A Road Less Traveled By

[ChipStar65]

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
-- Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken

Like Frost I headed out on a 5K run (light years, that is) along a road apparently less traveled, as I ended up getting first discovery on hundreds of objects, some of which are shown below.

Spoiler: FIrst Contact

What should be a contact binary, with major mass exchange between the two tightly-bound stars. The separation shown is not a perspective effect -- that is as far apart as they ever got during my visit.

Spoiler: The White Knight

The whitest giant I've yet to encounter. It was so far from its primary it was way too dim for a decent artsy shot, though.

Spoiler: Tolkein Reference

Seven Rings for the Dwarven Lords...
(OK, I admit it, I'm a nerd.)

Spoiler: Yet Another Tolkein Reference

Sauron lives!
(Really, really, really a nerd!)

Spoiler: Tasty

The Inverse Oreo, a rather unusually marked gas giant. Otherwise nothing special.

Spoiler: Size Does Matter

The Barbell System, quite a size contrast

Spoiler: Splat!

The Splatted Planet. All I can think of is a seriously huge impact some time in this little guy's distant past.

Spoiler: How nice, you left the lights on for me!

Homelands. The last leg of the return to our homey little bubble. This trip really impressed upon me the size of our galaxy, both real and virtual.

 

[ChipStar65]

Some other notes and crass stats:

Total haul for cartographic sales @ The Conduit (maybe not the best site but it was handy): 71, 204,271cr incl. all discovery, mapping and Codex bonuses.

Repair costs: 316,970cr (Integrity down to 77%); paint also down but I skipped that

ARX: Total gained after carto sales about 515 total, split unevenly between two weeks. The trip out and back only yielded about 85 ARX for "Exploration" and unidentified "Other" sources. Not knowing what the carto sales might provide, I ended up exceeding my 400/wk limit in one day, so I can't be sure how much ARX I might have gained had I doled the data out in chunks. Honestly that doesn't bother me much as I'm not big on accessories, but for other Commanders it might be useful to know to parcel out your big carto data loads if you want to avoid maxing the ARX for the week. There's some risk of losing it if you hold onto it, of course, so that's also part of the equation.

Zero hostility from any source, no xeno artifacts or relics encountered, and only one life-form ( one of the anemone types) found in the Outer Orion Spur. This latter was very disappointing as I did come across many water worlds, terraformables, and life-bearing giants. With such opportunities, I expected approachable life to be more common. Or maybe I was just unlucky. Also, type O stars seem rarer than I would have believed, though As are abundant. I encountered very few nebulae of any type, and zero identifiable star clusters, which is really surprising seeing as how they are one of the most common infra-galactic structures observed in astronomy.

I also learned that Barnard's Loop is apparently a half-eaten doughnut; I always thought of it as a hollowed-out spherical object, being a supernova remnant and all.

Barnard's Loop seen edge-on from just inside the eastern border of the Inner Orion Spur region. Orion and the Horsehead are also just visible on either side of the Loop.

 

[LordFerret]

(Integrity down to 77%)

I've noticed in my travels that when I dock at a station, the advanced repair tab indicates my ship's integrity lowered even though my ship's display(s) indicate 100%.

 

[ChipStar65]

I've noticed in my travels that when I dock at a station, the advanced repair tab indicates my ship's integrity lowered even though my ship's display(s) indicate 100%.

Yes, I routinely do the Integrity rep, and it varies hugely depending on the ship, perhaps dependent on ship valuation. A 1% repair of my 'Conda (Integrity @ 99%) runs a couple thousand, but same for my Dolphin is about 12. They are both heavily engineered, too. It seems that ship Integrity is not equivalent to any kind of ship damage, as all my modules and hull were @ 100%. It was once explained that Integrity is more like vulnerability to damage than actual damage, so that makes a little sense.

 

[Orvidius]

I've noticed in my travels that when I dock at a station, the advanced repair tab indicates my ship's integrity lowered even though my ship's display(s) indicate 100%.

Yes, the hull integrity and hull health are two separate things. When the integrity (as shown in advanced repair) reaches zero, your overall hull strength (maximum "hit points" so to speak) is reduced by about 30%. So you can still have 100% hull with 0% integrity, which would be about the same as 70% hull at 100% integrity, in terms of how much damage you can take. If that makes sense.

At least, that's my understanding. I haven't verified the precise ratio, etc.