Fleet Peek - How to survey with your fleet carrier
13 Aug 2022Eeka
Taking a fleet carrier out of the bubble is a challenging task, its fuel is hard to obtain and there's a lot of variables to consider carefully so you dont get it stranded in the black. Still, it can be a powerful survey tool. I'll share with you a method i created to increase the usefulness of the behemoths.Fleet carriers with Universal Cartographics service can provide an additional feature besides selling carto data. They will work as space stations, allowing you to purchase carto data of nearby systems up to a 20ly radius.
Blue dots might take a few seconds to show up. Wiggle the filters a little if they doesnt. It has to reload every time you reopen the Galmap.This does not mean you can purchase data of all nearby systems, gathering exploration info freely. It's trickier than that. In fact, if it was possible, single ship exploration could lose its main purpose, visiting neighboor systems in the bubble would also stop making sense for the most part, as further explained by CMDR Sapyx here.
So why would we use a nerfed feature? Well, it still partially works, allowing you to purchase exploration data from apparently random systems, both explored and unexplored ones.
Ok, so how a nerfed and apparently random feature could be useful? If we think about how Stellar Forge works and how a system is generated it can lead us into its best use case scenario: peeking into visited systems. An unvisited system is not generated until a commander lands there, so both discovered and undiscovered systems with data available for purchase have been visited before. Some are tagged and some are not thus being undiscovered. In my experience i could see a ratio of 4:1 favoring undiscovered systems, of course this may vary with the sector you're in but it was a surprise to me to think about how many explorers lose their data or even self destruct (yeah, space madness can be a b*#$@).
Yet, there's one more detail i mentioned before that requires further explanation: which of those visited systems are available for purchase then? I wasn't able to confirm this (and i think no one without direct access to FDev will) but until the realization of the potential of this feature to break the intended game play regarding visiting other systems, it could've worked as we expected it to work: all visited systems (with and without data sold to UC) would have its cartographic data purchasable from a station up to 20ly away.
To back up this theory i could confirm that most of those systems are not available in EDSM and the ones in it have been discovered a long time ago. No recently discovered system is available for purchase/peek. I provided a sample in the screenshot above (Athaip MT-Q E5-672).
Still, a wise commander will be vigilant for possible additional variables present in systems available for purchase.
So, how peeking into old, previously visited systems 20ly away from my Fleet Carrier could be useful? Stay with me on this as such feature can be GAME CHANGING in specific scenarios.
At the Eldritch Gate's expedition is a perfect example of such scenario. They are looking for a system with a Green Gas Giant that have been found by CMDR Kelly Eldridge a long time ago. So long that she didn't even knew how rare they are and didn't note down the system name, triggering the whole expedition and a team of more than 200 brave commanders in a very organized search operation along the Perseus Arm, 7 years later.
If you ever chose to use this method in your survey, here's an additional geometrical help you'll need in order to keep your survey effective and fuel efficient. You can survey an area that you have no idea where's the direction of your target, using the boxed search:
Note that each box will cover about 120³ly and can stack with complimentary search boxes. It's a 2d plane but remember to consider the Z dimension as well, thus leading to 13 jumps per box.
If you know the direction of your target, you can use a focused search:
Either methods will require 40ly jumps. In my tests, the RSC MelRose spent about 10T of tritium with each jump, leading to an estimative of 120T tritium for a box (first jump +12 additional jumps). She had about 600 units of cargo.
Remember to use the grid coordinates to measure distances and position of jumps.
Considering how smart and daring you commanders are, i don't think i need to mention you may find ways to improve these methods. Feel free to share them as you desire. Contact me if you want so i can update them (with proper mention of course) in this article. This extends also to new findings regarding the theory explained here.
I would like to thank CMDR Richard Fluiraniz for his help about Stellar Forge system generation and support on the development of this method.
That's it commanders, RazorLabs hopes this helps you to bring progress to our galaxy.
o7