Post 2.1 edit: this guide is now old and quite a few things have changed since it was written - NPC's became a lot more dangerous, and it seems like the day when we can encounter dangers that are not man-made out there is approaching as well; therefore the old meta of stripping down to super light, very low shielded exploration ships seems ill-advised as the return to the bubble is now riskier. With engineer upgrades it is now possible to have an over 40ly jump range anaconda that has great shields, some armor, and some other defensive mechanisms such as point defense, chaff, mine launchers etc. I will leave the guide as it is for now, with the caveat that it was written way before 2.1 hit.
I decided to post a thread of this title after a lot of recent debate about builds for Distant Worlds. I've seen a lot of advice trotted around in the past weeks, some of it good, some of it.. well, less than optimal, imho. I have some experience in this so I figured, I'll post a thread on how I approach making exploration builds that have served me well so far. Note that we are talking about ships built for long-range exploration; if your goal is to explore closer to the bubble, your options are more numerous.
1. Which ship do I take in the first place?
If you can afford them, Asp Explorer or the Anaconda. They both have long range and good internals - Anaconda has more of both for a much higher price and heavier handling. Some people are bothered by it's performance in supercruise - I don't really mind. It lands fine with 5D thrusters on most gravitational environments, and I can happily confirm you can do that with HD 148937's 9.7g planet and live to tell the tale.
If you can't afford any of the above, a Cobra Mk III or a Type 6 are worth a look, depending on your budget and preferences.
2. D means light.
D rated modules, with a few notable exceptions, tend to be the lightest ones. So on your standard (mandatory) internals, there are systems you can happily D-rate to save on mass; systems like thrusters, power distributor, life support and sensors. After doing a lot of planetary landing tests with various ships, I'll mount the lightest class D rated thrusters I can. Test this before you head out a long way, though, and make sure you're comfortable with it; if you just dislike the thought of landing with a 5D 'conda, get 6D's and be happy with those. In my experience 5D's work and will get you off the ground of very high g worlds (though takeoff can be a bit tricky, or long and boring if you follow certain rules).
3. A-rate the power plant.
A rated power plants handle heat the best, meaning less heat alarms during scooping. In addition, let's say you're considering a 3D power plant on your shiny new Asp Explorer; let me do the Chewbacca defense of my position here and just say it out loud - it does not make sense!
Why? Because a 2A produces more power, is lighter, and handles heat better than a 3D. This principle can be applied up as you go through the classes - 3A is better than 4D, 4A is better than 5D, and so on. Therefore there is no reason, at all, for an explorer to ever mount a D rated power plant.
4. Power distributor or the age old "do I need boost?" discussion
This has also been a point of contention. I personally take the lightest power distributor that still allows me to boost. Why? Because it can save your life. You're going out on a long trip, there will be times when you will be distracted, tired, typing on skype instead of being on TS like the cool kids, or whatever, and you won't notice how that descent speed indicator went well into the red. You'll point your nose up, throttle up, and if you can't boost, probably make a new crater in the planet. Congratulations, you now get a few million worth of a ticket that will instantly transport you back to the bubble! Aren't you the lucky one Point is, we're not robots, mistakes happen, and boosting ability gives you a slight margin of error.
I will, however, say that pilot errors involving boost can be dangerous, so be sure your boost is bound to something you can't easily hit by accident.
5. But we are exploring, don't we need better sensors?
Alas, no. Just D rate them. These are only useful for seeing pirates from further away in a RES. Even then I take D's because I prefer to use the extra power on shields and weapons.
6. Fuel scoop.
I'll be short and clear on this one: put the best fuel scoop you can afford in the largest internal you have. Sometimes the differences between an A and a B can seem small, but the price difference huge - and indeed, if you can't afford, say, a 6A, go with a 6B, it's a fine piece of kit. But if you can afford the A go with that instead. We go on long trips, the scooping times add up. And sooner or later you'll end up draining your tank more than usual and you'll want to top it up as fast as you can without cooking yourself. By the time you and your lovely B have finished topping up, I've already scanned the inner planets and am supercruising towards that spiffy looking ringed Earth-like In addition, when you get back you can sell the scoop at no loss. This to me makes it a no-brainer - if you can afford the A, go with the A unless you intend to test landings in extreme gravitational environments and want to keep the re-buy costs low.
7. Shields, and do I need boosters?
This question is harder to give a definitive answer to. I'm taking 5D's and no boosters on my conda, myself. I'd say run tests on a few landings before you head out. I will say this; before you throw a bunch of boosters on your shield generator, go to coriolis.io and try out if you can't get less mass and more range and shield power by throwing out boosters and just putting a better shield generator in. I've seen plenty of people make that mistake in the Distant Worlds thread. In some configurations, boosters make sense, in others, they don't. It really depends on the ship, build, and shield class/rating, so I do urge you to experiment both on coriolis and on a few planets of different g's before you head out into the black.
8. What about Bi-Weave / Prismatic shields?
No. Prismatics are just too heavy and power hungry. Bi-Weaves are weaker but faster charging, not what you need to protect you from a momentary thud of a planetary landing. Standard shields are, well, a standard for exploration.
9. Auto-Field Maintenance Units, or AFM's for friends.
There has been a myth floating around for these that B rated ones are better because they have more ammo. This myth is false, because while the B rated AFM's have more ammo, they fix less with a single unit of ammo, and an A rated AFM will repair more damage to your ship in total. Note that like fuel scoops, AFM's have no mass. They also require lots of power, but when you use them, you need to be out of supercruise anyway, so you can shut down your thrusters or shields to free up power for the AFM. Don't bring a larger power plant so you can keep your AFM on all the time! You'll be reducing your range for no benefit at all. Do you need two AFM's? Probably not, especially now that we can refill them with synthesis. However, if you have more internals than you know what to do with (otherwise known as a 'conda pilot), bring a small second unit to fix the first one - a single AFM can't repair itself. This is pure luxury, though - on my last 150,000ly, two months trip I didn't even come close to draining a single 5A AFM on my Asp. Finally, never try to repair FSD or thrusters while in supercruise! This will result in an emergency drop and further damage to your ship. In general, dropping down from supercruise to a safe location before initiating repairs is a good habit to have.
10. How many SRV's should I take?
Despite the popular rumor of these being fragile, my findings have been to the contrary; these things can take a beating, on top of that they are incredibly easy to repair and also get magically repaired when you re-board your ship (don't get me started..) Bugs can still happen, if rarely, so I'd personally take two of these just in case. You're probably still coming home with 2, but in case something happens you'll still have a buggy. If you don't intend to drive like a maniac you won't need to bring a whole SRV parking garage with you. If you intend to do crazy stunts to the point of literally destroying them, go ahead and bring more, but for normal use, 2 is more than enough.
11. Don't forget scanners!
Advanced Discovery Scanner if you don't want to miss out on a bunch of stuff / use the parallax method for hours just to determine if the system is worth a look in the first place. Detailed Surface Scanner I also consider a must, it will enable you to make more detailed scans of astronomical bodies and sell the data for more. Exploration already pays less than the other professions (well, maybe not piracy, but let's not digress), so may as well max out your profits while out there.
12. Heat sinks?
Another funny thing. People used to take them more often, nowadays there's this trend of "I don't need them, they're useless and restrict my range". Well.. ok. But consider this; they could be useful pre-Horizons in certain situations, and after Horizons Frontier made them even more useful by enabling you to deploy them from supercruise. This means that on the rare, but very possible instances where your ship will jump right between multiple stars in very close proximity and start heating up faster than a Ford Pinto on a highway, now you can deploy a heatsink avoiding any heat damage altogether as you supercruise or high-wake to safety. My advice, take one or two. They are light, don't reduce your range by a lot, and only need to be on one at a time when you need them.
13. Extra fuel tanks or not?
This depends on player comfort, really. In general, there's this fear of vast unscoopable regions, but the truth is there are always scoopables nearby (don't forget the Z axis on your galaxy map - the unscoopables tend to be in the middle, go a few hundred ly up or down from the ecliptic and you can avoid these fields with ease), and sometimes you just need to pay more attention to make sure your plot takes you to one before you run out. I personally went the other way and reduced my Conda's main fuel tank to 16T, then added 8 and a 2T secondary tanks for a total of 26T of fuel. I find this works well for a "top up at every scoopable" exploration style, as I need single jump range more than I need total range. Again, test, take her out for a few days before you go on a longer trip, and see if you like it. I personally welcome the fact I need to pay a little attention to navigation.
14. Cargo racks
Having empty cargo racks will allow you to set a slider on the galaxy map when plotting a route to a simulated amount of cargo, the maximum being determined by your current max amount of cargo. Without that, your two plotting options are economical and fastest - having empty cargo racks allows you to do something in between, so you can get more economical jumps than fastest but still without the crazy amount of jumps the economy plotting mode will produce. I don't consider this essential to the level of needing a good fuel scoop or A-rating your power plant, but it is very handy. Now, I wouldn't add them if it meant sacrificing, say, an AFMU or a shield generator (especially if you intend to land on planets), but if you have empty internals after putting all the other equipment in, fill up the empty ones with cargo racks! When they're empty they won't reduce your jump range at all, but will allow you to adjust your range a bit on the galaxy map. Plus you never know who you may run into out there, and I'm guessing Thargoid ale might fetch a good price on the local cat food market...
15. Do I need weapons?
While it's true that you never know what you'll encounter out there, my logic is this; exploration and combat builds don't mix too well together. To have a ship that's good at combat you need to weigh it down pretty hard. An explorer that's light and still has some weapons won't fight too well; it won't have great firepower, it won't manuever well, it's shields will be weak, and you're far from a port and can't afford to take damage past your shields, and will probably end up running away anyway. May as well dump the weapons and have a lighter ship with a better range and less power requirements. Up to the individual explorer, of course, but if you want to do long range exploration, my advice is to leave the weapons at home. In the unlikely event of an alien encounter, at least you can't be accused of being a trigger happy cowboy who started an interstellar war
Finally, I'm going to post some example builds:
Anaconda (I use this build myself)
Asp Explorer (switch off cargo hatch, planetary vehicle hangar, heat sinks and the AFMU until needed)
Cobra Mk.III (switch off cargo hatch, planetary vehicle hangar, heat sink and the AFMU until needed)
Lakon Type 6 (switch off cargo hatch, planetary vehicle hangar, heat sinks and the AFMU until needed)
Starter explorer's kit (budget non-Horizons Hauler build; not suitable for planetary landings, classic honk'n'scan exploration only. Feel free to add a heatsink)
Feel free to use / modify these as you like. I personally don't use docking computers but if you like using them and have an empty internal for it, go for it
I decided to post a thread of this title after a lot of recent debate about builds for Distant Worlds. I've seen a lot of advice trotted around in the past weeks, some of it good, some of it.. well, less than optimal, imho. I have some experience in this so I figured, I'll post a thread on how I approach making exploration builds that have served me well so far. Note that we are talking about ships built for long-range exploration; if your goal is to explore closer to the bubble, your options are more numerous.
1. Which ship do I take in the first place?
If you can afford them, Asp Explorer or the Anaconda. They both have long range and good internals - Anaconda has more of both for a much higher price and heavier handling. Some people are bothered by it's performance in supercruise - I don't really mind. It lands fine with 5D thrusters on most gravitational environments, and I can happily confirm you can do that with HD 148937's 9.7g planet and live to tell the tale.
If you can't afford any of the above, a Cobra Mk III or a Type 6 are worth a look, depending on your budget and preferences.
2. D means light.
D rated modules, with a few notable exceptions, tend to be the lightest ones. So on your standard (mandatory) internals, there are systems you can happily D-rate to save on mass; systems like thrusters, power distributor, life support and sensors. After doing a lot of planetary landing tests with various ships, I'll mount the lightest class D rated thrusters I can. Test this before you head out a long way, though, and make sure you're comfortable with it; if you just dislike the thought of landing with a 5D 'conda, get 6D's and be happy with those. In my experience 5D's work and will get you off the ground of very high g worlds (though takeoff can be a bit tricky, or long and boring if you follow certain rules).
3. A-rate the power plant.
A rated power plants handle heat the best, meaning less heat alarms during scooping. In addition, let's say you're considering a 3D power plant on your shiny new Asp Explorer; let me do the Chewbacca defense of my position here and just say it out loud - it does not make sense!
Why? Because a 2A produces more power, is lighter, and handles heat better than a 3D. This principle can be applied up as you go through the classes - 3A is better than 4D, 4A is better than 5D, and so on. Therefore there is no reason, at all, for an explorer to ever mount a D rated power plant.4. Power distributor or the age old "do I need boost?" discussion
This has also been a point of contention. I personally take the lightest power distributor that still allows me to boost. Why? Because it can save your life. You're going out on a long trip, there will be times when you will be distracted, tired, typing on skype instead of being on TS like the cool kids, or whatever, and you won't notice how that descent speed indicator went well into the red. You'll point your nose up, throttle up, and if you can't boost, probably make a new crater in the planet. Congratulations, you now get a few million worth of a ticket that will instantly transport you back to the bubble! Aren't you the lucky one
Point is, we're not robots, mistakes happen, and boosting ability gives you a slight margin of error.I will, however, say that pilot errors involving boost can be dangerous, so be sure your boost is bound to something you can't easily hit by accident.
5. But we are exploring, don't we need better sensors?
Alas, no. Just D rate them. These are only useful for seeing pirates from further away in a RES. Even then I take D's because I prefer to use the extra power on shields and weapons.
6. Fuel scoop.
I'll be short and clear on this one: put the best fuel scoop you can afford in the largest internal you have. Sometimes the differences between an A and a B can seem small, but the price difference huge - and indeed, if you can't afford, say, a 6A, go with a 6B, it's a fine piece of kit. But if you can afford the A go with that instead. We go on long trips, the scooping times add up. And sooner or later you'll end up draining your tank more than usual and you'll want to top it up as fast as you can without cooking yourself. By the time you and your lovely B have finished topping up, I've already scanned the inner planets and am supercruising towards that spiffy looking ringed Earth-like
In addition, when you get back you can sell the scoop at no loss. This to me makes it a no-brainer - if you can afford the A, go with the A unless you intend to test landings in extreme gravitational environments and want to keep the re-buy costs low.7. Shields, and do I need boosters?
This question is harder to give a definitive answer to. I'm taking 5D's and no boosters on my conda, myself. I'd say run tests on a few landings before you head out. I will say this; before you throw a bunch of boosters on your shield generator, go to coriolis.io and try out if you can't get less mass and more range and shield power by throwing out boosters and just putting a better shield generator in. I've seen plenty of people make that mistake in the Distant Worlds thread. In some configurations, boosters make sense, in others, they don't. It really depends on the ship, build, and shield class/rating, so I do urge you to experiment both on coriolis and on a few planets of different g's before you head out into the black.
8. What about Bi-Weave / Prismatic shields?
No. Prismatics are just too heavy and power hungry. Bi-Weaves are weaker but faster charging, not what you need to protect you from a momentary thud of a planetary landing. Standard shields are, well, a standard for exploration.
9. Auto-Field Maintenance Units, or AFM's for friends.
There has been a myth floating around for these that B rated ones are better because they have more ammo. This myth is false, because while the B rated AFM's have more ammo, they fix less with a single unit of ammo, and an A rated AFM will repair more damage to your ship in total. Note that like fuel scoops, AFM's have no mass. They also require lots of power, but when you use them, you need to be out of supercruise anyway, so you can shut down your thrusters or shields to free up power for the AFM. Don't bring a larger power plant so you can keep your AFM on all the time! You'll be reducing your range for no benefit at all. Do you need two AFM's? Probably not, especially now that we can refill them with synthesis. However, if you have more internals than you know what to do with (otherwise known as a 'conda pilot), bring a small second unit to fix the first one - a single AFM can't repair itself. This is pure luxury, though - on my last 150,000ly, two months trip I didn't even come close to draining a single 5A AFM on my Asp. Finally, never try to repair FSD or thrusters while in supercruise! This will result in an emergency drop and further damage to your ship. In general, dropping down from supercruise to a safe location before initiating repairs is a good habit to have.
10. How many SRV's should I take?
Despite the popular rumor of these being fragile, my findings have been to the contrary; these things can take a beating, on top of that they are incredibly easy to repair and also get magically repaired when you re-board your ship (don't get me started..) Bugs can still happen, if rarely, so I'd personally take two of these just in case. You're probably still coming home with 2, but in case something happens you'll still have a buggy. If you don't intend to drive like a maniac you won't need to bring a whole SRV parking garage with you. If you intend to do crazy stunts to the point of literally destroying them, go ahead and bring more, but for normal use, 2 is more than enough.
11. Don't forget scanners!
Advanced Discovery Scanner if you don't want to miss out on a bunch of stuff / use the parallax method for hours just to determine if the system is worth a look in the first place. Detailed Surface Scanner I also consider a must, it will enable you to make more detailed scans of astronomical bodies and sell the data for more. Exploration already pays less than the other professions (well, maybe not piracy, but let's not digress), so may as well max out your profits while out there.
12. Heat sinks?
Another funny thing. People used to take them more often, nowadays there's this trend of "I don't need them, they're useless and restrict my range". Well.. ok. But consider this; they could be useful pre-Horizons in certain situations, and after Horizons Frontier made them even more useful by enabling you to deploy them from supercruise. This means that on the rare, but very possible instances where your ship will jump right between multiple stars in very close proximity and start heating up faster than a Ford Pinto on a highway, now you can deploy a heatsink avoiding any heat damage altogether as you supercruise or high-wake to safety. My advice, take one or two. They are light, don't reduce your range by a lot, and only need to be on one at a time when you need them.
13. Extra fuel tanks or not?
This depends on player comfort, really. In general, there's this fear of vast unscoopable regions, but the truth is there are always scoopables nearby (don't forget the Z axis on your galaxy map - the unscoopables tend to be in the middle, go a few hundred ly up or down from the ecliptic and you can avoid these fields with ease), and sometimes you just need to pay more attention to make sure your plot takes you to one before you run out. I personally went the other way and reduced my Conda's main fuel tank to 16T, then added 8 and a 2T secondary tanks for a total of 26T of fuel. I find this works well for a "top up at every scoopable" exploration style, as I need single jump range more than I need total range. Again, test, take her out for a few days before you go on a longer trip, and see if you like it. I personally welcome the fact I need to pay a little attention to navigation.
14. Cargo racks
Having empty cargo racks will allow you to set a slider on the galaxy map when plotting a route to a simulated amount of cargo, the maximum being determined by your current max amount of cargo. Without that, your two plotting options are economical and fastest - having empty cargo racks allows you to do something in between, so you can get more economical jumps than fastest but still without the crazy amount of jumps the economy plotting mode will produce. I don't consider this essential to the level of needing a good fuel scoop or A-rating your power plant, but it is very handy. Now, I wouldn't add them if it meant sacrificing, say, an AFMU or a shield generator (especially if you intend to land on planets), but if you have empty internals after putting all the other equipment in, fill up the empty ones with cargo racks! When they're empty they won't reduce your jump range at all, but will allow you to adjust your range a bit on the galaxy map. Plus you never know who you may run into out there, and I'm guessing Thargoid ale might fetch a good price on the local cat food market...
15. Do I need weapons?
While it's true that you never know what you'll encounter out there, my logic is this; exploration and combat builds don't mix too well together. To have a ship that's good at combat you need to weigh it down pretty hard. An explorer that's light and still has some weapons won't fight too well; it won't have great firepower, it won't manuever well, it's shields will be weak, and you're far from a port and can't afford to take damage past your shields, and will probably end up running away anyway. May as well dump the weapons and have a lighter ship with a better range and less power requirements. Up to the individual explorer, of course, but if you want to do long range exploration, my advice is to leave the weapons at home. In the unlikely event of an alien encounter, at least you can't be accused of being a trigger happy cowboy who started an interstellar war
Finally, I'm going to post some example builds:
Anaconda (I use this build myself)
Asp Explorer (switch off cargo hatch, planetary vehicle hangar, heat sinks and the AFMU until needed)
Cobra Mk.III (switch off cargo hatch, planetary vehicle hangar, heat sink and the AFMU until needed)
Lakon Type 6 (switch off cargo hatch, planetary vehicle hangar, heat sinks and the AFMU until needed)
Starter explorer's kit (budget non-Horizons Hauler build; not suitable for planetary landings, classic honk'n'scan exploration only. Feel free to add a heatsink)
Feel free to use / modify these as you like. I personally don't use docking computers but if you like using them and have an empty internal for it, go for it
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