I'm just looking at the feasibility of taking off from a fleet carrier in the start system, jumping the carrier 500ly and then working through the systems in between.
How long would it take to scan systems along a 500ly route?
- Thread starter CMDR Fen Fenghung
- Start date
just to clarify:
do you intend to use "normal" max plotted jumprange, or economical routing? this will greatly affect the number of systems.
generally (depending on your ship jumprange and star density) 500 ly will be 7-10 jumps, a jump takes at least 45 seconds without scanning, so you will already spend 5-7 minutes jumping (and more realistically 10 minutes). A Carrier can jump every 20 minutes and you have to board it 2 minutes 30 seconds before jump latest. so basically the travel takes at least 10 minutes plus some for dropping at the fleetcarrier and docking. give it another 3 minutes for that. that leaves you with 20-25 minutes of scanning in those 7-10 systems you visit.
should be time enough to fss those systems you visit, if you don't hit a lot of systems with many bodies or don't fss everything.
and if you hit something you want to map ...
do you intend to use "normal" max plotted jumprange, or economical routing? this will greatly affect the number of systems.
generally (depending on your ship jumprange and star density) 500 ly will be 7-10 jumps, a jump takes at least 45 seconds without scanning, so you will already spend 5-7 minutes jumping (and more realistically 10 minutes). A Carrier can jump every 20 minutes and you have to board it 2 minutes 30 seconds before jump latest. so basically the travel takes at least 10 minutes plus some for dropping at the fleetcarrier and docking. give it another 3 minutes for that. that leaves you with 20-25 minutes of scanning in those 7-10 systems you visit.
should be time enough to fss those systems you visit, if you don't hit a lot of systems with many bodies or don't fss everything.
and if you hit something you want to map ...
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When you say "scan systems" what does that mean...
Simply honking on the way through?
Honking and FSS (Full Spectrum System Scanner)?
All of that ^^^ and DSS (Detailed Surface Scanner) of interesting bodies (ELW and Terraformable water/metal/rocky bodies)?
All of that ^^^ AND Exobiology?
Or some other options/combinations I didn't include above?
The reason I ask is that I can typically take a couple of play sessions just working one system for all of those scanning options...but many systems do not have opportunities for all of those options or even anything more than just a honk.
Simply honking on the way through?
Honking and FSS (Full Spectrum System Scanner)?
All of that ^^^ and DSS (Detailed Surface Scanner) of interesting bodies (ELW and Terraformable water/metal/rocky bodies)?
All of that ^^^ AND Exobiology?
Or some other options/combinations I didn't include above?
The reason I ask is that I can typically take a couple of play sessions just working one system for all of those scanning options...but many systems do not have opportunities for all of those options or even anything more than just a honk.
You may not be aware of this but .... you can actually try it for yourself.
Open world sandbox game ftw!
Thanks for the replies so far, I'm just looking into the best way to stage an expedition.
I am part of a 'squadron' of explorers (well there are 3 of us) and we have a fleet carrier in which we went down the Colonia bridge in, explored Holloway15, and been up to HIP 58832. Now I want to look at deep space exploration, something where we are in the black for a while.
I'm not sure how this is normally done, but my options are either
"Pathfinder" to roam out first, to map some spots to park the carrier, then move carrier and coordinate sections for each other to cover and scan. "-- says Alan on Facebook
or
The Explorers leave the Carrier at the start system, I jump the carrier 500ly to the destination system, and then the explorers work their way through the systems to get back to the carrier, charting and scanning them as I go, however they wish.
If it was the 2nd way, then what I'm asking is how often am I likely to move the carrier? Once a week?
Fen
I am part of a 'squadron' of explorers (well there are 3 of us) and we have a fleet carrier in which we went down the Colonia bridge in, explored Holloway15, and been up to HIP 58832. Now I want to look at deep space exploration, something where we are in the black for a while.
I'm not sure how this is normally done, but my options are either
"Pathfinder" to roam out first, to map some spots to park the carrier, then move carrier and coordinate sections for each other to cover and scan. "-- says Alan on Facebook
or
The Explorers leave the Carrier at the start system, I jump the carrier 500ly to the destination system, and then the explorers work their way through the systems to get back to the carrier, charting and scanning them as I go, however they wish.
If it was the 2nd way, then what I'm asking is how often am I likely to move the carrier? Once a week?
Fen
At the moment it's a feasibility expedition, a smallish trip into the black to see what problems we encounter. Maybe just to the edge of the galaxy from the bubble, or something like that.
it's really very much down to style of exploring. i'm doing around 1300-1600 ly a session (~ 1 evening exploration), fss'ing most systems fully, and mapping everything i find interesting. i rarely land, but visit any NSP. that would be 2 or 3 fc jumps per evening. others do more or less.
500 ly are not that much in exploration builds, so i don't think it very important whether FC goes first or explorers go first. - but as you probably want to have a rally point anyways with your group, i think FC should move first. also gives you a chance to resupply the tritium tank at the end of your session instead of waiting for the FC to arrive.
i recommend the "edge"as in highest or lowest above/below sol. you will encounter most problems you encounter between galactic arms etc, routeplotting and so on - while you are never than a few FC jumps away to adjust your carrier services or ships outfitting or transfering ships over etc.
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Yeah 500ly, 7 or 8 jumps for a decent exploration build, if you don't encounter anything worth scanning and aren't stopping to do bio it's easily possible to beat the carrier to the destination system, it only takes a couple of interesting bodies to slow you down a bit, or one body 100kls from the entry point. This is how I often travel, and at the end of a session I park on the carrier and get another 500ly further, but it depends on what I am doing. At the moment I am scanning particular targets so I want to get there as fast as possible while scanning everything I jump into, a more leisurely exploration trip would see me doing some bio as well.
I think you'll find that what anyone here has to say isn't all that relevant, because what really matters is how long it will take you and your friends. People do things differently and it also will take different amount of time depending on where you are in the galaxy (the difference in number of systems in the outer regions and what you might encounter closer to the center is huge - and I mean really huge - on the outer fringes 500 LY might mean few systems to scan, while in the center its thousands), whether you're in a hurry to move carrier ASAP to it's final destination, or don't need tight schedule and plan to scan area between each 500 LY jump thoroughly, etc.
In my opinion just start with option 2 and when everyone is at 500ly mark, check the time and move the carrier (if someone's faster than others, they can certainly find something to explore around FC destination while waiting) - if that's how you like it, then you can use that as rough estimate for the time being.
If there are just 3 of you, then coordinating things between you will not be that difficult. If one of you feels like they need more time, I'm sure he can speak and rest can adapt, or work something out, right?
Your expedition with friends looks like fun. Good luck.
How long is a piece of space string?
No seriously there is no set time.
I use the 'tow truck' system, i have a few ships engineered to pretty much spot on 50LY (Krait/Asp/DBX).
Look at the map and plot a course about 500LY (no more) and then i just jump and scan every system i pass through (FSS).
Sometimes i find interesting stuff like ELW and WW which i want to stop and fully map or Ice rings that i check for Trit (for future reference) this of course slows down the progress, but whats the rush?
Once i hit the 500LYs i jump the carrier and start again.
So it can be fast or in some cases take days when i find some systems with nice stuff or planets with plants/Geos.
O7
If you don't have a specific destination in mind, I would recommend getting on the galaxy map, eliminating the more common stars (the protostars and all of the scoopables except A,B, O) and find something that you think might be of interest.
Set that as your destination, re-add the eliminated stars and go.
Unless you head into spaces between the arms, or into places of stellar scarcity such as the edge or the extreme depths and heights, you'll be able to get a feel for it with minimal risk because there is almost always a scoopable somewhere close inside the main arms.
Set that as your destination, re-add the eliminated stars and go.
Unless you head into spaces between the arms, or into places of stellar scarcity such as the edge or the extreme depths and heights, you'll be able to get a feel for it with minimal risk because there is almost always a scoopable somewhere close inside the main arms.
We don't worry about scoopable, we're in a fleet carrier, finding rings to mine is the possible problem
"How long" depends entirely on "how thorough" you and your friends wish to be. 500 light-years is typically 8 to 10 jumps for a typical exploration ship, and wouldn;t take more than 10 minutes if all you were doing is A-B travelling, scanning while you go. What you need to ask is:
- What are you looking for? ELWs, "valuable" planets, interesting phenomena, biologicals, etc., or are you doing the full "Star Trek" boldly going, scanning everything?
- Are you filtering out the "boring" star types like class M and brown dwarfs? These star systems rarely have interesting/valuable planets - but sometimes, they do, and since everybody normally bypasses them, they're less likely to be already discovered.
- How thoroughly do you want to search, beyond the bare minimum 8-10 systems? You can set your route-plotter to "economical", but even this will bypass some systems, especially in the denser regions of the galaxy. If you're aiming to scan every single star system in a cylinder of space that's 500 LY long and, say, 10 LY radius, that's 157,000 cubic light-years of space. Out near the Bubble, that volume would contain, on average, about 630 stars, which could probably take a team of three explorers a week or so to cover adequately, depending on how much time per day each player can contribute to the mission. The star density gradually gets higher the closer you get to the centre; in the heart of the Core, the star density is 1000 times greater - so that same volume of space would contain more like 630,000 stars, which you and that same team would need 1000 weeks (almost 20 years) to survey.