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Newcomer / Intro Deep space exploration, best ship for little money?
- Thread starter Flakoff
- Start date
First, are you looking for a ship that maximizes its exploration/travel potential or its defense potential? In order to "max" one you must give up on "maxing" the other. When exploring way out in deep space you do not really even need weapons unless you are planning to play in OPEN mode and even then chances of encountering other CMDRs in deep space is minimal. Also, increasing your ships defensive capability means you will be adversely affecting its ability to explore most efficiently i.e.: a heavy shield generator for defense vs. a smaller one to maximize jump range.
Consider the Diamondback-Explorer (DBX). The DBX is currently the ship with the highest possible jump range with proper outfitting. The DBX is relatively inexpensive compared to the other, generally accepted "explorer" ships like the Asp-Explorer (Asp-X) and Anaconda and it is called the Diamondback Explorer, after all. Regarding others posts about the Hauler, I wouldn't know, I never owned a Hauler.
Fact is though, you can go exploring just fine in almost any ship. You can go exploring in a Cobra Mk. III or even a Sidewinder the only differences really being jump range (my A-rated and heavily armed Cobra III currently jumps over 25 LY) and the amount of exploring & self-maintenance capability you want to take with you i.e.: SRV and/or SLF, AFMS, Detailed Surface Scanner, redundant AFMS or SRV, etc.
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AFM= auto field maintenance, meaning you can repair damaged modules on the go. Your ship modules take damage when exploring, a little bit from a Neutron star here, a little bit from a planetary landing there, a little bit from just jumping around.
Other terms, dock at a station, open the outfitting window, look at all the module options to buy, see the names.
For the DBX fit, go to "Ships of Elite" subforum (under Guides subforum; check main Forum) and click on any DBX box, it'll open all the discussions about the DBX, with links to third party tools and fits, plus awesome discussions.
I can attest to this. I basically did a ~14k Ly round trip out and back and made about 14M credits. Didn't do it for the credits, but they were a nice side effect.
Can someone explain to me how one makes money from exploring?
Cheers,
Texy
Best places to outfit ships are Mail Slot stations at highly populated systems. Check "how do I find highly populated systems in Elite: Dangerous" or "best stations to outfit ships Elite: Dangerous".
Jump around, scan stars and planets, use the discovery scanner to do a full system scan, jump, rinse, repeat, dock at a station, open Starport Services, click on Cartographics, sell explo data.
Gotcha - cheers.
here is a link to my build that i took to Colonia via Sag A*
total cost ran to 8m cr to outfit.
the trip went really well and would recommend a cobra to anyone looking to explore.
Basically:
- equip a ship (any ship) with a fuel scoop, maxed out FSD (frame shift drive), Advanced Discovery Scanner and Detailed Surface Scanner
- jump around between systems, scan every system with the ADS, then scan all worthy bodies (takes a while to explain that - mainly earth-like worlds, water worlds, ammonia worlds and terraformable worlds)
- go to a station and sell the scanned data at interstellar cartographics
If you want to max out the game, google for "road to riches".
At 4 Million, you won't get an expedition grade DBX. A stripped down DBX explorer will run at ~12 Million, plus another 2 or so as backup for the rebuy. That 5A FSD is rather expensive.
If you go for some cheaper parts, you might get it down to ~8 Million, but then you wouldn't need a DBX.
What you can get would be an expedition Hauler. 3 Million for the ship and 150 k rebuy, so you can afford to wreck it a couple of times.
If you go to one of those links and click on the "$" sign at the top right, it will lead you to eddb. Enter the system you currently are in as "reference system", click on "find stations", and it'll find you the nearest stations to your position where you can buy the ship with this loadout.
To make rapid credits with exploration you should hunt scannable earth like worlds.
Use EDDB to search your current area for them, there's more in and around the bubble than you might think.
https://eddb.io/body?p=0&l=26&i=1000&t=0&d=0&r=21114
So my above search is for all earth like worlds around Maia that are within 1000ls of the star, then click on the Ref column to see what's closest to your position.
Once I have a list I'll usually bookmark around 20 systems in my galmap, takes a bit of time but once it's done it creates a more visual representation of their positions and I can plan my route better.
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