What kind of jump range do you need, to go just about anywhere in the galaxy without route planning?

[Branithar]

I want to go to some of the darker patches. The only time I've ever needed to do route planning was crossing the Formidine Rift recently over the past few days (no big deal, I just had to backtrack and search for the Formidine Bridge. But looking at the pic I took in EDDiscovery, and the heat map videos on YouTube, The Formidine Rift is one of the hardest places to cross. What would you say is the minimum jump range necessary to get just about anywhere in the galaxy, without route planning (and excluding crossing the Formidine Rift, which is one of harder places to cross)? Maybe not the absolute outskirts, but the darker spots on the heat map?

 

[Screemonster]

35ly will let you cross the abyss, I usually aim to get above 40 on anything I'm going to take out of the bubble just so it doesn't get tedious on the return trip.

 

[[VR] Frank_G]

I did go to the core back in 3301 with 29 ly Asp Explorer. It managed the job with ease.
Today with Synthesis and neutron star FSD Supercharge you can easily boost the jump range, when it gets critical.
For the smooth ride, i would recommend 40+.

Currently i use an engineered Krait Phantom that can make 53 lys fully kitted, which is very convenient.

 

[Branithar]

35ly will let you cross the abyss, I usually aim to get above 40 on anything I'm going to take out of the bubble just so it doesn't get tedious on the return trip.

What exactly is the abyss? I have a 52ly ship, and I went from the Crab Pulsar, and went "south" and couldn't cross that gap without a detour.

 

[Shinji Ikari]

Where do you want to go exactly? There're places that are not reachable unless you have more than 75 Lys but such systems are extremely rare so the more jump range the more places you can go.

 

[Shinji Ikari]

What exactly is the abyss? I have a 52ly ship, and I went from the Crab Pulsar, and went "south" and couldn't cross that gap without a detour.

The abyss is the gap between the two arms in the northern-most part of the galaxy, 52 Lys should be enough to cross the Abyss, with many injections you might be able to cross the sourthern gap.

 

[Screemonster]

What exactly is the abyss? I have a 52ly ship, and I went from the Crab Pulsar, and went "south" and couldn't cross that gap without a detour.

the abyss is the gap between the arms on the far side of the galaxy, that you need to cross in order to reach Beagle Point.
In just about any ship, once you get to a depleted enough area of the galaxy, you'll start running into gaps between the stars. I've got a 57ly DBX and just after 3.3 went live, I headed straight up and was running into route plotting failures when I got past 1000ly above the bubble.

 

[Numenor1379]

The abyss is the gap between the two arms in the northern-most part of the galaxy, 52 Lys should be enough to cross the Abyss, with many injections you might be able to cross the sourthern gap.

Took my Anaconda to Livingstone Point and only needed jumponium for the last few jumps, but that gap after the Crab Nebula was still annoying. Made it across without jumponium but I did have a 75-77ly range.

 

[Shinji Ikari]

the abyss is the gap between the arms on the far side of the galaxy, that you need to cross in order to reach Beagle Point.

It is the fastest route but not the only one, you can detour to the external arm to the east and then travel through it till you get to Beagle Point.

 

[Shinji Ikari]

Took my Anaconda to Livingstone Point and only needed jumponium for the last few jumps, but that gap after the Crab Nebula was still annoying. Made it across without jumponium but I did have a 75-77ly range.

Directly south it isn't that bad but the more you go to the east, the harder it gets to cross. The time I went to Amundsens Star I had to detour quite a lot since I was planning to just travel in a straight line without knowing how sparse the gap would be, at that time I flew a 56 Ly AspX.

 

[Branithar]

Where do you want to go exactly? There're places that are not reachable unless you have more than 75 Lys but such systems are extremely rare so the more jump range the more places you can go.

I want to head from the Formidine Rift to Colonia, and stick within the slightly darker patch (in the heat map), because I should find a lot of uncharted stars. And maybe continue to the darker patch in the north-west quadrant of the heat map. My Asp Explorer can jump over 66ly, but my 52ly Python has got more stuff to keep my ship safe on a long trip. Back when I went to Beagle Point, the Asp Explorer I'd taken only had the FSD engineered, so was 55ly: I was able to zig-zag left-right-up-down to avoid high traffic areas, and made it to Beagle Point with no dead-ends or detours.

 

[Shinji Ikari]

I want to head from the Formidine Rift to Colonia, and stick within the slightly darker patch (in the heat map), because I should find a lot of uncharted stars. And maybe continue to the darker patch in the north-west quadrant of the heat map. My Asp Explorer is can just over 66ly, but my 52ly Python has got more stuff to keep my ship safe on a long trip.

That should be doable albeit with manul plotting and some injections, I don't recall going to the Formidine Rift though.

 

[Jackie Silver]

To travel without caring, I'd say around 60.

 

[marx]

The most difficult places to cross are generally the inter-arm voids where star density is at its lowest. In particular, the one going through Kepler's Crest has been the most difficult one.
As a general rule of the thumb, a (full tank) jump range of 40 ly will enable you to travel through anywhere, but it might require manual planning and/or synthesized boosts. Go up to 50 ly (doable for many ships), and you can likely have the game plot routes for you through most anywhere. 60 ly, and you don't even need to take care with the plotter. Above that range, the only difference is being able to reach a few more systems on the extreme edges of the galaxy.

Bear in mind that the darker areas of EDSM maps are not because the places are difficult to cross: rather, there are few lines simply because there are only a few explorers going there every now and then. I'd recommend checking out the decaying heatmap video on EDAstro.com for a great illustration of this.

 

[Orvidius]

With a 50+ ly jump range, you can probably still cross the gap in Kepler's Crest with jumponium, on a straight line to Shackleton's and Amundsen's stars. I did that with a 55 ly ship, and it wasn't too difficult. It just took careful manual jumping with the FSD injection. I think many of the jumps were in the 80-100 ly range.

Since that's one of the more difficult areas that's still traversable as such, 50 is pretty comfortable number just about everywhere else.

 

[iain666]

I want to head from the Formidine Rift to Colonia, and stick within the slightly darker patch (in the heat map), because I should find a lot of uncharted stars.

You can fly through the brightest bits of the heat map all day long and still only rarely see a tagged system. All the systems in that map account for a mere 0.007814% of the galaxy after all...

 

[ibmalone]

You can fly through the brightest bits of the heat map all day long and still only rarely see a tagged system. All the systems in that map account for a mere 0.007814% of the galaxy after all...

Even within one jump of the core or two from Colonia you've got a good chance. The only exceptions are neutron stars on popular routes, but even then going a little out of your way will get you first discovered on a few.

 

[Ashnak]

"just about anywhere" is a wide order. Usually, anything above 30 ly is ok-ish, although with the current state of technology, I'd aim for something in the 50ish ly range. But still, there is at least one place (probably more) that is only reacheable in a one-way trip with a stripped down Anaconda (i.e. >80 ly base range): http://elite-dangerous.wikia.com/wiki/Anaconda_Graveyard
For your aim of travelling along lesser visited systems, though, 40ish ly would be sufficient. That map only looks well travelled from afar. Get close, and those visited stars are far and few. Unless, of course, it's the only bleedin' neutron star within a 1000 ly radius .
Or, given the new data from the Codex, the only carbon star in that sector.