(Science in another thread.)
Note huge spoilers and some guesses and hasty maths. Also, this is concerning engine tunings only. Rudder optimisations make work the same but... we'll see.
Ok, first we need to know how slow our ship is. Yes, how SLOW it is. How fast does it go at rock bottom with no tunings.
Now, divide that value by 10. This is now the amount each engine tuning will add to the speed.
Now we need to factor in scripts and similar. If your ship is just any old ship bought from a shipyard, then obviously we don't need this. However, if your ship is like the Hyperion Vanguard mission reward for the Poisoned Paranid plot, it may be given "default equipment" by the script. In this case, it is, and in the case of some mission, "GoD" and external script spawned ships, it may also be. For now however I cannot prove this.
This will add anywhere up to (it seems) 100% of the max number of tunings, at what appears to be about a 1/40 chance for 80% and about a 1/100 chance the maximum number. So it's a lot of reloads!
It's also important to note that the game will spawn 8 pandora crates containing 2 to 5 tunings or optimisations. I'm not sure on the variation of these, as the only crates I've seen in my current game have all been tuning and all had 5.
So let's put this to use! Let's say we have just reloaded our Poisoned Paranid game until the speed is 250.3m/s, the MAXIMUM it will be. This is because it has been given 100% of 15 tunings, plus 12 which are hardcoded in the ship's spawn, so it now has 27 tunings out of a usual possible 15.
The amount per tuning = 67.6 / 10, base speed / 10, so 6.76 per tuning. 67.6 + (6.76 x 27) = ... yep, you guessed it, 250.3m/s. (Well actually no, it equals 250.12, but shhhh. The game rounds, and only ever shows to 1dp. so things can get confusing.)
Using this knowledge we can calculate the maximum possible speeds of different ships got through different means.
For example, I can calculate that the BEASTLY Pirate Kestrel could have a theoretical max speed of... wait for it... 1361.2m/s.
The amount per tuning is 18.15, and it could be fully tuned to 635.2 + have a maximum of 8 x 5 pandora tunings! (I'm waiting for someone to upload a save with all 8 crates as x 5 tunings or optimisations...
)Sure enough, adding 40 tunings to a fully tuned Kestrel gives me this speed, so my maths is correct here.
Now we need to work out some of the other instances that we can get overtuned ships through the game using "default" then adding tunings afterwards as it does with those mission reward scripts. People have in the past reported various NPC taxi craft, second hand ships, and mission created ships as overtuned. We need to do more science!
Also, before you ask, yes you can get a Q that goes at 446.6m/s. >:D
EDIT:
Thanks to the info in this thread.
