How are you waiting for Horizons?
- Thread starter Ziljan
- Start date
Warning: Positive Love-Filled Post Incoming.
As some of you may know, I have been fairly disenchanted with deep space exploration in general for about a month now, so I finally gave in to FDs pew pew focused game design, and have been advancing my rank via Bubble Exploration in my Cobra. The results surprised me. I am starting to believe this is what FD means when they say they enjoy "exploration" and it's "solid" game design. I have to admit that once I stopped worrying about name tags, and let the pew-pew come inside and play, I actually started to have some fun again while exploring.
Here is the build I am using:
http://coriolis.io/outfit/cobra_mk_iii/04A4A4A3D3A3D4C2727121200040332456b2i2f.Iw1-kA==.Aw1-kA==
This ship is fast, and can smuggle any illicit goods you find out there without the need for heatsinks. At 441 m/s, it is so fast that it can even dodge police scanners just by Boosting out of range before the scan completes. The speed also helps when you enter a SSS as well, and you can kite whole wings of NPCs (or players) and zip in-&-out of swarms of enemies to finish off weakened prey.
As for the exploration aspects:
There are tens of thousands of undiscovered systems within the inhabited bubble, and while all of them already have name tags, they are actually still RED and unexplored by me personally. They also have quite a bit more going on than anything in the black. In addition to having some very cool systems like binary ELWS or earthlikes with rings, etc, they are filled to the brim with USS, WSS, SSS and new outpost stations with odd personalities and economic opportunities. And pirates, lets not forget pirates. So there is danger and discovery aplenty, which is all I ever really wanted from exploration anyway. Granted it's not "scientific" or pacifist, or even "legal" exploration, but hopefully those things are on the way with 1.4, 1.5, and Horizons?
Ok sure, the second-hand exploration CR are small potatoes, and the biggest tangible reward is filling up my galaxy map with White System Icons. But guess what? I am having too much fun to care. Getting interdicted by space pirates while trying to DSS? That has never happened before in the Black. Jumping into SSS and slaughtering a wing of 6 eagle pirates protecting an angry T-6, while in my exploration specced Cobra? That has definitely never happened while snapping pretty photos of a pretty nebula. Assisting an imperial convoy that is being raided by a competing corporation, then scooping up the swanky loot they drop, all while dodging laser beams and the incoming police scans? Pure fun. And even though I am making far less from pure exploration, the extra income from salvage, stealing from SSS, and bounty hunting far exceeds anything I'd make outside the bubble.
I have heard lots of bad things about the signal sources, and maybe they are true if you are focused on buggy missions, but if you are just randomly exploring, they do have plenty of variety to keep you guessing. At least for now.
My hope is that FD expands on this kind of discoverable phenomena so that we won't just need to fill our hulls with space loot but can also drop to SC to view natural objects like comets, rogue asteroids made from incredibly rare materials, and small primordial black holes and scan them (or possibly sample them) for extra discovery credit.
In the meantime, I shall attempt to achieve Elite in exploration by travelling to every unknown system inside human space. It's slow going, and the pile of Red Systems is immense, you might even say "epic", so I doubt I will run out of systems before Christmas.
So how are you passing the time while waiting for Horizons?
I guess we really do think alike. This is exactly my plan to achieve Elitem, for the last 20% remaining I have to go. I am going to do urban exploration for all the systems around ELEU, I have many already, but as you said, there are thousands in the bubble. I want to achieve ELITE as a symbolic way of saying that when you want to explore, the scale of teh galaxy and distances even within same system can make an epic travel of 100ly as epic as 10,000ly. Where to stop and what to scan is what makes the difference.
In a recent mission that I ran for SEPP where I had to kill 12 pirates, I spent nearly 1 hour in a stretch of not 2 ls! I was dropping SC for all kind of signals, plus getting interdicted by the pirates at a min SC speed. That was such a fun adventure, the last 2 ls to an outpost..I realized there was as much fun in that little stretch as in any 100 ly journey... is the scale what makes the difference.
just searched n managed to answer my own question
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Still exploring as everyone knows... I'm hoping to compile a list of systems to revisit once Horizons launches publicly. Looking at ELWs, AWs and WWs with atmosphere-less moons to start. And between the three of those, systems with B or O type stars, though I think I've only found moon-less WWs around the O types.
Philip K "Do Androids dream of electric sheep" made famous in the film "Bladerunner".
Good film, better book.
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thanks for this post 
what you wrote about outposts and signal sources is very true!
after coming back from sag A the harsh and short way, i sold my fleet, got a python, and traded every rare good there is - there are 127 +/-, and hutton is just the most famost far-away-outpost, so that took some time. i'm now slowly moving circular through the bubble, and watch the systems, where rare goods are in danger of getting blocked, or try helping to get a faction into power, which will unlock a rare. in between i took part in the bootlegger run - in an dbs.
i did a small exploration project by trying to reach the highest point possible above sol in a dbs, and learned a lot about working with the grid, plotting your course manually, fuelscooping to the minimum and maximizing your jumprange. love the dbs a lot, i plan, after i have experienced 1.4 a little to take the dbs out for a shortrange exploration tour into the region where i found my first earthlike way back in my adder.
what you wrote about outposts and signal sources is very true!after coming back from sag A the harsh and short way, i sold my fleet, got a python, and traded every rare good there is - there are 127 +/-, and hutton is just the most famost far-away-outpost, so that took some time. i'm now slowly moving circular through the bubble, and watch the systems, where rare goods are in danger of getting blocked, or try helping to get a faction into power, which will unlock a rare. in between i took part in the bootlegger run - in an dbs.
i did a small exploration project by trying to reach the highest point possible above sol in a dbs, and learned a lot about working with the grid, plotting your course manually, fuelscooping to the minimum and maximizing your jumprange. love the dbs a lot, i plan, after i have experienced 1.4 a little to take the dbs out for a shortrange exploration tour into the region where i found my first earthlike way back in my adder.
when you are back to the bubble, get a xihe biomorphic companion for your next trip - "using the latest technology and robotics, better than nature and guaranteed to last"
- i'm sure they even have toads .
For me, it's right now almost more fun to program my utility application for the game than to actually play. Still, I like to take my ship for a spin to relax when not programming.
Thanks for the reminder to check out signal sources sometime, I more or less ignored those until now. Sounds fun, actually. A bit of pew pew won't be too bad, as long as it don't try grinding for combat Elite.
TLE
Thanks for the reminder to check out signal sources sometime, I more or less ignored those until now. Sounds fun, actually. A bit of pew pew won't be too bad, as long as it don't try grinding for combat Elite.
TLE
Another way I'm waiting for Horizons, is to convert my Asus ROG into a Hackintosh.
This is to try and produce a Mac version of Captain's Log.
It's a real bane and a timesink to make a Hackintosh - Perhaps I'll have the Hackintosh part ready by the time Horizons is released
Then there's making a Mac version of CL
This is to try and produce a Mac version of Captain's Log.
It's a real bane and a timesink to make a Hackintosh - Perhaps I'll have the Hackintosh part ready by the time Horizons is released
Then there's making a Mac version of CL
Really enjoying reading these posts. Especially hearing the variety of activities.
Kancro, I hope you saw the patch notes today, as minor factions will be added on the 6th of October If you wanted to spice of the name of SEPP to something that sounds more "explorery" and is a bit more memorable to attract more players, now is the time to petition FD
I've been meaning to do this with my asus rig the next time I upgrade as well. My PC is just starting to show it's age, can't quite do VR or even shadowplay.
Kancro, I hope you saw the patch notes today, as minor factions will be added on the 6th of October
If you wanted to spice of the name of SEPP to something that sounds more "explorery" and is a bit more memorable to attract more players, now is the time to petition FD I've been meaning to do this with my asus rig the next time I upgrade as well. My PC is just starting to show it's age, can't quite do VR or even shadowplay.
ha, now i know where you got your name from, just reading excession from banks
ha, now i know where you got your name from, just reading excession from banks
Now we know how you're waiting for Horizons
Enjoy that book - it was my introduction to the Culture series and it's epic.
Why can't I be living in a post-scarcity hi-tech society like that: *whine*
Have you not read The State Of The Art?
hard to tell, for the scanners not showing up on sub-targets (this is how you find a pirate, or a bounty-hunter).
met some system-defense-forces some hundreds ly from sol, and some other ships. but 1000 ly out, i stopped checking wss.