4Game

I'm autistic. Some things irritate me a lot more than they would others. Today's rant is about travelling vs. exploring in Elite.

Someone asks about exploring and a bunch of well-meaning people jump on and say "I got my jump range to 9 million parsecs!" and others chip in helpfully with "make sure you filter to KGBFOAM!"

y'all are not listening. He's talking about EXPLORING. Not travelling to a distant destination.

The way I travel is to try to max my range – 60LY+ – and get the biggest fuel scoop I can. I take extra fuel tanks so I don't have to scoop so often. I don't take scanners or extra gear. I set a 20kLY route towards my chosen destination and I go. Jump – scoop – jump – scoop – jump. Rinse and repeat.

The way I explore is completely different. For a start I don't plot a route. I choose a general area in the galaxy I want to go. Then once I'm out the bubble, I plot each jump individually, in the general direction I'm going. I don't take ANY NOTICE of the star class I'm jumping to, until I need to scoop.

As I arrive at each system, I honk and FSS scan it. I DSS scan all landable planets; all Ammonia worlds; all Water Worlds and all Earth like worlds. Sometimes I'll scan metallic rings, too… I have a carrier and might come back to mine a decent spot.

Once I've done all this, if I find anything interesting on landables, like a lot of useful materials; human signals; xeno signals etc – I'll land and break out my SRV. I might spend a whole evening in one system.

Having done all that – I'll choose my next star and jump to it.

My explorer build will be completely different to my traveller build. I don't care so much about jump range so I might even engineer my FSD for something else. As long as I've got 25LY+ I'm happy. I'll have a nice fat fuel scoop. I'll bring two SRVs and be positively BRISTLING with scanners of every type I can get. Weapons will be the minimum necessary and shields will be basic. Power will be in the green deployed/retracted and no more development than that. Engineering will focus on sensors, scanners and whatnot; not on ship performance. Thrusters will be maxed because it's handy to have extra power when you land on a heavy with lots of gravity.

AFMUs will be useful as your modules degrade over time; and a repair limpet controller might be useful in case you bang into a rock. Finally – know how to find carriers out in the black – they can be lifesavers!