Voyage of discovery to the heart of the maelstrom

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Day 1 - not just a trip to the shops

Since it appears that one of the main narrative and development focuses for Elite: Dangerous at the moment is going to be the maelstroms I thought I'd start a new forum thread documenting my personal journey to uncover whatever it is that lies at the heart of these mysterious caustic clouds.

This became a "journey" (and not just a quick trip to the shops) when I sat down this morning to set up a dedicated ship to explore the maelstroms and gather the materials needed to get myself one of these new Caustic Sink Launchers (I didn't take part in the recent CG because I was busy driving the SRV around another planet). For this purpose I decided to dust off my Alliance Chieftain ("Passion Aggressive") which had been gathering dust at Jameson Memorial.

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Having done a bit of preliminary research I knew a couple of things I was going to need were corrosion resistant cargo racks (to carry the corrosive materials I'd be collecting from the maelstroms) and heat sink launchers (to stay cool while doing that and not attract unwanted attention from patrolling Thargoids or the Caustic Generators that inhabit the cloud and which I'd be taking tissue samples from). For the latter I made a quick trip to the Spirit of Laelaps megaship in Luyten's Star to grab a couple of the pre-engineered Sirius ones (which have an increased ammo capacity of 5). For the former tho' (again because I spend too much time driving around planets) I only had the class 1 (capacity 2) variety in storage so getting some class 4 variants seemed like my top priority.

First step on my journey then would be a trip to the legendary "Dav's Hope" abandoned settlement on planet A 5 in the Hyades Sector DR-V c2-23 system to stock up on Chemical Manipulators (of which I currently have 0).




Stay tuned for this ongoing voyage of discovery which I'll hopefully be documenting with lots of lovely screenshots, videos and acquired knowledge. Feel free to chip in with corrections if I'm completely wrong about anything but otherwise not too much back seat driving and let's see where this jouney takes us!




Contents

Series 1

Day 1 - not just a trip to the shops
Day 2 - hope springs eternal
Day 3 - tartan paint, a long weight and a reach around
Day 4 - reduced fat cream on a full fat doughnut
Day 5 - maelstrom madness
Day 6 - a mean green maelstrom machine
Day 7 - fried caustic generators

"Caustic Science" (a short film)
"Caustic Science (Part 2)"

Series 2

Day 1 - Drunken marriage proposals and other ancient relics
Day 2 - Scrambled Grelics
Day 3 - Titan Grooming
 
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I plan for this blog to tread a fine line between in-universe story telling while also being a useful and informative how-to guide for this stuff featuring 3rd party websites and the like. I guess I'll just have to deal with Dav's Hope when I get there but will probably do a mixture of Open and Solo for the obvious reasons (I mean, it's relogging either way so brace for some immershun damage).
 
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I mean, it's relogging either way so brace for some immershun damage.
To be fair, most of what all of us do in Elite straddles the line between immersive fantasy and internet-surfing reality. The blend of the two isn't just perfectly acceptable; it can be compelling in that it can inspire others to utilize all of the tools available to us in order to have ever grander adventures.

So, that's fine. I wish you the best of luck on your journey into the heart of corrosive darkness. Just stay healthy out there. There's still plenty of SRV and SLF racing to do, and the last thing we need is a heavily contaminated Alec Turner coughing and sputtering across the finish line.
 
I like the idea of this blog and hope to learn from it. But can this thread probably limited to Alec´s blogposts ?, its hard to follow the thread when its loaded with the usual nonsens discussions from the "always on" forum veterans.
 
Oh, I love stories from Alec!
Surprisingly while after all these years I still feel myself somewhere connected to the Dav's Hope site, however searching for HGE's with pharmaceutical isolators and then trading them down is still - probably better - option for getting manipulators. And doesn't require relogs=)
(I know there are quite a few other ways to get them - but lets not discuss all of them here, there are some dedicated threads for that).
 
I like the idea of this blog and hope to learn from it. But can this thread probably limited to Alec´s blogposts ?, its hard to follow the thread when its loaded with the usual nonsens discussions from the "always on" forum veterans.
Fear not - I plan to add follow-on links and/or a contents page in the OP for folks who just want to follow the story and nothing else (see here for how I did something similar for my Colonia adventure)
 
Part 2. Got murdered at Dav's Hope by Goid Sympathizers. Screw this. Y'all can go $%#^^ yourself. ;)
You would have to be a fool to go to a materials site in open if for no other reason than you'd have to share the mats...
I just find it silly that some commanders must spend time there all day, all night, sometimes monitoring the place for 24 hours a day 7 days a week, just for that one burst of fun.

How can you kill that which has no life?
--- Blizzard Execs (South Park, "Make love, not warcraft)
 
Day 2 - hope springs eternal

Not actually that much to report today. As I mentioned I'm desperately short on the engineering materials required to get myself some class 4 corrosion resistant cargo racks so I'm on my way to the eternal spring of such mat's, Dav's Hope on planet A 5 in the Hyades Sector DR-V c2-23 system (remembering to get a planetary vehicle hangar and SRV installed before I set off).

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It's pitch black when I arrive so not a very photogenic location but what's important is that its occupants are still among the messiest people in the known galaxy so no sooner have I completed a circuit of the settlement picking up all their discarded junk than another pile is lying around on the floor ready for another pass
(*1). Not a very thrilling afternoon but extremely productive! I'm actually going to be away on holiday for five days now but when I return I'll be taking a look at what's next on my shopping list. In the meantime sit back, relax, put the following video on repeat and imagine I'm spending my holiday at Dav's Hope, just going round and round hoovering up all the goodies!

Source: https://youtu.be/4a-Q7USS-Gg

(*1) after a quick relog

Continued ...
 
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Day 2 - hope springs eternal

Not actually that much to report today. As I mentioned I'm desperately short on the engineering materials required to get myself some class 4 corrosion resistant cargo racks so I'm on my way to the eternal spring of such mat's, Dav's Hope on planet A 5 in the Hyades Sector DR-V c2-23 system (remembering to get a planetary vehicle hangar and SRV installed before I set off).



It's pitch black when I arrive so not a very photogenic location …
I believe that it is always night there now.
 
Yeah tidally locked planet, orbit same as rotation, used to be always day, now it's always night after they moved the settlement for Odyssey planet tech, not sure the reason for the move!
Randomised I'm guessing. A lot of Horizons locations may well have been hand placed as they were introduced to the game one by one (certainly most of those in Colonia were in stunning locations). Alas when Odyssey came along and required a reshuffle the "bake in" process that Dav Stott described clearly had no eye for beauty and just plonked things down in the first place conveniently flat and boringly far from its nearest neighbour that it found. Not that I'm bitter or anything.
 
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