The Future of Exploration Ship Choices

Personally, I wish ED could be relaunched with every ship having a lower range. It's already rather silly when we've got people reaching Sag A* in less than 12 hours and a trip to somewhere like NGC 7822 takes only a little over an hour. The galaxy is supposed to be big!

I agree, bigger ships should really have the longer jumps, with ships at medium size lower and the smaller ships should have the lowest jump range.

The ultimate ship for exploring is the Anaconda it can get 30ly jumps (with weapons, shields and lots of other extras ) but requires bigger fuel tanks , which is coming in 1.3 i think. When you are in one, it gives you that added feeling your in an exploring Starship.
 
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You can get the formula from https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?p=643461#post643461

If my calculations are correct, if you could shoehorn a 6A FSD into an Asp it would manage 64 LY.

Personally, I wish ED could be relaunched with every ship having a lower range. It's already rather silly when we've got people reaching Sag A* in less than 12 hours and a trip to somewhere like NGC 7822 takes only a little over an hour. The galaxy is supposed to be big!

64 light years, wow, guess that would scale back as you actually put the equipment on board

The Galaxy still feels big to me, as those paces are just jump refuel jump refuel, it the top ships and equipment.
 
Personally, I wish ED could be relaunched with every ship having a lower range. It's already rather silly when we've got people reaching Sag A* in less than 12 hours and a trip to somewhere like NGC 7822 takes only a little over an hour. The galaxy is supposed to be big!

They could always bring back hyperdrive breakdowns and misjumps, and beef up the old wear and tear. :) Me, I think the Galaxy is big enough right now seeing as we've not even explored a thousanth of a percent of the Galaxy yet.
 
I hope the Courier is good for exploring, if not, the Clipper will do with a fuel tank upgrade.

I refuse to fly one of those anti-aesthetic ASPs

You Sir are a cad and a blackguard.....The asp is a fine and beautiful beast....the Clipper is for those who need to make a statement.
 
I feel it is a misconception that you need the biggest jump distance available to be an explorer UNLESS you are specifically going to the furtherest reaches of the spiral arms, heading anywhere amidst the spirals and especially towards the centre, you do not need a great distance on your jump engine UNLESS you are doing a speed run to Sag A* or something like that...

The money and ranks aremade by the journey not how fast you can get there and I am sure there are many systems that people have jumped past that may well have contained valuable targets in their rush to get to a sightseeing spot
 
I agree, people overrate jump range for exploration.

Jump range is important, especially if you are in a hurry to get somewhere, but things like safety, range on one tank of gas, and maneuverability rating are also important! For example, if you are scan-happy then maneuverability rating of the ship is probably the most important statistic (I actually feel the adder is extremely underrated as an exploration vessel for this reason -- it is the only ship with a reasonable jump range that has manuverability rating of 8).

Adder's biggest weakness is only 4 jumps on one tank, and few module slots. Once I can fit extra fuel tanks on the adder I will probably use it over my asp.
 
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I agree, people overrate jump range for exploration.

Jump range is important, especially if you are in a hurry to get somewhere, but things like safety, range on one tank of gas, and maneuverability rating are also important! For example, if you are scan-happy then maneuverability rating of the ship is probably the most important statistic (I actually feel the adder is extremely underrated as an exploration vessel for this reason -- it is the only ship with a reasonable jump range that has manuverability rating of 8).

Adder's biggest weakness is only 4 jumps on one tank, and few module slots. Once I can fit extra fuel tanks on the adder I will probably use it over my asp.

The Adder is really good, and I might downgrade back to it from the Cobra because of the maneuverability. That ship just feels so much better in deep space, where the Cobra feels more tanky and slow. It'll have more jump range and more slots, but don't like how it flies at all.

Downside of the Adder is it's canopy. Explorer ship with a canopy like that is really, really bad design (and that we don't have transparent metal for the window frames, more so). Explorer specific ships need a huge view, larger than even the Asp has now.
 
I agree about the adder's canopy. The debug camera somewhat mitigates this problem for screenshots, but yes that is another huge downside of the adder to me.
 
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I'm not sure that I agree that maneuverability is that important for exploring. Most of the time I'm flying in a straight line to the next object to scan. I'm currently exploring in a T6 and I was thinking just yesterday how nicely it handles in SC and it's way down on the agility scale. The 5A FSD responds well when I suddenly need to slow down and not overshoot.

Still, I agree that the Adder would be a great explorer if it were not for the very limited view.
 
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