I'm coming up on 100,000LY in my DBX this trip. The trick is to not crash.
New exploration ships
- Thread starter Wardonis
- Start date
I'm coming up on 100,000LY in my DBX this trip. The trick is to not crash.
I want my Diamondback Expedition Ship.
Are you saying you couldn't get a Clipper to above a 30ly jump range without grinding combat related materials?
I was just earlier today flying a brand new exploration build in my Clipper (35ly jump range). All it needed was a FSD booster, no engineering, no grinding. Very minimal combat to get the focus crystals and to swat away the annoying sentinels when unlocking the FSD booster itself. I think some missions give focus crystals as rewards, and they can spawn from USS. Shooting a wanted target 1 time at a nav beacon while System Security is tearing it apart can often net you several focus crystals, you only need a little over 20, so you could have that part done in an hour or even less.
I'm not a huge fan of combat, I mostly explore while doing some trading on the side. My combat rank is pretty low, but once in a while I will pull the Courier or FDL out of storage and do light bounty hunting of NPC ships near nav beacons. When you've built up enough credits to hit Elite in exploration that money's got to go towards something. And rebuy screens while exploring are rare, so it's not going towards that. So outfitting a fighter just to occasionally bounty hunt for the materials for the FSD booster or for light engineering of the FSD, not a bad investment of one's time.
I want an Imperial exploration ship as much as the next person, and while the Clipper isn't ideal due to it's pad size restrictions or lack of module space, it still does okay in the role. With a FSD booster and simple D-rating of internals it can get upwards of 35ly jumps without engineering a thing. With slight engineering it could get easily into the 40s. It would be much harder to do with a Cutter (and by harder I mean more expensive), and probably impossible with a Courier with it's tiny modules.
So as of today I have 3 exploration ships: DBX, Krait, and Clipper. Each having their own unique strengths and flaws in regards to the role.
DBX has range, though seriously lacks module space. I'd like to have a good fuel scoop, a shield, an AFMU, a FSD booster and a SRV bay on a dedicated exploration ship... the DBX is clearly not that ship. The DBX is a FSD with a chair strapped to it. We're lucky there was room for a life support system in that thing.
The Krait has okay module space, a good canopy view, okay but not great range, but from the outside looks like a guitar pick with thrusters.
The Clipper has okay module space, okay jump range, looks great in screenshots, but landing options are more limited than the other two ships and it has a tendency to heat up faster than the others. The last problem is overcome by throwing money at it for a massive fuel scoop so as not to hang near a star longer than a few seconds.
So ideal to me would be a slightly smaller clipper that could fit on a medium pad, jump just a bit further from the reduced mass and have maybe one additional slot (a size 3 maybe?) than the Clipper has for either an additional AFMU or a SRV bay that my current built can't incorporate without removing the already undersized shield. I can deal with it's heat issues as is, so if that aspect didn't change I could live with it.
I was not wrong. That ^ is grinding/farming a combat area, a place I would never go to begin with. and whats an FSD booster? I've never seen or heard of one before.
An hour in USS is not "grinding" in my opinion. It's also not the same as engaging in combat, it's salvaging wreckage.
Also, an FSD Booster is a piece of Guardian tech that does exactly what it sounds like. It boosts the Frame Shift Drive. The one I have installed on my exploration ships adds 10.5lyrs to their jump range (that's the biggest one btw). You unlock it once at the Tech Broker and it adds it to your outfitting options, comes in different sizes that add more distance to your jumps and reduce the fuel consumed on those big jumps a little.
Just curious - are you exclusively an Open mode player? If so, a place like Dav's Hope might be a place where you could get shot, but if you are ok using the other modes, there will be no Combat involved at all.
Land, disembark, scoop up what's laying on the ground. IIRC, that same planet also has Polonium, if that interests you.
Riôt
You do realise that it'll be a variant on the chieftain don't you?
You might need more than 40 if you're going to Star One and other very distant stars on the very edge of the galaxy. The number of stars are extermely reduced there, and the jump ranges are sometimes over 100 ly, so only with a high jump range and premium boost can you get there. (Been there, done that)
So far as I've heard there's been no confirmation of any such thing. There are already 2 variants of said ship, having another would mean the Alliance would either have no large ships on par with the Corvette or Cutter, or have vastly more ships than any other faction as they would have 4 mediums by that point with their entry into the large ship category still to come.
I find it more likely to be the Alliance's entry that is equivalent to the Cutter and Corvette.
If it has some of the characteristics of its smaller sisters, I will be very interested indeed in such a thing, as would others, I imagine.
I think it's possible that we might be getting more than one ship in this update as well. It's possible that we might be getting the above-mentioned large Alliance ship, a new Mining ship, and a new Exploration ship.
I look forward to finding out.
Riôt
I would very much like to see an explorer version of the T-9/10.
Daves Hope is not a horrible place in open but there are many that will pop in from another board like solo to open in an Anaconda and shoot the SRVs roaming about there for sport. Daves is perhaps the most popular but Tailors Keep and others all around the bubble offer the same data and mats and I never see a soul around. Better yet bouncing around to these abandoned sites offers up a nice reward to cash in. A new usable ship with Anaconda like internals and jump abilities would be a welcome addition for me.
An imperial explorer would be very nice.