[DW2] Commanders Log

Commander's Log: 33050617

We're trying a different tactic to get back in time, by trying more shorter stints at flying. Hopefully it should be more manageable, able to fit it around other stuff more easily. It does mean we'll probably cut down the logs unless something happens on one of the legs.

That being said, something did happen today.

We were heading through an area with a lot of brown dwarf stars. Sid was being particularly irritating in his cage, and in trying to deal with him, I failed to notice that we had run out of fuel. So, we jumped into a dwarf system and couldn't get out. The really annoying thing was that this had happened a couple of times this evening, but each time we still had enough fuel for a short jump to a nearby star to refuel. Not this time. Selecting a relatively close star of 4.8Ly away, couldn't manage that. The bar was empty, not even a sliver.

So, after a brief panic (pretty sure R'geli may have hit me, can't quite remember) we put out a call to the legendary Fuel Rats. After a brief kerfuffle with the system name (turns out I can’t spell, 0 and O look very similar on the galactic map and even then, the system wasnt in their database), Commander AlterNERDtive began the long journey out to us. and by long we were talking ETA tomorrow evening. So, we shut everything we could down to conserve fuel, took some pictures of the stranded ship and had a look at the map. The great thing was that we were 6 jumps away from reaching the milestone for the night. It was at that point that R'geli noticed a single star system that was a smidge closer (3.48Ly) than the one I tried. So, with some cheering on from the Fuel Rats' comm channel, we successfully booted up and engaged the FSD, and landed in the saviour system.

With hands in the air and a massive YES over the comms (didnt help that just before someone had asked if I was running low on air, brief moment of panic on their part), we were saved. AlterNERDtive stood down, and all was good. To make that jump and not the other one, we really must have been running on fumes. Next time need to be more aware of fuel situation, or to plot along scoopable stars.

A massive thank you to the Fuel Rats. This incident and the one involving the Hull Seals do make me want to join up to one or both. Maybe once we’ve gotten back and had a chance to recoup a bit.

Sol: 50,580.15Ly, 29 days to go.
 
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Commander's Log: 33050627

Finally, after over a month of travelling, we made it to the Rendezvous Point system. To find nothing? Had really been expecting to find a tourist beacon marking this event. It was great learning about this early, far-flung meet-up, but had thought there would be something.

We will quickly skim over the planets before we leave, to see if its on one of them, but it would have most likely have been in space. There isn't any record of one either.

On another note, we have been sticking to OBAFGKM stars for the last 100 or so jumps. really dont want to repeat the incident from last week.

At our current pace, it will be September before we get back to Sol, just a tad late for the 16th of next month. So it looks like for the next leg at least we will try to use neutron stars to get to Explorer's Anchorage. Without them the journey will be over 300 jumps, with cuts that down to 102 jumps. So that looks like hopefully by the end of next week we will be at the centre of the galaxy.

Sol: 42,972.22Ly, 19 days to go
 
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Commander's Log: 33050702

We had a quick scan round the system for a tourist beacon, but couldn’t hang around for too long, we had a journey to continue.

So, with that we headed towards the nearest neutron star. Also, to speed up time, we have decided to only do the old honk and jump method for scanning the systems (maybe doing more detailed scans when refuelling). First jump was a bit nerve wracking (plenty of gingerly, particularly as neither R'geli or myself knew exactly what to do, but we figured it out.

We covered the same amount of distance as we normally do, but without timing it not sure if it was faster though it probably was a lot (we are jumping around 3-4 times our normal distance.

The manual route plotting takes a bit longer than we are used to, does make you wonder how they managed on the first trip to Beagle Point.

I must admit, the self-imposed deadline is looming up a bit. 2 weeks today, eek. Though if we can repeat this day every day, we will be back in little over a week. But first Explorers' Anchorage.

Sol:38510.24Ly, 14 days to go.
 
Commander's Log: 33050703

So we continued along the route laid out for us and to be honest, it didnt feel much faster than before. Sure we were travelling further each jump, but those jumps were taking longer due to having to scoop and plot the next jump manually. Not to mention the longer refuelling stops and the occasional complete stop to fix the FSD. As an example the first 6kLy we travelled via the neutron stars took us 1.5 hours.... about the same had we just visited normal stars (distance would have been about 120 jumps, at 45 seconds a jump puts us at 90 minutes or 1.5 hours).

However it went really well when we combined the two methods for the last 6kLy to Explorers' Anchorage by using the route plotted by the Athena's computer. The remaining distance we covered in a little over an hour, almost 50% faster than the lengthy route previously given.

At last CIVILISATION!!!!!

Though still just over halfway back to Sol, we were met with other people and ships. And they bore news that the surplus from building Explorers' Anchorage had been used for a megaship and science station. With the megaship out of the system, we decided to visit the science station. It was a great moment seeing something I had helped to contribute to (at this point we hadn't seen the completed anchorage yet).

That was until raiders decided to attack. They came out of nowhere whilst we were taking some snaps, nearly obliterating our shields in the first volley. We tried to escape, but the stations mass slowed down the FSD charge. We boosted away hoping not to draw any attention, but we were spotted and lost our shields and about half of our hull. Putting everything into the engines we tried to clear the stations gravity well, but were caught and destroyed.

A while later, our life pods were retrieved and taken to Explorers' Anchorage. Trust me its not fun being in a confined space in 0-G with a space gerbil freaking out around you. I think I know why R'geli ejected her pod before I got to mine.

We regrouped at the station's bar, partially to celebrating still being alive, but to commiserate the lost Athena and the data stored within her. Whilst the paperwork was being processed to replace the Athena, the data was irreplaceable.

We put out a call to any pilots flying around the station to see if the emergency storage box could be found, but we are not hopeful.

Probably going to spend a few days at the station getting over this.

Sol: 25899.71Ly, 13 days to go.
 
Commander's Log: 33050704

Someone did it. Someone found the emergency storage box. And with it all of our lost data.

You cannot believe how over the moon we were.

The original plan had been to sell the data when we got back to Sol, but that now seems too risky. So we are currently selling the data as I record this, so many first to find and map bonuses. If think I may have also ranked up in exploration, but cant tell until done. So many pages.

We did have one page that was worth 25M credits, and currently have earnt about 10 times that with more pages to come.

The slight disappoint with all of this was that with a new ship comes a new paintjob. We had been hoping to see what the Athena would look like after her journey, but now thats gone. We do have the pictures from Event Horizon, and compared to the returned data its only a very small niggle, so we'll get over that.

Sol: Still 25899.71Ly, now 12 days to go, but feeling so much better

Update: Final income from the data was 414,577,557 Credits (balance now double what i had) and took half an hour to process it all. And the best bit is that I am now an Elite Explorer. :D
After a bit of research it appears that selling all of that data would have gotten me from base level aimless to Elite....3 times :D :D
 
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Commander's Log: 33050711

After a party to celebrate getting Elite status (may have taken a few days longer than planned), we restocked and heading out from Explorer's Anchorage. Took a few more shots of it now that it is complete, and it is a wonderful sight.

Decided to have a little detour to see the new megaship. Along the way we stumbled across a lightning storm... in space. I remember watching a really old film when I was younger (Stellar Walk I think, though not quite sure) which had a massive ship come out of a lightning storm in space. No luck for this one though, still have to hope to see a capital ship emerge one day. We did have a few strikes to the hull, and I think I put Sid a bit too close to the wall as when I looked over a particularly big strike he had turned into a big puffball of fur. I could feel R'geli smirking from the co-pilot seat.

Made it to the DSSV Distant Worlds without a hitch. Quite an unusual design and would have liked to have hung around for a bit longer looking at it, but we rather not have a repeat of the Event Horizon science station incident.

And with that we turned to Sol. We were a bit far out to plot a single route, so we aimed for a system midway and got going, using the now tried and tested method of normal and neutron stars and only doing a brief scan of the system.

About an hour and a half, we decided to call it a night (took a bit longer at the megaship than we planned) but we had covered 7kLy, enough to allow us to plot directly to Sol. :) Another 3 evenings of that sort of flying and we will be home and boy are we cutting it fine.

Sol: 18973.71Ly 5 days to go.
 
Commander's Log: 33050714

So, this is it. The last push for home. We've flown for a couple of evenings now just stopping in a system long enough to re-orientate and jump out. Still using a combination of neutron and re-fuelable stars. Didn’t really hang around long enough in any system to see if there was anything new, but as this was on the direct path between Sol and Sag A*, we were probably flying through systems that had been scanned at least several hundred times over.

We did hit a few milestones on the way. Reached the Inner-Orion Spur region (where Sol is). Passed 10kLy to Sol. Passed 100 jumps to go (currently sitting at 79 for the last leg). It is all very exciting.

So, we have one last leg to do, most likely tomorrow, and then we're home in time for the launch. We will be around on the day of the landing, but unfortunately something has come up, so we won’t be around at the time, but it was still an achievement to make it back in time, particularly as most of the way back we weren’t travelling fast enough.

Sol: 4300.6Ly, 2 days to go.
 
Commander's Log: 33050715

So, this is the last leg, unless the engines give out (they have done at other points on this journey). Slowly creeping towards Sol, 50 jumps to go, 25 jumps, 1000Ly, jumps now into single figures, 5, 4, 3, 2, destination: Sol! At 21:44:36 15/07/3305 my journey to Beagle Point and back was done. :D The whole journey took 183 days, 1 hour, 44 minutes and 36 seconds (slightly annoyed writing this that we missed beating 6 months by a few days, had lost track of the start date, but we are back for our other goal). That can be read in the following ways:
15,817,476 seconds; 263,624 minutes (rounded down); 4393 hours (rounded down); 26 weeks (rounded down); 50.16% of 2019. Such a long time, it really does feel ages since we destabilised witchspace with that first jump.

We are all feeling pretty pleased with our accomplishment (can't really comment Sid to be honest). It had been the longest trek any of us had done before by a very long way (halfway was further than our previous PB), and so many first-time experiences: first expedition; first time to Sag A*; first to Beagle Point; first black hole; first neutron star jump; first lightning storm in space; got Elite status just to name a few.

Looking forward to heading to Luna a couple of times over the next few days, but I think we will all be happy crashing in our own homes for the next few weeks at least.

There may be another log or two reminiscing about this, but if there isn't again, many thanks again to the organisers of DW2 for arranging this amazing trip as well as all of the other Commanders who helped (particularly Fuel Rats and Hull Seals) and made the experience so enjoyable.

If anyone has any questions about my experiences, feel free to drop me a line.

Sol: Arrived!
 
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