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WARNING, this guide isn’t up to date, read it [here] in English!
Localized by Larmakosa
Elite: Dangerous offers several options to improve your FSD jump range : reducing your hull’s mass, changing fuel’s composition with materials, supercharge the engine with some specific stars, install Guardian technology… However it is not advised to use these modifications without knowing the negative side effects they might induce.
Prepare your tools commanders, let’s pimp your ride!
The ideal ship
All ships without exception can have their jump range improved, however some are more gifted in the exploration category thanks to their light hull and maximum power of their modules. This guide will of course help you improve the jump range of your combat ship, transport ship and other types.
Here’s a top 5 of ships that jump the highest without specialized equipment:
Engineers mods, with Boosted FSD, and with Reduced Mass.
- Anaconda // 68 / 78 / 83.5 LY
- Diamondback Explorer // 59 / 68 / 75 LY
- Krait Phantom // 57 / 67.5 / 73.5 LY
- Asp Explorer // 55.5 / 66 / 72 LY
- Orca // 53.5 / 64 / 70 LY
The equipement
With the following builds, you will get a good grasp of how to improve a ship jump range.
Once those details acquired, all you’ll need to do is apply them to your ships and specialized them whichever way you want.
- An A-Rated FSD engine
- D-Rated modules as they’re always the lightest
- A Power Generator, Thrusters and a Power Distributor  of lower class
- The highest rated possible Guardian FSD Booster (Guide – Unlock the Guardian FSD Booster)
- A Fuel scoop is important because long jump ranges will drain your fuel quickly and they have no mass
- You could also equip a smaller fuel tank, but you’ll constantly need to keep an eye on your fuel levels!
- A low class D-rated Shield generator
- Engineers mods to lower your mass, such as lightweight or Clean
- Engineers effects to lower your mass even more, such as mass manager or stripped down
However, it’s important to note that the lighter your ship gets, the less resistant to attacks it becomes. Therefore a combat ship lighten to the maximum would be much less resistant to attacks, and it’s obviously not the desired goal. It’s up to you to find the right balance, grasshoppers.
Also, for a transport ship, try not to get attacked/intercepted if you’ve reduced your mass to the maximum.
Engineers and Boosters
There is several ways to improve a ship jump range, for which the Horizons DLS is mandatory:
- Engineers, with the help of materials after you’ve unlocked the workshop on invite.
- Mods and Effects will raise or lower certain stats, like mass.
- Even if you don’t have a mod that lower that mass, just use any other mod that you like: this will allow you to add an effect such as stripped down.
- Synthesis, with the help of materials as a one-time usage. Available via the system (right) system panel, under cargo, directly in your ships.
- White dwarf stars, +50% jump range when it supercharges your FSD
- Neutron stars, +300% jump range when it supercharges your FSD
Take a look at the links below to learn more about the available engineers and how to unlock them.
The first thing to do is to visit the first Engineer available: Felicity Farseer, system Deciat.
To unlock her workshop, you will need to provide her with 1 Unit of Meta-Alloy.
To do this:
- Rendez-vous in the Pleiades, around 380LY from the bubble of Sol, system Maia.
- Here, look for the planetary base “Darnielle’s Progress”. This is the only place where you can buy Meta-Alloy… however, this item is uncommon these days and the market mlight be empty.
You have to find an active Thargoids Barnacles site. - Rendez-vous in the system Pleiades Sector GH-L b8-0, and look at your left hand panel, Navigation, then head toward the Barnacles site.
You will get its location, so head down on the surface and gather your chunk of Meta-Alloy on one of the peak coming out of the ground.
You could also visit HIP 14909, a Thargoid Structure, to gather a Meta-Alloy. - Bring it back to Felicity, Deciat. Careful in Open, this is a Players Killers’s lair.
- Congrats, you have unlocked her Workshop and you can start modding your ship, here we want to mod the FSD Drive.
- You will need to increase your reputation with Felicity to craft better and higher ranks mods.
- To do this, craft multiple Rank I mods, even if it’s several times the same.
- Or sell her Exploration Data
- The mod FSD Drive “Increased Range” is our choice here, and you will need Materials.
- Materials are items you collect (they are not stored in your cargo and you won’t loose them if you die) in unknown signals, near points of interests, after you destroyed a ship, by scanning FSD low and high wakes, … so get a shopping list and check your tab “Materials” on your right hand panel, to understand where and how to collect Materials, or click the link.
- It’s your turn now!