Exploration Builds

PTN’s Com­mu­ni­ty Team often run explo­ration events, usu­al­ly cen­tred around a Fleet Car­ri­er expe­di­tion. These are great oppor­tu­ni­ties to get out into the black with some friends and sup­port and see what explo­ration is like. Any of the builds below will enable you to take part in these events! If you’re inter­est­ed in the nit­ty grit­ty, here are some things to con­sid­er when choos­ing your build, and the amount of mon­ey and engi­neer­ing effort you want to put in. For a more com­plete guide, check out EDAs­tro.

Jump range: Helps you get fur­ther from the Bub­ble and into unchart­ed space, but also helps in areas of the galaxy where stars are fur­ther apart. It’s pos­si­ble to explore close to home with a low jump range, but the longer your jump range, the more options open up to you, and the faster you can reach them. There are three ways to boost jump range: keep­ing your ship as light as pos­si­ble, engi­neer­ing your FSD, and using a Guardian Frame Shift Dri­ve Booster.

Guardian FSD Boost­er: Unlocked by col­lect­ing spe­cif­ic items from Guardian ruins. A guide to all Guardian unlocks can be found here. The PTN Com­mu­ni­ty Team runs reg­u­lar car­ri­er taxi ser­vices to Guardian ruins sites to help CMDRs unlock their Guardian modules.

Engi­neer­ing: The most impor­tant engi­neer for explo­ration is Felic­i­ty Farseer: She’s the first engi­neer you can unlock and can engi­neer your FSD to max­i­mum, as well as var­i­ous grades on a few oth­er use­ful mod­ules. How­ev­er, it’s now pos­si­ble to buy a ful­ly-engi­neered class 5 FSD from Human Tech Bro­kers using engi­neer­ing mate­ri­als: for ships that take a class 5 FSD, this is the supe­ri­or option as it has high­er range than a stan­dard FSD and costs less in mate­ri­als to buy than to engi­neer from scratch. Just make sure to get Felic­i­ty to put the Mass Man­ag­er exper­i­men­tal effect on it.

Fuel Scoop: A must for any explo­ration build, they don’t weigh any­thing and can be turned off when not in use. They can be expen­sive, but it’s always worth pack­ing the largest (i.e. high­est num­ber) and best rat­ed (i.e. A‑rated if pos­si­ble) you can afford (and fit).

Detailed Sur­face Scan­ner (DSS): Allows you to scan plan­ets for extra cred­its and to dis­cov­er plan­e­tary fea­tures. The pre engi­neered DSS-V1 unlocked at a Human Tech Bro­ker is even bet­ter than any engi­neered DSS.

SRV bay: The only way to explore a plan­et’s sur­face with the base game. Also use­ful in Odyssey if you plan on land­ing on plan­et surfaces.

Repair Limpets/AFMUs: Use­ful for longer jour­neys, neu­tron boost­ing, and peace of mind. AFMUs are essen­tial­ly “free” if you have a spare slot as you can turn them off to save pow­er and they don’t weigh any­thing. Repair limpets require some car­go space to use, which means you need to have at least one car­go rack on board – but if you have the mate­ri­als (or a way to gath­er them such as an SRV or Min­ing Laser), you can syn­the­sise them when need­ed rather than car­ry­ing them all the time.

Flight Assists: Flight assists are less impor­tant while explor­ing as there are far few­er oppor­tu­ni­ties to use them, so many explo­ration builds that are short on space (or pow­er) don’t take them.

Ship Launched Fight­ers (SLFs): A fun toy to play with when you’re thou­sands of light years from civil­i­sa­tion, but only avail­able on the largest ships and cost a lot of range because of their weight.

Point Defence: For explor­ing Guardian ruins specif­i­cal­ly, a point defence is use­ful as it will help shoot down seek­er drone mis­siles. How­ev­er, stan­dard explo­ration builds usu­al­ly skip these.

Mod­ule pri­or­i­ty: It’s com­mon to dis­able pow­er to mod­ules that are only need­ed on an occa­sion­al basis to allow the use of small­er (and thus lighter) pow­er plants.

You don’t need any of the above to explore (except a Fuel Scoop – you kind of do need a fuel scoop!), but they’re all help­ful options to increase your range, capa­bil­i­ty and fun-fac­tor for exploration.