How far to loneliness?

[Lord_Itchybum]

As the title suggests, how far do we have to travel to get complete solitude? I have done a trip to Sag A and a few runs here and there of 3000-4000LY and back. I have finally decided I need to go and get my Elite rank in exploration. All I need is another 89% to achieve this.

However, my current trip I am about 5000LY out, heading in a roughly NNE direction and so far I keep seeing signs of so many other commanders. I have tried going up and down a few hundred or even thousand LY but it seems that at this distance from Sol EVERY SINGLE point of interest (neutron/blackhole etc) has been discovered.

With so many commanders exploring now how far do we have to go now to truly find solitude?

I don;t want to see any more first discovered by tags, and not becuase I want to have them myself, but I want a feeling of being truly alone and so far from anyone else.

 

[Pirin]

You never get complete solitude. Multiple copies of Cmdr Allitnil roam all the corners of Galaxy

Joking aside, closest untagged AA-A system i managed to find was about 10 000ly from Bubble. If you look for black holes or neutron stars, go to Z=+/-1000 level. You need to stay away from any prominent Nebula or other tourist attractions. For AA-A systems your best bet is Core area.

 

[Asp Explorer]

Simply pick a direction that doesn't have a bright shiny, and keep going until you find an unexplored system, then choose random directions and distances from then on.

There's absolutely heaps of unexplored stuff!

 

[Erimus Kamzel]

For true solitude you need a time machine, and go back 18 months

But use the mapping project, EDSM galactic map. It'll give you an idea of where the least explorered regions are these days. I doubt there's a nebula or cluster in the game that hasn't been tagged now.

I sometimes wish the name tag could be switched off in options so we never have to see another one ever again if we chose not to.

 

[dognosh]

I sometimes wish the name tag could be switched off in options so we never have to see another one ever again if we chose not to.

That is a weak attempt at a side swipe at our own Glastonbury explorer
(Translation: Glasto is full of hippies)

 

[lionhead]

I'd say you need at least 10,000 ly behind you before you come across neutron stars and giants that haven't been explored yet. Of course, there is always a chance. Always.

 

[Traveller_GG]

Ironically when you DO find yourself jumping from system to system as yet untagged, and this keeps on for 100s and 1000s of lightyears; when you come across a tagged one it's kind of reassuring... you get that sense of camaraderie, knowing there are still others around.

Unless it's Stupid_Hippy. Then I just hate him (soooo much... flames....)

 

[Cdr Voorheez]

I'm only 2Kly out from the bubble in a massive area of untagged unexplored stars/neutron stars.
Just use EDD turn on all stars and plot a route to an empty patch of map.
Lots still exist.

 

[Jackie Silver]

I'm roughly level with the core at the moment (passing through PHIPAE, STUEMIE, CLEEQAI which are a little to the "east"); I've been plotting routes between giant stars, and none of them have been previously explored so far.

There's a strange dynamic at work, where in some ways the further you go the more likely you are to run into other people's tags because the stars thin out so much at the fringes that everyone takes the same route. This applies equally well to AA-A H systems; there are very broad areas where there's only one or a small handful of AA-A H stars per sector, and so the likelihood of finding one that hasn't been visited is small (because everybody knows about AA-A H systems and sometimes they're used as navigation points), whereas nearer the Core there can be hundreds and thousands of AA-A H systems and there's a much better chance of finding untagged ones. I might bimble around here for a bit and report back on that.

On my newer version of the sector map (link in sig) I've been recording density by mass code, but that's only indicating e.g. whether or not there's an AA-A H system in the sector, not how many AA-A H systems there are. I've mapped that before on a smaller scale and it was interesting, but it's quite time-consuming to do; still, I'll think on how that can be added to the representation because it's really dramatic just how many AA-A H systems there are in the Core.

 

[goemon]

my last trip took me into the general direction of statue of liberty nebula / counter clockwise on the upper plane above the center / theta muscae / and back. if you don't fly from waypoint to waypoint, but take a bit unusual route, you'll find nearly no already discovered systems. btw. - the same happened to me in 1.4. with my 1000 ly from sol pet project ... some sectors which are not reachable without manual routeplotting are in huge parts unexplored close to sol.

e.g. - go along some arm till it ends, and you'll be very much alone.

 

[Jackie Silver]

Ok I've had a look at CLEEQAI and there are 715 AA-A H systems here (H0 to H714); I'm going to randomly pick numbers from among them and go visiting, will be interesting to see how many are tagged.

I should note that in the very heart of the Core, there are thousands of AA-A H systems and they're all terribly boring because of the suppression effect, so they prolly be even less visited.

 

[goemon]

because of the suppression effect

what is "the suppression effect"?

 

[Jackie Silver]

what is "the suppression effect"?

In a line right through the centre of the galaxy, AA-A H systems which would normally be exciting giant O, B and Wolf-Rayet stars get transformed into boring T-Tauris and other small stars. I.e. if you look up a STUEMEAE AA-A H system you get something ordinary, if you look up a CLEEQAI AA-A H system you get something unusual.

STUEMEAE AA-A H0,1,2,3,4 - TTS9 VI, TTS4 VA, TTS7 VA, TTS2 VA, TTS1 VA
CLEEQAI AA-A H0,1,2,3,4 - WC0 I, O0 VZ, WO0 I, O6 IVA, WO0 I

I think it's to prevent overcrowding in the centre and to prevent the area around Sol (the line runs from Sol to Sgr A* and beyond, and also sideways from sol) having extraneous bright stars which would mess up the constellations as seen from Earth.

It's one of the reasons why the link between the mass code letter in the system name and the mass of the primary star wasn't immediately obvious, because it affects other bright stars near the centre line too.

In slightly related news, the average distance between two random points in a 1280ly cube is 847ly. I could be some time...

 

[[VR] optimal_909]

To be frank, I don't understand much of this. What is an AA-A system to begin with?

 

[Jackie Silver]

To be frank, I don't understand much of this. What is an AA-A system to begin with?

In most sectors (generally anywhere except the fringes of the galaxy) there will be a group of systems whose name includes AA-A H; for instance, CLEEQAI AA-A H219, which I've just visited. In most of these sectors - except the ones which are suppressed as noted above - those stars will be very big and very bright, and generally worth visiting.

The reason for this is that Universal Cartographics divides the sectors up into cubes (or "boxels") and gives star systems a name which depends in part on the mass of the primary star. A full size sector is 1280ly on each side, and the most massive stars are all given a mass code "H" and are spread out through the whole of the sector. That cube happens to be called AA-A so they are AA-A H stars. The next most massive stars are given mass code "G" and are split into eight smaller cubes which are 640ly on a side. One of these is called AA-A, so those stars are AA-A G stars, another is called BA-A so those are BA-A G, but the names get more complicated after that.

This goes on getting in to smaller and smaller cubes; "F" are 320ly on a side, "E" are 160ly on a side, and so on down to "A". These mass codes are totally distinct from the ordinary spectral classes, although you can make some loose connections based on mass.

I've only got round to visiting five AA-A H systems in CLEEQAI but they've all been untagged, so things are looking good: I expect there are tens of thousands of untagged AA-A H stars around the Core.


(edited to add) sorry if I'm coming across as overly didactic here! Didn't mean to hijack.

 

[lionhead]

To be frank, I don't understand much of this. What is an AA-A system to begin with?

Its a system that has AA-A in its name. They are a good source for rare stars.

Its a big revelation for me as i only just begun nitpicking AA-A systems and i'm not disapppointed. Plenty of O class and hyper giant B class, for example. Also Herbig stars and black holes. Very happy, this is going to totally change my way of exploring. Instead of hoping for ELW's and going from neutron star to neutron star, i'm going to hunt rare stars.

 

[Lord_Itchybum]

Thanks for all the great advice. I pointed the node of my ship straight up and went about 1000LY. The area is sparsly populated and having a 34LY jump range is going to be very handy. It is so peaceful and quiet. There is not a lot to see but I don't mind so much. I finally have the solitude I have been after.
If anyone wants to lookup where I am as I type this message take a look at :
BLO EURL WH-P C20-5

 

[Muadib24]

I´m heading to the Perseus Fade now, and in the part not closed (it´s really a true pathfinder job find a way to navigate across) on the orion-persean gap I found a couple of neutrino stars, a bunch of blackholes and lots of water, terraforming candidates and earth like.

I pick four or five systems of 700k each one (according captain´s log).


My plan is dwell for a month in the perseus fade and the outer arms, between skull crossbones and heremit´s world. Maybe I could find out something interesting there

 

[Galanthalas]

The far side of the galactic core.... I have not seen another commanders name for months.... Only reason I remember that other ppl play this game is because of the forums. Ive actually come up to my first nebula since I set out on my Sag A pilgrimage and it would appear that the neutron stars in and around this nebula arent branded yet. Could it be that i have come across a virgin nebula? I hope so... I might even hunt for barnacles... not that i can carry meta alloys around

 

[CDR Michael Darkmoor]

I would recommend the Western Reaches.... Having traveled the full length from the Abyss to Zejoo Neblua, the only place I saw anyone else's footprints were at the nebula on each end of the trip. A great many very massive systems (With designators "H##") lay waiting for those capable of getting to them.