Elite / Frontier Exploration in FFE

[The Land]

Is it viable?

I happily loaded out my Asp with a fuel scoop, swapped my military drive down to regular, and lightened up my weapons load a bit in order to do a bit of long-range exploration.

However, it seems that nearly-deserted systems have the same number of pirates as any other system. I jump 4 times from Gateway to end up in a system marked as "some mining" which has no starports or space-stations, set a course for the nearest gas giant, and I find pirates coming at me from nowhere. Imperial couriers and explorers, Couriers, gangs of fighters.... a bit like Veliaze

This is a bit of a pain, as the Asp is only really viable in combat against this level of threat when shrouded in shield generators to a level that makes long-range exploring tediously slow.

Am I right that there are too many pirates in frontier space...?

 

[Riker]

You're totally right, there's too many of them and the game is too unforgiving.

 

[Bounder]

These are the frontier systems - they're not uninhabited, obvioushly, and many will have rampant piracy. As you get further out it gets a lot more remote. You'll rarely meet anyone in unexplored systems..

It's definitely worth exploring though.. there's some really funky systems out there - i just found one with 36 bodies, i'm not sure what the record is but it'd take me a week just to explore this 'un. Give yourself a mission, to find something interesting or novel.. there's merged binaries to discover, exotic giants, and just what is the max number of bodies in a system, anyway? Loads to do and see...

Pity the fabled black hole's non-existence was recently confirmed, searching for that was always a happy, if fruitless way to waste a few hours...