Yesterday I had a discussion with @Timsup2nothin about ship jump ranges. I said the best range could be obtained by upgrading a really good explorer. Tim thought a good exotic would perform as well, or better.
When I thought about it afterwards, I realised that I haven’t actually tested the facts for years. Every time HG release an uprade, or a patch, or a reset, they slip in sneaky little undocumented changes. It’s possible that ship stats and performance are no longer calculated the same way I remember.
So I decided to do some Citizen Science, and find out through observation and empirical testing. Everybody is welcome to join in.
Questions I’m interested in:
- What’s the best jump range of an explorer as found?
- What is the effect of upgrading an explorer’s ship class?
- What is the maximum range an explorer can be upgraded to?
- What is the maximum range of an exotic as found?
- What is the maximum range an exotic can be upgraded to?
You may have different questions. They may be more interesting than mine. It’s possible that other ships could have even better performance - I haven’t even considered living ships, for instance.
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I’ve been using a fully set up Royal Exotic in one save for a long time but will need to get back to you on its range. I know its pretty big.
I do remember that wild find S class ships used to always hold the superior atributes compared to an upgraded S class.
Unsure if that is still a factor.
A newer feature to include is the custom built S class ships. Where do they fit in? Better than wild-find, same as other upgrades or what exactly?
I support this venture in citizen scientist ship range study & vote for a full grant from the Etarcian High Counsil 
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I have another question along the same lines…let’s say you buy your ship for looks because you’re me. And maybe you like the C class look better than the S class but then you go to the space station and upgrade your ship to an S class. How does this affect the stats?
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Do the ships change in appearance as you upgrade the class? I wasn’t aware of this.
Does that happen to weapons too?
I thought they just gained higher stats…
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A question for our scientists to research, indeed. I said your questions might be more interesting than mine.
Not an answer to your question, but a possible solution:
Each system is allocated a group of ship models - there’s around 12. There’s no variation. When these ships appear at the space station, there’s always a small chance that one of them will be a class S.
If you see a ship model you like, wait around the space station long enough, and it will turn up as a class S. Could be a long wait, though.
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I am not known for patience. 
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No. Ships do not change appearance as you upgrade them. Sometimes I find the S or A class version of a ship is not as aesthetically pleasing as a lower class ship. So I buy the one I like then upgrade the stats. But I wonder how the upgraded stats compare to the original stats of an A or S class ship.
And now, I cannot remember which ships I have upgraded so I am not much use in the above research
This ship I have had for a very long time. I waited and searched far and wide to find one with 2 normal wings. I upgraded it to class S.
And I have spent very little time trying to figure which configuration of modules makes for the best stats. I just searched for the S class ones and crammed in as many as I could without overloading the system.
In the beginning, I would put one of each, S, A, B, C and did not realize I could put all S class mods in…
My damage potential on this ship is awful because I use it mainly for jumping and exploring
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I have not upgraded these…I think…
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I have to say, you could do with reorganising your upgrades. My current sentinel ship has considerably better jump range than any of your ships, and that had a pitiful base figure. Just by moving your upgrades around, you should be able to gain a huge improvement.
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However, yours is also an S class and mine is a B…sometimes my brain just moves on to other things… 
but I will tinker with it
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Not entirely sure on the stats but I do know, each class upgrade adds an overcharged slot to your ship. I’m not sure if the slot locations are pre-decided or randomized when you upgrade the ship (you may also not see them as you upgrade if you don’t have all the slots unlocked). I think overcharged slots work the same with upgrading multitools too.
A natural S class and an upgraded s class will have the same amount of overcharged slots from what I recall.
I don’t have any explorers or exotics maxed out to really share with this study but I do have a custom s class fighter I made recently and trying to max out that might be useful when guaging if custom ships are slightly better, worse, or the same.
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Sometimes I am just overly perplexed. My untinkered sentinel ship has better range than the one I have tried hard to improve…
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Your explorer is an S. And from the looks of it, it had a starting stat somewhere around half the available range. Properly pimped, I would expect something exceeding 2,000 ly from it. As is, it’s showing 1424.
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Then there is the whole issue of searching far and wide for the best upgrades. I have devoted many hours to that. I try to hit each space station to see what is available. Here is the untouched Boundary Herald
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That’s what this enquiry is all about. A few years ago, we thought we had all this sorted out and understood. Now I suspect there have been changes behind the scenes, and maybe we don’t understand any more.
So I’d like to find out.
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Glad to see we started something. I should have the nanites together sometime today to upgrade my explorer to S class, so I’ll have a ‘before and after’ to contribute, as well as the comparison to my exotic. I will also have the comparison to my S class sentinel ship, which is going to outright murder them both unless I am completely misreading something. I have yet to do anything at all with that ship, but it has a base range of over six hundred, where base range on the explorer and the exotic are under 200.
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It kinda makes me think, even after upgrading to S, it is still better to find an true S class from the start.
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Here is my sad little ship I found early on in this current save several years ago. I just cannot let it go even though the stats are deplorable.
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This would be an unwelcome revelation for me. Far and away my primary ship is an upgraded S class fighter. I got it as an A class, in a system with a weak economy where it would probably take just this side of forever to get a native S so if I went and found a native S it would almost have to be a different model. Not only do I really like the look of my ship, it might have been the biggest native cargo/tech bay I’ve ever seen, so unless the difference in stats was really significant…
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