I don't recall if my explorer rank is Pathfinder or Ranger, but I've done a reasonable amount of exploring and yet I've never found an Earthlike - never even seen one outside of the terraformed ones in occupied space!
My ideal goal was to first-discover an Earthlike on the boundary of occupied space - less than 500LY of Sol. So I've been exploring in our immediate neighbourhood, which isn't very productive because many or most systems are already visited, especially stars that look promising for any valuable worlds. So I hadn't even seen an Earthlike and I was resigned to the certainty that if I ever did find one it would have been discovered by someone else long ago.
Today I saw my first Earthlike, it is 436LY from Sol, and I was first to discover it! Woot!
Most of the neighboring systems had been visited, and there was evidence that good-candidate stars had been visited with priority by a few recurring-name discoverers, so I was really surprised that such a promising system had been missed. A bounty of over 50 bodies... and a blue speckled gem that cannot possibly be... but might be... but is... an Earthlike!
I left some low-hanging-fruit planets undiscovered - maybe in the following months or years others will claim them and I'll be able to tell I wasn't the only explorer to appreciate HIP 109167.
I've graduated Explorer School now. So... what's next is on my list of Things To Do...?
Here's the system and the world (and me!)
The ELW is about 20,000LS from the arrival point. So it's a few minutes away but not very far. (I didn't check the orbits - so for all I know the distance might vary).
I didn't notice any signal sources, but hopefully the system is close enough to Sol to have some of our "alien" life too
My ideal goal was to first-discover an Earthlike on the boundary of occupied space - less than 500LY of Sol. So I've been exploring in our immediate neighbourhood, which isn't very productive because many or most systems are already visited, especially stars that look promising for any valuable worlds. So I hadn't even seen an Earthlike and I was resigned to the certainty that if I ever did find one it would have been discovered by someone else long ago.
Today I saw my first Earthlike, it is 436LY from Sol, and I was first to discover it! Woot!
Most of the neighboring systems had been visited, and there was evidence that good-candidate stars had been visited with priority by a few recurring-name discoverers, so I was really surprised that such a promising system had been missed. A bounty of over 50 bodies... and a blue speckled gem that cannot possibly be... but might be... but is... an Earthlike!
I left some low-hanging-fruit planets undiscovered - maybe in the following months or years others will claim them and I'll be able to tell I wasn't the only explorer to appreciate HIP 109167.
I've graduated Explorer School now. So... what's next is on my list of Things To Do...?
Here's the system and the world (and me!)
The ELW is about 20,000LS from the arrival point. So it's a few minutes away but not very far. (I didn't check the orbits - so for all I know the distance might vary).
I didn't notice any signal sources, but hopefully the system is close enough to Sol to have some of our "alien" life too
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