A long-time lament of explorers has been that because you're usually in some remote part of the galaxy far from the Bubble, there's no practical way to return to the Bubble in time for events like CGs, which only last a week. The DSSA combined with the new double-engineered FSD (henceforth called 2xFSD) now makes this practical and cheap.
The 2xFSD is available from . Its regular price will be:
- 18 datamined wake exceptions (G5)
- 26 tellurium (G4)
- 26 electrochemical arrays (G3, under the military supercapacitors tree)
- 28 chemical processors (G2, under the pharmaceutical isolators tree)
But until 3/10 you can get it for
- 10 datamined wake exceptions
- 10 tellurium
- 10 electrochemical arrays
- 12 chemical processors
It's a 5A FSD with both the increased range and fast boot engineering mods, giving it slightly better range than a player-bought 5A FSD fully engineered with the increased range mod. You can pull off the following trick with one, but two will practically eliminate any downtime. (That's in addition to any 2xFSDs you want to keep installed in your regular ships.)
A lot of have shipyard and outfitting services. With a little preparation, that gives you a quick ticket back to the Bubble. Use that list and to find the closest suitable DSSA carrier.
- Leave a stock, un-outfitted Sidewinder at a shipyard in the Bubble. This will be your disposable ship.
- When you're exploring in an area, visit a nearby DSSA carrier with a shipyard, and transfer the disposable ship there. It shouldn't cost much. The transfer time is the obstacle to a quick trip back to the Bubble, so transfer it ahead of time.
- When you want to return to the Bubble quickly, visit that carrier, sell your exploration data, switch to the disposable ship, kill yourself, and decline rebuy. You'll lose the ship, but you'll end up in the Bubble with a stock sidewinder.
- Fly to your home station and switch to a better ship. Store the stock Sidewinder, don't sell it. Do whatever you need to do in the Bubble.
When you're done with business in the Bubble, returning will take a little longer (you have to fly back), but can be done pretty easily with minimal cost.
- Buy a DBX. Build it for maximum jump range. Scoop, AFMU, only what you need to neutron jump back. You can lightweight some modules to G2 or G3 using cheap engineering mats to increase jump range. But don't go nuts since you're going to be selling off these modules.
- Equip the 2xFSD with mass manager. This will save you from having to sell off or transfer a fully-engineered FSD later.
- Fly the DBX to the DSSA carrier where you parked your exploration ship.
- At the carrier, remove the 2xFSD and save it in storage. Sell off all the other modules from the DBX.
- Switch back to your exploration ship.
- Sell off the DBX. You'll only get back 90% of the ship price, so you'll lose about 185k.
- Transfer the Sidewinder you left at home to the DSSA carrier, to prep for your next trip back to the Bubble.
The next time you return to the Bubble
- Follow the first procedure
- Transfer the 2xFSD to your home station. Since you bought it with engineering mats, its price is zero, and it should only cost you 100 CR to transfer.
- Having a second 2xFSD means you can leave the Bubble immediately. If you only have one 2xFSD, you need to wait for the transfer to complete before you can leave.
Final cost for the round trip transport (instant trip back to the Bubble, then back to your exploration ship): 185k CR (the loss from selling the DBX) +100 CR (transfer the old 2xFSD back home) + any fees to transfer the Sidewinder to the DSSA carrier.
As an alternative, if you have lots of money you can just use the DBX as your disposable ship. Store its 2xFSD at the DSSA carrier, strip it of modules (core modules get auto-replaced with E-rated modules when you store/sell them). When you need to head back to the Bubble, use the DBX to suicide. Final cost for the round trip is then 1.85 million (DBX) + 100 CR to transfer the old 2xFSD back home + any fees to transfer the DBX to a different DSSA carrier if you should move. The benefit of this over the Sidewinder is that you don't have to wait for the Sidewinder to finish transferring, in case you should want to make another quick trip back to the Bubble.
