yojimbo

Elite:Dangerous speedrunning

My Type-8 made the Hutton Run in 26m40s (with a theoretical min time of 23:20) ... but now we have the Cobra Mk V, and that's a significantly faster ship. What can we achieve?

CMDR Osiliran has added the new speed data to their SCO Speed and Fuel Rates spreadsheet and with a max speed of 7017c we can make the 6,395,831 Ls journey in 911.47 seconds, 15:20 (this doesn't account for acceleration/deceleration/alignment and final approach/docking, which is why the Hutton Run Leaderboard hasn't broken the 17:00 mark at time of writing.

Fuel though ...

While at max overcharge, we'll be consuming fuel at 351.12T/hour; we need around 20 minutes fuel, which would be 117.04T. The Cobra has a 4C fuel tank holding 16T, and we'll need to add some more tanks ... and luckily the Cobra has just enough space.

We have optional internal slots for one 5C tank (32T), 3 4C tanks (16T each), and 3 3C tanks, 8T.

This gives us an additional 32 + (3 x 16) + (3 x 8) = 104T, and if we account for the core 4C 16T tank, we get 120T of fuel. You could add another 2C and 1C tank for an additional 6T but you won't need it. Alternatively, you could read to the end to find out how much fuel I had left-over, and trim that off before you start; but I don't believe SCO speed is affected by ship mass, so there's probably little need for this sort of finesse, unless you really wanted a shield on this ship.

Yeah, but it's a dry heat ...

A quick test shows that an unengineered A-rated power plant does slowly build up heat under overcharge; luckily with the recent Thargoid War we're all experts in heat management now, so some Low Emissions engineering is easy. This gave me a stable 48% heat maximum, so actually no need for heatsinks at all!

Need for Speed

So, how does this ship perform? Honestly, much better than I expected. My run came in at 17:42, allowing for a little loop or two at the destination as I was coming out of overcharge. I had 27T fuel remaining after a 16Ly jump into the system from Gendalla. A reasonably low-effort 3rd place that will soon be knocked off the perch by other commanders giving this fun ship a good workout!