What does an "exploration" carrier need?
- Thread starter BradHann
- Start date
On mine I have everything apart from Shipyard, Outfitting and Secure Warehouse. Only needed if carrying or supplying other users.
These not only take up space, but need to be stocked which also costs in space and the heavier your FC is the more fuel it takes to jump.
Your maintenance service supplies fighters, SRV's, ammo etc as well as for repairs.
What you will need is a range of equipped ships for different situations and a good stock of equipment so that if you want to change a ship configuration you can, ie fuel scoops, fuel transfer limpet controller, spare weapons inc mining types, cargo bays, AFMU's in a variety of sizes. these can all be brought from stations and transferred to your personal stock onboard.
Your own stock of ships and equipment does not use space.
List of prices on wiki page.
These not only take up space, but need to be stocked which also costs in space and the heavier your FC is the more fuel it takes to jump.
Your maintenance service supplies fighters, SRV's, ammo etc as well as for repairs.
What you will need is a range of equipped ships for different situations and a good stock of equipment so that if you want to change a ship configuration you can, ie fuel scoops, fuel transfer limpet controller, spare weapons inc mining types, cargo bays, AFMU's in a variety of sizes. these can all be brought from stations and transferred to your personal stock onboard.
Your own stock of ships and equipment does not use space.
List of prices on wiki page.
Cost:
cmdrs-toolbox.com
Fleet Carrier Calculator — CMDRs ToolBox
Easy to use calculator to find out if you can afford a fleet carrier in Elite Dangerous
cmdrs-toolbox.com
This are two different services and the first one is, actually, just a waste of money and storage place for tritium. Because, let's be honest, the absolute majority of explorers do use fuel scoops
I believe, the same that restocks limpets.
You might also need shipyard if you plan to invite someone else to your expedition.
Last edited:
FC needs miner ship, which needs all services. So yeah, all except "Shipyard, Outfitting and Secure Warehouse".This are two different services and the first one is, actually, a waste of money and place for tritium, because, let's be honest, the absolute majority of explorers do use fuel scoops
You can keep that paused until you fly away/offline. That will do 8.8mil/week + 100k/jump.
I'd say at a minimum you want: UC, and Armoury (for SRV, heatsink, and limpet restocks).
Refuel is nice, so that people can always top-up, but it isn't strictly necessary. Repair is also nice, since not everyone has repair limpets, and power plants can't be repaired in the field. By again, not strictly necessary. Redemption Office is useful for cashing in those codex vouchers, but they're not worth much.
Shipyard and Outfitting are useful on the occasion that someone wants to have modules or ships transferred out to your location, but I don't think this will be used often. And as the owner, you get this capability anyway, which will help if you want to keep a mining ship onboard.
As others have pointed out, keeping a mining ship onboard is a good idea. Repair/Refuel are highly useful for this, but you can also outfit the miner like an exploration vessel as well, depending on how you want to do things.
The only one that is useless for exploration is the Secure Warehouse.
On my DSSA carrier, I installed everything except the secure warehouse. On my personal (mobile) carrier, I did the same thing at first, but ended up removing the Shipyard and Outfitting since I can use those capabilities without them installed, and no one else is travelling with me. Anyone who visits along the way probably won't need those services, and if they do, there are always DSSA carriers and other locations to do that.
Refuel is nice, so that people can always top-up, but it isn't strictly necessary. Repair is also nice, since not everyone has repair limpets, and power plants can't be repaired in the field. By again, not strictly necessary. Redemption Office is useful for cashing in those codex vouchers, but they're not worth much.
Shipyard and Outfitting are useful on the occasion that someone wants to have modules or ships transferred out to your location, but I don't think this will be used often. And as the owner, you get this capability anyway, which will help if you want to keep a mining ship onboard.
As others have pointed out, keeping a mining ship onboard is a good idea. Repair/Refuel are highly useful for this, but you can also outfit the miner like an exploration vessel as well, depending on how you want to do things.
The only one that is useless for exploration is the Secure Warehouse.
On my DSSA carrier, I installed everything except the secure warehouse. On my personal (mobile) carrier, I did the same thing at first, but ended up removing the Shipyard and Outfitting since I can use those capabilities without them installed, and no one else is travelling with me. Anyone who visits along the way probably won't need those services, and if they do, there are always DSSA carriers and other locations to do that.
Last edited:
I have considered this question very carefully when planning my expedition and have come to the conclusion that 500 extra tons of tritium are of better use than one size 3 slot on my mining ship
Then you can go more and ...consider to have various sized cargo containers & repair limpets on board. So once your ship gets damadged - install repair limpets and do repairs (and amfu). Then you can move even more - synth everything you would use - limpets, mining charges.I have considered this question very carefully when planning my expedition and have come to the conclusion that 500 extra tons of tritium are of better use than one size 3 slot on my mining ship
So you can completely remove armory/repairs/refuel and have on board couple repair limpets, couple cargos and couple amfus. Install on ship who needs it.
In such setup you will need just UC installed to pay bills.
That is true, but if you plan to mine tritium on the way, you'd better have armory, for it weights only 250 tons, but gives unlimited limpets.
...and then we back to what i said, all except 3.
For me, so far it has. It's not making enough money to also buy any significant amount of tritium, but I'm doing just fine with the maintenance. It did however encourage me to take the shipyard and outfitting off my main carrier though, since I get those capabilities anyway as the owner. The upkeep for the week can be earned in one evening of exploration, usually. Maybe two, if your time is more limited, or you're exploring more slowly.
Last I looked, my DSSA carrier was earning a small profit from the UC sales of visitors. I haven't checked in a couple of weeks now, so I should probably look again and see if that is still true. EDIT: Yes this is still happening.
Last edited:
Depends on the time you spend for ED, and how you explore I think... At maximum a FC upkeep is ~30mio... If you cherry pick tWWs and stuff for a couple of hours a week you should be fine.
Yep, for your own ships/modules no outfitting is needed... you can swap as many modules as wanted.
Refuel is useful if like me you use different ships for exploring and mining. I scoop to keep my Dolphin scout/mapper half full, but I use the FC to refuel my 'Vette after a mining session, just too lazy to fly to the star after a couple hours in the rings. Ship's fuel is very very cheap and the module doesn't occupy a huge cargo space.This are two different services and the first one is, actually, just a waste of money and storage place for tritium. Because, let's be honest, the absolute majority of explorers do use fuel scoops
I believe, the same that restocks limpets.
You might also need shipyard if you plan to invite someone else to your expedition.
Exploradata can easily cover FC expenses including jump maintenance (100k per jump). My expenses run to less than 12M per week. Since FCs dropped I have made around 600M from exploration alone and that's after expenses and the cut the FC takes. I am not anywhere near the bubble however, so virgin systems are more common, and they give bonuses for both discovery and mapping. I map extensively though not always entirely, depends on the system. When first heading out things were a bit leaner but I could still recoup all costs. If you mine to recover fuel use after every one or two carrier jumps, rather than going for huge amounts of Rocket Tea, then your ratio of mining to exploration time can be as high as 1:10, which is typical for me if all I do is replace used fuel. If I also mine for money minerals or a tritium reserve boost, that can drop to 1:8.
This methodology is not fast the way jumpaConda travel can be fast, and it does take patience and a willingness to explore more than the systems encountered in a path from one carrier waypoint to another.
I did add outfitting, and stocked it with mining-related gear. As a lone explorer, who moves the FC while exploring, I keep the commodity market open to purchase tritium at about 150% market average. Figure I would compensate anyone who wanted to help keep me running. And I buy some strange things too, like data caches and escape pods (and no I'm not experimenting on them like that creepy engineer in Colonia.) I do charge a 12% premium on repair/refuel services as well. I have UC.
The plan was that if a fellow explorer needed a place to repair, or turn in some exploration data, they might want to temporarily outfit their ship and make some CR mining trit as a break from exploration. But this hasn't really panned out. I think I might get one cmdr every couple of weeks to stop in, and no one has purchased gear from the shop. I'm only about 5kly outside the bubble, moving slowly rimward through the galaxy, so maybe the FC density and closeness to the bubble still has something to do with it, but my feeling is that I will disable outfitting to save a little on upkeep if I don't see a ROI over the next month or so.
The plan was that if a fellow explorer needed a place to repair, or turn in some exploration data, they might want to temporarily outfit their ship and make some CR mining trit as a break from exploration. But this hasn't really panned out. I think I might get one cmdr every couple of weeks to stop in, and no one has purchased gear from the shop. I'm only about 5kly outside the bubble, moving slowly rimward through the galaxy, so maybe the FC density and closeness to the bubble still has something to do with it, but my feeling is that I will disable outfitting to save a little on upkeep if I don't see a ROI over the next month or so.
Last edited:
Yes. At one occasion I checked how much I earned in average each system (using EDD) and came to the conclusion it was 2.5 mil. And even if it would be, lets say 1 mil, then you'd only need 20 jumps or so to not only cover the weekly cost but also give you some spare change.
As others said, it depends how much you explore. Personally I can say that the mandatory UC fee alone covers my expanses. My carrier has 7 years worth of credits on board and the last time I sold data it went up by about 1 month worth of credits, and that was after 3 weeks of scanning (about 1500 systems).