I love the game but FD ignoring 95% of folks and caving to 1% makes me want to walk away.

[CMDR Zadian Lichtfrost]

but lakon already make a (infact TWO) exploration ships..... and yet you would rather their medium sized heavy cargo hauler out explore their actual exploration ships.

personally i would rather see a zorgon peterson explorer or a saud kruger exploration ship..

(but then i would be more in favour of more specialised ships which are actually honed towards specific tasks where as it seems some (you?) would rather every ship be capable of excelling at every role if you buy the correct modules.

then again me personally i would rebalance the multiroles to make sure that whilst they CAN do all things, they are not optimal at any of them.

If I have to decide between a "new" ship capable of exploration and no ship I would choose "new" ship, even if it is yet again a Lakon ship. I just thought that the buff of the T-7 turned ship that is not very useful into something interesting and useful for some special use cases.

If I had to decide what new exploration ship gets introduced I would probably select a different manufacturer - actually I would introduce a exploration ship from every manufacturer (or most other ship classes).

Exploration is a bit of a problem when it comes to "dedicated" or "specialized", because in the end the only things really needed is the discovery scanner and a fuel scoop. Everything else is nice to have.

As a result a good exploration ship is basically a ship with long jump-range and enough module space. Since module space can be used for cargo or other modules making a pure exploration ship with the current system is impossible - it will always be at least a semi good multi-role/trader.

I don't think that every ship should be good at everything using the right modules. There are a lot of other aspects that have an effect on how a ship can be used.
I don't think that jump-range alone makes a good exploration ship. I think there is a place in this game for long-range traders and long-range combat ships - it just has to be balanced in some way to prevent that ship to be useful for everything.
In the case of the T-7 it would have been balanced by large landing pad, no combat ability and not much cargo (for the size of the ship).

 

[JLS1981]

Yeah.. what they all said.. and..

My bobble head is substandard...

 

[Harley Quinn]

I think the T-7 could be a really cool exploration ship. The cockpit is quite nice. It has plenty of module slots. It has no weapons to speak off. (OK, and I think it really looks like a utilitarian exploration or cargo ship).

What makes the T-7 such a no-go as an exploration ship?
Would changing the name of the "new" T-7 to T-7 Explorer help?

Nothing to stop it being used as such, but it’s a dedicated trade/haulage ship, not one of the exploration ships.

Changing the name suddenly won’t help. Changing the name of the ford transit to the ford artic explorer wouldn’t change the fact that it was built and designed to ship cargo or make it better than a vehicle designed for the artic. We may have simple mechanics in ED but the T series should be what they were designed for, while the exploration ships do what they were designed for.

As noted I would drop it to medium pad as it should have been, but redesignsting some modules to cargo/industry only sorts the issue. Yes it could be stripped back to an empty tin can with range but not a proper exploration ship then.

 

[Brrokk]

If we want a ship with large cargo capacity, but similar jump range both with cargo and empty, the way to achieve that is to increase its weight, and also give it a bigger FSD. That way, the cargo is a smaller proportion of the all-up weight. I think that could be a good way of buffing all the Type ships, without making stripped versions of them into crazy explorers. They look like they should have heavy hulls and bulky internals too.

 

[Ziljan]

I went from page 1 to page 17.

Did I miss anything, or have the crybabies who agree with the OP been crying rivers of entitled bollox?

...this from the guy who I just repped only days ago while he was 'crying' about the lack of more exploration ship options.

 

[willowfan]

but lakon already make a (infact TWO) exploration ships..... and yet you would rather their medium sized heavy cargo hauler out explore their actual exploration ships.

personally i would rather see a zorgon peterson explorer or a saud kruger exploration ship..

(but then i would be more in favour of more specialised ships which are actually honed towards specific tasks where as it seems some (you?) would rather every ship be capable of excelling at every role if you buy the correct modules.

then again me personally i would rebalance the multiroles to make sure that whilst they CAN do all things, they are not optimal at any of them.

Love the Lakon ships but a Saud Kruger X ship would be great, exploration with style and comfort

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

...this from the guy who I just repped only days ago while he was 'crying' about the lack of more exploration ship options.

It's called a parody

Except for the entitled bollox. That's just class.

 

[Harley Quinn]

As a basic DBX should be range and basic exploration. AspX should be similar range and full exploration. Problem is that needs something to explore beyond jump honk scan.

Conda in this balance should carry all the things dedicated exploration ships wouldn’t. Fighters, fuel limpits etc. T7 with jump range best as deep space miner so equipment for that.

Problem is that would only leave T7 with real purpose for being there equipped.

This is a problem with the depth of exploration or rather lack of it.

Fix that and who cares if someone is flying a stripped ship with better range and ADS/DSS. Those ships should cost a lot more than DBX with no advantage other than travelling.

We need dedicated exploration and industrial slots on role specific ships. The multi roles would be the ones with no restrictions on modules but compromises accordingly. Add some depth to exploration and role of ships would be more important than stripped down jump range.

I hope it will come in time but finding (for example) a mining point on a planet where you could fill your ship with platinum would make a point to exploration in a mainly lifeless universe. Once found returning with the T7 or whatever to exploit the site would give the pay off for time spent finding the spot.

 

[[VR] Mad Mike]

If we want a ship with large cargo capacity, but similar jump range both with cargo and empty, the way to achieve that is to increase its weight, and also give it a bigger FSD. That way, the cargo is a smaller proportion of the all-up weight. I think that could be a good way of buffing all the Type ships, without making stripped versions of them into crazy explorers. They look like they should have heavy hulls and bulky internals too.

i think this has merit

 

[[VR] Mad Mike]

Once found returning with the T7 or whatever to exploit the site would give the pay off for time spent finding the spot.

exactly this! however unfortunately that means a level of persistance which simply does not exist in ED (yet?)

if you find that rich vein of platinum right now in your exploration ship, as soon as you leave the instance to go and get your T7..... "poof" it is gone.

and this is a massive shame.......

 

[CMDR Zadian Lichtfrost]

… We may have simple mechanics in ED but the T series should be what they were designed for, while the exploration ships do what they were designed for.
…

What ship is more designed for exploration, a ship with minimal weapons, good module space and good jump-range or a ship with quite a good selection of weapons, good module space and really good jump-range?

I don't think that there is a single ship in Elite Dangerous that is designed for exploration. The two ships with "Explorer" in their name are closer to combat ships than to exploration ship and the only thing that makes them less usable for combat is their low agility and the only thing that really makes them good at exploration is their jump-range.
Not looking at jump-range for a moment and all 3 Type X ships are more designed for a explorer role than the ships usually used for exploration.

T-6 is a basic ship hull with good view from the cockpit and with enough space for the needed modules and it can carry a big fuel scoop. Compare that to the Asp Explorer (according to lore the civilian version of a military ship).
The Diamondback Explorer started it's existence as a combat explorer. Nice jump-range, but badly lacking in module space and with a small fuel scoop.
The Anaconda is one of the best combat ships, one of the best traders and the best explorer - but with a really bad view from the cockpit. The T-9 would be a much better choice - if it had better jump-range.

Now, I understand that lore and consistency is something desirable. It's just that the whole module, jump-range, engineering thing stopped making sense long ago. On top of the sometimes really bizarre ship design decisions that leave me with the impression that the ship designers design the ships for a non existent game reality.

If we want a ship with large cargo capacity, but similar jump range both with cargo and empty, the way to achieve that is to increase its weight, and also give it a bigger FSD. That way, the cargo is a smaller proportion of the all-up weight. I think that could be a good way of buffing all the Type ships, without making stripped versions of them into crazy explorers. They look like they should have heavy hulls and bulky internals too.

That's what FDev tired to do with the beta 3 buff, but the difference in optimal mass between the FSD classes is just to big and engineering makes everything even more complicated (to the point it gets absurd with the changes in 3.0)

...this from the guy who I just repped only days ago while he was 'crying' about the lack of more exploration ship options.

I think Ziggy flies a T-6.

 

[Harley Quinn]

exactly this! however unfortunately that means a level of persistance which simply does not exist in ED (yet?)

if you find that rich vein of platinum right now in your exploration ship, as soon as you leave the instance to go and get your T7..... "poof" it is gone.

and this is a massive shame.......

Yep, and many ways they could enable it if they choose to. Only so many variations needed and even if just locally persistent to player held on our own set ups as insert POI 567 at point XY it would be an improvement on no persistence.

 

[Snarfbuckle]

The main issue with jump range is that the average minimum for all ships is too low and the maximum for others are extreme.

Take the ultralight Anaconda for example vs the FerDeLance.

Some of the balancing becomes weird and a balance pass should be made over all ships.

 

[CMDR Zadian Lichtfrost]

…
Fix that and who cares if someone is flying a stripped ship with better range and ADS/DSS. Those ships should cost a lot more than DBX with no advantage other than travelling.
…

A small ship, extremely agile and fast (normal space) with insane jump-range and a good fuel scoop. That would be my dream exploration, data mission runner. (To make it extremely silly I would like it to be the Condor - or a very, very similar ship )
More data scanning options would be nice to have.

 

[B1rdy]

The big U turn on engineers shows they are listening.

FDev stated (I think it was Sandro in a live stream), that the current implementation of Engineers was not their first choice, but they had to do it because of time and money. So FDev new - I really hope,too - that the system was subpar. And as their philosophy goes, they are revising stuff that is used much by players. So nothing really new.

 

[Brrokk]

A small ship, extremely agile and fast (normal space) with insane jump-range and a good fuel scoop. That would be my dream exploration, data mission runner. (To make it extremely silly I would like it to be the Condor - or a very, very similar ship )
More data scanning options would be nice to have.

Ah, the Krait! (Hoping...)

 

[Agony_Aunt]

exactly this! however unfortunately that means a level of persistance which simply does not exist in ED (yet?)

if you find that rich vein of platinum right now in your exploration ship, as soon as you leave the instance to go and get your T7..... "poof" it is gone.

and this is a massive shame.......

Its database storage that is the issue i presume. It may never happen.

So many players, so many worlds.

 

[Mengy]

I don't think that there is a single ship in Elite Dangerous that is designed for exploration. The two ships with "Explorer" in their name are closer to combat ships than to exploration ship and the only thing that makes them less usable for combat is their low agility and the only thing that really makes them good at exploration is their jump-range. Not looking at jump-range for a moment and all 3 Type X ships are more designed for a explorer role than the ships usually used for exploration.

Sad, but accurate.

The Anaconda is a multirole which excels at everything due to it being designed to do so by Frontier. The only thing which makes it the most popular exploration vessel is that it also has the best jump range in the entire game because of its magical hull mass. However, it also has great cargo capacity and is an awesome combat ship sporting a wide array of hardpoints, and it makes for a better passenger ship than the Beluga Liner. It is not designed for exploration, it just happens to be good at it.

The Asp Explorer is the second most popular exploration ship because it has the third best jump range in the game, but it also has the best view out the window too. However, it’s also a very good combat ship and makes for arguably the best smuggling ship in the game. Still, the Asp X is probably the only ship in the game which even comes close to being “designed” for exploration, but it’s really just a multirole which excels at exploration too, like the Anaconda only less so.

The DBX has become the third most popular exploration ship solely due to it having the second best jump range in the game, behind the Anaconda but more than the Asp X. It would be much more popular but having the slowest fuel scoop in the entire fleet is a huge detriment. However, the DBX also sports some very strong hardpoints which are honestly worthless for exploration. If the hardpoints could be dropped and replaced with a larger fuel scoop I doubt anyone at all would be upset over it.

The only two ships in the game with the word “Explorer” in their names are actually multirole ships, and neither is more capable than the king of multirole ships, the Anaconda.

There really aren’t any ships in the game designed solely from the ground up to be specialized for exploration. There are pure combat ships, there are pure trading ships, but there just aren’t pure exploration ships. I wish this was different, that Frontier had designed some ships to truly excel at all three of the core aspects of the game, not just two. Both the Asp X and DBX should jump farther than the Anaconda, they just should even if they have to give up hardpoints to do so, and the fact that neither does is pretty terrible.

 

[JustJon]

The thing is although jump range is obviously important in an explorer ship - so you can travel further in less time, the reality is if you are properly exploring unless you start talking about the extreme regions - most places have stars which are only 10-15 light years apart if not less.

So need to really distinguish between 'exploring' and 'trying to travel as far as possible from Sol'.

Is the real moan about all this that actually even a 60 light year jump range is still tiny compared to a trip to Colonia at approx 20kly - it is still 330 + jumps to Colonia - 50 light years is 400 jumps etc etc. so the complaint is really - I want a ship which can get me further away quicker.

And is that the point of Elite? do we want to be able to jump 200+ ly's?

I think some people just have range anxiety and maybe are slightly less than large in the trouser dept and so need to compensate.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

if you find that rich vein of platinum right now in your exploration ship, as soon as you leave the instance to go and get your T7..... "poof" it is gone.

If you find it while in a ring system, they're persistent, so you can theoretically come back for it later in your T7.

Unless you originally found it near a RES or one of the rare ring-embedded stations to give a stable reference point, of course, actually practically finding the same spot in the rotating ring system as before is left as an exercise for the reader, since it's only theoretically possible.