First trip to Sag A* - Need some basic tips
- Thread starter Symbiont
- Start date
Black holes followed by Neutron stars pay the most.
Most fun is searching for earth likes.
Most profitable in a short time is finding a neutron star field, 19,000+ per star scanned with DSS. Do 2000 and you have Elite ranking but its dull work doing one after another.
For me personally I have found that having at least 1-2 heat sinks to be really beneficial, as it is very easy to have a lapse in concentration while fuel scooping and fly to close to a star and be forcefully dropped out of super-cruise. In that situation heat sinks can save a lot of hull and module damage while your frame shift drive charges.
Also having Auto Field Maintenance Unit modules is highly important (and also the only way) to repair any damage to your modules should a mishap or mistake occur.
Fly safe CMDR
Also having Auto Field Maintenance Unit modules is highly important (and also the only way) to repair any damage to your modules should a mishap or mistake occur.
Fly safe CMDR
Honk scoop and run (when fast) is about the same Cr as stopping to scan the main star and moving on, unless you find NS, BH or WD which you should always scan.
Scanning planets is not massively profitable (time wise) unless there are a few of them close to the star, and they are WW, ELW or at least Terraformable.
Nobody but a fool goes exploring for the money (I know you are not one of them), so scan what you like, its all a time/fun/money balance, just dont go for Rocky/Icey Worlds or Asteroids.
Scanning planets is not massively profitable (time wise) unless there are a few of them close to the star, and they are WW, ELW or at least Terraformable.
Nobody but a fool goes exploring for the money (I know you are not one of them), so scan what you like, its all a time/fun/money balance, just dont go for Rocky/Icey Worlds or Asteroids.
What is "WD"?
NS = neutron start
BH = black hole
NS = neutron start
BH = black hole
White dwarf
I think that pretty much covers it, take some Audiobooks/good music. Perhaps a few Pot Noodles...
EDIT - A.S.T.R.A with voice attack is always a good idea, the galactic database is nice to talk too. I also have 5000+ entries ranging from poetry to string theory, definitely helps on those 3am sessions when you are slowly slipping into a coma
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https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=142047
For when you are near the core Post 7 will help with speeding up route plotting. You may have read it being in on the buckyball posts though.
For when you are near the core Post 7 will help with speeding up route plotting. You may have read it being in on the buckyball posts though.
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Before you do a Sag A* trip do a couple of shorter routes to see if you actually like it. If you stop to scan stars, interesting planets etc. then you will be out for a while with little else. Don't do a big trip first. If you decide you are bored and want to join a CG and are 26kly out you've got a long haul home...
There are plenty of interesting things within a couple kly of inhabited space.
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On the 27th (ish) of Feb I set out for Sagittarius A* in my Clipper.
I was not an explorer, hell I was a space tourist going to the hottest spot in the galaxy. I threw a fit together and just headed out. What did I do wrong?
We I'm running a 6D power plant. That was dumb, should have fitted a 5A. I have 4x point defence, although on the way out the NPC's were at their nastiest and they didn't weight anything. When wings dropped they got heavy. Dammit. I have 4x AFMU, I only really need two, and having some cargo space would have been nice for jump range management.
Otherwise I'm golden. I'm armed and shielded which is how I like it. I have a 7C fuel scoop which is magnificent, at max rate my tanks are filling at 840/s and they are full before heat goes as far as 65. I can also scoop safely at about 300-400 with heat never going over 60 - in fact I can sit in a sun like this indefinitely.
So how was the journey. Well the first 2000ly was exciting, I was just bouncing from start to star, getting some undiscovered systems. Everything was new and exciting. But then things started getting similar, and the next few thousand light years were hard work. I was slugging away just jump/honk/scoop/jump/honk/scoop/...
I broke the monotony by changing tactic. I stopped powering to the core and started picking things to see. Huge O class star, check. Nebula, yup. Just go from one to the other, find something that will take about an hour to get to and head for it. Makes a leg worthwhile. I started to become an explorer, a pioneer. I started getting excited about things I was going to see again.
I was writing about my travels by then, at least once a week. This helped, especially when the camera drones started working.
I reached Sag A* on the 23rd March.
I reached the bottom of the galaxy, as far as I could go, on the 5th April.
I got embroiled in a neutron belt a few days later, which kepts me busy for a couple of weeks.
Today I am about 33k Ly from Sol. I've travelled some 50k ly. I should probably head back, but I can see a nebula that is only a couple of thousand k out.
I think I have become an explorer.
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tl:dr
Make sure you go an look at things rather than just plow on to the core. It will take a long time and just travelling is not fun, it really isn't.
I was not an explorer, hell I was a space tourist going to the hottest spot in the galaxy. I threw a fit together and just headed out. What did I do wrong?
We I'm running a 6D power plant. That was dumb, should have fitted a 5A. I have 4x point defence, although on the way out the NPC's were at their nastiest and they didn't weight anything. When wings dropped they got heavy. Dammit. I have 4x AFMU, I only really need two, and having some cargo space would have been nice for jump range management.
Otherwise I'm golden. I'm armed and shielded which is how I like it. I have a 7C fuel scoop which is magnificent, at max rate my tanks are filling at 840/s and they are full before heat goes as far as 65. I can also scoop safely at about 300-400 with heat never going over 60 - in fact I can sit in a sun like this indefinitely.
So how was the journey. Well the first 2000ly was exciting, I was just bouncing from start to star, getting some undiscovered systems. Everything was new and exciting. But then things started getting similar, and the next few thousand light years were hard work. I was slugging away just jump/honk/scoop/jump/honk/scoop/...
I broke the monotony by changing tactic. I stopped powering to the core and started picking things to see. Huge O class star, check. Nebula, yup. Just go from one to the other, find something that will take about an hour to get to and head for it. Makes a leg worthwhile. I started to become an explorer, a pioneer. I started getting excited about things I was going to see again.
I was writing about my travels by then, at least once a week. This helped, especially when the camera drones started working.
I reached Sag A* on the 23rd March.
I reached the bottom of the galaxy, as far as I could go, on the 5th April.
I got embroiled in a neutron belt a few days later, which kepts me busy for a couple of weeks.
Today I am about 33k Ly from Sol. I've travelled some 50k ly. I should probably head back, but I can see a nebula that is only a couple of thousand k out.
I think I have become an explorer.
- - - Updated - - -
tl:dr
Make sure you go an look at things rather than just plow on to the core. It will take a long time and just travelling is not fun, it really isn't.
Alright thanks for all that but the run to Sag is no kind of fun it's the challenge I need to be as fast as possible and have no time to look either left or right but when it's finally done I will definitely do exploration for fun and discovering unknown stars and worlds on the long way back, I will take all needed time for that
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I'm about 1/3 of the way there in a Clipper with this load out. Don't need anything over a 2A power plant. It's very light weight and being an A it's very good with heat management. Thrusters, FSD, Life Support, Sensors and Fuel Scoop are the only things that need to be turned on after ~1000 ly away from civilization. With a 2A PP you have beyond enough power for that. If you need to use your AFMU you'll want to be in normal space anyway, so you can disable your thrusters to power it up. Works like a charm.
Probably should have taken another AFMU, but it's too late for that now. So far so good.
Exploring in the Clipper is incredible. Yeah it's can't jump as far as an Asp, but it's a Clipper!
Enjoy your journey!
Probably should have taken another AFMU, but it's too late for that now. So far so good.
Exploring in the Clipper is incredible. Yeah it's can't jump as far as an Asp, but it's a Clipper!
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Let me explain how it worked for me.
"Hey, yo, I wantz to fly to Sag A* coz 'tis the thing to do 'yo"...
*Buys Asp, applies paint job, strips parts and equips for 500Ly test flight
"Right, let's test this ship, yo! 500Ly shakedown flight should be good to check her out"
*Flies 500Ly
"Hhhmmm... Am 500Ly towards Sag A*, 24500Ly to go, yeah, lets keep going!"
*reach Sag A*
"Hey, yo, ship - we'ze half way to other side of Galaxy yo - let's keep on shipping!"
*Now 45k Ly from Sol...
Along the way, you decide you want to hit Elite in Exploration, which, means you need to earn a fair bit of cash. Jumping in and blowing your trumpet, then moving on won't do that.
So you figure out how to find neutrons and black holes. And You're always on the hunt for water worlds, ammonia worlds, and Earth-like planets.
Once you reach within about 3000Ly of Sag A*, the galaxy map starts to grind to a halt. So, either you start plotting trips a system at a time, or set your target destination, and go do something else for a few hours. Like, sleep until morning, perhaps...
You also start to notice that things are pretty, the Milky Way gets brighter in the background (and eventually totally surrounds you), and you start to mess around with the debug camera, and taking photos. Until you get tot he point where you may, actually, be spending more time setting up a pic of your Asp with a cool planetary ring and the trinary stars it is orbiting, than you would to check out a planet that is 200k Ly away...
It's incredibly boring, flying out, with, perhaps, 5% of systems offering anything truly interesting - perhaps less... But, those things start to get addictive. They become a buzz, and the hunt for the next "cool" system is on.
The sky also gets interesting in different parts of the galaxy, bright blue specs totally surrounding you in some places, and very dark in others.
Then there is the fun of messing around with black holes and neutrons, flying around them and watching the lensing affect on the background...
Anyway, you've been warned.
Z...
It all starts when your jaw hits the floor for the first time.........you cannot stop staring at the beauty, the vista in front of your windscreen. You then carry on, chasing that same feeling across the galaxy.
And the best thing?
You keep on having to pick your jaw off the floor.......the cherry on the cake is that you never know when it's gonna happen again - it's always a surprise. The suspense is wonderful
And the best thing?
You keep on having to pick your jaw off the floor.......the cherry on the cake is that you never know when it's gonna happen again - it's always a surprise. The suspense is wonderful