it to boost every 8.7s with EF/SC. Not <5s, but not terrible for some use cases with a 6T weight savings. (Though if you're willing to go up to 9.0s between boosts, you could achieve that with charge enhanced and stripped down, and also save another 0.2T of weight.) A very similar situation exists for the DBX.

I'm curious, only because I can't think of one offhand, is there a build where you can achieve a boost at the 5s cap using an engine focused PD but couldn't achieve the same performance at the same weight of PD using charge enhanced instead? I've only ever found builds where EF makes sense when I'm willing to have a boost less often than 5s, but I could be forgetting or not thinking of one.
Click to expand...

For an exploration build i always use PD with engine focused and cluster capacitors and i never use bi-weaves so the shield recharge rate is not impaired in any way.
The engine focused PD has to be able to give me 3-4 boost in quick succession so the increased capacity from cluster capacitors usually works better than super conduits, especially for a lightweight build.

Shields, depending on internals available, are either D-rated (reinforced or enhanced low power depending on size), A-rated or prismatics (enhanced low power) and the experimental is always low draw.

I'm usually happy with 65+ ly jump range builds, the only concession being a Krait mk2 with srv hangar and 5d slf hangar that is doing 60 ly jumps (the fun of flying a slf does wonders combating the space madness)

So, as it seems now, the Mandy looks almost perfect to me.
Almost (it's missing the SLF hangar)
 

Schmack

Schmack
Has the exploring mentality change to longer jump range ships being better? If so, is that due to the need to travel so far outside of the bubble to find unexplored systems and plants? Of course more jump range is better, options are always better than no options. I am just curious if exploring now means traveling vs discovery since a 35LY ship can explore just as well as an 85LY ship, minus the edge of the galaxy jumps.

If I was exploring the US, for example, I'd not take a flight from LA to NY. I'd take a car across the country.
 

Ian Doncaster

Ian Doncaster
Schmack said:
If so, is that due to the need to travel so far outside of the bubble to find unexplored systems and plants?
Click to expand...
On my most recent exploration a couple of months ago, I was finding completely unexplored systems fairly regularly just 1000 LY from the bubble [1] including one with an ELW, and undiscovered planets within previously visited systems as close as 600LY from Sol (so maybe 350 LY from the edge of the bubble).

Unmapped planets and unscanned exobiology were fairly common by the 600 LY mark as well. So there's certainly no absolute need to travel a large distance purely to get first discoveries.

On the other hand, the types of plants possible to find at all vary between galactic regions, and may have other conditions not found near the bubble, so first discovery or not you'll have to travel a long way to find some of those.


[1] This obviously depends very strongly on the direction - a lot of what I was doing was 4-500 LY above or below the galactic plane. Conversely, going around near the galactic plane I didn't find an unscanned planet until about 2000 LY out (and only a few of those), and no completely unvisited systems.
 

angusmadmac1

angusmadmac1
No the thoughts have changed so that you can get out there and back quickly as it's easy money. There are systems close by where folk with their max jump have jumped over those systems. The need for max jump range has been propagated by Fdev anaconda then booster then sco , there isn't really a need for it. But you know hairless apes because they can they will ?
 

Schmack

Schmack
angusmadmac1 said:
No the thoughts have changed so that you can get out there and back quickly as it's easy money. There are systems close by where folk with their max jump have jumped over those systems. The need for max jump range has been propagated by Fdev anaconda then booster then sco , there isn't really a need for it. But you know hairless apes because they can they will ?
Click to expand...
I am a big believer in "if you can you should" so I get it. That's why we can carry so many different ships on carriers, you just never know.
 

Northpin

Northpin
Schmack said:
Has the exploring mentality change to longer jump range ships being better?
Click to expand...

For me longer jump ranges means getting there or getting back faster.
A 70ly explorer ship can do 5 ly jumps as good as it can do 70 ly jumps - so the argument that explorers dont need larger jump ranges else they dont/cant explore is a fallacy
A 50 ly ship cannot do 70ly jumps, duh!

And no, it's not only 20 ly difference, because when riding the neutron highway, the difference between 200ly and 280ly is getting quite significant
 

Kissamies

Kissamies
Oh yeah, I forgot. Re: Bi-Weave shields. Not me, but I believe some explorers min-max their power so harshly that they turn theirs shields off for supercruise and only turn them off for landing. With BW they don't have to wait so long for them to turn on, I think.
 

kofeyh

kofeyh
Emphatical said:
The Mandalay easily gets to above 60 with minimal engineering and fully kitted for explo tops out just around 90 anyone saying anything else is gaslighting you.
Click to expand...

It should be noted that 90ly range is optimal range, not actual. If you are going to claim someone is gaslighting, try not to quote numbers without context.
 

The Lawful

The Lawful
Getting closer.

(Mellon Collie -> Tonight, Tonight, but w/o the Pumpkins, if you remember the MTV clip)

suno.com

Giddyup Mandalay! by @lawful1 | Suno

violins trumpets fast-paced male voice giddyup song. Listen and make your own with Suno.
suno.com suno.com

vs.

(Swinging 50s - as in Fallout, but without the double meaning)

suno.com

Giddyup Mandalay! by @lawful1 | Suno

50s big band crooners fast-paced male voice giddyup grand song. Listen and make your own with Suno.
suno.com suno.com

vs.

(Stadium Rock - Wall of Sound, powerchords, great solo, driving - but limited in ranges of all kinds)

suno.com

Giddyup Mandalay!

Listen and make your own on Suno.
suno.com suno.com

vs.

(Celtic, WIP. 30% Mark Knopfler. Until the shouter destroys it all)

https://suno.com/song/3ed35e13-cd5d-404e-98cc-57e3416a3071

It goes 90+ ly here btw.

O7,
🙃
 
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