When designing your ships, there are two things to keep in mind: you need to have 90 or more Survey to visit the endgame sectors, and you need to have enough Range to follow the path you want to take without having too much extra (if you can still follow your desired path after downgrading your hull, then you should probably think about downgrading your hull to upgrade something else). With those two in mind, your options are naturally limited to a fairly small set of choices.
The following are some examples of ships I'd recommend for different purposes. All of the below designs will meet the minimum requirements for visiting at least two endgame sectors (90+ Survey, 70+ Range) except where otherwise stated. I feel that your hull shouldn't give you much more range than you're planning to use. In general, I favor Retrieval over Survey, as they do the same thing in two different ways (we think) but Survey is all-or-nothing while Retrieval is much more granular. This makes small variations matter less for Survey than for Retrieval. Also, we could be wrong about what Survey does or what impact it actually has on second items.
The Monster Hunter - Maximum Speed, high Survey, low Hull, minimum Retrieval (Zu Mount Farming)
This ship is designed specifically for hitting SC24 as often as possible, maximizing the chance of getting Iron Voyage Spoils (ie: Zu Mounts). Drop rates for these items are 1-2 for Optimal yields, and 1 for all other yields, so getting a "disappointing" yield is only slightly worse than an "optimal" yield. This makes the Retrieval stat nearly useless for obtaining them. Hitting just SC24 should take about 26 hours and 23 minutes. This version of the ship has a little more Range, allowing it to also hit one other sector from this list if desired: SC01 (adds 1h35), SC02 (adds 1h58), SC05 (adds 2h43), SC06 (adds 2h57), SC07 (adds 3h12), SC08 (adds 4h12), SC09 (adds 4h05).
- Hull: Invincible
- Rigging: Viltgance
- Forecastle: Odyssey
- Aftcastle: Bronco
- Survey: 126
- Retrieve: 46
- Speed: 154
- Range: 60
- Favor: 122
The Monster Trainer - Near maximum Speed, high Survey, low Retrieval, minimum Hull (Zu Mount Farming)
This ship is designed specifically for hitting SC24 as often as possible, maximizing the chance of getting Iron Voyage Spoils (ie: Zu Mounts). Drop rates for these items are 1-2 for Optimal yields, and 1 for all other yields, so getting a "disappointing" yield is only slightly worse than an "optimal" yield. This makes the Retrieval stat nearly useless for obtaining them. Hitting just SC24 should take about 26 hours and 46 minutes. This version of the ship has a little more Retrieval, allowing it to obtain more items on average when you fail to get Iron Voyage Spoils. It also has very slightly less Speed and Surveillance.
- Hull: Bronco
- Rigging: Viltgance
- Forecastle: Odyssey
- Aftcastle: Invincible
- Survey: 122
- Retrieve: 60
- Speed: 150
- Range: 46
- Favor: 126
The Frugal Freighter - Maximum Retrieval, high Survey, minimum Speed
This ship is ideal for FCs that want to maximize their gains from their company credits. By minimizing Speed while maximizing Survey (which we believe affects your chance at a second item) and Retrieval, you get the most bang for your buck. Just... not very often. If 84 Range doesn't do it for you, see the next ship design.
- Hull: Invincible
- Rigging: Bronco
- Forecastle: Tatanora
- Aftcastle: Tatanora
- Survey: 120
- Retrieve: 140
- Speed: 50
- Range: 84
- Favor: 136
The Frugal Flier - Maximum Retrieval, moderately high Survey and Range, minimum Speed
Like the above, this ship is designed to minimize speed, which is ideal for FCs that want to maintain a positive credit balance, especially small FCs. However, this ship has 14 more range so you can hit three sectors more easily. After three, gains start dropping from the worse ship parts in other areas combined with the need to go further from your path to hit the extra sectors. (Assuming we're right that survey affects second items,) I consider Aftcastles to be better than Forecastles due to Forecastles being all-or-nothing, whereas Aftcastles have more stages of benefit and can come up twice per sector.
- Hull: Enterprise
- Rigging: Bronco
- Forecastle: Odyssey
- Aftcastle: Tatanora
- Survey: 106
- Retrieve: 140
- Speed: 50
- Range: 98
- Favor: 118
The Fortune Seeker - Very high Survey, high Retrieval, low Speed
This ship is a minor variation on the idea of slowly getting lots of items. It doesn't have much Range, but it has tons of Survey and Retrieve, balancing them better than the Frugal ship designs. The ship is also not quite as slow as those.
- Hull: Invincible
- Rigging: Invincible
- Forecastle: Tatanora
- Aftcastle: Odyssey
- Survey: 124
- Retrieve: 122
- Speed: 68
- Range: 80
- Favor: 136
The Treasure Hunter - High Retrieval, moderately high Survey and Range, low Speed
This ship focuses on item collection, but has enough Range to hit three sectors easily while having a speed at least a little better than "plodding."
- Hull: Enterprise
- Rigging: Invincible
- Forecastle: Odyssey
- Aftcastle: Odyssey
- Survey: 110
- Retrieve: 122
- Speed: 68
- Range: 94
- Favor: 118
The Average Airship - Moderately high Retrieval, otherwise average stats
I consider this ship to be a fairly average endgame build. It has enough range to hit almost all of the doubles for farmable sectors, but only a few triples. It has pretty good retrieval while still having some speed. If this ship has enough range for you, it's likely a pretty good match. But, if you want to hit three sectors but can't hit the ones you want with only 90 range, you might want to try the next ship.
- Hull: Enterprise
- Rigging: Enterprise
- Forecastle: Invincible-II
- Aftcastle: Odyssey
- Survey: 96
- Retrieve: 118
- Speed: 82
- Range: 90
- Favor: 104
The Mostly Invincible - Very average all around
If you like average ships, this ship is as close as you'll get to a ship with completely average stats. I prefer making Speed be the "dump stat" compared to Retrieval or Range because I favor Retrieval in general, and 86 range would only let you hit two sectors. If I wanted to hit two sectors, I'd use the ship design above instead.
- Hull: Invincible-II
- Rigging: Enterprise
- Forecastle: Invincible-II
- Aftcastle: Invincible-II
- Survey: 100
- Retrieve: 104
- Speed: 86
- Range: 104
- Favor: 100
The Eager Explorer - Max Speed, low Range and Retrieval
If you still have sectors to unlock, you want to maximize speed so you can hit the sector as often as you can. If I am right that unlocking new sectors is not affected by any stat, then all that matters is the number of times you can visit it. Hitting only one sector feels like a waste, so you might as well hit a second one too. Assuming you want to hit an adult (17+) sector, you'll need at least 90 Survey.
- Hull: Enterprise
- Rigging: Tatanora
- Forecastle: Enterprise
- Aftcastle: Enterprise
- Survey: 90
- Retrieve: 78
- Speed: 132
- Range: 78
- Favor: 90
The Enterprising Explorer - High Speed, moderate Range
If you want to hit a bunch of sectors while unlocking, you might want a bit more hull:
- Hull: Invincible-II
- Rigging: Odyssey
- Forecastle: Enterprise
- Aftcastle: Enterprise
- Survey: 90
- Retrieve: 82
- Speed: 118
- Range: 96
- Favor: 86
The Trailblazer - High Range, moderately high Speed
Now, if you want enough Range to easily hit four sectors and have enough Speed that it doesn't take forever, try this one. It doesn't get as many items though, but by hitting many sectors, in theory, you have more chances to get the really rare items. This sort of design is also nice when you don't need many of an item, like when farming for some schematic mats you're missing.
- Hull: Odyssey
- Rigging: Invincible-II
- Forecastle: Enterprise
- Aftcastle: Enterprise
- Survey: 90
- Retrieve: 86
- Speed: 104
- Range: 114
- Favor: 82
The Collector's Quartet - Four ships that avoid overlapping parts
I like making one of everything. I don't really like having duplicates. To that end, I was wondering if I could make a series of four endgame ships that met my requirements (enough range to hit the sectors I wanted, but not TOO much, Survey of 90 or more) that used four sets of parts that didn't overlap at all. These are the four I came up with that I really like. Three can hit three sectors (one can hit four), and the last one can hit three if those three are SC18 > SC21 > SC22.
The Frugal Freighter
(see above)
- Hull: Invincible
- Rigging: Bronco
- Forecastle: Tatanora
- Aftcastle: Tatanora
- Survey: 120
- Retrieve: 140
- Speed: 50
- Range: 84
- Favor: 136
The Treasure Hunter
(see above)
- Hull: Enterprise
- Rigging: Invincible
- Forecastle: Odyssey
- Aftcastle: Odyssey
- Survey: 110
- Retrieve: 122
- Speed: 68
- Range: 94
- Favor: 118
The Mostly Invincible
(see above)
- Hull: Invincible-II
- Rigging: Enterprise
- Forecastle: Invincible-II
- Aftcastle: Invincible-II
- Survey: 100
- Retrieve: 104
- Speed: 86
- Range: 104
- Favor: 100
The Trailblazer
(see above)
- Hull: Odyssey
- Rigging: Invincible-II
- Forecastle: Enterprise
- Aftcastle: Enterprise
- Survey: 90
- Retrieve: 86
- Speed: 104
- Range: 114
- Favor: 82