Keep it small and efficient. Have a reactor or H2 engines on board to help charge the jump drives. I personally use small-grid ships to explore planets since they consume far less. Than use large grid ships to haul them and cargo around.

I built this thing for my recent survival playthrough. It doesn't have atmospheric thrusters though and you probably don't want as many guns on it.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3725324013

First, you'll want your ship to be able to fly in atmospheres using JUST atmospheric thrusters. You can have other types on-board. But your ship should be able to cruise the skies of the alien planet without using up precious hydrogen.

Second, your ship should be able to transition from the atmosphere and escape a planet's natural gravity. It should be able to do that with some mass left for cargo. You'll probably need hydrogen thrusters to escape the atmosphere. But it can be done with ion thrusters if you have good planning around mass and thrust.

Your ship should be able to jump a minimum of 4000km per jump. For a smaller ship that means 2-4 jump drives.

As far as arms and armor: a Safe Zone is nice for converting the ship to a station and throwing a Safe Zone up if you're on a server or going to explore away from the ship. One artillery turret up top for long range bombardment (if needed), two assault turrets on the sides to deal with small grid attackers. Two interior turrets on the outside to give jetpack attackers something to think about.

You can get all that you need in terms of meals from NPC stations. Growing your own onboard is fine. But make sure you have a separate, doored area inside of the ship with its own air-vent so that if the cabin loses pressure, your grow-room stays warm and oxygenated.

I would suggest making a plan on paper before building anything. A real rough doodle of what you want to build, and what you want to include in the ship then go from there. There's some excellent advice here, but I thought my method of building would help, too.

The KISS system... KEEP IT SIMPLE, STUPID!

Just playing, but it does work well for building anything. For a ship, it really depends on whether it is a space vessel, or something just for the atmosphere. That will largely dictate what sort of systems you'll need. It doesn't have to "look" good, that can come later. Just try to make sure it's got all of the systems you'll need.

SPACE: a ship for surviving in the depths of space.

Batteries
Reactor/Solar
O2/H2 generator
Gyros x2 or more
O2 tank
H2 tank X3 or X4
Thrusters (all directions)
*Note: If you intend to land on a planet, make sure there are lots of thrusters underneath
Drill (for getting resources)
Refinery (basic works well enough)
Assembler (I use the good one, but the basic works for simple repairs)
Ore Detector
Algae Farm (at least one, exposed to the sun)
Food Processor
Survival Kit
Antenna or Beacon
Storage
Connectors
Some sort of landing system (I personally hate those ugly landing feet... so I make my own with mag plates)

WEAPONS - Pirates WILL attack you

ATMO: A simple ship for transporting goods, not something for surviving long-term.

Batteries (at least 3 or 4)
Reactor/Solar
Gyros X2 or more
O2/H2 generator
H2 tank (I use it to fill my bottles)
Thrusters (electric)
Ore Detector
Survival Kit
Antenna or Beacon
Storage
Connectors
Landing system

WEAPONS - Pirates MAY attack you

Originally posted by antvas1963:

I would like to build a planetary explorer with jump drive capabilities. Id rather not build a huge transport or a battle cruiser. Any suggestions are appreciated.

I was just like you way back 2017, the first time i saw the game...

Best way build your biggest ship:

Is to appreciate living a small space pod on a star system survival gameplay in a month, after that you will realize what your really need and what you don't, you will respect every inch you put on your future big ships...

Pendragon by Keen / Valikai
The original Keen design is already in game. You have surely encountered this ship as an Explorer wreck. Excavating that wreck, transporting it to the base, and rebuilding it in survival mode - that makes for a substantial chunk of gameplay.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2960660979

When you say “planetary explorer with jump drive” I’m going to assume you mean a ship to travel between planets, not one to drop down to the surface. (You can carry a small grid vehicle to do that)

Keep it small. Jump drives work better with low total mass. Build the ship around the jump drive and power supply. You’ll need a reactor or several hydrogen engines (which needs a h2 tank) to recharge the jump drive. Also add at least one battery. I’d go with ion thrusters because then you don’t need large h2 tanks and conveyoring.

Try to keep the rest to a minimum: couple of algae farms, survival kit, a cryopod, cockpit, o2/h2 generator, small O2 tank and gyro(s). Don’t forget a beacon, antenna and ore detector, you want to explore after all. Give it a connector to dock or to couple a small ship for planetside exploration. I wouldn’t bother with cargo or weapons…

If you want to carry other ships around, consider adding a services terminal to store/recall them…

Thank you all for the info. I ended up building the Nyx. I haven't flown it yet,

I hope I'm not too late to throw my 2 cents into the discussion. I've been building my first large grid ship myself. I went a different route, I decided to build my ship from scratch according to what I wanted. So a completely custom ship. I bet I've already put 50 hours into it, and I haven't even tried to fly it yet.

I've spent so much time building, then tearing down, then rebuilding, it's unreal! But I keep learning. And like I said, I haven't even flown it yet! I started getting really frustrated with this method, but after a few serious "a ha" moments, I've realized how valuable this method is.

Good luck with your adventure!

The most important thing to understand is that every bit of equipment and armor and styling costs weight that will then need more thrusters and more fuel, making it yet heavier, while reducing your useful payload. Aim for a ship that comes in between 300 and 500 tons and can lift twice its own weight to orbit (i.e. if the ship is 400t it should fly to orbit with another 400t in payload). This will keep it from getting overly complex and is an achievable build for a beginner.

You will need a way to recharge the jump drive(s), reactors are best but if you don't have Uranium yet, you'll need to consider how you're going to do it. Either extra batteries or Hydrogen engines. It's a question of how far you want to go before refuling your ship. Solar panels are not really viable as their power output is too low.

Being able to fly without using a lot of fuel in a planetery atmosphere is important, you will need enough atmo thrusters to lift the basic ship +50% (to account for payload). You can use hydrogen thrusters for directional thrust as additional atmo thrusters just add weight for little additional benefit.

Weapons are a mixed bag - it's nice to be able to fight for some loot but unless your whole ship is designed for battle and able to keep flying after sustaining damage, the weapons are likely just wasted. If you fly unarmed, you can approach most neutral stations and ships without them firing on you, as they don't perceive you as hostile. But even one internal turret will activiate their AI defence and they will attack you instead.

Other posters have made good suggestions for equipment to carry onboard but your most important consideration if playng a survival game with hunger enabled is going to be food. Make sure you have some algae farms and a food processor to convert looted supplies into meals.

A number of the Keen ships make good starter platforms for basic explorers, if building a whole ship seems daunting, try using one of them from the workshop that meets your general requirements in size and equipment space and modify it as necessary for your specific playstyle.

Out of curiosity, how many of you play in survival but use ships from the Steam Workshops as blueprints rather than "copy-n-paste" ships? It kinda reminds me of how my mother would buy patterns for dresses she would make - she would do the "hard work" of building a dress, but she never designed those dresses. Not sure women do that these days, but it was common back in the 1970s.

I like designing my own ships, but I do so in creative mode where it's easy, to then use the blueprint in survival mode to assemble in "the real world". It's very rare these days I design in survival mode. Modify, yes, but not design from scratch.

Originally posted by Captain Canard:

Out of curiosity, how many of you play in survival but use ships from the Steam Workshops as blueprints rather than "copy-n-paste" ships? It kinda reminds me of how my mother would buy patterns for dresses she would make - she would do the "hard work" of building a dress, but she never designed those dresses. Not sure women do that these days, but it was common back in the 1970s.

I like designing my own ships, but I do so in creative mode where it's easy, to then use the blueprint in survival mode to assemble in "the real world". It's very rare these days I design in survival mode. Modify, yes, but not design from scratch.

Personally I like to grab workshop designs that have the size and general appearance I want, then gut them and rebuild the interior to suit what I am trying to do.

Originally posted by Stalker:

Personally I like to grab workshop designs that have the size and general appearance I want, then gut them and rebuild the interior to suit what I am trying to do.

I did something similar but different, where I took an old workshop battleship that was using very old blocks, and I upgraded it to newer weapons, AI automation, some cosmetic blocks, etc, and then tested my ships against it. It was fun retrofitting an old ship, and a whole lot less work than building it from scratch!

DISCLAIMER - in this case I actually did just "copy-n-paste" the original ship in creative and play with it there. A ship that size would have totally exhausted me building it block-by-block in survival mode.

ive jumped in to creative mode for all of about 30mins .... maybe 5yrs ago.. maybe longer.
everything ive done has been from scratch save maybe three or so small grid ships i pulled from workshop to see how they were built when i first started

o7

Originally posted by Captain Canard:

Out of curiosity, how many of you play in survival but use ships from the Steam Workshops as blueprints rather than "copy-n-paste" ships? It kinda reminds me of how my mother would buy patterns for dresses she would make - she would do the "hard work" of building a dress, but she never designed those dresses. Not sure women do that these days, but it was common back in the 1970s.

I like designing my own ships, but I do so in creative mode where it's easy, to then use the blueprint in survival mode to assemble in "the real world". It's very rare these days I design in survival mode. Modify, yes, but not design from scratch.

I'm the opposite. I do most of my design work in survival so there are no surprises later. Gives me a better idea of the resources and labor needed. Designing in creative, I have a bad habit of going overboard and pushing a design to a point where it's impractical to build in survival. That said, by this point I have a large handful of blueprints that I reuse and modify to suit the individual needs (and mods) of a particular situation.

I switch over to creative when I'm in a mood to play around with completely new styles or crazy ideas, or if I found a neat blueprint in the workshop that I want to test, modify and experiment with. That's also where I design anything that I'm planning to publish.