New Pilots & Interface // Community Tools

Third-Party Apps Tools Directory

Series Systems Updated 2026-07-01
Briefing

Most of the galaxy runs on community tools

Elite Dangerous ships with a usable but deliberately limited in-game UI — no trade route planner, no engineering material checklist, no system search by attribute, no neutron highway plotter, no exobiology aid. Almost every meaningful gameplay loop above casual depends on at least one third-party tool, and a handful of foundational ones — Inara, EDSM, EDMC, Spansh, EDSY / Coriolis — are essentially required for serious play. The 2023 shutdown of EDDB reshuffled the deck; CMDRs Toolbox followed in 2024, picked up almost immediately by the Wanderer's Toolbox restoration project. The Powerplay 2.0, Colonisation and Trailblazers gameplay layers added since 2024 have spawned their own tool generations. This dossier is the up-to-date map of the territory.

90+
Tool entries catalogued
5
Truly essential foundations
19
Functional categories
13
Creator channels catalogued
01

Official & Community Hubs

Start at the source

Before the third-party ecosystem, these are the first-party and community anchors — where Frontier posts, where the playerbase gathers, and where you go when a server hiccups or you need a wing. Bookmark them all.

Official Website

Official Web

Frontier's storefront and news hub — buy the base game and DLC, grab the launcher, and read dev updates, livestream recaps, and release announcements. The canonical source for what's live and what's coming next.

Official Forums

Official Web

Frontier's own boards — patch notes, the dev tracker, bug-report threads, and long-form discussion. Where Frontier posts first: the authoritative channel for release notes and known-issue tracking.

Frontier Issue Tracker

Official Web

Frontier's official bug-report portal — the only place Frontier consistently responds to bugs. Search before reporting; vote on existing issues to push them up the queue.

Official Steam Community

Official Web

The Steam edition's hub — announcements mirrored from Frontier, plus player guides, screenshots, and discussions. The place for Steam-specific fixes: launch options, controller config, and Proton/Linux troubleshooting.

Elite Dangerous Subreddit

Community

r/EliteDangerous — the largest community feed. News breaks here, screenshots and questions get answered fast, and it reads the pulse of the playerbase. The fastest way to check "is it just me, or are the servers down?"

Elite Dangerous Community Discord

Community Discord

The main real-time chat hub — voice and text for wing-ups, quick questions, and event coordination. Where you find a wing at 2 a.m. when the subreddit is asleep.

Elite PvE

Community Forum

Forum and community organised around cooperative, PvE-focused play — a place to find griefer-free wings, group events and mutual aid away from Open-play PvP.

02

The Essentials

Install these first

If only five tools could exist, these would be them. Everything else in this dossier orbits around this set — they are the foundation the rest of the ecosystem either plugs into or builds on top of.

Inara

Essential

The encyclopedic multitool of Elite Dangerous — systems, stations, commodities & markets, modules, nearest-outfitting & shipyard search, engineers & blueprints, materials, missions, squadrons, Thargoid War, Galnet news, community goals and personal logbooks, all in one place. Post-EDDB, Inara absorbed most of its functions and is now the de facto answer to "where do I find …?".

EDSM — ED Star Map

Essential

Community-maintained galaxy database — system coordinates, body data, station info, faction states, flight logs. Powers dozens of other tools through its public API. Submit your journal via EDMC and your travels populate the map.

EDMC — ED Market Connector

Essential

The pipe that connects you to the ecosystem. Watches your journal and sends data to EDDN, EDSM, Inara, and any plugin you install. Without EDMC, you are invisible to the community web. Plus a thriving plugin marketplace covering exploration, BGS, materials, overlays.

Spansh

Essential

The dominant route-planning ecosystem — one site, many planners: Neutron Plotter and Galaxy / Exact Plotter for jumps, Road to Riches and Tourist Planner for exploration income and sightseeing, Trade Planner for profit-per-jump, and Fleet Carrier Plotter for carrier hauls, plus Body / System / Station search, Powerplay sub-tools and a public API & daily data dumps. If a route or search exists, Spansh runs it — and half the tools in this dossier use it as a library.

EDSY (with Coriolis as backup)

Essential

Ship outfitting. EDSY is the slot-by-slot build planner with the most complete engineering simulation and is what the project's fleet build links use; Coriolis has a layout closer to the in-game outfitting screen and is friendlier for new commanders. Both encode builds in the URL — share a build by sharing a link.

03

Galaxy Reference & Databases

Encyclopedias

When you need to know where something is, what something does, or how a mechanic actually works.

Wanderer's Toolbox

Active 2025

The restoration of CMDRs Toolbox, and a hub in its own right: curated guides (engineering unlocks, Guardian modules, pre-engineered FSDs, material farming), opinionated ship builds (exploration, mining and more), a multi-waypoint route planner, the Fleet Carrier and Plasma Slug calculators, exploration routes (Stratum & Billionaire Boulevard), and a curated external-tools directory. Clean, focused, modern.

EDastrometrics (edastro)

Web

Galaxy-wide heatmaps and exobiology / biome distribution maps rendered from aggregated EDDN data. The site to consult before a long exploration run — find under-explored regions, body-type concentrations, biological hotspots.

Roguey's Elite Dangerous

Web

Long-running ship and module database with engineering blueprint lookup. Less polished than Inara, sometimes faster for quick stat comparisons.

Elite Dangerous Wiki (Fandom)

Wiki

Community wiki — strongest on lore, mechanics, ship anatomy, faction history. Weak on real-time market data. The go-to for "how does heat damage scale" or "what is the Far God cult".

Pilots Trade Network

Web

Long-form gameplay guides — fleet carrier ownership, mining hotspots, Thargoid combat, BGS doctrine. Often the most thorough single source on a given topic.

04

Ship Outfitting & Builds

Theorycrafting

Where you design ships before spending the credits. Build URLs from these tools are the format every other tool understands. The primary outfitter, EDSY, is listed under The Essentials.

Coriolis EDCD

Web

The other major outfitter — UI mirrors the in-game outfitting screen. Same engineering simulation, gentler learning curve.

AXI Wiki — Thargoid Builds

Web

The authoritative source for anti-Thargoid combat builds — gauss, shard, AX multicannon doctrine, caustic-resistance loadouts, evacuation Belugas. Maintained by the AXI squadron.

05

Route Planning & Navigation

Get there fast

The galaxy is 1:1 scale Milky Way. You need a router. Spansh is the trunk; everything else clips into it.

SpanshRouter (EDMC plugin)

EDMC plugin

Auto-copies the next Spansh waypoint to your clipboard on each jump. Eliminates the alt-tab grind on long-haul exploration runs.

Navl's Neutron Dancer

EDMC plugin

Newer Spansh route plotter EDMC plugin — supports Neutron, Galaxy, Road to Riches, Expressway to Exomastery, Tourist, and Fleet Carrier plots via CSV import.

GalaxyGPS

EDMC plugin

Comprehensive route planning and fleet carrier management plugin — full GPS-style navigation experience for the galaxy.

EDMRN — Multi-Route Navigation

Windows

Ultra-fast TSP-based multi-waypoint route optimiser. Quoted at ~3 seconds Sol→Beagle Point, plus an Explorer tab integrating EDSM/Spansh data.

EDNeutronAssistant

Windows

Standalone alternative to SpanshRouter. Calculates routes via Spansh API, copies the next waypoint to the OS clipboard automatically.

06

Companion & Journal Apps

The big desktop tools

Apps that live next to the game, read the journal, and react. Most commanders run one or two constantly.

EDDiscovery

Windows

Captain's log + 3D galaxy map + trip planner — 50+ panels for combat, trade, exploration, exobio, ranks, missions, BGS. Steeper learning curve than EDMC, more visual.

EDDI

Plugin

Voice responder — speaks information back on jumps, scans, mission updates, danger alerts. Exposes game-state variables to VoiceAttack for advanced macros.

EDCoPilot

Windows

Virtual ship-AI assistant — ambient cockpit chatter, 30+ panel touch UI, route plotting, market lookups. Originally built for VR; works brilliantly on a second monitor or tablet via SpaceDesk.

Elite Observatory Core

Windows

Plugin-based journal monitor — flags "interesting" scans (landable terraformables, shepherd moons, close binaries, high-G landables, atmospherics). Critical for explorers and screenshot hunters.

Trade Computer Extension Mk.II

Windows

Multifunctional in-game HUD overlay covering trading, exploration, BGS, logbook and routes. Heavy but powerful — for commanders who want everything on one overlay.

o7 Debrief

Windows

Turns your Elite Dangerous journal into a shareable session debrief (HTML / Markdown) — jumps, scans, bounties, trade, exobio, rank progress. Great post-session memento or stream recap.

EDMD — Monitor Daemon

Linux

Real-time session monitoring dashboard for Elite Dangerous on Linux (GTK4 + terminal). Rare native-Linux option for the Penguin commanders.

07

Engineering & Materials

The grind tracker

Ships materials (raw, manufactured, encoded), Odyssey on-foot materials (chemical, manufacturing, data), engineer unlocks and blueprint requirements. Tracking these without a tool is masochism.

EDEngineer

Windows

Tracks every ship-side material, data fragment and commodity vs every blueprint, suit upgrade, weapon upgrade and engineer unlock. Progress bars and "next-to-collect" highlights.

ED Odyssey Materials Helper

Windows

The Odyssey counterpart — tracks all four material categories (chemical, manufacturing, data, plus ship materials). Suit and handheld blueprints, settlement loot tracking.

08

Exploration & Exobiology

For the Black

Tools for deep-space exploration, FSS analysis, exobiology scanning, and tracking what you found.

EDMC BioScan

EDMC plugin

Predicts which exobiology species are present on a planet from the body's properties — prioritise targets without driving down to check each one.

EDMC Pioneer

EDMC plugin

Highlights high-value bodies in a system and gives a quick total system value estimate — instant call on whether to fully map.

EDMC-Canonn

EDMC plugin

Submits your codex and biology data to the Canonn Research community database — your exploration finds feed into the community's mystery research.

Artemis Scanner Tracker

EDMC plugin

Tracks Artemis-suit exobio sampling progress per planet — kills the manual "did I already take three samples here" guesswork.

Exploration Buddy

Companion

Odyssey-live companion that shows real-time route, system, body and biological information at a glance.

EDXD — Exploration Dashboard

Cross-platform

Cross-platform (Linux / macOS / Windows) real-time explorer dashboard. Provides live system info even for systems not yet in EDSM or Inara.

Srv Survey

Windows

Themed overlay for Colonisation, Exobiology, Human Settlements and Guardian sites. The polished overlay companion for surface gameplay.

09

Mining & Resource Hunting

For the Type-11

Mining is one of the most data-heavy activities in the game — hotspot prices, ring composition, prospector limpet timing, refinery sorting. These tools make it sane.

EliteMining

Windows

Mining companion with real-time session tracking and a hotspot finder seeded with 61,000+ pre-loaded locations that grows as the community discovers more in-game.

EDG — Tritium Hotspot Finder

Web

Fleet carrier-tuned: find known tritium hotspots close to your current location for refuelling on long carrier journeys.

10

Trading & Commerce

Cargo and credits

For commodity hauling, rare-goods loops, fleet-carrier arbitrage, and pure profit per jump.

Trade Dangerous

Windows

The heavy-hitter trade route optimiser. Command-line, complex constraints (cargo, jump range, pad size, illegal goods), supports multi-stop loops. Power-user territory.

EDCT — Carrier Trader

Windows

Tool for large-quantity trades — built for fleet carrier owners shifting 25,000+ tons at a time. Carrier-to-carrier arbitrage support.

Gold Detector

Discord bot

Discord bot that finds stations with large stocks of 90% discounted gold — a niche arbitrage corner that pays out absurdly.

11

Fleet Carriers & Colonisation

Capital ops

Once you own a carrier or begin a colonisation build, the logistics curve goes vertical. Colonisation tooling is the freshest category in this dossier — these tools are mostly 2025–2026 builds.

EDColonisationAsst

Windows

Tracks colonisation build-site progress and fleet carrier logistics automatically from journal. Construction progress, commodities remaining, carrier inventory. The current best colonisation tracker.

Raven Colonial

Web

Web tool for planning colonised systems, tracking colonisation construction sites, and pre-loading commodities on fleet carriers. Excellent companion to the project's colonisation doctrine.

Elite Cargo Log

Web

Journal-based hauling and offloading calculator. Upload your journal to calculate delivered cargo and freight payouts for fleet carriers and colonisation build sites.

FCMS — Fleet Carrier Management

EDMC plugin

Auto-reports carrier fuel, cargo, jump schedule and finances. Multi-carrier dashboard. The default carrier management plugin.

CATS — Carrier Administration

Windows

Fleet carrier auto-jumper / autopilot + multi-carrier management UI. Schedules sequential jumps along a Spansh route, auto-commits each jump. Multi-day AFK trips done right.

CTS — Carrier Traversal System

Windows

Newer, simpler carrier auto-plotter focused on long carrier journeys. Lighter than CATS.

Multi Carrier Manager

Windows

C# WinForms app for managing multiple Fleet Carriers (requires alt accounts). Side-by-side stats view across your carriers.

fleetcarrier.space

Web

Showcase tool for your fleet carrier — services offered, location, schedule. Lets other commanders find your services.

Fleet Carrier Macros

Windows

Lower-tech hotkey macros (Ctrl+F11 refill from carrier, Ctrl+F9 next jump, Alt+F9 auto-jump remaining route). Quick wins without the autopilot complexity.

12

Powerplay 2.0, BGS & Squadron

Meta-game

Background Simulation and Powerplay 2.0 are the deepest meta-games in Elite. For the Jerome Archer pledge specifically, the Powerplay Assistant below is the single most useful tool in this dossier.

PowerPlay Assistant

Web

Web tool covering every Powerplay 2.0 task — select your task and Power, it gives full instructions. Finds nearby anarchy systems for illegal tasks; tracks Megaships (auto-update with the tick); rare-goods finder; system finder by Powerplay requirements. Essential for the Jerome Archer pledge.

BGS-Tally

EDMC plugin

The all-in-one tracker — BGS, Colonisation, Powerplay merits and Thargoid War activity. Counts every contribution across the journal and generates squadron-ready reports. Most actively maintained meta-game plugin.

ETN — Elite Tactical Network

Web

Multi-tenant squadron intelligence portal focused on BGS and Powerplay activity tracking. Aggregates squadron contributions, visualises trends, supports cross-squadron coordination.

EDMFAT

EDMC plugin

Elite Dangerous Minor Faction Activity Tracker. Auto-records every in-game action affecting minor faction influence — missions, bounties, cartographic sales. Generates BGS reports.

Elite Dangerous Dashboard

Web

Web companion app focused on commander statistics and a powerful squadron dashboard. Activity tracking and leaderboards.

Elite Warboard

Windows

Optimisation tool for combat exploration, colonisation, massacre missions, and mining — focused on stacking the right missions for maximum payout.

EDR — ED Recon

EDMC plugin

Scans other commanders, fetches Inara background plus Karma / past legal records aggregated by other EDR users. Critical for Powerplay PvP encounters and Open-mode situational awareness.

ED Wing Helper

Windows

Manages wing invitations from a predefined commander list — monitors the journal to detect when squadmates are online and auto-prompts for invites.

13

Voice, AI & Immersion

Talking copilots

Voice command and ambient AI. The most fast-moving sub-category in 2025–2026 thanks to the arrival of LLM-driven copilots.

VoiceAttack

Windows · paid

The platform almost every voice tool builds on. Maps phrases to keybinds, macros, plugin calls. Foundation layer for HCS, EDDI, EDCoPilot integration.

HCS Voice Packs

VA pack · paid

Commercial voice packs (Astra, Verity, Eli, Orion, more) with theatrical voice actors and Elite-specific scripts. The immersion layer most commanders pair with VoiceAttack.

COVAS:NEXT

AI · LLM

Talk to your ship computer in real-time. TOS-compliant, reacts to game events, triggers ship actions and searches, vision capabilities, persistent memory, supports local and online STT/TTS/LLMs. The most ambitious AI copilot in the ecosystem right now.

Elite Intel

AI · offline

Sci-fi inspired offline private AI ship computer. Open source, Linux + Windows. The privacy-conscious alternative to cloud-LLM copilots.

EliteVA

VA plugin

VoiceAttack plugin exposing in-game events, variables and keybindings to your macros. The clean modern alternative to older bridging plugins.

EDISON

Windows

Surface and orbital navigator — calculates bearings and headings for surface driving and planetary approach. Excellent for VR commanders.

14

HUD, VR & Hardware Integration

The cockpit

Things that change what's on your screens, add new screens, or wire physical hardware to the game.

EDHM — HUD Mod

Windows

Recolour the entire in-game HUD — orange becomes blue, green, white, anything. Reversible, online-safe. Accessibility-critical for some colour-blind commanders.

EDMCModernOverlay

EDMC plugin

Modern replacement for EDMCOverlay / EDMCOverlay2 with backwards compatibility. Custom on-screen placement of plugin HUD elements, Windows + Linux.

Elite VR Cockpit

VR

SteamVR overlay adding virtual throttle, joystick and holographic buttons — VR play without HOTAS. Works everywhere except on-foot Odyssey.

MFD Cougar Display

Windows

Extends cockpit instrumentation onto additional monitors (Thrustmaster Cougars, touchscreens). Fleet Carrier, mining, piracy and bounty-hunting extras baked in.

EliteChroma

Windows

Makes Razer Chroma and Chroma-connected RGB devices react to Elite Dangerous in-game events. Cockpit-lighting immersion for desk gear.

Touch Portal

Mobile

Turns a phone or tablet into a customisable touchscreen control panel. Pages of virtual buttons mapped to Elite keybinds — Stream-Deck-on-glass.

SpaceDesk

Windows · tablet

Turns any tablet into a wireless second monitor for your PC. Many commanders use this to host EDCoPilot's UI on a tablet beside the HOTAS.

EDRefCard

Web

Generates a printable visual reference sheet from your Custom.binds file — keyboard layouts, joystick, HOTAS. Browse other commanders' shared bindings for ideas.

EDProfiler

Windows

Multiple graphics, HUD-colour and controls profiles — switch between them before launching Elite. Useful for VR-vs-monitor swaps.

Elite G19s Companion

Logitech G19

Companion app for the Logitech G19 keyboard's secondary display — orrery view, status, market info, news ticker.

15

Data Networks & APIs

The plumbing

The substrate everything else runs on. You don't talk to these directly — but every tool above does.

EDDN — ED Data Network

API · Network

The community-run firehose of anonymised journal events — market prices, scans, faction states, shipyard, outfitting. Every EDMC and EDDiscovery commander contributes; every tool subscribes. The single most important piece of infrastructure in the ecosystem.

EDSM API

API · REST

Public read API over the Star Map data — systems, bodies, stations, factions, traffic, ranks. Rate-limited but free.

EliteAPI (.NET)

API · .NET

Open-source .NET library wrapping journal parsing, in-game state and keybindings. The base under EliteVA, Discord rich presence apps, custom companion tools.

EDGIS — Galactic Info System

API · Web

Performance-first galactic coordinate, 2D vector system maps, 3D galactic neighbourhood, closest neutron star, coordinate prediction. Backup for EDSM when its load is high.

EDCD FDevIDs

Reference

Community-collected mapping of FDev internal API identifiers — every ship, module, commodity, suit, weapon by its internal symbol. Required reference for any tool builder.

Coriolis Data

Reference

The canonical machine-readable model of every ship hull and module in Elite. Powers Coriolis, EDSY, and most downstream simulation tools.

EDEngineer Data

Reference

Authoritative blueprint definitions — material costs per grade for every engineering blueprint. Used by EDEngineer itself plus many other material trackers.

16

Rescue & Player Groups

Community

Player organisations that have real gameplay impact — fuel rescue, hull repair, science research, anti-Thargoid combat.

Fuel Rats

Player group

The search-and-rescue squadron. Stranded out of fuel anywhere in the galaxy → file a request → a Rat is dispatched (typically <15 minutes). Free, 24/7. The Sidewinder insurance fallback's actual backup plan.

Hull Seals

Player group

The repairs mirror of the Rats — hull repairs, broken canopy rescues, SRV strandings. The Asp Explorer's deep-space insurance.

Canonn Research

Player group

The science-and-mystery squadron — Thargoid biology, Guardian sites, anomalies, codex entries. Operates its own megaship (The Gnosis). Pairs with the EDMC-Canonn plugin.

Anti-Xeno Initiative (AXI)

Player group

Coordinated anti-Thargoid combat group. Evacuations, AX combat zones, Thargoid Titan ops. Maintains the canonical AX build wiki.

Hutton Orbital Truckers

Player group

The (in)famous community around hauling cargo to Hutton Orbital (6.7 million light-seconds from the entry star). Has its own EDMC plugin (Hutton Helper), podcast, and lore. Run for the meme, stay for the mug.

17

Directories & Aggregators

When you don't know what you need

The starting points for discovery — if you remember nothing else from this dossier, remember EDCodex.

EDCodex

Web

The directory of directories. 288 third-party tools catalogued by function (audio, BGS, EDDN, exploration, fighting, graphics, logbook, routes, shipyard, trading, etc). Tool authors submit and update entries themselves.

NEWP — New Player tools

Web

Clean, curated short-list of essentials targeted at new commanders. Avoids overwhelm — the recommendation list to give squadmates.

r/EliteDangerous Great Posts

Reddit wiki

Reddit-curated archive of vote-promoted essential posts — guide compilations, tool roundups, gameplay primers.

Just Elite Dangerous

Web

Community-driven guide site — curated tool recommendations from community submissions, creator profiles, gameplay deep dives.

Elite Dangerous Addon Launcher

Windows

Lets you choose which apps and websites to launch when you run Elite — a coordinated launcher for your tool stack.

18

YouTube Channels & Creators

The video side of the galaxy

The community's video wing — weekly news roundups, build and engineering tutorials, cinematics, in-universe lore and live analysis. Sorted by subscriber reach: big-channel news at the top, focused specialists below. Reach is not the same as fit — pick the ones matching your play-style.

Elite Dangerous (Official)

Official YouTube

Frontier's own channel — reveal trailers, developer livestreams and feature spotlights. The canonical video source for what is shipping next and how the player-driven narrative is unfolding.

ObsidianAnt

YouTube News · Analysis

The largest Elite Dangerous voice on YouTube — update analysis, feature breakdowns and galaxy news, running since the early years. Also covers the wider space-game and flight-sim scene.

The Yamiks

YouTube Commentary

Sharp, often irreverent commentary and critique — mechanics deep-dives, build experiments and unfiltered takes on where the game stands. Long-running and veteran-leaning.

Down to Earth Astronomy

YouTube Guides

Practical guides and tutorials with an exploration and astronomy bent — tool walkthroughs, exobiology and deep-space how-tos. A prolific back catalogue for the working commander.

The Buur Pit

YouTube News · Cinematics

Weekly Witchspace News every Friday, plus mid-week first-look reviews and investigative specials. Frontier- and VKB-partnered; run by the husband-and-wife duo CMDRs Buur and Rheeney.

Galnet News Digest

YouTube Lore · Satire

In-universe satirical news — the galaxy's events retold through Galnet with a straight face and a cast of billions. Built from Elite assets with Frontier's permission, for non-commercial fun.

Ricardos Gaming

YouTube News · Guides

Weekly news, ship reviews, lore and update analysis — Operations, Powerplay, Thargoids, colonisation and Guardian mysteries. New video every Sunday, pitched at new and veteran commanders alike.

Astyrrean

YouTube Anti-Xeno

Mile13 Gaming

YouTube Guides

Up-to-date guides and tutorials with a comedic streak — Odyssey and general gameplay, aimed at keeping commanders current on the latest mechanics.

CMDR Exorcist

YouTube Cinematics

Partnered Elite Dangerous (and Space Engineers) creator — weekly let's-plays, cinematics and development news.

CMDR MTMAJOR

YouTube News · Guides

Weekly news, lore and career coverage across trading, exploration and combat, with the occasional Saturday stream.

Slamscape-X

YouTube Guides · Streams

Educational-but-entertaining coverage from a variety streamer — practical Elite Dangerous content alongside other titles.

Midnite Black

YouTube Beginner Guides

Clear, beginner-focused explainers for the parts the game never teaches well — engineering, ship builds, combat fundamentals and progression. A newer channel built on hands-on in-game experience.

19

By Play-Style — Recommended Stacks

Map to the KA- fleet

Mapping tools to the specific roles in the KA- fleet. The five essentials in Section 1 are assumed always-on; this layer is what you stack on top.

Role / HullAdd to the essentials
Insurance / Sidewinder Mk I Fuel Rats & Hull Seals bookmarks. That's it — the disposable hull doesn't need more.
Explorer / Asp Explorer · Mandalay Elite Observatory Core, EDDiscovery, EDMC-Canonn, EDMC BioScan, EDMC Pioneer, Artemis Scanner Tracker, Hull Seals bookmark, Fuel Rats bookmark.
Passenger ferry / Lynx Highliner Spansh Tourist Planner, EDCoPilot or EDDI for ambient narration, EDISON for orbital approach.
PvE Combat / Viper Mk IV · Python Mk II EDEngineer, HCS Voice Pack + VoiceAttack, BGS-Tally (for Powerplay merits), EDR for situational awareness, EDHM-UI for HUD visibility.
Cargo trader / Type-9 · Type-8 Trade Dangerous or Spansh Trade Planner, EDDI (mission narration).
Mining / Type-11 Prospector EliteMining, Spansh Body Search (ring hotspots), Wanderer's Plasma Slug Calculator, EDG (tritium hotspots).
Powerplay 2.0 grind (Jerome Archer pledge) PowerPlay Assistant (elite.niceygy.net) — non-negotiable. BGS-Tally for merit tracking. EDR before any encounter.
System Colonisation EDColonisationAsst, Raven Colonial, Elite Cargo Log, plus the carrier stack below.
Fleet Carrier owner FCMS (EDMC plugin), CATS for auto-jump, Spansh Fleet Carrier Plotter, Wanderer's Carrier Calculator, Multi Carrier Manager (if alt-account carriers).
BGS / Squadron player BGS-Tally (covers everything), EDMFAT for minor-faction work, Inara Squadrons, ETN if running organised ops.
Thargoid War combat AXI Wiki builds, Canonn Research membership (intel), HCS AX voice pack.
VR commander EDCoPilot + COVAS:NEXT (or Elite Intel offline), VoiceAttack + HCS, Elite VR Cockpit, EDDI, Touch Portal + tablet.

The "if I install one thing" answer

For someone just starting their tooling journey: install EDMC. It's the foundation everything else builds on, and even with no other tools it makes you a contributing member of the data ecosystem. Then bookmark Inara, EDSY and Spansh, and add tools from this directory as specific gameplay needs arise — not before. The galaxy doesn't reward over-tooling early; it rewards understanding why each tool earns its slot.