A Novice’s 1st Trip South.

[Nort]

A Novice’s 1st Trip South.

Me being an Explorer with only short run’s from Home, It was time to spreed my wings.
I have equiped the ASP wth a big fuel tank, a 2nd to best fuel scoop, and a wheeled buggy.
So heading South as that is down hill to start! I start my quest to venture as far as I could before I got scared..

Not really knowing what to expect, I begin the scanning at each system. Then realising I need to understand how the remote camera works. Yik’s, more stuff to bind with yet more keys to remember! This took a while to get working, but well worth the effort. Each system presenting a variety of shots with rings, flumes, and very occasionally plant life. (not photogenic)

Being diligent I did my best to search out the best shots, this adding heaps of time, and not a lot of traveling going on! Not to worry I was enjoying the experience. I have deliberately tried to avoid any popular spots, this affording me lots of un-discovered systems. Hoping to find that special place, may be intersecting rings, Conjoined Suns, or welded planetary bodies.

I did find two Stars/Suns quite close, HYPOAE AEC QW-V B44-OA , having a 0.3 day orbit.
If you go there be cautious, you get jammed in-between the two ! With heating a real problem.

Found Bio at,
PHOI AED SL-R C19-3 B 8 C,
HYPIAE AIP HB-L C9-3 B 2 B,

Getting down into the South I turned Left ! Skimmed the Southern area, not going too far, as me being a novice I wanted to be able to get back !! So did a big wheel East and then North.
Then I read that certain planets have a huge advantage with Credits if scanned.
These are approximations.
Earth, 3.2 Million.
Water World Terra, 3.2 Million.
High Mettle Content Terra, 1.9 Million.
Ammonia World, 1.7 Million.
Rocky Body Terra, 1.5 Million.
Mettle Rich, .38 million.

I have been surprised at how many wealthy planets get left un scanned. Presumably by T Shirt Explorers, who whizz around like desperate fly’s looking for rotten meat. I think I have sussed them out to be not explorers, but tourists on a quick bus excursion only stopping at hot spots to get the T Shirt.

My trip is not that far in Galactic terms, but has taken me three months. Partly down to my inexperience, my relatively short jump range, and scanning just about everything going.
One very lucrative system bagged a cool 15 Million, Mainly to the Terra-formable planets.
I left the Bubble with 28 Million in my back pocket, and a lowly rank. then after half an hour of selling my pages of un-explored data. I now Have 344 Million, and have attained Elite status.
Go figure ! A novice is now an Elite!
I still do not know how to fuel the buggy, work the Comm’s panel, and the cameras still give me grief. Elite ! Ya Right.

There are a huge number of shots I have taken, some I think pretty cool. And some quite ordinary. My Next adventure is to be a long term trawling exercise, shoot out to some wayward spot, drop the anchor and map everything in range. How long I can last will be down to boredom. Not much for me back in the bubble, apart from may be an upgrade.

 

[Sapyx]

I still do not know how to fuel the buggy...

The SRV has to be refuelled while you are in the SRV, on the go, using materials gathered from the surface. Fortunately, they are common materials you can pick up from just about any planet anywhere in the galaxy. The only other way to refuel it is when you are docked at a starport; it either refuels itself automatically, or it refuels when you hit one of the auto-restock buttons (not sure which one).

 

[Sapyx]

I have been surprised at how many wealthy planets get left un scanned. Presumably by T Shirt Explorers, who whizz around like desperate fly’s looking for rotten meat. I think I have sussed them out to be not explorers, but tourists on a quick bus excursion only stopping at hot spots to get the T Shirt.

Do not be so hasty to judge your predecessors. Some may have been cherry-pickers, sure, but not all of them. You do not know their motives, nor the equipment that may have been using. Many early explorers had just primitive equipment: a scanner that only scanned out to 500 Ls, or perhaps even no long-range scanner at all and they had to find all their planets using parallax. Or they may have been badly damaged and in a rush to get back to starport. Or maybe they had a cranky tourist onboard and needed to hurry back to their point of origin before their passenger gave up in disgust.

 

[Rudi Raumkraut]

...or they are lazy buggers

 

[Rooster Podunk]

Do not be so hasty to judge your predecessors. Some may have been cherry-pickers, sure, but not all of them. You do not know their motives, nor the equipment that may have been using. Many early explorers had just primitive equipment: a scanner that only scanned out to 500 Ls, or perhaps even no long-range scanner at all and they had to find all their planets using parallax. Or they may have been badly damaged and in a rush to get back to starport. Or maybe they had a cranky tourist onboard and needed to hurry back to their point of origin before their passenger gave up in disgust.

Or with the new system stars get auto scanned as the explorer moves on to their intended waypoint. After 3-4k systems I'm sure I've moved on through more than a few of them.

 

[Orvidius]

Not to mention, they may have been looking for something other than what you're looking for. For instance, lately I've been more interested in gas giants, and don't always scan the inner terrestrial worlds, even though those will generate a lot more money.

 

[marx]

Ah yes, the subforum drinking game has been triggered again, what with going on about how people who don't scan everything are not explorers. Oh well, I'm a fake explorer.

So, @Nort, consider this: after tens of thousands of systems, most people get bored with the same old common stuff. Also, the FSS with its infinite range scanning has been around for one year and four months, and before that, you had to fly to each and every body to scan them. It's entirely likely that you'll come across systems scanned before the FSS.
My advice would be to go on, give that a try, map (not just scan!) every body in every system, and then think a bit on whether you'd do that for tens of thousands of systems.


As for the Elite rank, about how you mentioned your doubt about it: the rank requirements were set when payouts were much lower, and haven't been adjusted with the big buff. These days, Elite in exploration is the second most common exploration rank (#1 being Aimless), so getting it is basically "you have completed the extended tutorial for exploration" now. But you did it on a cool route, rather than just zipping to Colonia, so congratulations!

 

[Straha Yeagar]

Not to mention, they may have been looking for something other than what you're looking for. For instance, lately I've been more interested in gas giants, and don't always scan the inner terrestrial worlds, even though those will generate a lot more money.

Myself, I am on an icy body with exosphere kick. Not terribly lucrative credits wise

 

[wetwire]

@Nort Enjoyed the story presentation of your adventures south. Great screen shots and description of events.
If the entire post is from an in character point of view then T-shirt explorers seems acceptable from a characters opinion for the sake of story. otherwise pointing out misconceptions can lead to negative replies. T-shirt comment uses too many assumptions and too little evidence to support it if directed to actual players.

 

[Nort]

OOP’s, my puffed out chest has deflated, So me now being Elite is tantamount to getting your first bike. Less training wheels !
What it has afforded me is access to the Jameson shop! Where my 300+ Million is to be put to some silly spending spree. Not sure I need an other ship, just splash out, top specking the ASP.
Been also thinking of the Krait Phantom as an explorer! It can probably carry a larger anchor than the Asp.
Sorry if I come across as being a little flippant at times, this is a game of blobs! ( Blob spotting ). With cool ships, and some stunning space vistas.

I do realise the early explorers had open cockpits with perhaps a canvas cover to stop sun burn. So will have had to endure much harsher times, there wooly overcoats and Radiation drenched underwear must have been quite sore.

Question:
On my return my ship showed it to be at 100%, then when in the Dock the Advanced maintenance had ship integrity at 54%. What is this?
I have left the paint alone keeping the scratches as evidence of my trip.

 

[Melorum]

Ship integrity is a separate value from your hull, and it gradually goes down the longer that you don't dock along with your paint. When you go on really long journeys you'll commonly find that your integrity is at 0% when you finally dock

 

[wetwire]

Any damage a ship takes and even simple use over time will apply a small amount of fatigue to the ships integrity in the background. Long ago Frontier decided to cut the cost of repair by shifting some of the repair bill into ship integrity found under advanced maintenance. So you can repair your ship to 100% hull and move on, but the integrity will still have some fatigue. You can then opt to repair this fatigue later. ship integrity affects how vulnerable the craft is to damage. best i could find was a 0% integrity is similar to having 70% hull.

 

[Sapyx]

You lose Integrity at the same rate you lose paint: 1% per 100,000 Ls in Supercruise. Weapons fire, landing on planets and other activities do not reduce Integrity, only Supercruise flight. Flying to Hutton Orbital (6.8 million Ls) means losing 68% Integrity, which can be a hefty repair bill if you're flying an expensive ship. It's meant to emulate "wear and tear", rather than actual damage: bolts and rivets coming loose, armour plating wearing thin in patches, that sort of thing. The official line from FD is that flying at 0% integrity is equivalent to flying at 70% of your regular hull strength. Modules may also be more prone to damage from weapons fire too.

You can't see Integrity loss anywhere except when docked in station. But, since paint wears away at exactly the same rate, you can use the visual indication of paint loss as a surrogate indicator of integrity loss - assuming you always remember to repair both paint and integrity at the same time.

 

[varonica]

Ah yes, the subforum drinking game has been triggered again, what with going on about how people who don't scan everything are not explorers. Oh well, I'm a fake explorer.

So, @Nort, consider this: after tens of thousands of systems, most people get bored with the same old common stuff. Also, the FSS with its infinite range scanning has been around for one year and four months, and before that, you had to fly to each and every body to scan them. It's entirely likely that you'll come across systems scanned before the FSS.

I spent most of my first few years looking for volcanic sites on candidate bodies, sometimes spending a week or more painstakingly scanning every single inch of a body from 30km up in glide mode. Before the intriduction of the FSS the only ways to tell if a body had vulcancism was to either scan every single body, or actually do some proper research and check the orbital periods and body composition from the system map after honking to cut down on unnecessary time wasting. For someone new to come along, who has never spent weeks cruising endlessly across barren airless landscapes looking for that telltale sign of vulcanism, to accuse myself and other poeple like me of not being "proper explorers" because we didn't scan every single body and who now has the advantage of the FSS so he doesn't even have to fly to them to scan them, is bizarre. I trust he maps every single body in every single system, because that's the equivelant not of what scanning was back then!

 

[Nort]

Knickers twisted or what ?
Not another forum !!!! Na ! Shant go there !

Best i bite my tongue, and get out from this silly stuff, and go exploring in SOLO mode.

See ya !

 

[marx]

Knickers twisted or what ?
Not another forum !!!! Na ! Shant go there !

Best i bite my tongue, and get out from this silly stuff, and go exploring in SOLO mode.

Well, what you just wrote does sound like "knickers twisted".
But hey, if you come in insulting whole groups of people, don't be surprised if you get some stronger words in return. Besides, it's not like you got called a lazy tourist, or anything negative really.

 

[Romeo India Charlie]

It's meant to emulate "wear and tear", rather than actual damage: bolts and rivets coming loose, armour plating wearing thin in patches, that sort of thing. The official line from FD is that flying at 0% integrity is equivalent to flying at 70% of your regular hull strength. Modules may also be more prone to damage from weapons fire too.

What I never really understood are the consequences of this. Why does this matter and when? Should we look at it as a multiplier for the integrity of every other equipment in the ship? When can this hurt an explorer in the deep black?

 

[Sapyx]

It doesn't really hurt a deep-space explorer - which is a good thing, since there's nothing that can be done to fix it except return to spacedock, and nothing can be done to prevent it, except, well, don't explore so much. It "matters" only when returning to the bubble and people start shooting at you again. Which, again, doesn't really matter too much for explorers as most explorers fly paper-thin ships to start with so making that paper 30% thinner doesn't greatly decrease the survival rate.

 

[Nort]

So if you get down to 0% integrity your ship will still function? But is at a higher risk of damage!
Take the old sailing ships of long ago, they carried shipwrights on board to keep the ship ship shape so to speak. Seems in this futuristic time there would be robotic drones doing a similar job!
If not ! That is an oversight on any exploration adventure, to not be able to keep the integrity of your vessel up to scratch. And scratches, they had paint pots hundreds of years ago! in the future they would have invented self replenishing paint? Live active finishes that stay supple, smooth out and give unlimited life time guarantee. If we haven't by then, we are a bit stupid…
Seems these futuristic thing’s have not been fully exploited in the game, with current day limitations being applied to far in the future functionality. That is a bit of a worry, we haven figured out how to self generate Integrity.

 

[Sapyx]

Take the old sailing ships of long ago, they carried shipwrights on board to keep the ship ship shape so to speak.

Those old sailing ships were self-sufficient in repairs to an extent, but even here, a ship gradually grew less "tight" as it aged, becoming more leak-prone. It would also gradually accumulate barnacles, shipworm and such; while the crew could scrape them off, it really needed to be beached/drydocked to get it all off properly and to get things like the copper plating replaced.

I suspect that, when it was implemented, FD wanted to give some kind of penalty or punishment for having a ship flying without "proper maintenance" for too long. The precursor games (FE2/FFE) had hyperdrives that needed "maintenance" every six months or you could get he deluxe service, which lasted a whole year; if you didn't maintain them, then you'd risk a catastrophic failure that would turn your hyperdrive into a pile of trash (literally) and leave you stranded. Since it took a game-time week to make a full-range hyperjump, it meant that you needed to give the thing a service every 26 or 52 jumps. That kind of restriction on jumping would have been catastrophic for exploration in ED (especially as ED, being multiplayer, doesn't have the option to scumsave), so they made the penalty less severe, but still severe enough that you ought not to neglect it forever.

Paint damage isn't inherently logical, either, in terms of causation: if the FSD is an Alcubierre-type drive, moving space around the ship rather than the ship moving through space, then what, exactly, is impacting the ship and causing the sandblasting-like damage to the paint? There shouldn't be anything out there in Supercruise hitting me.