Distant Worlds Poll: Sorry if this has already been done.

[JughedJones]

How soon till you Buckyball the whole damn thing?


I'm about 4k LY from the next BC, and it's just set in how freaking far I am from civilization.

I work a lot and my free time for the past 3 odd months has been caught up in following you guys
to the next camp. Soon, it's going to end.

But!!!! Since I've been doing this, I've scanned every star and looked for anything interesting to discover at every jump.

I'm afraid that once I 'break the seal' and start racing, I'll never look again.

How many of us have already stopped scanning stars? How many of us are complete OCDs that scan everything and still keep up?

When do you stop scanning and just want to get back home?


5 answers, please elaborate!




EDIT: DAMN!!!! I meant to have a "I'm Honking and Jumping as soon as I get to Beagle Point" answer too!

Blast!

 

[Jastebro]

I scanned stars on my first expeditions, but it is quite time consuming. Instead, I've settled with a honk & charging the FSD while checking the system map. If anything looks interesting (metal rich bodies, water worlds, ELW's), I abort the jump & scan the relevant planets.
Only if an ELW is present or the star is of some exotic variety does it get scanned. Regular stars are roughly as boring as rocky or ice bodies.
I'm not too concerned with returning to civilization, in fact I will follow the Sagittarius-Carinii arm back to the bubble. I'll find more ELW's that way, while waiting for 2.1 to be released.

 

[JughedJones]

I scanned stars on my first expeditions, but it is quite time consuming. Instead, I've settled with a honk & charging the FSD while checking the system map. If anything looks interesting (metal rich bodies, water worlds, ELW's), I abort the jump & scan the relevant planets.
Only if an ELW is present or the star is of some exotic variety does it get scanned. Regular stars are roughly as boring as rocky or ice bodies.
I'm not too concerned with returning to civilization, in fact I will follow the Sagittarius-Carinii arm back to the bubble. I'll find more ELW's that way, while waiting for 2.1 to be released.

See? I can't imagine not scanning every star on the way there, but it takes an incredible amount of time/patience/effort.

I won't have any of those things once we turn around.

 

[iain666]

Still scanning all the stars, metal rich, water/ammonia/earth like worlds, things that look like likely CFTs. And something, anything if there's anything unclaimed in a part-tagged system.

I do not move quickly though...

 

[Jackie Silver]

None of the above, sorry. Most of the time I jonk, but sometimes I scan in quantity and occasionally in detail.

 

[CMDR Murf]

I'm not on the initial fleet but seriously considering a detour to Beagle Point when I've finished my trip. My original destination was Sag A, exploring and scanning the whole way. Ended up following the DW route due to how good it is, and decided to extend it to Green Crystal. After the sheer amount of time I've lost I decided to go all the way now while I'm already out here, so I never have to go too far again unless I really want to.

But Beagle is REALLY far, even from Sag A. So here's my plan;
- Go back to original Sag A trip with a big jonking detour along the DW route to Beagle, stopping for photos at waypoint destinations.
- Then Jonk back to the core and pass over it to avoid galmap route-plotting issues and rejoin my original route home where I'll explore and maybe Neutron farm a little bit.

So Jonking everything on the other side of the galaxy, and exploring everything on our side. Our side has a lot more to see.

 

[Rikk]

None of the above, sorry.

On the way out I have been pretty much honk and jump all the way. Occasionally stopping to look a the map.

On the way back I'm going to slide my cargo bar all the way to the right, relax, and scan whatever takes my fancy.

 

[Flash_Baggins]

At the moment a mix between honking and jumping and checking for good planets, at which point I will scan most of the system

 

[CommanderFredo]

How can I find out how many other commanders are in the same system as me, including all instances?

 

[Mengy]

I do a mixture of them all. Between the waypoints I mostly honk and jump, only stopping to scan for water worlds, Earth like worlds, ammonia worlds, black holes, or rare stars, or just systems that I particularly like. Once at the waypoints if I'm ahead of schedule then I scan every system I jump to in the area completely while helping out the rock rats out by prospecting on Trello. If I see something interesting on the galaxy map along the way then I alter course. I also sometimes change to scan everything mode if the mood hits me.

 

[CMDR-AD]

I use the ADS upon arrival, and check the map for anything interesting. Perhaps a gas giant, or a binary, perhaps something of notably large or small size. And of course the water worlds and Earth-likes.

When I began my DW trip I was ranked at Surveyor. Unless there is some schedule after Beagle Point that I am interested to follow, I am thinking of trying to go for the gold on the way home... scanning enough to reach Elite Explorer ranking. Perhaps a dream, but a fun one!

 

[[VR] optimal_909]

I scanned stars on my first expeditions, but it is quite time consuming. Instead, I've settled with a honk & charging the FSD while checking the system map. If anything looks interesting (metal rich bodies, water worlds, ELW's), I abort the jump & scan the relevant planets.
Only if an ELW is present or the star is of some exotic variety does it get scanned. Regular stars are roughly as boring as rocky or ice bodies.
I'm not too concerned with returning to civilization, in fact I will follow the Sagittarius-Carinii arm back to the bubble. I'll find more ELW's that way, while waiting for 2.1 to be released.

I am scanning interesting/rare stars only.

As for the route back, I will head back directly toward the bubble, but will probably get lost a bit in the core while doing it.

 

[Roqinn]

I scan what catches my attention. At the minimum I honk and detail scan the main star. At the maximum I scan everything that catches my attention. I almost never scan moons. I don't bother with ice balls at all and most of the time I don't mess with gas giants unless they happen to catch my eye for whatever reason.

I did this on the way out to BP and still doing it on the way back.

 

[Zeeman]

None of the above...

I'm basically just scanning "interesting things", not even bothering with the stars, once I get to BP though, that is where my personal expedition starts, form there I'll be in "omnivore" mode...

See? I can't imagine not scanning every star on the way there, but it takes an incredible amount of time/patience/effort.

I won't have any of those things once we turn around.

I did that one my last trip out - about 8000 systems and 230k LY - thing is, stars are mostly not worth very much, and you're probably better of jumping and honking, and checking the systems map for anything you find interesting. The only reason I scan a star now is if there is a planet or something interesting enough that I want to tag the system - though it really would depend on ones personal mission/intention for the trip. Ther eis no right or wrong, there is only what works for you.

Z...

 

[Jackie Silver]

How can I find out how many other commanders are in the same system as me, including all instances?

I don't think there is a way to do that, at least not out in deep space. You can see how many others are in Open (by logging in to Open) and you can see how many are in any private groups of which you're a member (by logging in to those) but there's no way to determine how many people are in Solo or in other private groups.

 

[Reido]

None of the above.

I'm doing a planetary survey on the way out (and back), so it's an "all or nothing" approach that I use. I J-scoop 1kly or so away from a way-point without even honking (I don't like seeing how many objects I don't have time to scan) and then scan everything for 1-2kly and then J-scoop again when I need to catch up.

I won't have a schedule to keep on the return trip so I'll scan everything and I'm sure my computer will start bogging down with spreadsheet data by the time I get back


CMDR Andrew Reid

 

[Satsuma]

I've been at least checking the system map on every system up until about 10kly ago. Then I got behind, and needed to make some fast time, so I've BB'd the last 10kly up to waypoint 21. My poor soul is sad. I want to scan the next 14kly more intensively.

And then on the way back, it'll be good times and system maps all the long way home.

 

[NCC71201]

From the beginning, I always scanned the main star and checked the system map. If there was something interesting to scan I did, but only when it was scan-able
from the main start's location. For life bearing worlds I flew close to scan those. With this behavior, I am able to make appr. 1000ly per hour including a short break, so I think
I will not deviate from it on the journey home after beagle point.
o7 commanders

 

[CaptainKremmen]

I check the system map every time, but I'm power-jumping with 45 second turnaround. So it has to be a quick look only.

So I chose the sad, last option of the poll, because it's the closest match to my current flight style.

"I brake for ELWs" is about it by this time in the trip.

 

[Jon474]

I'm slow...evidenced by the fact that I am still only a few 100LYs from WP16.

I jump in to a system, hold the ADS key, turn to centre the star, go to the Galaxy map to get the distance to the next system to 2 dps, switch to EDD2, enter the distance in the box, open the System map, take a screen shot, review the System, decide if there is anything I want to go and look at close-up, yes or no, I rotate the T-6E to allow me drop under the star to refuel whilst heading for the target object in the system or to the new system, then it's either SC to the in-System object or Jump when the temps have dropped to 60C or below.

When I am into a rhythm I can do all of this in about 43 seconds.

What am I scanning? I started out scanning the star and everything, then I dropped to always scanning the star and all ELW/WW/AWs, but if none of those were present I scanned a random object in the system. For a long while I always scanned the penultimate object in the system...however far away. That led me on some very long excursions. My longest was a Rocky world 587K LS away! I tend not to bother scanning stars anymore unless they are A, B or O - I love these stars. The exotics do get a scan, obviously.

After 60-odd days of DW I have taken up an interest in the gas giants so always go and scan "nice-looking" GGs. I am playing GG Bingo at the minute. I am looking for a system containing a GG I, II, III, IV and V <BINGO>.

I am seriously impressed with the appearance of the planets right now. Seems to me that a lot of work has been done making them look absolutely fantastic. HMCs are very pretty and some of the GGs just blow me away. I still don't really like the blue ones but TBH some of them do look good. Well done to the FD team on these.

Space madness crept in over the weekend and I realised why I feel the need to scan as much as possible: this game is so very huge, there are just so many systems in the Galaxy, and my flight plan takes me a long way off the beaten track, that there is a very real possibility that some of the systems I have entered will NEVER EVER be visited again. I could be the only person in the RL history of this Galaxy that will ever enter some of these in-game systems. That is a sobering thought. No-one will ever again come to this system, I could end up being its one and only visitor in the whole of history. I realised that I felt, and still feel, a huge responsibility to do the system "justice". To record its existence. To record its content. To tell the Galaxy of its existence. If I didn't, or don't, do this then no-one else will ever do so. I had to go and have a lie-down at that point in my deliberations.

Not planning to change my approach so I am not certain of making WP23 by the end of May...but I am trying.

Flying very happily indeed
Jon
T-6E
(DW #141)