Noob rides a Dolphin into the black

LifesAJourney

LifesAJourney
31 in-game hours. That turned to be enough to:
- Become familiar with the most basic game mechanisms.
- Fly about 3 kylies doing data/passenger missions.
- Rebuy once (haven't noticed that a passenger I offered a ride had some unfinished business with local police...). Luckily it was almost stock Hauler, so the price of shame was pretty low, even for beginner.
- Gather some experience, hard way in many cases: caused a head-on collision with AspX at the station entrance (oh, green lights do mean something!), rammed control tower at the station, got a penalty for occupying wrong slot while docking, made scooping-fly-by the star too fast, performed an embarrassing crash into planet because thrust was not set back to forward after reversing. Marvellously no deaths in all these situations! :O
- Earn enough money to prepare A/D-class Dolphin for a long trip and have some left for likely rebuy.

After clearing all outstanding missions I arrived to Herbert Dock (Wolf 906) to severely refit my Dolphin. Spent almost two hours on calculations, comparisons, buys, sells. Finally everything was ready.

So I picked some random direction, random system about 2 kylies from current location, looked at several human faces for the last time in who-knows-how-many days. And undocked.

First jump and... Power plant appeared to be too small and red warnings spammed my windscreen screaming and blinking. Well... 100% power usage with some modules already turned off? Really? After two hours of calculations? What the... OK, calm down. Herbert Dock again, bigger power plant. Attempt number two.

So I picked some random direction, random system about 2 kylies from current location, looked at several human faces for the last time in who-knows-how-many days. And undocked.

This time everything went OK. Several jumps taken, fuel scooped, all modules (and the pilot) up and running. Found some nice ice ball to land on and voilà! First night in the wild! I hope there are no space-wolfs, space-jackals or space-grizzles out there...

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LifesAJourney

LifesAJourney
Update 1: 1 kly done!

So far, so good, EDSM shows 1088 Ly from Sol. I decided to try some various activities at the beginning. It's better to pancake&rebuy or burn&rebuy after 500 ly than after 5k or 15k Ly. So I did several USSs (all thread 0 since I don't have any weapons), drove SRV searching for mats, refuelled SRV, performed high G landing (ok, 2.3g is not record breaking, but it's significantly more than 0.05-0.3 I had done in most cases by that time), used AFMU to fix 2-3% damage of most modules (dived too fast to the planet and entered the orbital cruise with big BOOOOOM). Had some problems planning the trip using non-scoopable stars along with scoopables, so decided to stick with KGB FOAM until the high-speed stage is completed. I know Fuel Rats are out there but I would rather let them rescue serious explorers in serious situations.

The Dolphin works perfectly. Heat management is very effective - scooping almost entire tank at max flow and no risk of temperature raising above 63-65%.

Highlights worth mentioning:
- I'm still in one piece! :)
- I tagged my first untagged bodies (ok, ice balls far away from their stars, but who cares? ;) ).
- EDSM shows 7 first system discoveries but I don't think I've been to really untouched ones. Probably some CMDRs not contributing to 3rd party databases had been there before me.
- First outside-the-bubble system with ELMs found. Two beauties, one of which with material-rich, tidally-locked younger brother. Had to fly over 160k Ls to look at them but the view was definitely worth it.
- Materials for first FSD injection gathered, who knows when it becomes useful?

Now taking a rest on aforementioned moon, looking at "Earth-like" disc hanging outside the window. Amazing view!

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Kenneth McGrew

Kenneth McGrew
LifesAJourney said:
Update 1: 1 kly done!


The Dolphin works perfectly. Heat management is very effective - scooping almost entire tank at max flow and no risk of temperature raising above 63-65%.
Click to expand...

Just be careful planet side if you do a lot of flying about, the dolphin has a bug which causes it to overheat rapidly when turning, like 300% in about 4 seconds, any flying in the external camera needs extra caution

fd are are aware but cba to fix it as of launch of the dolphin

link here if you’re interested https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...e-crazy-BUG-STILL-PRESENT-SINCE-2-2!!!!!!!!!!

apart from that solid ship heat wise
 
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Cpt Shadow Wolfe

Cpt Shadow Wolfe
I bought a second account to do the multi crew thing, but that was a bust, gotta have a better internet connection to make it work. So I made it an exclusive exploration wing of the first account. Built it up to a DBX and went on a 24k ly trip, mainly to go thru areas that I had explored on the first account to 'clean' up systems that I left unscanned objects in. I don't like leaving "partial" systems out there, its an OCD thing. But was able to take the proceeds from that trip, went from a 32 mil bank account up to 360 mil. Got Elite in exploration and able to outfit a ExploraConda, and do some unlocking of the engineers. Headed out to see the wizard at Beagle, but have only progressed about 4k Lys from home, keep getting sidetracked by the Nebulas I haven't visited yet, like the Crab, Soul, Cat's Paw, Trifid and Lagoon. Have to stop at each and get my name on some things before moving on. Of course, since those are close Nebulas to the bubble, everybody and their brother has been there and scanned a lot of it up, but have been able to get at least a couple hundred objects in each, usually just the left overs...the undesirables...but I don't care, will take what I can get, but have found several 'Virgin' systems in each, usually on the fringe, not in the nebulas themselves, just in their sectors. The only Nebula that I was unable to locate any first discoveries was in the Crab, must of jumped to over 100 systems, no luck...oh well.

Just left the Lagoon and heading towards Colonia, since its on the way, decided to drop the fighter bay to give me a bit more umpf in the jump range. Wasn't sure I needed it in the first place but someone mentioned flying in a fighter thru canyons was a way to break up the monotony of a long trip, but since I rarely make pit stops, I'd rather just have the jump range, which in this Conda's loadout and minimal upgrades is about 60 Lys. I wanted to drop the fighter bay at one of the Asteroid bases, but they have no outfitting options, so will just have to wait til I get to Colonia region to drop it.
 

Whiterose

Whiterose
I always thought a Dolphin should vent plasma through a hole in the top. Same goes for a Beluga and Orca come to think of it.

I shall be using an Orca for DWE2. Looking forward to it.
 

LifesAJourney

LifesAJourney
Update 2: 3 kly done!

My randomly chosen target system for going out from the Bubble turned out to be the most boring system in entire Galaxy. A single M-class star, no other objects. So after arrival I did some spins and turns to look for a new target. The choice could be only one - beautiful bracelet of white stars, shining from far away.

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After dozens of jumps I realized that this is not a bracelet but a NGC 7822 Nebula. Amazing place, with lots of very young and often multiple-stars systems. Rumours say that there are also black holes in there but I couldn't find any. Unfortunately, the beauty of the Nebula must have attracted many Commanders - all places I have seen there were explored and tagged to the smallest stone hidden in the most distant orbit (o7 for CMDR Star Falcon and CMDR Vexos, your names are everywhere! :) ).

I spent some time in the Nebula but a new target appeared in my mind. 5 kLy from Sol which is necessary to unlock the third Engineer. So I picked a direction opposite to galaxy core and left 7822. 2 kylies to go and then I will probably go back to the Bubble, switch to another ship (Orca maybe) and do some engineering to have better range. 30 Ly appeared to be too small when it comes to exploring areas more distant from galaxy core and from galactic plane.

Highlights worth mentioning:
- Second ELW, but still waiting for undiscovered one.
- Two or three undiscovered systems with all bodies that are high metal-content worlds.
- A dangerous close-call with the planet. I'd read the Elite forum for several second too long and when I switched back to the game, the planet was just below my ship rushing over 8c at the moment. I'm pretty sure that if this planet was landable, I'd be dead or at least heavily damaged.
- A smallest distance between two systems I've seen so far - 0.18 Ly

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- Crashed SRV on a 3g planet. Unfortunately, an occupied escape pod just vanished when I went back not more than 800m to the ship since the cargo hatch in my SRV was already full. Well... Some guy was so close to be rescued, but... I felt really horrible... [where is it]

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- An unusual system. A star with several tiny bodies, nothing special. And the last planet - a gas giant, with orbital inclination almost 100 degrees and... with water-based life! A delivery from another system? A protomolecule? ;) I still wonder whether the life came into existence BEFORE or AFTER the planet arrived to this system. What was its parent system? Why was it banished from there? Too bad there is no possibility to land on such planets and ask these creatures many questions. Who knows, maybe they are already intelligent?

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duckofdeath

duckofdeath
Yeah, that one. It's going to be the most popular exploration destination once we get to land on atmospheric planets.
Liquid metal atmosphere... Will it be possible? Only one way to find out.... \o/
 

GunnerBill

GunnerBill
duckofdeath said:
Don't forget to check out S171 37 if you want to witness the most insane (unreal) planet in the galaxy... :D
Click to expand...

LifesAJourney said:
You mean this one: https://www.edsm.net/en/system/bodies/id/22469/name/S171+37/details/idB/226/nameB/S171+37+8 ?

Crazy, indeed... :eek:
Click to expand...

Not terraformable? I am disappointed has the human race no aspirations?

duckofdeath said:
Yeah, that one. It's going to be the most popular exploration destination once we get to land on atmospheric planets.
Liquid metal atmosphere... Will it be possible? Only one way to find out.... \o/
Click to expand...

Get your free metallic paint-job! Although you might struggle opening the doors of your ship hen you get back -_-

Does it rain sand there?
 
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LifesAJourney

LifesAJourney
Trickylion said:
You know there is an asteroid base in ngc 7822
And further out at heart amd soul..
Click to expand...
Well... Now I know... ;)

I think Heart and Soul is too far away for the very first trip. I'll probably take a look at Wayfarers' Graveyard and it should get me 5 kylies from Sol goal achieved.

And, frankly speaking, popular nebulas are not so tempting to me since they are fully tagged. No exploration chill, you know. But I'm sure sightings are gorgeous, at least they were gorgeous in 7822.
 
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