"By seeking and blundering we learn" JW von Goethe

[deBoesselaere]

So there I was, returning from a nice round trip of about 15000ly, nothing extreme but I was testing out my Clipper for exploration and do not have a Guardian FSD booster yet so I thought lets not get carried away. I scanned almost everything, preferring to take my time and look around, no rush I thought.

Returning to the bubble I flew around the Witch Head a bit, doing some missions around Lembasa to try and help the poor people in the damaged station and gain some imp. rank at the same time. Nothing spectacular happened, so I went on to Palin to unlock him having traveled far enough, picking up some sensor fragments on the way using some good people's YT advice.

Wishing to sell my data and gain some local rep at the same time, I headed for an out of the way Imperial system. Exiting supercruise I approached the station, boosting as I normally do. However, I had JUST upgraded my drives to dirty grade 5. What a mistake-ah to make-ah... I realized too late that my ship was too bloody fast and I smashed into the station at 500+ m/s with my 'explorer shields' not being capable of preventing predictable and devastating results. I literally buried my face in my hands for 10 full seconds, how inexcusably stupid. Such a totally preventable and lazy mistake had cost me about 60-80 hours of playtime and a lot of 'discovered first' tags, not to mention quite a few millions in lost income (not the worst in today's economy but still).

Lesson learned fellow Commanders! Never be complacent. Sell your data quickly and efficiently. I have shrugged off the worst and am off to have fun in other areas of the game but this will sting for a time.. Next time I head out, I will definitely be more cautious! By the way, the Clipper was wonderful to me out there, a 7a fuel scoop and a very fast pitch rate made a lot of difference. Luckily I still have the obligatory 'ship in front of things' pictures, if you would indulge me .

Sorry for the long post! I hope to warn others not to repeat my mistake.

 

[marx]

To be fair, as good as the Clipper is for exploration, it's also quite dangerous for collisions. Not only is its base shield strength quite low, but it can get a lot of momentum. Heavy ship, powerful thrusters.
I'm sorry you had to learn this lesson the hard way, and early on in your exploration career.

Next time around, I'd recommend filling those utility slots with engineered shield boosters. Those along with a 4A shield can get you some decent protection, although probably still not enough for a head-on collision at speed. (That rarely happens with planets though.) You could go with a class 6 shield, but then you lose a bit of jump range from having to go with a class 4 Guardian FSD booster, instead of 5.

 

[deBoesselaere]

Hi CMDR marx, thank you for the quick reply. Yes that was found out the hard way! That mistake will not be repeated though so it was valuable in a sense . Ironically I took a repair limpet controller and 2 AFMU's with me precisely to arm myself against planet crashing, I just never envisioned headbutting a station.

Thanks for the loadout tips I will take them into account, high time to unlock that FSD booster..

 

[marx]

Oh, one more thing: if you see you're about to collide, shunt four pips to Sys. That'll strengthen your shields and thus lessen the hull damage from the impact. Of course, with weak shields, it won't make much of a difference, but with stronger ones, it can.

 

[Romeo India Charlie]

I started with weak shields on my exploration ships, now I have pretty strong ones. However, I think I went from too little to too much. I can crash head first full speed into a 6G planet and get away with 40% hull and this was actually tested if you are wondering.

So my question is, how do we know when it's enough? Is there a way to calculate this without brute testing it like I did?

 

[Orvidius]

Yeah, as I always say, the number one killer of explorers is complacency. I always recommend selling early and selling often. I think it's best to be completely empty of exploration data before doing anything else, other than more exploring of course.

 

[Orvidius]

I started with weak shields on my exploration ships, now I have pretty strong ones. However, I think I went from too little to too much. I can crash head first full speed into a 6G planet and get away with 40% hull and this was actually tested if you are wondering.

So my question is, how do we know when it's enough? Is there a way to calculate this without brute testing it like I did?

I think direct testing will always be best. You can get a sense of how a ship will do by looking at the numbers (shield strength, hull speed, overall mass, top speed), but I don't think anyone has an equation for how much damage that will be if you collide with something. Even if we had such an equation, it wouldn't take into account situations where you bounce and have more than one impact. Instead, I'd use the numbers plus your personal experience with that ship (or similar ones) to get a feel for what to expect, and do some actual testing before you leave the bubble.

I don't think there's ever a situation where you will have "too much" shielding. It's just a question of how much mass and power (and therefore power plant mass and heat) you're willing to devote to it, to be a little safer in the field.

If you can boost into the ground on a high-G world and survive it, you're in great shape.

(EDIT: As an aside, I've sometimes done some landing and crash tests on Achenar 3. These days I usually skip that since I have a good feel for most of the ships I fly, but I still do heat testing with all of them on Skardee 1.)

 

[marx]

I think direct testing will always be best. You can get a sense of how a ship will do by looking at the numbers (shield strength, hull speed, overall mass, top speed), but I don't think anyone has an equation for how much damage that will be if you collide with something. Even if we had such an equation, it wouldn't take into account situations where you bounce and have more than one impact. Instead, I'd use the numbers plus your personal experience with that ship (or similar ones) to get a feel for what to expect, and do some actual testing before you leave the bubble.

Exactly. Plus even the angle of collision can mean much more damage, or much less - it's hard enough to tell. Best to test it in the bubble with a head-on ground collision, at speed. That's quite unlikely to happen when you're out exploring, but who knows - maybe a pod (in an NSP) jumping in front of you just as you are boosting away will do roughly the same amount of damage. Maybe you'll slam into a metallic crystal that you didn't notice, because it was dark and you didn't have night vision on. And so on.

It can also vary quite a lot between ships, and momentum can matter quite a lot. For example, I remember trying a Courier with 350 MJ shields, head-on ground collision at around 500 m/s, and the shields didn't drop. Doing the same in a Clipper: boom.

 

[CMDR Karrde Sun]

I go canyon boosting, so cant go exploring in a clipper. Took me 3 or 4 attempts before i finally learnt my lesson. Not going to say any more.

 

[Rick6549]

You learned to take good shields and hull, even when exploring

 

[Romeo India Charlie]

(EDIT: As an aside, I've sometimes done some landing and crash tests on Achenar 3. These days I usually skip that since I have a good feel for most of the ships I fly, but I still do heat testing with all of them on Skardee 1.)

I'm currently testing on Achenar 3. It felt really good to smash at full speed and surviving. However, now I have to manage heat every time I need to full tank scoop. That led me to wonder "how often do I crash at full speed on a 6.7G planet" versus "how often do I have to full scoop". I'm sure there's a balance somewhere. Maybe not with an equation, but something like the distribution of Gs on landable planets. Is 6.7G the .50 percentile or the .95 percentile?

It can also vary quite a lot between ships, and momentum can matter quite a lot. For example, I remember trying a Courier with 350 MJ shields, head-on ground collision at around 500 m/s, and the shields didn't drop. Doing the same in a Clipper: boom.

I have a gut feeling this is related to optimal mass supported by the shield generator.

 

[Orvidius]

Most of my ships let me loiter in the deepest part of the scooping zone as long as I want to, but not all of them can do that, even with the coolest possible builds. A handful of ships don't need a lot of help here, and you can get away with a less heat-optimized build and still have a "good enough" level of heat. Usually I like to know which category I'm in before I leave the bubble with a new ship. Skardee 1 is great for this, since it's an extreme situation of having the planet inside the scooping zone, and so ships that can scoop fine might still have heat issues flying over the planet. It's worth keeping in mind though that "failing" the Skardee 1 test isn't necessarily a bad thing. It's a very extreme case and you're unlikely to find anything else like it out there.