Guide / Tutorial The Popular Guide to Exploration

[Lance 'Spacecat' D.]

Thank you Ash. Aaand I won't bother showing a goldilocks zone for terraformables and waterworlds since EDSM is now treating us. ^^

Decent update today, added a page related to heat control, and another about Xenoarchaeology, those guardians and thargoids being such a thing!

 

[CaDaVuR]

Newbie

Many thanks for this detailed guide. As a new explorer you have made my day good Sir.

 

[Ricochetv1]

To ease your long trips, here's a good list of systems that contain stations from the bubble to Pekoe, which contains the station that's closest to Sag A (and incidentally, the destinations of a good majority of the long-haul passenger missions. I keep all these bookmarked, and you can add these as waypoints in the Spansh Neutron Star Plotter. They will provide you an opporunity to land, stretch your legs, sell your nav data, repair, restock the AFMU, etc... Also, there's a good bowling alley in the Eagle sector. You'll see what I mean when you zoom in on it in the map.

Mammon
Lagoon Sector FW-W d1-122
Omega Sector VE-Q b5-15
Eagle Sector IR-W d1-105
Rohini
Skaudai CH-B d14-34
Stuelou AT-J c25-24
Gru Hypue KS-T d3-31
Gandharvi
Kashyapa

 

[simonb1]

Hi,

Thank you for a wonderful slide show.

From personal experience, with an Imperial Courier install a size 3 fuel scoop for less time scooping and run away at 80% heat. I also suggest at least 2 heat sink launchers if you are doing pure exploration.

Simon

 

[Ricochetv1]

Hi,

Thank you for a wonderful slide show.

From personal experience, with an Imperial Courier install a size 3 fuel scoop for less time scooping and run away at 80% heat. I also suggest at least 2 heat sink launchers if you are doing pure exploration.

Simon

Well, I'm using an Asp Explorer with a 6B fuel scoop. I can fill up after a full range hop in about 20 seconds without going over 60% heat...

 

[Lance 'Spacecat' D.]

Yeah, technically one can explore in anything with a fuel scoop and two slots for scanners, but some qualities make a ship just more comfortable for exploration:

1: Decent base jump range
2: Room for SRV bay, AFMU and a small shield for bumps (6 internal slots total, bonus points if 7+ since you can add an FSD booster)
3: A canopy with a good view (the lakons, imperial clipper, Saud Kruger ships or the Krait.)
4: Decent supercruise agility. (Anything smaller than the big 4, but the Asp, Dolphin and many light ships are best at this)
5: A fuel tank with more than 3-4 jumps in it.
6: Reasonably cool while scooping

No ship has all these qualities to perfection, which is why there is no single ship 'better than all the others' at exploring. (The AspX and Krait come very close) Add to that how some of the qualities matter less or more depending on the commander and how we favor one ship's quirk over another (I'm a fan of the type-6, for instance)...

Thus we see a great variety of ships out there in the black, and that actually makes me smile.

 

[Lance 'Spacecat' D.]

Well, update done today!

I've finally decided to say a few words on how to start engineering FSDs, though I don't go very in-depth. (this isn't a 'popular guide to engineering' after all) and the guardian FSD boosters... Also adjusted all the ship designs that still pointed to coriolis.edcd.io.

Aaaaand I'll have a ton of work when the big patch hits... yah.

 

[Lance 'Spacecat' D.]

I've done the update today for upcoming patch 3.3

The big 'exploration' change is how the Discovery Scanner will now be integrated to all ships (one less internal to worry about) and how the 'Full Spectrum Scan' it does now requires some new controls. Here is my advice for folks regarding those controls:
-Setup keys to go in and out of the FSS, obviously
-Zoom in, Zoom out, Radio Tuning + and - will be your most used keys, tuning is done left to right. (I used AWSD on my keyboard+mouse setup)
-Stepped zoom is less used but still important, a good choice for an 'analog' control. (I use my mouse-wheel)

Consider that separately from the Detailed Surface Scanner, which really just has one extra key to see the back of the planet. Again you can use a ship control key since the ship can't be controlled while throwing probes (I use W)

 

[khaos526]

Great, this will come in handy when it's released tomorrow. I hate having to go research how to things the day of big updates like this, so this should help out a good deal as long as the changes in Beta haven't changed much when it's released that is...

 

[Tifu]

I stumbled upon this excellent series of guides just in time. It won't be long before DW2 launches, many thanks!!!

 

[Lance 'Spacecat' D.]

Small update done today: I've added a small mention that a research limpet can be useful out there if one meets space lifeforms.

But more importantly I turned the 'tools of the trade' into a two-pager to explain EDSM and the market connector and such, and moved it in the basics. Because data is highly important to scientists and explorers. And folks might enjoy the neutron router and its powerful search features, y'know... plus I learnt of a few cool EDMC plugins lately.

 

[Lance 'Spacecat' D.]

Whew, it's been ages.
But here I am having updated this, my oldest and most beloved guide. Ship designs are tweaked, I speak more in the engineering section... little things.

 

[Oborax]

Whew, it's been ages.
But here I am having updated this, my oldest and most beloved guide. Ship designs are tweaked, I speak more in the engineering section... little things.

Hi Lance,
Just wanted to say a big thank you to you sir!
I've only just started out in E and your guide is wonderful and useful.
You have helped me much - thank you again for the time you have invested in sharing your experience
07

 

[Lance 'Spacecat' D.]

Well, I hadn't touched this beauty in forever. But here we go! updated for Odyssey at last (Which mostly means correcting screens for planetary scanning)
I also added a word on human tech brokers, because that v1 engineered drive is a godsend!

 

[timedriver]

Hey everyone, with the interdictions being horrible early 1.4, I hear a lot of players are going out into the black. I took advantage of a server outage to get some work done and wrote a useful guide for players new to exploration: The Popular Guide to Exploration.

It's designed to be easy to read, a bit of fun, and gives the material in easy to digest bite-sized chunks. Although it's intended for new players, I even had some more experienced players tell me they learnt a few tricks from it.
My inspiration was Hanako's own Popular Guide to Powerplay. (Another Aisling's Angel, go us!)

Everyone, freely share this guide with folks unused to exploration. It might help them out.

I appreciate all the effort.....would like to see this with a controller vs keyboard.