I recently build a freighter-sized ship. It has FTL emitters and FF fuel in it’s tanks, currently docked at Avalon. But it’s unable to start a journey to Boucher - the UI just tells me “invalid”. Here’s the BP… any idea why my ship can’t jump?
Known issue: Bugs and Improvements - #1312 by Qirono
You need a high-power and/or hyper-power FTL reactor to jump with a HCB.
In my opinion this should be documented visibly when creating a blueprint because people keep unknowingly hitting this restriction after building their ship.
EDIT: that was wrong, see Ogrebeef’s reply below
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I am aware of no such limitation. Your ship might fly slower but it will still work with any FTL engine.
This does appear to be a bug with this particular configuration. Specifically, using a large STL fuel tank. I got the same “invalid” message with a blueprint identical to the one above. However, if I change to a medium STL fuel tank I have no problem with FTL flights.
To reiterate – I did not mistype the fuel tank type above. Changing the STL fuel tank (not the FTL fuel tank) is what resolved the issue in my test.
edit: after a bit more testing it appears that the failure has to do with a ship volume issue. In the blueprint example above the ship volume is 6108. Switching to a medium STL tank got it down to 5825. However, leaving the large STL tank in place and switching from a Quick-charge FTL reactor to a Standard FTL reactor gets the volume down to 6102 and that also fixes the problem.
So, either the Quick-charge reactor has a limitation that prevents it from working with ships above 5845 volume (the highest number I could get in testing that still works) and the limitation needs to be fixed or the blueprint system needs to block the Quick-charge as an option with this configuration. My guess is the former since the specs for these reactors were created before huge cargo bays were a thing. Also, the Standard reactor doesn’t seem to have this limitation as it can fly even with the maximum ship volume of 6122.
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Wow, thats bizarre. Really unintuitive, but at least there’s a potential solution to try. Thanks for the detailed response.
I created a ticket for it. At first glance, it looks like the problem is the insufficient power output of the QCR. When adding the large cargo module, the required emitters are calculated and in sum their power requirements exceed the 2000GW output of the the QCR.
This has been no issue until the introduction of the huge cargo bays, because before even the largest ships had a maximum power requirement that could still be provided by the QCR.
Not sure how to fix this yet, but I think it would be best to disallow saving a blueprint if power requirement > power generation. The power requirement is not displayed in the UI which makes it hard to see the problem right now.
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Thanks for seeing this and making a ticket for it. I agree some simple feedback around requirements > power generation would help preempt the issue.
With a medium STL fuel tank, I believe this design will work. The HCB with a FSE + QCR + MSL is our cheap 5k design.
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I’ll give it a shot with a medium STL fuel tank and will report back.
A large STL tank is a waste anyway unless you intend to spend a lot of fuel flying between planets within the same system.
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Alright, swapping for a Medium STL fuel tank worked 
Still would like an “utterly maxed out ship” in endgame, but I guess I’ll make do 
Thanks for the help everyone.