Newcomer / Intro What are you up to?

[WeComeInPeace]

This evening I've been cruising around Eta Crusis, just around the corner from Jameson. The system has a couple of ringed brown dwarfs that I wanted to try and mine. Got me some Serendibite which is rather profitable (~950K CR / T). It's generally a beautiful system well worth a visit. These brown dwarfs are interesting. Sort of half star, half gas giant, with no hydrogen fusion. Because of a low surface temp of 363 K (90 deg C or 194 deg F) they hardly emit light and this one, due to a very bright nearby main star, casts a shadow on the rings. Pretty neat:

I also found this Olympus Mons lookalike:

I like they way you keep discovering new tiny details in this game. Have you ever noticed the glow of the exhaust nozzles of the forward thrusters, slowly fading away after you shut them down?

 

[algwat]

Cashed in all my schips, cause I wanted to see a 2Bn credits instead of 1Bn credits.
Got bored, rebuilt a fast and long Krait phanton, I was going to call it ,wait for it.....
...."The Phantom Denis".......
Settled on ' Scitec Reasearch ' again. Doing as many mat type gathering as possible.
With some explorations again. That 2 did not last long, have to wait till a get back from ...somewhere...

 

[Speedcuffs]

This evening I've been cruising around Eta Crusis, just around the corner from Jameson. The system has a couple of ringed brown dwarfs that I wanted to try and mine. Got me some Serendibite which is rather profitable (~950K CR / T). It's generally a beautiful system well worth a visit. These brown dwarfs are interesting. Sort of half star, half gas giant, with no hydrogen fusion. Because of a low surface temp of 363 K (90 deg C or 194 deg F) they hardly emit light and this one, due to a very bright nearby main star, casts a shadow on the rings. Pretty neat:

View attachment 145406

I also found this Olympus Mons lookalike:

View attachment 145404

I like they way you keep discovering new tiny details in this game. Have you ever noticed the glow of the exhaust nozzles of the forward thrusters, slowly fading away after you shut them down?

View attachment 145405

Any Tourist Beacons over there?
Currently in the 'Luxury Vagrant' parked at Jameson.
Be nice if some tourists wanted to visit over there.

 

[WeComeInPeace]

Any Tourist Beacons over there?
Currently in the 'Luxury Vagrant' parked at Jameson.
Be nice if some tourists wanted to visit over there.

I didn't see any, but I didn't look for them. Maybe it's what you need to go and discover, among some of the other stuff the system holds

Later last night I went to Sol, and had a look at Mars and Olympus Mons. They've filled most of the planet with water? That's a lot of H2O! Any explanation of where that came from?

After that I went out to see Pluto and then "Planet 9". Literally "Far out dude". I took me a couple of minutes after I arrived, before I was in the middle of a battle. A female CMDR was shouting for help, and a message popped up, but I didn't know what to do, so I just shot at any "wanted" ship, until I ran out of missiles. Then I landed on Persephone (what humans back in the 21th century called Planet 9) to catch my breath. I really enjoy giving up on doing the trivial tasks I've been doing in the game so far, and just Blast My Trail instead. What Yamiks sarcastically calls "the personal narrative", is strong with this game, once you give in to it. I think the next thing I'll do is to go and see the Crab Pulsar. That one has always fascinated me.

 

[Codger]

I seem to be on a mining kick. For some reason I'm really enjoying the old-school painite mining, with the modern wrinkles of hotspots and etc. It just seems to fit my mood at the moment.

It's mostly safe and relaxing once you deal with the initial pirates (I shoot them or wait for them to leave, depending on my mood at the time hehe). I did almost get crushed between two huge asteroids, though. I wasn't paying attention!

Metallic rings are not quite as pretty as ice rings, generally speaking, but this one is around a lovely little ice-covered planet. It did make for some nice views.

 

[Nekozji]

Continuing along the Colonia Highway and just passing the half way point. 10.5kly back to the bubble, 10.5kly to go. I guess there is no longer much point in considering bailing out.

Taking the shortest, dumbest, most well-travelled route. Still found a couple of undiscovered stars, and a handful of undiscovered water worlds and some ammonia worlds.

Either not many people make it this far along the Highway, or space is big.

Really, really, big.

Also I wish my brain had let me not FSS everything in this 81-planet system x(

 

[Trotsky2112]

Taking the shortest, dumbest, most well-travelled route. Still found a couple of undiscovered stars, and a handful of undiscovered water worlds and some ammonia worlds.

Either not many people make it this far along the Highway, or space is big.

Really, really, big.

Also I wish my brain had let me not FSS everything in this 81-planet system x(

Yeah, the sheer amount of undiscovered stuff on a relatively well-travelled route is staggering. I got 40-60 mill in exploration data (including first discovery bonus) when I got there, having discovered at least 20 new bodies. I think its to do with your jump range and starting point, both of which dictate the amount and location of the systems you visit.

Also, you just won't believe how mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you might think that its a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space...

Edit: I just wish I'd discovered the colonia connection highway before I'd started.

 

[aRJay]

Continuing along the Colonia Highway and just passing the half way point. 10.5kly back to the bubble, 10.5kly to go. I guess there is no longer much point in considering bailing out.

View attachment 145618

Taking the shortest, dumbest, most well-travelled route. Still found a couple of undiscovered stars, and a handful of undiscovered water worlds and some ammonia worlds.

Either not many people make it this far along the Highway, or space is big.

Really, really, big.

Also I wish my brain had let me not FSS everything in this 81-planet system x(

But did you manage not to map them all?

 

[LetItBleed1980]

Slowly meandering along the Colonia Highway.

Found an undiscovered terraformable water world, right on the route. Apparently it is true that players haven't mapped out nearly as much of the galaxy as they think

I think those people tend to be fairly new and probably haven't ventured outside the bubble very far yet. Or looked up the data on just how little we've explored. I've seen multiple threads over time where players frustrated over not discovering any planets ask whether or not there are any left to discover. For those of us who have been out there it's enough to LOL but these are just people who understandably don't grasp the scope of the game yet, or even the size of the galaxy, not yet realizing that the inhabited section they've been playing around in is a very small part of the galaxy map with the rest being mostly unexplored. Even well-traveled routes are not what I'd call tamed. I can get on the Colonia Highway or just the well traveled route straight from the Bubble to Sag A* and the majority of the systems I travel through are unexplored. Or it looks as if somebody just jump/scooped their way through and discovered the star but didn't bother with any of the planets.

 

[Nekozji]

I just wish I'd discovered the colonia connection highway before I'd started.

Oof. I don't think I'd have bothered if I hadn't plotted out a bunch of rest stops along the way. I get really antsy if I've gone a week without handing in my data. I know it's pretty hard to die while exploring, buuuut...

But did you manage not to map them all?

I managed to not map the ones that aren't terraformable or 160kls away... They were already FSS'd, but I hope to get some money for the first mappings

(Edit: 52 mil of exploration data handed in. Surprisingly little rep with the local faction... last time I dumped that much on anyone I'm sure I went straight onto their buddy list.)

In other news, did the spectral lines in the FSS change? I used to look for signals in the ANAL of ANALYSIS, but then I found an ELW in the R of SPECTRAL...

 

[WeComeInPeace]

Also, you just won't believe how mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you might think that its a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space...

I remember looking through a telescope and seeing a nearby star that was ~6000 ly away. That made me think. The light I saw had traveled from that star, in a roughly straight line through empty space since the early dawn of human civilization with a speed making the same light able to travel around the Earth 8 times in a single second. Then I thought that the closest large galaxy, Andromeda, is 2.5 million light years away, and quickly gave up trying to find an analogy for that. The quasar called 3C 273 is 2.5 billion light years away, but it is visible in a good amateur telescope. Using the Hubble Space Telescope you can see the jet from the quasar:

And 3C 273 is still pretty much in da hood, so yes, the Universe is mighty big, and even the Milky Way in Elite is mindblowing. I think you get a tiny sense of how big it really is. A more realistic sense of it could be had by supercruising at 2001C to Beagle Point. That would take 33 years in the game

 

[Nekozji]

Even well-traveled routes are not what I'd call tamed.

I cherry pick and only route via type G and larger stars - and there are still undiscovered, valuable worlds. Few months ago, I found an undiscovered ELW 'just' 800ly from the bubble. Only 12 jumps and one scoop for an exploration vessel.

Mostly the stars have been honked, but maybe 1 in 5 has either not been FSS'd at all, or the last person didn't do a full job, or didn't surface map the interesting planets. You get quite a lot for first mapping of WWs, ELWs, or terraformable HMCs.

 

[WeComeInPeace]

Another old analogy is that the amount of stars in the Milky Way equals the amount of sand grains on Earth, and that does not include the planets, which also explains why so few of them have been mapped. The analogy is not precise but still seems to hold within an order of magnitude. Try and take just a handful of sand grains and count them. It will take a while.

 

[Para Handy]

Amount of game galaxy discovered = 0.036% in April this year.

 

[WeComeInPeace]

Ok, here's a minor one for whenever you're feeling bored: Find a distant star, fly straight towards it in supercruise with the hammer down, and try to see how long you dare to do that

I promise, you'll get close and you probably haven't passed a star at such velocity before. (Bring a rebuy)

 

[aRJay]

Ok, here's a minor one for whenever you're feeling bored: Find a distant star, fly straight towards it in supercruise with the hammer down, and try to see how long you dare to do that

I promise, you'll get close and you probably haven't passed a star at such velocity before. (Bring a rebuy)

If you have a suitable nearby star set as an H-Jump destination and jump just before you have insufficient fuel left you might get by without using the rebuy, of course if you do this in a Cutter loaded with fuel tanks it might be a while before it comes to that.

 

[WeComeInPeace]

If you have a suitable nearby star set as an H-Jump destination and jump just before you have insufficient fuel left you might get by without using the rebuy, of course if you do this in a Cutter loaded with fuel tanks it might be a while before it comes to that.

That was not what I meant. I mean playing chicken with a star at a speed of ~20c or more. It suddenly becomes very large in your view, and then you quickly duck under it as late as possible. Let me put it this way: The fuel scoop doesn't have time to deploy, and you don't need the rebuy every time. You need some distance to the star to accelerate to a proper speed, and the gravity of the star will slow you down, but you can still pass the corona at pretty high speed, and if you do it right, I assure you that you forget feeling bored. It's actually quite fun, though I admit that it's a little dangerous.

EDIT: I think it's important not to have the star selected as your target. Just find it and fly towards it...

Edit edit: I've been trying to take a picture to show what I mean but I keep hitting the star when I do that. I've been testing an ASPx build, with a std 3D shield gen, and the first couple of times you hit the star you only lose ~1% hull.

 

[Tyres O'Flaherty]

I thought HGE's were supposed to be a bit more numerous now... #cantfindanyitssounfairanwherehaveallthepharmaceuticalisolatorsgone

 

[aRJay]

I thought HGE's were supposed to be a bit more numerous now... #cantfindanyitssounfairanwherehaveallthepharmaceuticalisolatorsgone

Having pretty much filled my raw materials via falling off cliffs and the materials traders I have started hunting HGEs now after swapping from Spectre my exploration Phantom to Jackhammer my old mining Orca and it is going quite nicely.

#Bunda #lotsofHGEandEE #whocaresaboutpharmaceuticalisolatersjusttradeunpinnedgfivesforthem

Switched to Jackhammer due to its speed and limpet controllers as with only 30 minutes it is a race to empty all the HGEs in the time limit but with her I can just slam to a stop trying not to hit too much debris and then fire off multiple limpets to hoover up all the goodies, the location is useful as there is a black market in case my limpets pick up something stolen.

 

[Rob_the_Sparky]

Yeah, I've found a number of HGEs recently but they are certainly not everywhere you visit but have seen up to 3 in one system and I've not been playing much recently so yes they are now relatively common.