Low cost exploration ship.

newman1702 · Jun 1, 2017

If you have more than one AFMU, they can repair each other, and you can refill them with mats (as long as you have an SRV), so in that case the only real difference of consequence left is repair speed, as your only damage bottlenecks become hull and power plant, that can only be repaired when docked at stations... Of course this is all academic since in practice I've never even come close to draining a single low class AFMU, let alone multiple higher class ones - even on longer trips. Came back from 6 months of DWE with what, 90% AFMU capacity on the c5 one. You need to be taking lots of damage over lots of time for any of this to become really relevant in practice - and if you're taking that much damage, chances are you'll kill yourself on a botched landing way before you get a chance to drain an AFMU

Just saying that folks shouldn't think that B rated AFM's extra ammo is an advantage over the A's, because it's not.

Kenneth McGrew · Jun 1, 2017

newman1702 said:
As I said, I can understand it from a saving money perspective, but a lot of people see more ammo and think it's better (i.e. will actually repair more than an A, which it won't), so I'm just saying A's are better in every way except price. Power consumption is largely irrelevant because you want to drop out into normal space before repairing anyway - it's way too easy to start repairing thrusters or FSD while in SC and causing further damage to your ship. Repairs aren't something you'll be doing too often, so dropping out before repairing is a good habit to have; and when you do that it's easy to just shut something down to free up power for the AFMU. It's more of a matter of common sense than play style, really.

completely agree ammo wise as I mentioned above, and yes it is common sense but the immersion is strong in some.

marx said:
A minor note of curiosity on this: AFMUs do have integrity, and as such, a B-rated one can take more damage than an A-rated one. Of course, in practice this doesn't matter, since if you suffered enough internal damage that it would kill your AFMU(s), then you'd likely have far bigger problems anyway. Bill Turner and Lori Jameson actually offer Shielded mods for AFMUs - one of the most useless blueprints in the game.

I raise you the shielded fuel scoop

CMDR CODY · Jun 1, 2017

My DBX has no cargo, on my first trip to Colonia, I came across two wrecked ships.
Both had barrels laying about, mostly illegal cargo, but two were painite. No cargo space.

What funny is that now, Im shuttling an AspX out there, and I still have no cargo. opted for reinforced hull instead.
The DBX got there with 55% hull.

Kenneth McGrew · Jun 1, 2017

CMDR CODY said:
The DBX got there with 55% hull.

what were you doing with it?

Ashnak · Jun 1, 2017

CMDR CODY said:
My DBX has no cargo, on my first trip to Colonia, I came across two wrecked ships.
Both had barrels laying about, mostly illegal cargo, but two were painite. No cargo space...

If you want to run the gauntlet with NPC interdictions for a few (ten) thousands in Painite (or watever) while carrying several million Cr. worth of exploration data (and the risk of being deposited back at your last port of call

), feel free.

Ernest T Bass · Jun 5, 2017

duckofdeath said:
I prepped a iCourier for a long range trip myself once, because it has a neat fighter jet-like cockpit.
The undersized fuel scoop was unfortunately a deal breaker for me, so I only did something like 10 kyiles in it.

BTW, what's with the C rated life support and sensors? I mean, I don't think the extra 150 seconds of air will do you much good if your canopy breaks 5,000 light years from the nearest dock.

I did very little changing from leech spec for the Salome event. Very good point.

Ernest T Bass · Jun 5, 2017

space voyager said:
I stupidly keep a cargo rack in my exploration ship in hope of Frontier adding into the game something worth hauling back. Never happened so having no cargo space is very acceptable. Sadly. Nice ship.

You'll very likely not travel on efficient route when a actually going somewhere though.

I do the efficient route and chart any full system that looks like it has an ammonia/earthlike, or seems to score a valve of 2Mcr or more. That usually means 3 or more HMCs. I've been moving about 100ly per hour. I'm not in a rush.

On the practical side. Some stretches of dead zones (unscoopable) can easily hit 200ly.

Ernest T Bass · Jun 5, 2017

Well, It looks like I started a descent thread. This happened on a whim. About three hours after Salome was killed, I was on my way to SAG A. As a general reply to points brought up, after building an Anaconda for this, that can perform roughly as well, and beat most minor PvPers in a fight, I think you get my point. The protect Salome spec called for no weapons. Remembering my 5kly trip, I liked the idea. On my way out, I charted a metal rich with iron magma volcanoes. I couldn't find the volcanoes, but there was a POI with an unidentifiable wreck and 3 escape pods. I had to leave the poor souls behind. What I want to find/map are earthlikes, on the unreasonable hope that one day, we will be able to get a deed on what we have discovered. That would make for an interesting game aspect, once players can build stations and trade is possible between players.

space voyager · Jun 6, 2017

Lestat said:
People whined when their was POI in deep space. It gave us something to do. I think they should add them back in in well traveled areas. Destroyed ships and such.

When exploring, I ignore POIs anyway as you can't find anything worth taking. Even large data cashes at what... 100k?... are not worth their weight unless I'm close to getting back.

wielkimagik · Jun 6, 2017

Want to go cheap? If you can live without an SRV and don't care about salvage, if you go out only to look for ELWs/neutrons/black holes and/or look at pretty colors in nebulae and/or get someplace far you probably can't go cheaper than a Sidewinder. Here's mine:

https://coriolis.edcd.io/outfit/sid...AAMAPPRr0aQAAAA=.EweloBjEoUwQwOYBtYhARgtoA===

If you go with 2B AFM the cost will drop under 3 million.

I didn't put exact values for mods, just picked best roll for each. You want the best you can get for FSD range and lightweight sensors and life support, obviously; the rest are modded only to get mass reduction on secondary roll. I got 32,88 ly jump range with full tank in mine, and some jumponium materials just in case. Sadly, SRV hangar would lower the jump range by about 4,5 ly.

Pros:
- cheap
- awesome maneuverability in SC

Cons:
- shieldless - not much of a con to be honest, without SRV you won't have a reason to land on a planet too often, and if you get attacked when coming back to the bubble a shield on a Sidewinder won't do much good anyway (I think I'll switch to solo when returning)
- either no SRV or jump range under 28 ly - problematic on the edge of the galaxy
- the range just under 33 ly is low for current (engineered) exploration ship standards - but remember 33 ly was pretty great before the Engineers update
- 2A fuel scoop - not bad, but could be better
- tiny fuel tank - with fastest plotting you need to fill up every 2 jumps; I just filtered out non-scoopables in galaxy map

How far can you go in this? Well, I'm under 5k ly from Beagle Point, so pretty far. I should be there by friday, depending on real life.

space voyager · Jun 6, 2017

I'd miss landings IMO. Also having fun among asteroids as I'd be too afraid without any shielding. But it is possible...

wielkimagik · Jun 6, 2017

Yeah, I'm actually missing them currently. But like I said it depends on your goal if it's good for you or not - for me the goal was to reach Beagle Point in my starter Sidey, so there weren't many options. Under 3k ly now.

Next time I'll probably take my Conda, I built it to explore and I never took it further than 1k ly from the bubble...

Ernest T Bass · Jun 7, 2017

@ CMDR CODY And a Lincoln motor?

Ernest T Bass · Jun 7, 2017

Since on a long trip, you either can't repair an AFMU. Well, unless you have two of them. You need the most durable. And engineering for integrity helps. Power plants are even more critical. But if you can avoid hitting stars and rough landings for restocking, this doesn't matter a lot either. And as someone else pointed out, for exploring, you really can D spec most systems.

Major Klutz · Jun 7, 2017

I just finished putting this together...
https://eddp.co/u/HH1JaSaj
(It's got a Lincoln motor and it's really souped up!)
34.4ly on a full tank. 37.8ly on fumes. 500M/s cruising speed. 675M/s boost, every 11 seconds.

I gave priority to speed over weight and jump range to make searching for volcanism more fun.

Not as Low Cost as yours but still cheaper than a DBE and she's a lot of fun to fly over planets.
I think I'll take her out an a short shakedown cruise to NGC 7822 or someplace fun but no too far away.

Major Klutz · Jun 7, 2017

Commander Wielkimagik's sidewinder inspired me to do a cost comparison of exploration ships.

These are theoretical maximum jump ranges based on Coriolis "Best" roll on the engineering mods. I know it's possible to do better than those "best" rolls, but these are also realistically achievable rolls.
I made every effort to keep the ships comparable by using the same mods and as similar a configuration as possible while minimizing weight and maximizing jump range.
I thought the results were interesting enough to share. Some of it's obvious, but some of it was new to me.
For example, I saw I could fit my Python with a better jump range than I expected,
and I didn't know the Hauler had the 4th best jump range. A bit more expensive than the sidewinder but a much better jump range until you add any weight to it.

Apart from the top three, the range list changes a lot when you add the weight of an SRV and Shields.

Part 1. Max Range, Stripped bare
a. Range

b. Cost (fuel scoop normalized)

c. Speed (Note: most ships are unable to boost with 1D Power Distrubutor. Surprisingly, many can.)

d. Configuration Links

Part 2. Full Exploration Loadout (*where possible)
a. Range

*Some of the smaller ships don't have the internal compartments for a full loadout.

b. Cost (fuel scoop normalized)

c. Speed

d. Configuration Links
*If I could not fit a full loadout, I prioritized components in the order SRV, Shields, AFMU.
IMO, You can land without shields (if you're careful) and for me, the AFMU is rarely used so it's a lower priority than being able to land and gather jumponium.
Some of the larger ships did not have enough power to keep the shields on but in those cases you can shut off the Fuel Scoop and/or FSD to turn on the shields before landing.

Updated: The really big fuel scoops and AFMs seriously skew the costs of the larger ships. An 8A scoop is ~290 million by itself, more than the cost of a Cutter.
So I re-ran the comparison with a fuel scoop price cap equal to or less than a 4A and made the AFM the same on all ships.
That scaled down to cost range to 250M from 500M.
I've updated the config links.

wielkimagik · Jun 7, 2017

Major Klutz said:
You can land without shields (if you're careful) and for me, the AFMU is rarely used so it's a lower priority than being able to land and gather jumponium.

Absolutely true. Before heading out I tested my Sidey, among other ways, by landing on Achenar 3 (6,73 G) - no damage. You just need to be patient. I suffered only minor damage on the way to Colonia via Sag A* - one emergency drop (don't text and scoop) and one overheating (triggered FSD too close to B-class and opened system map). No damage after leaving Jacques so far.

I sacrificed SRV to get more range, but I spent some time gathering jumponium materials before leaving. Still haven't used any, got 27 premium boosts if needed.

Ernest T Bass · Jun 14, 2017

Nice research Klutz! It looks like my instincts on the Courier were right. Given that any detail can be debated. You have given me a couple of tweak ideas when I get back to Canonn in about a month. Hopefully,by then, the Gnosis will be closer than Chacobog and I can sell data while I'm there.

Cdr Voorheez · Aug 4, 2017

Amazing stats Herr Major.