Elite / Frontier FFE - What's the furthest out settled system you've found?

[Assimilator1]

Just literally had a 5 min look on the map earlier, heading out South West from Beta Hydri I found Essowa sect -12,-6, 97.3 ly away.
[update] It doesn't have any bases despite being a tourist/farming world, what!?
Anyway nearby Faessla, sect -11,-6 does . Southerly direction next I think.....

[update] Found Edwaso, sect -3,-13, 1-10 Mill, being 107.3 LYs from Sol it's a long way out for a Federation planet! Also found a high pop world nearby, Anquphi, sect -3,-10, 1-10 Bill!, Independant.

Gonna look more carefully at another point, I bet there's some further out that direction (& others).

Just wondered what others had found?
Btw if there's already a thread about this then link me up

[update] Since found this map http://www.jades.org/maps/index.htm ,but my question really relates systems found with your own exploration without using the above & smiliar maps

Is the FE2 map the same?

 

[gunbladelad]

I believe there's populated systems at intervals of every 256 light years all around the galaxy, but it's been some time since I looked.

 

[Assimilator1]

Hmm, interesting, that might be a bit of a stretch to bridge that kinda gap!
Especially in my Panther as apparently it can't have a fuel scoop

Omw to Essowa, that's proving tricky enough!

Any1 else?

 

[Bounder]

Heh in the old 'miggy version you could pan out of the galactic map... and keep on going... jam a match in the key and come back a while later and there'd be myriad galaxies, and eventually far more than pixels on the screen. I forget the distances but must've been hundreds of thousands of ly. True, they were all clones but thanks to the wormhole bug you could travel to any of them.

This feature even rolled over into the local system map - using shift + scroll you could scroll right off the edge of the galaxy, across intergalactic space to the next galaxy... and the one/s after that etc.. and since they're all clones if you had the fuel range you could actually jump directly to the same system you're already in, albeit on the other side of the cosmos...

Always struck me as a shame this quirk wasn't incorporated into the standard game since presumably each 'clone' galaxy could instead start from a slightly different random seed (just like the original) without much more effort... could've brought back intergalactic drives and simulated a whole universe for a few more kb..

ETA: Just checked and presuming the system map spans the same scale as the galactic one, the furthest habitable system is basically any one you like some 101 million 777 thousand 500 ly away (between opposite corners of the galactic map at max zoomout)...



Maximum zoom out, from WinUAE (the original Amiga screen had much prettier greyscaling, looked fluffier like cotton wool.. the emulation doesn't do it justice)

 

[Assimilator1]

Lol, yea pitty we can't Galactice hyperdrive anymore like the orginal.
Btw that's FE2 you've got there, is that the same map as FFE?

Re Essowa, I discovered just before jumping there that it doesn't have any bases, even though it's a farming/tourisim world with (IIRC) 1-10k people there, what!?
Anyway nearby Faessla does (sect -11,-6), & as far as I can see that's the furthest base you can get to in a SW direction from Sol (without wormhole bugs ).

Btw any1 know what the deal is with Ethenbe?, sect -8,-6, says 'Federation interdict, illegal to visit'!. I went anyway , no probs so far!......

 

[gunbladelad]

First Encounters does indeed use the same basic map as FE2, albeit with a few changes. Main changes include the Alliance systems (some of which have had name changes), some of the systems used in the scripted missions, and Planet Earth itself.

So far, I've not found any other changes, but they're similar enough that the contact Binary system still crashes the game when entered.

 

[Assimilator1]

Contact binary?

 

[Bounder]

Mind, there's lots of contact binaries that don't cause a crash, if you can find 'em.

Some of the sights to behold include physically merged stars of roughly equal size in a classic figure 8 embrace, or a large and smaller one - such as a dwarf co-orbiting fully submerged within the corona of a giant...

Rather than being hard-coded these pairs seem to be very rare extremes of the same engine generating all the other systems - ie. it's almost as much a quirk (dare i say 'bug') as a feature - and quite possibly not even intended or known of at the time of release... and thus it doesn't always come off realistically either - you can sometimes find two (or who knows, perhaps more) stars centred at the same point, one nested perfectly symmetrically inside another. In these systems only the system map and HUD tags give any clue the object is two fused stars since the larger one just looks like the corona of its smaller sibling. Plus, there's no acretion discs (notwithstanding those you sometimes get around white dwarfs), which might be seen as something of an omission if these systems were intentional... who knows what the plans were for Beta Lyrae tho, it was obviously unfinished...

 

[Assimilator1]

Ok but what's a contact binary then? Merged stars as you were saying?
What's in Beta Lyrae?

What's the furthest settlement you've found then? (& everyone else for that matter )

 

[Geraldine]

A Fools Errand?

I would need to dig out my old flight log book that I made years ago while playing FE2 in the 90s.

Back then rumour was rife on the early net that there was a secret ship hidden somewhere out on the rim. So with a heavily hacked Sidewinder, (Class 7 Hyperdrive ) I proceeded to search for this Mirage. I never found it and later on it turned out that this "secret ship" never actually existed. It was all just a myth, I felt such a fool. I recall being very disappointed at the time

Anyways, one benefit to all this searching was that I logged 100s of star systems on or near the rim and some of those (a small number) were indeed inhabited with starports.

You can imagine at the time when I came across an inhabited system so far out, that I thought I had hit the jackpot.........

Still, it was fun seeing all those star systems hidden away in the game so the journey was not a total loss.

If I can find the log book I will post some coordinates

As for whats in Beta Lyrae, who knows? I never came across anyone who managed a clean jump to that system without crashing the game

 

[Bounder]

Ok but what's a contact binary then? Merged stars as you were saying?
What's in Beta Lyrae?

What's the furthest settlement you've found then? (& everyone else for that matter )

Yes, stars in contact - such as one feeding off the other.. then the donor might not have enough fuel left to sustain itself and collapse to a smaller denser object like a neutron star or white dwarf -which in turn begins reclaiming matter from its larger sibling forming an acretion disc and eventually even reconstituting itself at the other's expense, etc.

Contact binaries are basically binaries close enough to be physically interacting, exchanging material.

Habited system seem to occur throughout the galaxy according to a fairly consistent random weighting, and appear in small clusters - if you find one explored system, there'll doubtless be others nearby, and thus some inhabited. However these tend to form small, isolated islands of civilisation amongst predominantly unexplored systems. So it's possible to find outposts everywhere - from the galactic centre out to anywhere on the perimeter. Using the wormhole bug i've visited such systems (and like i say, even those in neighboring galaxies, fwiw) so the most distant one would be the most Westerly one you could find (the furthest from Sol) on the opposite side of the galaxy. This could probably be determined in a few hours of searching i expect, if you were curious enough...

 

[DraQ]

Mind, there's lots of contact binaries that don't cause a crash, if you can find 'em.

Some of the sights to behold include physically merged stars of roughly equal size in a classic figure 8 embrace, or a large and smaller one - such as a dwarf co-orbiting fully submerged within the corona of a giant...

Rather than being hard-coded these pairs seem to be very rare extremes of the same engine generating all the other systems - ie. it's almost as much a quirk (dare i say 'bug') as a feature - and quite possibly not even intended or known of at the time of release... and thus it doesn't always come off realistically either - you can sometimes find two (or who knows, perhaps more) stars centred at the same point, one nested perfectly symmetrically inside another. In these systems only the system map and HUD tags give any clue the object is two fused stars since the larger one just looks like the corona of its smaller sibling. Plus, there's no acretion discs (notwithstanding those you sometimes get around white dwarfs), which might be seen as something of an omission if these systems were intentional... who knows what the plans were for Beta Lyrae tho, it was obviously unfinished...

Well, in case of an actual contact binary (both stars overflowing their Roche lobes), rather than semi-detached one you generally don't get a disk.

Anyway, since a picture is worth a thousand words, some pictures:
http://www.space-art.co.uk/en/artwork/binary-stars/
Those are, of course, artistic impressions, but they are pretty well grounded in science.

Also of note there are other kinds of space art on the site, including planets. Shows pretty nicely why realistic space in sci-fi is all in all way cooler than generic non-realistic "sci"-fi crap.

 

[Assimilator1]

Bounder
As I said in my original post, I meant furthest system without using the wormhole bug

But interesting to know their out there, & that their isolated by unexplored systems, I wonder what the story is supposed to be as to how those human settlements got there so far from Sol ? lol

Geraldine
Ah ok, that's the system that crashes the game then, Bounder didn't link that earlier .

And yea would like to see your mapping results if you find your log book .

With the FFE map I found going West from Faessla (the most SW'ly base I found) that their were quite a few systems marked as 'Frontier system, mining/prospecting' upto about a 100 LYs out (IIRC, I'll re-check that), although I didn't check each & every1 of those I've yet to find one of those labelled systems which has a base.
At about 1000 LYs systems start to pop up which say 'unexplored' & no settlement of any kind inbetween 100-1000 LYs, I was panning W in a straight line though.

What happens if you were able to visit an unexplored system? game crash?

 

[Assimilator1]

Going directly West from Faessla the furthest 'Frontier' system I found was just ~45 LYs, going South it was ~53 LYs, basically within multiple jump range from Faessla.

I scanned directly West from Faessla for 4500 LYs & all were unexplored after ~1000 LYs, maybe their aren't the isolated colonies in FFE? Or are they very sparsely spread?

 

[Bounder]

Bounder
As I said in my original post, I meant furthest system without using the wormhole bug

You can also reach them conventionally of course! You'd need fuel scoops, and probably come up against your maintanance schedule at some point (esp. with larger ships) but it's doable..

But interesting to know their out there & that their isoltaed by uexplored systems, I wonder what the story is supposed to be as to how those human settlements got there so far from Sol ? lol

Not sure of the official back story there but then imagination's half the fun - perhaps they're just far-off explorer outposts, maybe some were discovered following misjumps then colonised later.. who knows?

 

[Assimilator1]

(Damn, I see I missed loads of typo's, lol)

Now I did think of that (fuel scooping way to systems) but I thought the maintenance issue would put a stop to that, how long beyond 1yr can a ship go before hyperdrives breakdown? Or if that's pot luck, what kinda time range can it typically be?
Didn't know bigger ships could more likely suffer breakdowns, why's that??

Re isolated colonies, maybe they formed from sleeper ships?
What are those big ships often moored nr stations?.... cruisers? deep space vehicles? (can't remember ), maybe they were used?

Maybe breeder ships? Each bloke has to have 3 children with 5 women each, lol, to have decent genetic diversity

 

[DraQ]

Bounder
As I said in my original post, I meant furthest system without using the wormhole bug

I think you might be severely outclassed here by people using plotline ships.

One has jump range of about 95ly, the other - almost 660ly.
Without exploiting the wormhole bug.

Now I did think of that (fuel scooping way to systems) but I thought the maintenance issue would put a stop to that, how long beyond 1yr can a ship go before hyperdrives breakdown?

Generation ships and other sorts of long range colonization craft would probably be built to different standards than consumer ones.

Maybe breeder ships? Each bloke has to have 3 children with 5 women each, lol, to have decent genetic diversity

You don't create genetic diversity from nothing - it depends on starting population and even a generation ship doesn't fly for so long to make random mutations count.

What does count aboard a starship is room, energy and resource consumption and strain put on recycling systems, so you'd have to keep the population constant.

 

[rgmarett]

You don't create genetic diversity from nothing - it depends on starting population and even a generation ship doesn't fly for so long to make random mutations count.

What about Adam & Eve, there were just two of them and they created the entire human race. Plus they were really, really real

 

[DraQ]

What about Adam & Eve, there were just two of them and they created the entire human race. Plus they were really, really real

AFAIK incest is bad.

 

[gunbladelad]

Well, they were related, as the bible mentions she was created from his flesh. All sorts of nasty side effects can come from cloning, and even more so from incest.

Anyway, let's get back onto Elite. Personally, I reckon some of these distant colonies could be explained by Wormholes, misjumps, and possible drive overloads in poorly maintained ships shooting them off to a distant region of the galaxy.