Newcomer / Intro Help with jump distance please.

Hello everyone,
I'm working on a federation rank up post I found online doing doing courier missions from Ochosi to Chakpa which is 13LY. Only my Cobra MKIII will only do 9ly jumps. I've been using a diamondback,,,, can't remember, not the scout but the next one up. Anyway, I like my cobra much better, It just seems to handle better and I like to divert occasionally and do threat 1 weapons fire for some extra cash.

Is it possible to make my cobra just the 13LY?

My core Internal now are as follows:
Class 4
4E Power Plant
4E Thrusters
4E Frame Shift Drive
4C Fuel Tank

Class 3
3E Life Support
3E Power Distributer
3E Sensors

Class 1
1C light alloy

Any suggestions that will make this happen?

Also I have 2 empty Class 0 utility slots. What are those used for?


Thank you very much!
 

Robert Maynard

Volunteer Moderator
Changing out the Grade E equipment (other than the Frame Shift Drive) for Grade D will improve jump range, because Grade D equipment is lighter than Grade E.

Changing out the Frame Shift Drive for a better grade (A being the highest) [edit] of the same class [/edit] will likely make the most difference. Installing a Frame Shift Drive of a lower class will reduce jump range.
 
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Robert Maynard

Volunteer Moderator
Just whatever you do don't use a lower class on your FSD. Stick to class 4 and improve up as much as you can. E to D to C and finally to A
Ignore B: improved durability for much higher weight.
Very important point that I managed to omit. Added in to my post.

A Grade B FSD is still better than a Grade C in terms of jump range, even if it is heavier.
 
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Is it possible to make my cobra just the 13LY?
Yes, armed dangerous cobra will jump about 40 ly.
But that is long way - optimize modules, engineering it.

E - base model
D - lowest weight = best range - everything else is cut off.
C - "different behave", for example C-shield will charge faster in cost of total strength
B - toughest and heaviest - low jump, resists a lot. Main function slightly worse then A.
A - best main function

Then on top of it you put engineers ....
 
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Here is a nice starting cobra. You need around 7 million and it will allow you to do various missions. It will jump around 20Ly and boost up to 430 meter per seconds


Of course you can upgrade the modules one by one when you have the credits. If you do that start with the powerplant. Then go for the FSD and the rest. Both cost around 1.6 million. A-rated parts are usually for sale in High tech and Industrial systems.

The Utility slots can be used for heat sinks, Chaffs or to increase your shields strenght.
On Coriolis you can see what other modules you can fit in there. Ranging from bounty to cargo scanners

Have fun playing and dont be afraid to get blown up. Just make sure you have enough money to rebuy your ship. In the right hand panel you can see how much it will cost to rebuy your ship after a glorious explosion!
 
There are also systems that give discounts on various ships and modules, lowers the rebuy cost too.

 
Wow! So much awesome information! I'm at about 2 million now maybe I'll just wait
Here is a nice starting cobra. You need around 7 million and it will allow you to do various missions. It will jump around 20Ly and boost up to 430 meter per seconds


Of course you can upgrade the modules one by one when you have the credits. If you do that start with the powerplant. Then go for the FSD and the rest. Both cost around 1.6 million. A-rated parts are usually for sale in High tech and Industrial systems.

The Utility slots can be used for heat sinks, Chaffs or to increase your shields strenght.
On Coriolis you can see what other modules you can fit in there. Ranging from bounty to cargo scanners

Have fun playing and dont be afraid to get blown up. Just make sure you have enough money to rebuy your ship. In the right hand panel you can see how much it will cost to rebuy your ship after a glorious explosion!
That is perfect! Thank you!!
 
And let's not forget the guardian FSD booster, a good excuse to visit a guardian ruin.

 
Wow! So much awesome information! I'm at about 2 million now maybe I'll just wait

That is perfect! Thank you!!
Keep in mind that you can sell modules for what you paid for them. Ships sell for about 90% of what you paid for them and the modules that are fitted when sold.

The best use of E rated modules is to fit to a ship you are about to sell to reduce that reduction.

When buying a ship the advice was always to have at least 3-5 times the purchase price available so that you have enough credits to at least partially fit it out without having to sell your old ship and still have money for rebuys.
 
To optimize your ship for jump range the general principle is: The less mass, the larger the jump range.

(This, of course, in addition to size and the grade of the FSD. The bigger the better. You can also get a nice boost with a Guardian FSD booster, but that requires a bit of grinding to unlock. But you only need to unlock it once, and you can then buy as many of them as you want. Highly recommend.)

Perhaps the biggest singular component that affects the mass of the ship (well, at least the ships I have optimized) is the hull: You want the free lightweight one for maximum range. Of course now your ship is made of cardboard, so forget about any sort of combat.

Then it's up to optimizing all the other modules to be as lightweight as possible. In general you want the D ranked ones because those are the most lightweight (with the exception of the FSD, of course, which should be maxed out.)

Oh, and engineering the FSD to maximum makes a humongous difference, so that's kind of mandatory if you are building for jump range.

Note that you don't have to have a module of the same size as that module's slot. If a smaller module suffices for what you need, you can save a good amount of weight. Most prominently in a really lightweight ship you can often get away with a smaller power plant than would fit the ship. It's not impossible to have a 3-sized power plant on a ship that can fit a 5-sized or even 6-sized one. (As long as the power use doesn't go into the red, you are A-ok.) Note that if you do fuel-scooping you might want an A-grade power plant, else it will overheat really easily. (It's better to have eg. a 3A power plant than a 4D one, as the former will not overheat as much when fuel-scooping.)

The power distributor and the thrusters are modules where you really have to make a compromise between weight and usability. It can be annoying to have too few pips eg. for thruster boosting, or have it reload really slowly. It can also be annoying if the ship moves at a snail's pace on thrusters. I suppose it's up to you what kind of handling you find comfortable. Luckily, the difference between usable thrusters and power distributor vs. the lightest ones available is not very large (probably like 1ly in terms of jump range, or the like).
 
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...
Perhaps the biggest singular component that affects the mass of the ship (well, at least the ships I have optimized) is the hull: You want the free lightweight one for maximum range. Of course now your ship is made of cardboard, so forget about any sort of combat.
...

That is rather misleading really - applying Heavy Duty Armour modification entails a weight penalty of +30% for Grade 5 - 30% of 0 is still 0 - add deep plating experimental for another 8% hull boost - so all for no weight penalty on the default lightweight armour.

So no - default lightweight armour is not "forget about any sort of combat" - it is more a case of perhaps avoid combat until you can apply engineering.

I am talking PvE here, def not PvP builds which obviously would need a more "robust" approach.


Edited for vocabulary.
 
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On the subject of mass affecting your jump range keep in mind that cargo and fuel carried affect the total mass of your ship so always plot routes after refuelling and loading cargo.

People have been stuck in a system trying to burn off fuel before now after filling up their tanks and then finding no stars within their jump range. Usually only an issue very early on in a pilots career.
 
On the subject of mass affecting your jump range keep in mind that cargo and fuel carried affect the total mass of your ship so always plot routes after refuelling and loading cargo.

People have been stuck in a system trying to burn off fuel before now after filling up their tanks and then finding no stars within their jump range. Usually only an issue very early on in a pilots career.
Ahhh thank you for that!
 
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