Hello everyone.
I'm an explorer closing in on 10,000 hyperspace jumps under my belt, and i definitely recognize when I need to jump into a new ship to refresh myself.
I've gone exploring in lots of different ships. Diamondback, the Clipper, Asp Scout, Anaconda, Courier, Hauler... i definitely like a nice change when exploring.
Unfortunately, i have noticed two particular flaws in small ships that make exploring in them more tedious, for reasons that's not visible in bigger, medium-large ships.
The culprits in this are; the fuel scoop, and the SRV hangar.
The problem with the fuel scoop in small ships is that even the most expensive ones often struggles to quickly and comfortably recharge the fuel tank for another jump.
I'll use the Imperial Courier as an example, because it's a ship that suffers quite a lot from both of these issues.
It's definitely not unusable for exploration, but it's one of the less comfortable i have tried, and I wouldn't do it again.
The Courier has a 8 ton fuel tank, while only being able to mount a maximum of an 3A scoop, causing it to have a refueling time of 45 seconds, which is fairly long. (the Diamondback Explorer is an even more infamous example, taking as long as 1 minute 34 seconds on an empty tank. However, it remains popular because of the jump range)
In addition, the Courier does not have the heat management to stay at max scoop range, even with a power plant engineered for cooling, which increases that 45 second time to well over a minute
Large ships, like the Clipper for example, don't have any problems fuel scooping, as they can mount an EXCESSIVELY large fuel scoop, like the Clipper for example. With the 7B fuel scoop, it can refill from an empty tank in a whole FIFTEEN seconds.
The simplest change i could imagine to improve this issue is to add an engineer recipe for the fuel scoop, allowing it to scoop faster. The fuel scoop has zero engineer recipes other than a generic "Reinforced" recipe with a placeholder name, so i think this would really be the one choice.
Another alternative would be to allow installation of more than one fuel scoop on a ship, however i imagine this is a lot more complex to do, and would be completely unavailable to small ships which already have to pick modules away.
The second issue i have found is with the weight of the SRV hangars. It definitely punches a hole in your ship's jump range, however the effect is massively magnified for ships with a low hull mass.
Here i use the Hauler as an example.
The Hauler is unique in that it has the very lowest hull mass in the game, at only 14 tons.
When stripped down to lightest components, exploration scanners, and a 2A power plant, and with an average G5 FSD roll (from EDShipyard.com) it attains a quite good 37ly fully loaded jump range.
However, the addition of an SRV hangar, a module i consider essential to actually having fun with exploration, it suffers an ENORMOUS drop in jump range due to its low hull mass.
With a six ton 2G SRV hangar, its jump range drops a whole SEVEN LIGHTYEARS, all the way down to 30,5ly when fully loaded. This is the most extreme and visible case of the SRV hangar problem, and turns what would have been a very nice small exploration ship into something approaching combat ship territory.
My solution here would be to introduce a Lightweight recipe for the SRV hangar. Modelling a theoretical version of a -50% weight recipe on EDShipyard by dragging the SRV Hangar's mass down to 3 tons, the same Hauler now manages to have 33,5 lightyears of jump on an average G5 FSD roll, which is a big improvement. A -75% weight reduction increases its jump range up to 35.1 lightyears, which is now starting to get pretty comfy.
I would very much encourage the developers to look into these two fairly minor changes for the Q1 Beyond update, as the new planets are added.
Exploration is uniquely a part of the game where players have virtually no reason to compete against each other, so I would say there's no reason to not make more ships comfy to explore in.
These two recipes would do a little bit for the jump range minmaxers, sure. But I absolutely think the biggest improvement would be seen in diversity of ships.
We would all like to see a few less Asps in front of things, right?
I'm an explorer closing in on 10,000 hyperspace jumps under my belt, and i definitely recognize when I need to jump into a new ship to refresh myself.
I've gone exploring in lots of different ships. Diamondback, the Clipper, Asp Scout, Anaconda, Courier, Hauler... i definitely like a nice change when exploring.
Unfortunately, i have noticed two particular flaws in small ships that make exploring in them more tedious, for reasons that's not visible in bigger, medium-large ships.
The culprits in this are; the fuel scoop, and the SRV hangar.
The problem with the fuel scoop in small ships is that even the most expensive ones often struggles to quickly and comfortably recharge the fuel tank for another jump.
I'll use the Imperial Courier as an example, because it's a ship that suffers quite a lot from both of these issues.
It's definitely not unusable for exploration, but it's one of the less comfortable i have tried, and I wouldn't do it again.
The Courier has a 8 ton fuel tank, while only being able to mount a maximum of an 3A scoop, causing it to have a refueling time of 45 seconds, which is fairly long. (the Diamondback Explorer is an even more infamous example, taking as long as 1 minute 34 seconds on an empty tank. However, it remains popular because of the jump range)
In addition, the Courier does not have the heat management to stay at max scoop range, even with a power plant engineered for cooling, which increases that 45 second time to well over a minute
Large ships, like the Clipper for example, don't have any problems fuel scooping, as they can mount an EXCESSIVELY large fuel scoop, like the Clipper for example. With the 7B fuel scoop, it can refill from an empty tank in a whole FIFTEEN seconds.
The simplest change i could imagine to improve this issue is to add an engineer recipe for the fuel scoop, allowing it to scoop faster. The fuel scoop has zero engineer recipes other than a generic "Reinforced" recipe with a placeholder name, so i think this would really be the one choice.
Another alternative would be to allow installation of more than one fuel scoop on a ship, however i imagine this is a lot more complex to do, and would be completely unavailable to small ships which already have to pick modules away.
The second issue i have found is with the weight of the SRV hangars. It definitely punches a hole in your ship's jump range, however the effect is massively magnified for ships with a low hull mass.
Here i use the Hauler as an example.
The Hauler is unique in that it has the very lowest hull mass in the game, at only 14 tons.
When stripped down to lightest components, exploration scanners, and a 2A power plant, and with an average G5 FSD roll (from EDShipyard.com) it attains a quite good 37ly fully loaded jump range.
However, the addition of an SRV hangar, a module i consider essential to actually having fun with exploration, it suffers an ENORMOUS drop in jump range due to its low hull mass.
With a six ton 2G SRV hangar, its jump range drops a whole SEVEN LIGHTYEARS, all the way down to 30,5ly when fully loaded. This is the most extreme and visible case of the SRV hangar problem, and turns what would have been a very nice small exploration ship into something approaching combat ship territory.
My solution here would be to introduce a Lightweight recipe for the SRV hangar. Modelling a theoretical version of a -50% weight recipe on EDShipyard by dragging the SRV Hangar's mass down to 3 tons, the same Hauler now manages to have 33,5 lightyears of jump on an average G5 FSD roll, which is a big improvement. A -75% weight reduction increases its jump range up to 35.1 lightyears, which is now starting to get pretty comfy.
I would very much encourage the developers to look into these two fairly minor changes for the Q1 Beyond update, as the new planets are added.
Exploration is uniquely a part of the game where players have virtually no reason to compete against each other, so I would say there's no reason to not make more ships comfy to explore in.
These two recipes would do a little bit for the jump range minmaxers, sure. But I absolutely think the biggest improvement would be seen in diversity of ships.
We would all like to see a few less Asps in front of things, right?