Airship Guide

[BonzaiFerroni]

I'm thinking that you're right about proximity to the new sectors. I'll have to try a forecastle upgrade, however; it should be known that we found sector 11 with just the bronco hull around rank 17 so I'm not sure if we just got lucky or if the minimum stat of 70 was enough to find it. We're currently trying to find sectors 7 and 8 though at rank 20 so perhaps the upgraded forecastle will help us discover them sooner? To note, we've already visited all sectors (except 11) that we could (1 through 6) and have not gotten 7 or 8 yet.

Wow, this is the kind of report I was looking for \o/ Please keep us updated. It could be that all the information I just added about "invincible forecastle recommended" is false, but I'd rather know the truth. I was conducting an experiment of my own to see how far I could get on a bronco forecastle, I just haven't gotten that far. Let us know how far you get!

It still might be that a forecastle would increase your odds, but there is RNG involved. I suppose for the time-being I'll continue to recommend the invincible forecastle. This is a really difficult thing to test because you can only discover a sector once, so it's hard to run multiple tests.

Maybe this has been mentioned already, but it may be an addition to the theory on unlocking additional airships.

Sector 8 seems to be the last of the "bronze" sectors. To unlock the next airship slot, maybe it is something as simple as visiting all of the bronze sectors. Referring to the OP's wonderful flow-map, due to the bottle-neck at Sector 5, I think most would discover (and visit) Sector 6 and it appears Sector 7 is the location to discover Sector 8.

One way to test this would be for someone to refrain from visiting either Sector 3 or Sector 4 until they have discovered and visited Sector 8.

Naturally if this holds true, the 3rd airship may unlock upon completion of the silver tier sectors.

This is the best explanation I've heard, and it's worth testing. I was planning to hold off from visiting 3 on my alt, so you've just given me a more coherent reason to do that \o/ I'll let you know what I find.

[Arcticharm]

It still might be that a forecastle would increase your odds, but there is RNG involved. I suppose for the time-being I'll continue to recommend the invincible forecastle. This is a really difficult thing to test because you can only discover a sector once, so it's hard to run multiple tests.

Fully in agreement. I believe that your rating on a sector helps determine if you chance into finding a new sector or not. I'll keep you posted, we're currently out to sector 6-> 5-> 4 atm at rank 20. Ship is due back in 4 hours and I'll have my FC mate report in to the spreadsheet and I'll post an update here.

You all are doing awesome work, keep it up!

Update: Ship came back from the trip and didn't find any new sectors. When I reviewed the log our ship did abysmal and substandard in the sectors that we think are tied to finding new sectors.

http://imgur.com/a/86t9u

[BonzaiFerroni]

You all are doing awesome work, keep it up!

Thanks so much! I'm having a blast checking the post every day for new replies, it feels like we are figuring it all out together \o/ I'm going to modify my credit request to be "Swiftsong FC and the Lodestone forum community."

I hadn't totally ruled out in my mind the "flyover" theory, that the path from one sector to another that would get you near the sector is what would unlock it. We had reports that it wasn't necessary for some sectors, that even 1-stop trips to some sectors would do the trick. It might be that surveillance extends your "sight radius", and sometimes it isn't necessary to take a specific path because imply visiting that sector falls within the radius. As a theory it isn't a good one because its so hard to test. Even if it unlocks on a "flyover" trip, we can't be sure if it was that or some RNG. And it fails occam's razor pretty bad XD