Picking Your Platform
Picking Your Platform
Truth be told, you can explore in anything. You can't get to every single point in everything -- sooner or later, for fundamental accessibility, jump range is king -- but you can have a perfectly cromulent explorer that isn't a Jumpaconda.
For this guide, I'm building off a Krait Phantom, which is my long-range explorer of choice. The Phantom currently ranks third on the max jump list, trailing the Anaconda and (narrowly) the Diamondback Explorer, while itself narrowly edging the Asp Explorer. Why the Phantom? The Anaconda maneuvers slowly in supercruise and is hard to land in tight areas. The DBX can't carry either a full-size fuel scoop (equal in size to its FSD) or a full-size FSD booster; of those two, the scoop is the one you notice regularly. Note that the jump rank between DBX, Phantom, and AspX is driven by the 10T gap in hull mass between each.
So, at right, a stock Phantom, jumping a whopping 9.3 LY. Let's fix it.
Module Basics
Module Basics
For exploration ships, only two grades of module really matter: A and D. D-rated modules are, famously, low-mass. Exploration ships love D-rated modules... except when they don't. A-rated modules, meanwhile, are the "best", or at least generally the most efficient mix of mass and capability. For an explorer, two modules are must-have A-rated: the FSD (for jump range) and the power plant (for thermal performance and, unexpectedly, mass). A downsized-A power plant always gives more power for less mass (as well as better thermals) than a upsized-D plant. This pattern doesn't hold elsewhere, but it's relevant here.
So, step 1 to fit a Phantom for jump range is to put in the biggest A-rated FSD, the smallest D-rated power distributor that still allows boost, the smallest D-rated shield that works, D-rated other modules, and the smallest A-rated power plant that runs the show. That's a 5A FSD, 3D distro, 3D shield, and a 2A plant. We also add in the biggest fuel scoop we can afford (here a 6A for $29M, but even a 6C for $2M is great). Tack on an SRV hangar, a DSS, and a heat sink launcher to round out basic equipment. Oh, and drop the weapons. We've jumped from 9 LY to 34 LY (+25 LY), enough to reach Beagle Point.
Core Upgrades: FSD and Booster
Core Upgrades: FSD and Booster
The single biggest jump range upgrade available is getting the pre-engineered V1 5A FSD from a Human Tech Broker. It's only available in 5A, but that covers most of the most popular exploration ships and combines two engineering effects that improve your jump range. If you're building a ship with another-sized FSD, engineer that FSD for Increased Range, paired with the Mass Manager experimental effect. Technically Mass Manager gives a little less performance than Deep Charge for FSD classes 2-4 (the difference is completely negligible on class 4), but Mass Manager is always more fuel-efficient. It's the only one I use, and this V1 FSD includes it.
Increased Range also increases the power draw of the FSD, and here, it pushes the Phantom over capacity. The power priorities set earlier cause the Planetary Vehicle Hangar (SRV bay) to automatically shut down in flight. That's fine; when you land, your thrusters cut off and free up plenty of power. The SRV bay comes on five seconds after landing and automatically powers off when you lift off.
The V1 FSD raises the jump range from 34 LY to 59 LY (+25 LY), enough to reach Semotus Beacon with a few Jumponium boosts.
Next we add a class-5 Guardian FSD Booster for an extra 10.25 LY of jump range (minus the slight penalty for the extra mass of the booster module). Note that the power draw of the booster puts extra pressure on the power plant -- we could disable the shield for flight, re-enabling it for planetary landings (when we don't need the scoop or the booster), but that's an extra thing to forget and I don't like that. We just bump the plant to a 3A instead.
This is also a good point to discuss color-coding on power priorities, because the 3A plant is enough to set meaningful ones. If a plant is damaged enough to malfunction, its power output will temporarily drop to 40% of normal -- that's blue in EDSY. Keeping Thrusters and FSD blue means a malfunction won't drop the ship from Supercruise (which would cause further damage). If a plant falls to 0% integrity, its output permanently drops to 50% -- that's green in EDSY. Having the life support and fuel scoop green means they'll be available even in the worst case. I've never seen this in an exploration ship, but why not manage for it?
Adding the Guardian FSD booster raises the jump range from 59 LY to 69 LY (+10 LY). Short of extreme measures like running without a shield or SRV, this is now at least 95% of the possible jump range on a ship.
Utility Engineering: Felicity Farseer
Utility Engineering: Felicity Farseer
Felicity Farseer is one of the first engineers every Commander unlocks, and it's for good reason for explorers, as she covers a grab bag of relevant modules.
In addition to max-grade FSD mods, Farseer does Grade 3 upgrades on a DSS (which is all we ever practically need), sensors, and thrusters, plus Grade 1 upgrades on power plants and shield boosters (and experimental effects on all of them).
Shown here are three 0E Shield Boosters with G1 Heavy Duty + Super Caps, raising shield strength from 106 to 170, 4D Thrusters with G3 Dirty + Drag Drives, 6D Sensors with G3 Lightweight, and an (upsized again) 4A Power Plant with G1 Low Emissions + Thermal Spread. Most are self-explanatory, but why Low Emissions? It reduces plant output and increases mass. However, and important for fuel scoopers, it reduces the heat of the ship. Note at the bottom thermal ("THM") block that idle ("IDL") heat has fallen from 20% to 17%. That's additional margin against heat damage when fuel scooping, planetary maneuvering, escaping an exclusion zone, and more. Idle temp is also baseline supercruise temp.
We've tweaked power priorities to expand the list of systems available in emergency conditions as the power plant size increases. We've also gained +0.37 LY of jump range, which barely seems worth acknowledging.
Engineering the Rest
Engineering the Rest
At this point we skip ahead to a full-featured build with complete G5 engineering access. Notable module swaps include:
The shield generator is now a 5D running Enhanced Low Power + Hi-Cap. Coupled with G5 shield boosters, the ship's base shield strength is now 716 (up from 310 with an equivalent 3D generator).
The life support is a 4A instead of a 4D. With G5 Lightweight, the jump range penalty is 0.15 LY, but the 4A will last us long enough to get to a station from anywhere (provided we've got a reasonable stock of life support synthesis materials). It's an insurance policy.
The power plant is G5 Low Emission + Monstered, and the thrusters topped out at G3 Dirty + Drag. This puts the thrusters, FSD, and the fuel scoop (the only modules at power priority 1) under the 40% plant output threshold guaranteeing that they'll run no matter how badly the plant malfunctions. Coupled with life support endurance, this ship can limp home from anywhere. Note also the super-cool 13% idle temp.
Additional items include railguns (lightweight, plasma slug) to dump fuel to extend jump range in marginal cases, a mining laser to harvest synthesis materials from asteroids, a laser to tag things (such as Guardian beacons), a two-SRV bay for redundancy, a cargo rack for limpets and a repair limpet controller for hull repairs, and two AFMUs for module repairs. We could swap one AFMU for a fuel transfer limpet controller if we want to add Fuel Rat capability (the second AFMU repairs the first, which is not strictly necessary).
Some guides will suggest that undersized thrusters won't work for high-G planetary landings. This isn't true; the game allows any legal (i.e. within ship mass limits) thruster to hold altitude and lift off with both the ventral (flat landing) and main (vertical take-off) thrusters. The margin of error may be small, but good control will let any build land in any gravity.
Do note that we've lost slightly less than 1 LY of jump range in this final build: from 70.1 to 69.4. That jump loss, though, provides a wealth of redundancy, and very few places are more than 138.8 LY but less than 140.2 LY (the difference in premium Jumponium jumps for the two builds) distant. With the advent of the DSSA carrier network, this sort of redundancy is probably overkill -- but this is how you build for it.
Well, I don't, but you do.
Here, then, is a maximum jump range Phantom build. D-class everything except the FSD, Lightweight or Stripped Down engineering mods, and no non-core modules with mass except for the FSD Booster. Note that the FSD experimental does not become Stripped Down; there's more to gain by improving its performance than by shaving a bit of mass.
The Phantom can jump nearly 75 LY with a fully-sized fuel tank. If the tank is downsized to a 2C plus a 1C optional (6T of fuel against the FSD's 5T/jump consumption), the fuelled jump range rises to 80.14 LY. 80.51 LY is the theoretical max for a tank level of exactly 5T with nothing in the reserve tank.
Memes aside, here are some exploration ideas to consider.
CMDR Minikill's maximum Jumpaconda (uses some legacy engineering to exceed what's available as new-build construction today)
As of 2020, the Dolphin is effectively immune to heat. With G2 Low Emissions on the plant, I can go to full scoop depth, idle the throttle, and charge my next jump without breaking 65% heat.
The Lakon T-series all make respectable (and respectably-cheap) explorers with good optionals.
