Newcomer / Intro Exploring - Don't get it at all.

Rock Hunter

Rock Hunter
G Evans said:
This is what I've been wondering about as well. To me, and I could be totally missing something, but extended engineered jump distances would be more desirable for traders, and miners where you need to get from point A to point B as quick as possible to avoid pirates. But pure exploring, all you really need is a ship that is big enough to haul the things you need - fuel scoop, AFMU's (I take 2 so one can repair the other if needed), Shield Generator, SRV, DSS scanner, and a FSD drive to get you from one scoopable star to the next. To me, exploring isn't about getting from point A to point Z in one jump, but getting from A to Z by stopping at B, C, D, etc. . . along the way and gathering data as you go.

Getting back to the bubble as fast as possible to sell your data could be nice, but really isn't necessary - as you'll continue to "explore" as you head back home.

To be completely truthful though, the main reason I don't have an engineered drive (or engineered anything for that matter), is because I loath all the bullsh.t you have to do to get one. It would be nice, if a player had a few hundred million credits to spend, that he or she could simply just buy one, but alas I'm not a developer. ;)
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Yep, you're right. It isn't necessary...just a quality of life thing. You can have a ship with a 78ly jump range but still jump only 8ly...or less. Experienced explorers may have come back to the Bubble for one reason or another and just want to head straight to a specific area that they haven't explored in depth, a big range allows them to get there quickly and then just get on with stuff.

Engineering. I'm split on that. I like the idea that it guides players through most career paths to open the game up for people but some of the design decisions are just infuriating - is it Kamitra cigars that always require you to go back for a third trip, whatever your cargo hold size, for a piddling five more cigars?
 

Maolagin

M
Rock Hunter said:
Yep, you're right. It isn't necessary...just a quality of life thing. You can have a ship with a 78ly jump range but still jump only 8ly...or less. Experienced explorers may have come back to the Bubble for one reason or another and just want to head straight to a specific area that they haven't explored in depth, a big range allows them to get there quickly and then just get on with stuff.
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Sometimes, it depends on where you're going. Travel becomes quite inconvenient in a hurry once the average distance between stars gets to be larger than your jump range! We're not just talking about the extreme galactic rim here either. The Bubble isn't in all that dense a region of space, and it sits in a little ridge of density (that's the Orion Spur in the region name) in what would otherwise be the gap between spiral arms. Go 1000 LY up or down and you're already into 20-30 LY jumps needed just to reach the next star. Try and push past 1500 LY up and you'll run out of reachable stars without an engineered drive.
 

Para Handy

Para Handy
Marvin the Martian said:
..... For the record, my Cobra can jump 10.2 light years as it sits; for whatever that's worth.
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This means that you have done something that is sub-optimal - something is mis-matched if your Cobra MkIII only has 10.2 jump.

If you go to https://coriolis.io/outfit/cobra_mk_iii alter the items to match what you have then copy the "shortlink" (upper right corner) - post that link on here and people can advise you on how to adjust your build.

Let us know how much you have in credits and what you are initially going to use it for (fit depends on purpose).

FYI - if you just want to go out exploring then maybe consider a Diamondback Explorer, Type-6 or Hauler (descending cost and jump) instead of a Cobra.
 

G Evans

G
Maolagin said:
Sometimes, it depends on where you're going. Travel becomes quite inconvenient in a hurry once the average distance between stars gets to be larger than your jump range! We're not just talking about the extreme galactic rim here either. The Bubble isn't in all that dense a region of space, and it sits in a little ridge of density (that's the Orion Spur in the region name) in what would otherwise be the gap between spiral arms. Go 1000 LY up or down and you're already into 20-30 LY jumps needed just to reach the next star. Try and push past 1500 LY up and you'll run out of reachable stars without an engineered drive.
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Those will be places I'll never get to then. Unless they decide to make purchasable optimized drives, my current 34 Ly Asp Explorer will just have to suffice. :)
 

Rock Hunter

Rock Hunter
Maolagin said:
Sometimes, it depends on where you're going. Travel becomes quite inconvenient in a hurry once the average distance between stars gets to be larger than your jump range! We're not just talking about the extreme galactic rim here either. The Bubble isn't in all that dense a region of space, and it sits in a little ridge of density (that's the Orion Spur in the region name) in what would otherwise be the gap between spiral arms. Go 1000 LY up or down and you're already into 20-30 LY jumps needed just to reach the next star. Try and push past 1500 LY up and you'll run out of reachable stars without an engineered drive.
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Also true.

Personally I don't understand why you wouldn't jump through the Engineering hoops and build a ship most capable for your needs ( whether it's exploration, combat or trading ) and benefit from the choices that are afforded as a result. Choosing not to won't lock you out completely but will impact your abilities and the choices you're able to make.

I'd suggest this is certainly true for newer Cmdrs. Once you're experienced in the game the weird and wonderful choices may open up to you as you look to make the game that little bit tougher again...he says thinking of d8veh and his triple Elite Sidwinder only save.
 

Ashnak

Ashnak
Marvin the Martian said:
Here's a shot of where I am now - LHS 3615

I've gone about 10 jumps southwest as the crow flies on that map view.

View attachment 301695
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You have a few inhabited regions in the Galaxy:
  • the Bubble, roughly a spherical region around Sol with 200...400 ly radius (depending on who you ask). If you tab over to the fourth tab in the GalMap (the one with the stars), then you can select the powerplay view, which is better at visualizing why we call it the Bubble
  • Pleiades, a nebula roughly 400 ly "south" of the Bubble. A few inhabited systems and a lot of Thargoids
  • Witchhead, another nebula, IIRC something like 2000 ly "east"
  • Colonia, a rather larger agglomeration of inhabited systems, roughly 22,000 ly NNW of the Bubble, born from the mishap of a cybernetic barkeeper
  • the road to Colonia, about a dozen of inhabited systems and ~50 permanently stationed megaships between the Bubble and Colonia

Your location, 57 ly from Sol, is still firmly in the core of the Bubble. You may need to zoom out a bit...
 

Para Handy

Para Handy
Maolagin said:
....Try and push past 1500 LY up and you'll run out of reachable stars without an engineered drive.
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G Evans said:
Those will be places I'll never get to then. Unless they decide to make purchasable optimized drives, my current 34 Ly Asp Explorer will just have to suffice. :)
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Before engineering I would happily travel where stars became far distant - because I always set out with full stocks of jumponium materials. So there is no reason a non-engineered build can't travel to sparse regions, just ensure you keep plenty of synthesis materials.
 

G Evans

G
Rock Hunter said:
Also true.

Personally I don't understand why you wouldn't jump through the Engineering hoops and build a ship most capable for your needs ( whether it's exploration, combat or trading ) and benefit from the choices that are afforded as a result. Choosing not to won't lock you out completely but will impact your abilities and the choices you're able to make.
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Mostly because I don't have the patience for it!! :D
 

Ashnak

Ashnak
G Evans said:
Unless they decide to make purchasable optimized drives, my current 34 Ly Asp Explorer will just have to suffice.
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There is a purchaseable optimized drive, size 5A. Sizes 3,4 and 6 (IIRC) were given away as trophies in two of the more recent CGs. But size 5 is ok - it fits AspX, DBX and either of the Kraits. I'm currently collecting the datamined wake scans to buy one for my explorer (while in parallel waiting the required four weeks so I can get a mining lance).
 

Maolagin

M
G Evans said:
Those will be places I'll never get to then. Unless they decide to make purchasable optimized drives, my current 34 Ly Asp Explorer will just have to suffice. :)
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You can though, at least in one specific case. It's possible to buy the double engineered 5A FSD from human tech brokers, which is conveniently the size you need for an AspX. It won't get you out of collecting materials altogether though, since it's purchased with both materials and credits.
 

Para Handy

Para Handy
G Evans said:
Mostly because I don't have the patience for it!! :D
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To be honest, if you just want a bit better jump range then there are no hoops to be negotiated - Flic is available very early in your flying about and the stuff for the FSD mods is pretty basic.
 

Darth Ender

D
another secret to exploring is that there is absolutely no need to care about flying off into the sparse voids between galactic arms or edge of the galaxy.

You wont find anything there that you can't find in densely packed arms or the core etc. a 30ly jump range is plenty.

If your goal is just to get bragging rights for most distant whatever then yea, engineering is pretty necessary to fully maximize jump range. So is getting a carrier.

If your goal is to just explore, you can do that without any engineering or even without maximizing jump range of non-engineered ships. easily. and you can do it for as long as you can stomach the unending monotony of it all - even with the snazzy first discovered by you bonuses. There is no need to min-max to explore successfully.

just go off galactic plane a bit in a direction that doesn't look like it's going straight to a nebula and you'll be hitting undiscovered systems in no time.

I wouldn't go too far though (less than 5000ly). There's nothing out there to find that will make the amount of time you spend getting there worth it. So if the act of "exploring" isn't fulfilling and you think you're doing this to be the first to find something nobody else has seen or that something you find will matter to the game, then you should probably just avoid the endeavor now or you'll just grow to hate the game.

Reward wise, first discovered by bonuses i think are 50% of the value of the body. It adds up, but obviously if you're going blind your exploration income is going to be mostly random luck since you can't know much about the system before visiting. Exploring previously explored systems allows you to pick and choose a path that maximizes income and that can far exceed any 50% bonuses you may have gotten otherwise. So if you're exploring for the money, you should explore previously discovered systems other people have already mapped and do them yourself, the 50% bonuses of mostly worthless planets and stars wont be able to keep up.
 
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