Guide / Tutorial Nutter’s explorers guide to the Galaxy

[neXib]

Made it home and sold the data, a cool 1,683,183 CR, only took 20 minutes, hehe, how do you guys survive longer than that

I scanned a Gas giant that is class V, haven't seen it before and not in nutters first post, but didn't seem to be worth anything special. The best system was worth 78k so nothing spectacular, I suspect it was the one with a couple of water worlds. I only found the one black hole at Mintaka on my trip, no other special stars. Home back was utterly boring, but guess I was lucky with the way towards my goal.

I think my next exploration trip will be in the Rift, that's the best way to appreciate it as a trip. But all in all I'm happy with the pay too, it's doable. Wear and tear was only 21k.

 

[Jackie Silver]

Dunno if you've visited it, but there is a W star along with a DA at HIP 99982, which is just 500 ly from Sol.

I haven't, thanks, that's excellent.

Also lots of W's in this list with HIP/HD numbers, I located 4 others in the general area of the elephants trunk today give or take 2k ly's, not visited them yet though to confirm whether they really do exist in game or not though. http://pacrowther.staff.shef.ac.uk/WRcat/

I've had indifferent results finding them from lists - seems like most of the time they're in but only as main sequence or giant stars.

 

[Nuruodo]

After about 18k travelled, 700 systems scanned, I've started noticing cracks in my windshield. Should I be worried, abandon my tour and head straight home?
View attachment 10636
My hull is at 76%, Thrusters and power plant at 90%, no clue where I can see the ship integrity or canopy status. Am I doomed? Currently at NGC 884, 7.6K from Sol.

How did you even get so badly damaged so far from home?

 

[virosh]

I haven't, thanks, that's excellent.

I've had indifferent results finding them from lists - seems like most of the time they're in but only as main sequence or giant stars.

I just noticed the previous post that you are searching for W, C and S stars.
There is one C star around 200-300 LY from the inhabited space - HIP 19931 (-300:7:-600). It's large and very easy to spot on the map.

 

[Niddi]

I've got two questions:

- I think all of the stars say "They range in mass from x to y " in the description, but at the same time you can find stars of that class that exceed these numbers several times. Are these just exceptions or are the entries bugged?
- Do you use fastest or economical route when plotting a course? I tend to use fastest and just look a bit to the left and right to check if I can see anything interesting. On the one hand I want to arrive at my destination within a reasonable amount of time, but on the other hand I feel like I'm missing out on a lot of cool systems.

 

[Varrag]

Posting this as I am not seeing class V gas giants (hot Jupiters, apparently) in the OP's list. No idea how much is it worth though - probably same as other giants.

Spoiler

View attachment 10725

I suppose others has stumbled upon them before me, perhaps they're already mentioned somewhere in this thread and I missed it. Sorry if that is the case.

 

[Ratlan]

Posting this as I am not seeing class V gas giants (hot Jupiters, apparently) in the OP's list. No idea how much is it worth though - probably same as other giants.

Spoiler

View attachment 10725

I suppose others has stumbled upon them before me, perhaps they're already mentioned somewhere in this thread and I missed it. Sorry if that is the case.

Yo, I posted about this a few days ago actually. According to the reply, the guesstimate is that they aren't worth very much, along the lower end of gas giants (~1-2k). A pity too, considering how awesome they are. The hottest gas giants by far, filled with metal, glowing, etc. Beautiful finds I feel. So far the two I found were around blue and blue-white stars.

Still, I would like a definite number on the approximate payout.

Personally, even though they supposedly don't pay much, Class V gas giants are my favorite bodies to find so far.

The problem is, they are both rare and people don't expect them to pay much in the first place. I am a bit surprised not to hear more about them, considering most explorers end up in O and B systems in their efforts to find the best payout.

 

[virosh]

I've got two questions:

- I think all of the stars say "They range in mass from x to y " in the description, but at the same time you can find stars of that class that exceed these numbers several times. Are these just exceptions or are the entries bugged?
- Do you use fastest or economical route when plotting a course? I tend to use fastest and just look a bit to the left and right to check if I can see anything interesting. On the one hand I want to arrive at my destination within a reasonable amount of time, but on the other hand I feel like I'm missing out on a lot of cool systems.

I can't answer your first question but i can provide you with some info on the second one (at least from my point of view).
I tend to use fastest route when traveling. I would look for an interesting star around 100-500 LY in the direction which i am heading and use it as a waypoint. Then i will plot my route towards this waypoint in 100-150LY jumps and during this i am constantly looking around for some interesting stars and places. If i find one - i will divert my route in order to visit it.
This way i have managed to find few black holes and one neutron star on my way to California Nebula.

 

[Ratlan]

I can't answer your first question but i can provide you with some info on the second one (at least from my point of view).
I tend to use fastest route when traveling. I would look for an interesting star around 100-500 LY in the direction which i am heading and use it as a waypoint. Then i will plot my route towards this waypoint in 100-150LY jumps and during this i am constantly looking around for some interesting stars and places. If i find one - i will divert my route in order to visit it.
This way i have managed to find few black holes and one neutron star on my way to California Nebula.

On the one hand, I'm not a fan of your methods. On the other, it means those of us who are completionists can come through and fill in the holes, which complements both. The only downside for me is it means anything that is particularly mind-blowing is almost guaranteed to have already been found and scanned by the time I get to it.

 

[Lodorenos]

After about 18k travelled, 700 systems scanned, I've started noticing cracks in my windshield. Should I be worried, abandon my tour and head straight home?
View attachment 10636
My hull is at 76%, Thrusters and power plant at 90%, no clue where I can see the ship integrity or canopy status. Am I doomed? Currently at NGC 884, 7.6K from Sol.

I had a similar experience 4000 from the core. I made it there and back without a problem, even after emergency stopping four additional times. Refueling + Netflix is a terrible combination.

 

[Ambivalent]

I can't answer your first question but i can provide you with some info on the second one (at least from my point of view).
I tend to use fastest route when traveling. I would look for an interesting star around 100-500 LY in the direction which i am heading and use it as a waypoint. Then i will plot my route towards this waypoint in 100-150LY jumps and during this i am constantly looking around for some interesting stars and places. If i find one - i will divert my route in order to visit it.
This way i have managed to find few black holes and one neutron star on my way to California Nebula.

I use pretty much the exact same method working in 100+ ly hops towards a target destination and I've begun to target F or G star's as the end point of each leg as I'm finding these are the most prolific for CFT's, water worlds and earth likes.

I just returned last night from a trip out to NGC7822 via some black holes on the way out and back and I found 6 different systems with earth like planets over the course of the 5000 ly round trip and probably in excess of 50 CFT's, total for the trip was 4.9kk credits for roughly 300 systems scanned.

Next time I go out I intend to not use the route planner at all and just target F and G stars only as much as possible and see if it holds up or if i was just extremely lucky on this last trip.

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After about 18k travelled, 700 systems scanned, I've started noticing cracks in my windshield. Should I be worried, abandon my tour and head straight home?

I don't think you need to worry very much, my own experience tells me that those cracks are just a representation of the fact that yuor ship integrity is getting pretty low, I've reached the point where my ship is at 9% integrity left and the cracks on the canopy where nearly meeting in the middle of the screen but it have no adverse effect on anything, I just had a big bill when I got back to base.

As far as I know, ship integrity is just a credit sink and doesn't actually cause you any problems aside from that, correct me if I'm wrong though.

 

[Ratlan]

Most Class F stars I come across are completely alone. Am I just having bad luck?

 

[virosh]

Most Class F stars I come across are completely alone. Am I just having bad luck?

I think you are just having a bad luck there. I checked my notes and the last two F stars i encountered have significant amount of HMC, WW and Gas Giants planets. Some of them where candidates for terraforming.

 

[Ratlan]

I think you are just having a bad luck there. I checked my notes and the last two F stars i encountered have significant amount of HMC, WW and Gas Giants planets. Some of them where candidates for terraforming.

Sometimes I take notes and sometimes I don't. I find it hard to because the perfectionist and the completionist in me conspire together and I end up spending an hour writing down EVERYTHING. Even when I try to cut out the least important stuff, I still end up with a lot of pointless information. When I do take notes, I feel bad ignoring certain details, even if they aren't necessary. Things like mass and atmosphere type on ice moons feels like I ought to write it down.

Eh, maybe I'll try notes again on my next trip out. I don't know what I'll do for rules on what to write down though...

Also, just came across a class K with two gas giants, one with water based life. Must just be weird luck.

 

[virosh]

I started taking notes and organizing them in the middle of my trip (and this is my first one). I wrote down on paper almost the whole route which i traveled until now by system names. However as Nutter mentioned earlier - the search engine in the Galaxy map is broken. Now i tend to also write down the coordinates of my waypoints and the end-of-100LY-jump systems.
I was thinking of organizing all data from the exploration in one database for easy search, however i found that the amount of work to get the data from the game and put it in a separate Excel sheet (for now) is tremendous. I wanted to have all stellar and planet bodies information available to me.
Now i just tend to mark how much and what type stellar and planet bodies a system have in my notes. Once i have more free time i will probably create the database with the most minimal information, like type, mass, size and temperature. Maybe distance...

Exploring without taking notes for me is kind a waste of time, and with the current broken galaxy map search engine it is even worse as i have the system names, but i cannot find them to check the data if i wish to.

Now i know how to optimize my notes and have more data written in more compact way for my next trip when i plan to have ASP and to go further away as possible.

 

[Ratlan]

The problem I have with using the coordinates is either I have to be imprecise or spend a short while counting out the correct coordinate.
I would like to eventually have a publicly available giant spreadsheet of explored systems, but to do that there needs to be somebody who loves and lives data entry. Maybe a third party application could work for it, but I like to keep my games vanilla on principle.
The other issue I have is sometimes I just don't want to scan certain objects. Especially asteroid belts, and occasionally icy planets. If I note down information on a system, even if it's just type/mass/size/temp/pressure, that means I have to scan everything, or my notes will be incomplete.

Maybe if there was an easy classification system for approximate on important data, like how there is for stars. Might be good for personal use if you wanted to denote a lot of approximate information in one string of characters. It might also help with understanding the differences between planets and potentially finding important trends.

I get very tired of writing down important details for every object I scan. Even when it's only 50 objects, it still is incredibly tiring.

 

[neXib]

I think my next trip out will be with the Oculus Rift on. What are the closest must-see places to go? I've been to Mintaka and Vy Canis Majoris which is the other way from the centre so I should probably head the other way.

I hear a lot of talk of Nebulas, but I don't know how exactly to place myself to see the beauty of them.

 

[Ratlan]

I think my next trip out will be with the Oculus Rift on. What are the closest must-see places to go? I've been to Mintaka and Vy Canis Majoris which is the other way from the centre so I should probably head the other way.

I hear a lot of talk of Nebulas, but I don't know how exactly to place myself to see the beauty of them.

While I've never been to a nebula, I would tend to guess they get really amazing to look at once you are under a certain number of LY away. Maybe do a circle around the core bouncing between core/near-core nebulae?

 

[virosh]

The problem I have with using the coordinates is either I have to be imprecise or spend a short while counting out the correct coordinate.

I found a very easy way about writing down coordinates. Once i get in the system at my final jump - i check the coordinates then. They will be aligned with your current position.
If i want to check a coordinates of a distant star which i found by chance - i select it as a destination and then write down the coordinates.

 

[Ratlan]

I found a very easy way about writing down coordinates. Once i get in the system at my final jump - i check the coordinates then. They will be aligned with your current position.
If i want to check a coordinates of a distant star which i found by chance - i select it as a destination and then write down the coordinates.

I must be missing something, Where does it tell you the coordinates of the system you are in? I usually have to find the closest point on the grid which has numbers on it and count out to the grid space I am in.