The first time I ever heard of Elite was an article from 2017 about CMDR Deluvian's (or maybe Persera's, I don't remember) voyage into the black and the mother of all Fuel Rat rescues that happened due to a miscalculation. So recently, having started playing Elite myself, I wondered: what if I could be the next idiot flying off into empty space for the sake of flying off into empty space? Like those who came before, I will be travelling to the furthest known accessible system: Oevasy SG-Y d0, also known as Ishum's Reach, at which point I will fly in supercruise away from Sol as far as possible before jumping back.
Previous attempts have used the Anaconda and Imperial Cutter, both of which are good exploration ships with large optional modules for fuel and thus good choices for such a challenge. I have made the slightly insane decision to do it in a Type-9 instead. This is only possible thanks to Fleet Carriers, a luxury that those before me did not have access to. I'll be using a Type-9 optimized for fuel efficiency and capacity along with 3 alternate accounts following behind in similar ships to act as fuel tankers. Assuming ideal fuel usage, the primary ship, the Endurance Border, will have a supercruise range of 152ly, which the three tankers (Larry, Moe, and Curly) can boost to a total of 281ly, but it will likely be a good bit lower. I'm guessing I'll make it to around 65,900ly from Sol. The total time in supercruise (not including time spent refueling) comes out to about 51 days.
The fleet carrier departs on 9/7/2021 and should arrive sometime in October at which point I'll get this idiotic plan rolling.
Controlling four ships at once is a bit of a mess, but it works!
My mining ship and the three tankers docked to Demuynck Memorial, orbiting Colonia 3A. I'm carrying 512 tons of Tritium in my mining ship to deposit into the carrier once we're underway, so unfortunately I can't switch to the Endurance Border for a group photo yet since it doesn't have enough cargo racks.
Group photo!
Big thanks to the the owners of the fleet carriers:
CMDR Jonaltriani - Sleeper Service (H2T-LHV)
Took me from the Bubble to Colonia
CMDR CrotchRoach - Demuynck Memorial (V1K-10M)
Agreed to make a detour on the Colonia to Beagle Point trip to drop me off at Ishum's Reach
Previous attempts have used the Anaconda and Imperial Cutter, both of which are good exploration ships with large optional modules for fuel and thus good choices for such a challenge. I have made the slightly insane decision to do it in a Type-9 instead. This is only possible thanks to Fleet Carriers, a luxury that those before me did not have access to. I'll be using a Type-9 optimized for fuel efficiency and capacity along with 3 alternate accounts following behind in similar ships to act as fuel tankers. Assuming ideal fuel usage, the primary ship, the Endurance Border, will have a supercruise range of 152ly, which the three tankers (Larry, Moe, and Curly) can boost to a total of 281ly, but it will likely be a good bit lower. I'm guessing I'll make it to around 65,900ly from Sol. The total time in supercruise (not including time spent refueling) comes out to about 51 days.
The fleet carrier departs on 9/7/2021 and should arrive sometime in October at which point I'll get this idiotic plan rolling.
The game doesn't provide good numbers on what the actual fuel use will be aside from the number on your fuel level readout, so it was a bit of trial and error and I'm still not totally sure how it works. It's negligible in most cases, so few have even bothered looking into how it works anyway. Some testing showed that the only thing that affects fuel usage is your ship's current power draw. Since I'm disabling nonessential modules, I'm only concerned about the power draw of the FSD, Thrusters, and Life Support. Power Plant efficiency is irrelevant, it will always use the same amount of fuel for the same amount of power. (Which strikes me as thermodynamically dubious? Where does the heat go?)
I picked the Type-9 because it and and Cutter have the highest fuel capacity, but of the two, the Type-9 has a lower hull mass allowing it to use smaller thrusters in addition to a smaller life support, which uses less power. Of the three modules, Thrusters use the overwhelming majority of the power, so to optimize fuel use using the smallest thrusters is key. I fitted it with 6D thrusters engineered with Grade 1 Reinforced and the Drive Distributors experimental. I only wanted Drive Distributors, but I needed at least one rank in something to apply it, and Reinforced is the only modification that doesn't decrease maximum mass. Next up was the Life Support, for which I used the E-rated module since it uses a bit less power. This might be the only time it's a good idea to use an E-rated life support for an exploration ship.
Finally, there was the FSD. In order to ensure the ship wouldn't be stranded, it needed to jump to the closest star, which is 50.07ly away from the departure star. Since jumps are calculated by the game from the departure star to the arrival star, I can be far away and still only have to jump the same distance. Weird. I can effectively halve this thanks to FSD injection, so I need to make a jump of at least 25.04ly. After playing with the numbers for a little while, I found that the best balance was to sacrifice 2 tons of fuel for a size 1 Guardian FSD Booster. Any larger and the loss of fuel would outweigh the efficiency gains. With a 6D FSD with Long Range grade 5 and Mass Manager, this gives a jump range of 25.11ly. The ship isn't equipped with a fuel scoop, so I'll need to send one of the alts to refuel it so it can return to Ishum's Reach.
Speaking of alts, they are built similarly to the main ship with the exception of having an unengineered 2E FSD, which uses the least amount of power. They don't need to make it back, so they'll just self-destruct once they've unloaded their fuel. Additionally, the alts are fitted with a size 1 Fuel Transfer Limpet Controller and trade out some of their fuel tanks for cargo racks to carry their limpets. To maximize the amount of fuel they can transfer, they also have 300 Iron and Nickel, allowing each one to synthesize 120 limpets. The main ship also carries materials to make 120 limpets and has a size 2 cargo rack, allowing it to make limpets and jettison them so the tanker can pick them up. I'll also fill the rack with 4 limpets, since why not. I put together a spreadsheet to calculate the ratios of fuel to limpets carried by the tankers. Ideally, they should transfer over all of their remaining fuel the moment the rest of the ships have burned the equivalent amount of fuel. Since each additional ship needs to burn fuel in order to carry fuel to transfer, there are diminishing returns, much like rocket stages.
Fuel Calculation Spreadsheet
The alts didn't take too long to prepare. I did road to riches followed by Robigo-Sothis passenger missions to get them about 150m, unlocked Felicity Farseer to engineer the thrusters, then collected raw materials to trade for Iron and Nickel. Each one was probably a few hours of grinding. In order to have all 4 accounts fly simultaneously, I have 4 separate installs of Elite: Dangerous and run them with graphics on low. Fortunately my computer is powerful enough to handle it (can't handle Odyssey tho).
I picked the Type-9 because it and and Cutter have the highest fuel capacity, but of the two, the Type-9 has a lower hull mass allowing it to use smaller thrusters in addition to a smaller life support, which uses less power. Of the three modules, Thrusters use the overwhelming majority of the power, so to optimize fuel use using the smallest thrusters is key. I fitted it with 6D thrusters engineered with Grade 1 Reinforced and the Drive Distributors experimental. I only wanted Drive Distributors, but I needed at least one rank in something to apply it, and Reinforced is the only modification that doesn't decrease maximum mass. Next up was the Life Support, for which I used the E-rated module since it uses a bit less power. This might be the only time it's a good idea to use an E-rated life support for an exploration ship.
Finally, there was the FSD. In order to ensure the ship wouldn't be stranded, it needed to jump to the closest star, which is 50.07ly away from the departure star. Since jumps are calculated by the game from the departure star to the arrival star, I can be far away and still only have to jump the same distance. Weird. I can effectively halve this thanks to FSD injection, so I need to make a jump of at least 25.04ly. After playing with the numbers for a little while, I found that the best balance was to sacrifice 2 tons of fuel for a size 1 Guardian FSD Booster. Any larger and the loss of fuel would outweigh the efficiency gains. With a 6D FSD with Long Range grade 5 and Mass Manager, this gives a jump range of 25.11ly. The ship isn't equipped with a fuel scoop, so I'll need to send one of the alts to refuel it so it can return to Ishum's Reach.
Speaking of alts, they are built similarly to the main ship with the exception of having an unengineered 2E FSD, which uses the least amount of power. They don't need to make it back, so they'll just self-destruct once they've unloaded their fuel. Additionally, the alts are fitted with a size 1 Fuel Transfer Limpet Controller and trade out some of their fuel tanks for cargo racks to carry their limpets. To maximize the amount of fuel they can transfer, they also have 300 Iron and Nickel, allowing each one to synthesize 120 limpets. The main ship also carries materials to make 120 limpets and has a size 2 cargo rack, allowing it to make limpets and jettison them so the tanker can pick them up. I'll also fill the rack with 4 limpets, since why not. I put together a spreadsheet to calculate the ratios of fuel to limpets carried by the tankers. Ideally, they should transfer over all of their remaining fuel the moment the rest of the ships have burned the equivalent amount of fuel. Since each additional ship needs to burn fuel in order to carry fuel to transfer, there are diminishing returns, much like rocket stages.
Fuel Calculation Spreadsheet
The alts didn't take too long to prepare. I did road to riches followed by Robigo-Sothis passenger missions to get them about 150m, unlocked Felicity Farseer to engineer the thrusters, then collected raw materials to trade for Iron and Nickel. Each one was probably a few hours of grinding. In order to have all 4 accounts fly simultaneously, I have 4 separate installs of Elite: Dangerous and run them with graphics on low. Fortunately my computer is powerful enough to handle it (can't handle Odyssey tho).
Controlling four ships at once is a bit of a mess, but it works!
My mining ship and the three tankers docked to Demuynck Memorial, orbiting Colonia 3A. I'm carrying 512 tons of Tritium in my mining ship to deposit into the carrier once we're underway, so unfortunately I can't switch to the Endurance Border for a group photo yet since it doesn't have enough cargo racks.
Group photo!
Big thanks to the the owners of the fleet carriers:
CMDR Jonaltriani - Sleeper Service (H2T-LHV)
Took me from the Bubble to Colonia
CMDR CrotchRoach - Demuynck Memorial (V1K-10M)
Agreed to make a detour on the Colonia to Beagle Point trip to drop me off at Ishum's Reach
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