In late December of 2017, while looking for something to do while sitting at work bored because of the holidays, I happened upon a post. This post detailed the great lengths a couple of fuel rats had gone to in order to save a commander who had gone just a little too far out from Semotus Beacon and couldn't make it back due to lack of fuel. The idea fascinated me... I mean, I had looked for a spaceflight game for forever. I started way back in the day with Earth & Beyond, and then tried Eve Online when E&B died. I "knew" that there were no other currently-available games out there that featured spaceflight that I could play and play with other people. Oh, sure, there's that game that has been in Alpha for the last five years, but that wasn't ready for prime time. But there weren't any others... So imagine my surprise when I found that, not only was there a game which featured spaceflight, but there was one where the players actually actively
HELPED each-other! A game where a player would, for nothing more than a "thanks", drop whatever they were doing and travel multiple hundreds (or more) of jumps just to be able to help someone they, frankly, didn't know from anyone. This idea fascinated me, so I had to look into it. In early January, 2018, I bought the game via the annual new-years sale. Not having tried it before, I (stupidly) decided to just get the base game, not the Horizons addon. That got rectified before the month was out, but not until after the sale was over. D'oh!
After spending a little time getting used to the game, I learned about some discord channels and some of the various tools. One day, while I was poking around on EDSM, I found expeditions... I wondered what these were and if I could get in on any of them. And then the announcement of DW2 showed up. I think I found it in the forums first, but I saw it and instantly decided that I, a month-old player of the game, was
GOING on this trip. I decided that it was impossible for me to make it all the way to an Anaconda for the trip, but I could darn sure make it into an AspX. And so, by March 1, I had gotten myself into my AspX. I then logged out for bed that night. I didn't log back in until early October.
I don't honestly recall what prompted me to log back in. I had been following the DW2 planning in a kinda offhand way, but hadn't really actively been tracking it, other than by what people were saying in the Galactic Academy Discord group. So I finally logged back in and realized that I hadn't gotten my ship ready and the fleet was going to leave any day now! Of course, it wasn't, but I didn't realize that. So I spent the next three months (basically) scrambling to figure out what I needed for a ship and to get the engineering done to go. At some point, I realized that it really
WAS possible to get enough cash for an Anaconda, so I went for it. I spent the last two or so weeks bouncing from ship to ship trying to decide which one to take. However, since I wanted to be a big part of the mining CGs, I decided that the only way I could get everything in that I needed was to take the Conda. Just before we started this run, I decided to make a test flight to get the 5K Ly I needed to unlock one of the engineers, and took my outfitted Conda to the Crab pulsar. That was an amazing experience in and of itself.
Now, I should note that, following some RL pressure, I ended up deciding to start school for my master's degree in January as well. That also got factored in, because I knew I was going to have a limited amount of time to play. If I had known how limited, I might not have actually come, but it wasn't until we got to Explorer's Anchorage just off of Sag A* that I learned how limited it would become. I got there and ran straight out of time for game. Two months later, almost to the day, I logged back in with everyone pretty much already arriving at Beagle. I was concerned that I wasn't going to be able to do it. That said, I had started this trip, I was darn well going to finish it. As a result of the impending deadline, in ten game days (21 RL days), I have travelled from Sag A* to my destination... Beagle Point.
I really want to thank Qohen Leth, Dr. Kaii, Synaptik11, and everyone in the Galactic Academy and Fleetcomm Discord servers who, at one point or another, has helped me get ready and then get here. Thank you to all the planners who put in so much time preparing the route and the POIs (about half of which, I'm sorry to say, I didn't get to see). And thank you to the devs, without whom I wouldn't have the opportunity to do this.
As I sit here at Beagle Point, looking back towards the cradle of humanity... The only thing I can say is "Wow"...
Source: https://imgur.com/a/T3lxyAX