Last night was hell. I began to feel claustrophobic for the first time in my many long years in space. You would think, that with as big as the ASP is, that the could at least put a window in the pilots cabin. Not to mention the fact that with a ship this size you would imagine that they could make the pilots cabin more than 6 M2 in size. Well, after several sleepless hours I came up with a solution. It's taken the last 3 1/2 hours but I have managed to completely remove the chair and secondary control panel on the lower observation deck. I have no passengers on this voyage (sadly...gods I miss sex), so I may as well turn the lower deck into my cabin. At least IT has a window, and a decent size one at that. Now I really wish I had a companion with me. I can just imagine a session with a lover in deep space in front of THAT window...sigh.
Maia, did you ever try the game "Out There"? It resembles your journey quite a bit. It was originally released for smartphones, but lately was added to Steam, too. Perhaps you'd like to give it a try (I am enjoying it quite a bit).
Sadly I don't have the equipment to build a holodeck. Besides, where would I put my bed?
Pushed on for just over 800 LY today. Found 2 more Ammonia planets...with life. Is it me or are they becoming more frequent the further down the arm I go? I'm beginning to get a bit worried here...
I've made it to the extreme edge of the PERSEUS Arm. If I go any further out (assuming I can actually make it much further) I will be on the very rarefied end of the OUTER Arm, and I won't be able to cross back if I continue down that arm. As it is, my path has taken on the now all too familiar "Staggering Drunk" pattern of a very open starfield. Actually its worse than that. I've reached a point where the stellar density is such that I can only plot a route of no more than 150 LY at a time. Needless to say, this is where forward progress slows WAY the hell down. If it gets any worse further down the arm I'll have to angle in a little bit to a slightly denser starfield.
I forgot to mention last night that I landed in another one of those Kevin Costner systems. 3 terraformable terrestrial water worlds (and 1 ammonia world) spread between 2 of the 3 stars in the system.
My current position puts me 10,437 LY from GUAYAMBAAN, or 10,373 LY from SOL.
Pushed on for just over 800 LY today. Found 2 more Ammonia planets...with life. Is it me or are they becoming more frequent the further down the arm I go? I'm beginning to get a bit worried here...
It's been a couple of days since my last update. In that time I have managed to Jury-rig the high-gain antenna back into a functional state, so this transmission will be extremely image heavy as I am including images from the previous days when the antenna was down.
I am powering down for the night in HYPINKS FF-R C4-1, a dull and lifeless system of nothing but snowballs around a rather small G type star. I have made some 2300 LY in the last 2 days, which puts my current position 12,743.07 LY from GUAYAMBAAN or 12,654.67 LY from SOL.
Today was, sadly mostly an uninteresting sprint across my days quota of a thousand LY. Very little to see along the way. Yesterday however, was a very different story. The stellar density seems to have increased a bit, so the staggering drunk phase was (thankfully) short lived and I was able to start making good time again. Yesterdays journey was a cornucopia of water world systems and other amazing sights.
Yesterday began with the discovery of 2 "Kevin Costner" systems (3 or more water worlds) in 2 consecutive jumps. The second of these systems also contained a life bearing ammonia world. Needless to say, this was an auspicious way to begin the day. Over the course of the days run, I crossed a rather large area of badlands. fortunately it was seeded periodically with scoopable stars. There was a whole host of water worlds, eclipsing binary and trinary stars and a couple more Earthlike worlds. Sadly most of the gas giants I passed were either uninteresting, or too far out for me to get to and still make my distance. I ended yesterday at a planet 6.62 LS from its parent star. THe star was in a period of solar storms, so I wanted to get some good eclipse shots of its corona. However, as soon as I got into position and dropped out of SC, the planet moved out of position so fast I couldn't believe my eyes. I got back into SC and caught up with the planet to find that it was doing something on the order of 98KMS. I checked the scan readings on the planet to find that it had an orbital period of 0.8 days!!! How is this little world still a sphere? At that speed it should be broken up, or stretched out into a bullet.
Ok, beginning with images from the previous few days.
The reddest gas giant I've yet seen.
While there, I found a roid with a huge flat area and no spin. I tried to set PROMETHEUS down on this iron plate, but touched down with just slightly too much speed and the force of the landing set the roid drifting out from under me and induced a slight tumble.
Pulling away from a close pair of B0 class stars on my way to a third, a B9 class 120,000LS away.
Listed as a "high metal content" world, it still had liquid water oceans with land masses. The atmosphere was mostly nitrogen and carbon dioxide.
This ringed snowball was fascinating in that the rings contained some unusual shades of blue. When I dropped out of SC near them I discovered that they contained IMMENSE amounts of rarefied gas, creating a fog so dense that I could barely see trough the ring. As visibility was near 0, I chose not fly through the rings.
Another ocean heavy Earthlike.
Started scooping as soon as I landed and almost ran headlong into the surprise red dwarf on the other side of the star.
More ammonia worlds to keep an eye on. Sensors registered life, so I didn't hang around for too long.
This Orange Giant is 182 LS from me. That eruption you are seeing...that's 3/4 of of the way around the limb from where this image was taken. Glad as hell I wasn't anywhere near that!
A terraformable water world in a double planet orbit with a metal rich world only 3 LS away. I used the planet as a slingshot to head back and check out a nearby ammonia world.
Found a second "High Metal Content" planet with large liquid water oceans, and land masses. If it weren't for the atmosphere, this would be an Earthlike.
High metal content planet with a very blue atmosphere
Happened upon the strangest planet I've yet laid eyes on. I have no idea what forces were at work in this worlds past, but this gas giants atmosphere has been leeched of all color.
Another Earthlike world, literally TEEMING with life; sensors were off the scale with sheer biomass. I orbited several times looking for signs of advanced life but in the end did not find any.
From a distance I thought that this water world clearly had land masses. However, a half hour in orbit studying it showed that those land masses were in fact continent sized masses of algae.
If the Thargoids haven't made it this far, I hope they never do. Quite a few ammonia worlds out this way, I'd hate to see them get a foothold in a region with lots of worlds that they could colonize...
High metal content world with a thick blue atmosphere. It was actually quite a beautiful little world, and terraformable to boot.
This was one of the more unusual planets I encountered. The surface coloring makes me wonder exactly what kind of metals are available there.
At least we come to the speedball world. I attempted to get some video footage of this, but Prometheus's video recording equipment failed to function (that problem has since been repaired). The second, third and forth images were taken with me dropped out of SC, and taken as fast as I could push the shutter button, total elapsed time...just under 1 second.. This is where I powered down for the night. The last 2 images in this set are the scene as I woke up this morning.
And this is my location to date. SOL sits 12,743 LY away.
The tally to date:
Earthlike worlds - 10
Water wolds - 37
Ammonia worlds - 8
Life bearing gas giants - 4
Netron stars - 1
Black holes - 1
Nebula visited - 5
HERBIG HE/BE stars - 2
T-tauri stars - 36
*The video log that I transmitted earlier does not seem to have been a very big hit, so I'm not sure if I will continue that series.
I came across an absolutely fantastic ringed gas giant yesterday. PROMETHEUS's sensors returned readings of water based life in the upper atmosphere, but that wasn't what really awed me. The rich metal rings were the densest, and eeriest I've ever laid eyes on. Sadly the ships documentation cameras have too narrow of a field of view for a panorama, so I sent out a camera drone and recorded this...
A glimpse of Hell.
Wanted to try a landing again. This time near a yellow star. The field I found was only 0.996 LS from the sun, actually within the fuel scooping zone. Sadly all of the roids there were tumbling too fast to get Prometheus close enough to that I could simply jump with a tether. MMU time again. Couldn't stay too long on this one as it was insanely HOT! Got some samples and some pictures and got the hell back on board.
How exactly can you do that? Can you view the System data of a system that is within a certain range of your current location?
I've always assumed, going by the number of times that System data is NOT available to me, that you can't get System data on an unexplored system until you actually travel to it and do a Advanced Discovery Scan (if you want ALL the bodies).
And if my assumption is correct, that you *can't* have a "peek" into the next System you are only a short range from... I really think FD should have a think about this and maybe change it, as it seems like we could miss the ultimate System, full of the wonders of the universe, simply because we jump left rather than jump right?
Red_13, you can get an extremely limited amount of information on a system when it is the very next system you are about to jump into. Your system can tell how many stars are in the system and get a general idea of their arrangement. You go to the starmap and zoom in on your next system. If it is a multiple star system it will show as such. In addition, you can use this to get an idea if it is safe to jump there. If the arrangement shows that one of the stars is in (or very close to) your direction of flight, then there is a good bet that you will have a collision, at which point it is a good idea to consider navigating around that system (or jump into it from a different direction if that is your destination).
Red_13, you can get an extremely limited amount of information on a system when it is the very next system you are about to jump into. Your system can tell how many stars are in the system and get a general idea of their arrangement. You go to the starmap and zoom in on your next system. If it is a multiple star system it will show as such. In addition, you can use this to get an idea if it is safe to jump there. If the arrangement shows that one of the stars is in (or very close to) your direction of flight, then there is a good bet that you will have a collision, at which point it is a good idea to consider navigating around that system (or jump into it from a different direction if that is your destination).
Thanks for the "how to"... You must have to really zoom in! I've never seen that kind of detail.
And thanks for the heads up on the approach!!
Now, taking all that into consideration... Do you think the information is enough? Like, can you "see" if there is a Black Hole in that system?
Keeping within the "reality" of the year 3300 and the technology available to us Commanders... Do you think that lack of detail is appropriate or in "reality", we should be able to scan the next system we're plotted to with a little more detail (like, what kind of worlds are there?) and also make it easier to get that info rather than going to the Galaxy Map.
In short... Is it something that FD should be looking at? Should we raise this as a feature enhancement?
Thanks again for the great story and updates. Love it.
(Although I'm only up to Page 2 of this thread... Slowly reading it during my lunch times at work. )
Yes, you can see if there is a black hole, neutron star, what have you, in the system ahead. Again, in the star map, you see the pane on the left hand side. The first tab of that pane is listed as info. When you hover a star in the map while in that tab, you will get information on the star(S) in that system: star type etc. This works from pretty much any range, whereas the previous tip only works for the very next jump on your route.
These tips are well and good, but as deep-range explorers we often find that these things take up too much time when we are trying to cover distance. As such we more often than not wind up making blind jumps, learning what lay ahead of us when we arrive there.
Yes, you can see if there is a black hole, neutron star, what have you, in the system ahead. Again, in the star map, you see the pane on the left hand side. The first tab of that pane is listed as info. When you hover a star in the map while in that tab, you will get information on the star(S) in that system: star type etc. This works from pretty much any range, whereas the previous tip only works for the very next jump on your route.
Ah, OK... I see what you mean, now... Still pretty cryptic! And I don't think it shows planets.
For example, the system I just jumped from "Lie Zhangwe" has in that little fact box in the Galaxy map: M2 VA, L3 V
So I can figure the M2 is an M class Star of magnitude 2, and an L class mag 3 star.
But what does VA or the V stand for? I can't figure that out as the M2 has 9 planets and the L3 has none.
Thanks for pointing that out!
Now I have to print off a Star Chart to tell me what all those letters mean.
Just did a flyby of a brown dwarf out near NGC-2467, the Skull and Crossbones Nebula. Nothing special about the star itself, but the view was spectacular.
Update incoming in just a little bit, gonna take a while to write it. In the meantime, if you have enjoyed the images I have been posting, and wish to see more of the same type I invite you to join my facebook page - Elite Dangerous: Wonders of the Deep
This is a page for art quality screenshots and videos (as opposed to combat related). Also, if you know an artist, writer, musician etc. that may find inspiration in such images, this page is for them too. Feel free to send them our way.
