Been doing a lot of low fuel exploration lately and can confirm that the max range number on the ship status panel is your max range with minimal fuel (i.e. just enough to meet the max fuel usage per jump for your FSD ) and no cargo. The current range number will change as your fuel level changes. If you start fuel scooping with a nearly empty tank, you can watch the number steadily increase until it reaches the max number and then it will start going back down until it settles at your minimum jump range. Btw, if you use the plotter to plot multiple jumps, it will never plot a jump higher than your minimum range. So, you can get better range by plotting manually (it's just way more tedious).
Do you mean it will never plot a jump higher than your current minimum range? Because I have plotted a jump before fuel scooping and picked up enough fuel to get me stuck between systems until I had burned some off.
Did you plot just one jump, or multiple? From what i can tell is if you plot one jump, what you describe is possible, but if you plot multiple jumps it uses your absolute minimum range (based on cargo load) and therefore your current fuel level is not taken into consideration
Thanks guys. I'm not sure this is 100% nailed down yet. Yesterday I noticed that by stripping the hard-points my current jump range approached the max possible value. Maybe the max figure is a totally optimised value: min fuel, no hard-points, etc.
How is it impossible? Fuel adds to the weight of your ship, which reduces your jump range.
The route plotter never uses your "minimum range", there is no "minimum range". The only reason it wouldn't be using your max range to calculate is if you're plotting economic routes.