Ishtar and Beyond - A Geriatric Exploration (AGE)

LifesAJourney · Jan 20, 2018

Who?
Cmdr Antarxis ~~(not active on the forum)~~, AspX "LOST (NSPACE)"
Cmdr LifesAJourney, AspX "LAJ V"

Why Exploration?
We both consider exploration the most fun and compelling activity in this game. We also believe, that exploration is the only activity here which really affects something significant - our knowledge about the Galaxy. So there was no other option for us. Equipped with around-50-Ly AspXs, SRVs and several hours of free time per week, we are going to visit remote areas of the Galaxy, probably avoiding the most recognizable and worn-out locations.

Why Geriatric?
Well... First of all, it's been a while since we were young.

But much more important is our, say, extraordinary ability to make problems where there are no problems actually. Emergency drops from SC, pancaking ships, fines for non-intentional but apparently reckless flying, wasting lots of heat sinks because of wrong fire group settings, making SRV 13% hull after just one jump-and-hit the stone, having issues with reverse thrusters. Yeah, that's us! We even managed to achieve "hull integrity compromised" message while setting up our ships to make a memorial picture. So, you know, just staying alive and keeping our ships in one piece is going to be a kind of an achievement for us. So we are more like really old chaps driving too powerful cars and scratching them every 15 minutes than serious explorers.

Why Ishtar?
After completing necessary beginner stuff (gathering money for ships, buying ships, farming mats, elementary engineering) we started to plan our first longer exploration. The inspiration for choosing the first target was EDSM map of POIs. Basically, we looked at it and picked the most POI-empty area we could find. Ishtar. So the Bubble - Colonia - Ishtar is the first stage of the trip. What will come next? Who knows. Maybe Beagle Point? Maybe western parts of the Galaxy? There is a lot of time to make up our minds. One thing is certain - the Beyond part of the trip will be much longer then the Ishtar part.

Some photos:
Expedition-departure memorial photo

Expedition-departure memorial photo - making of

Ammonia world just after departure

Is it possible to land on 4g planet shieldless? It is! So we're taking limpets instead of shields!

...to be continued

antarxis · Jan 20, 2018

A foreword from Cmdr Antarxis

Just a (first here) word from me...

Who?
Not active..? Well, actually actively forgetting: already forgot to leave SC before repairing thrusters, forgot the keyboard shortcut for heat sink, forgot to check g before landing, to activate planetary hangar before SRV deployment...
So, forgetting docking request or assigned pad number, when back to civilization would be nothing unusual then. Provided that we remember to return to Bubble or Colonia first.

Why Exploration?
Exploration means mostly uninhibited spaces. Uninhibited spaces mean lower risk to get hit damage from someone. So the theory... As said, being thousands of Ly from a single soul, we managed to make one. Actually not one... but nobody has seen it.
That's the exploration!

Why Geriatric?
Sorry, if I only could remember, I would write it here.

Why Ishtar?
In fact we were planning something else, but we could not recall.

Not to forget: stay tuned for more news soon!

RolloTreadway · Jan 20, 2018

A bunch of very nice pictures! And if repeatedly hitting things, damaging your ship and doing emergency stops (all far from civilisation) makes you geriatric, then I'd best be getting me a walking stick and a bus pass. Actually, I do have a walking stick. And frankly, I'm sure I'm elderly compared to a lot of people on these forums.

Anyway, look forward to hearing more about this. Always good to hear of other barely-competents causing themselves unnecessary damage, in amongst the endless 'I have all of the big three and they're perfect in every way' posts. As it happens, I just destroyed my SRV because I was taking screenshots and not paying attention - just the eight thousand light years away from the nearest station. All good fun, though.

And no, I have no idea why every sentence in this post begins with an A.

All the best, cmdrs o7

LifesAJourney · Jan 22, 2018

Stage 1 - From the Bubble to Colonia

Due to Xmas/New Year's Eve activities, we didn't have our flight opportunities at the same time. So we did this stage almost 100% separately. Since Antarxis had much less time generally, the Neutron Highway was his favourite keyword during the trip. But several detours allowed him, for example, to catch his first undiscovered ELW and almost pancake his ship after a "too close" message.

Against all odds he survived and was even able to deliver some more pretty shots of the universe (and less pretty of AspX...).

I did more roundabout path, covering some areas West of the Highway. Bypassed most outposts near the Highway, but visited two of them to sell exploration data and do some repairs and retrofitting of the ship. For example - I sold the mining laser which I bought in the Bubble to be more safe in terms of mats. Tried to mine some of them from asteroids in the meantime but it was a real disaster. Hundreds of elements that required a refinery to be processed and 4 or 5 pieces of the most popular mats among them? Seriously? I probably did something wrong, but mining had never been my desired occupation, so I gave up. And, of course, as a real oldie, I bounced an asteroid two times (shieldless!) which helped me make a decision to do an embarrassing detour to the nearest station.

I also popped into a great area several kLy SW from Colonia. Looooots of non-sequence stars! Dozens of neutrons, multiple stars systems, black holes, white dwarfs, carbon stars! I discovered my first Herbig and Wolf-Rayet stars here! An area definitely to come back some day and search for more interesting systems.

But the real delight came when I dived to 2800 Ly below the galactic plane. THAT is something everyone should do at least once. OK, navigation can be tricky, every neutron jump may be the last one in commander's current incarnation, but... What can I say, the views are just astonishing! And the sense of mesmerizing calmness. The humanity with all its emotions, noise and crowds so visually distant...

There was also a lesson. Two lessons in fact. Hard ones. First lesson: while supercruising at 10c, don't try to repair your thrusters. For some reason they are as important as FSD at that speed. Second lesson: while supercruising at 10c and hypercruise button seems to not work, don't try to press it for the second time hoping maybe it didn't notice the first press. Good thing - both lessons happened just before arriving Colonia, so AMFU and PP below 80% were not really a problem.

...to be continued

Yanick · Jan 23, 2018

I sincerely wish you people good luck on your expedition.
The Mercury 7 Expedition has already explored a lot in Ishtar. It was a main target of the expedition, and we didn't really find that many POIs. The region looks more enticing at a distance, than it is when you get there. Here is the info on the expedition, if you want some target info

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...dition-A-tribute-to-Americas-First-Astronauts

It's possible there are some POIs that we may have missed. But most of the obvious places in the area turned up little.
I'll be interested to see what you all find out there.

Fly Safe o7
CMDR Yanick

Corbin Moran · Jan 23, 2018

Had a blast reading through the two first posts of this thread

We have a saying where I come from:

"When you get older, three things happen;
You don't hear as well as you used to,
you don't remember as well as you used to,
and you don't hear as well as you used to."

Best of luck in your travels!

ADDENDUM:
If you continue beyond Ishtar into the outer Zephyrus region or further into Mare Desperationis you will enter regions that very few explorers have travelled according to EDSM data.

LifesAJourney · Jan 25, 2018

Stage 2 - From Colonia to Ishtar

"Yo, pilots! Gonna help the veteran?"

The guy was an insult to this place. He looked more like a hobo than a veteran and smelled like... C'mon, it was the best bar at Jacques Station! How he could pass these two big guys at the entrance? After arrival we left our ships in docks for repairs, refills and several fresh packs of heat sinks to cover our embarrassing mishaps. We also cashed our cartography data and therefore had more money than anytime in our entire lives. We could afford everything. But since Colonia is not the Bubble, "everything" means a lot less here than there. No half-naked waitresses, no post-space-techno music, no universities which means no pretty philosophy or sociology students who admire wrinkles, round bellies and lots of life experience and are eager to hear our horrifying stories about the Black, taking some dozens of kCR just by accident, obviously having no intention to do that. Ability to look at a modern design of the bar, good food and not diluted drinks were all explorers could buy here, regardless of how much money they had on their accounts. But he still didn't fit in there.

He also had something leaking from his left... OK, never mind. That's irrelevant for the story. Let's say he looked like somebody who could really use some help.

And he was old. Damn, he could be older than we both combined! Who uses "yo" nowadays? Our parents considered "yo" antique as hell and it was decades ago. He was probably the most ancient creature we've ever met. This alone made us respect him and not tell him to get lost.

And, to be honest, the atmosphere at the bar was so tense and boring that we could use any distraction just to kill some more time waiting for our ships to get ready. Thargoids, exodus, thargoids, burning stations, thargoids, repairing stations, thargoids, AX weapons. Did I mention thargoids? What had happened to these people? Who had really seen a thargoid? I'd done around 100 kLY through the Galaxy and never saw a single worm ship. If they were so advanced, why there were no their scouts scattered all over the Milky Way? Destroyed stations? I'm pretty sure the reason was more related to humans + alcohol aggregation than alien life forms. Kind of scary story that parents tell their children to make them go to bed early, allowing a couple of hours of silence become real at the evening...

"What can we do for you?" Antarxis must have had similar thoughts as I, so he asked as politely as he could.
"Oh, no, wait! I don't want the charity! I have something really useful for you guys." Antarxis' politeness is not really clear to people who doesn't know him. Frankly, it can be easily mistaken with first signs of incoming violence. The guy was frightened and I wasn't surprised.
"Like...?" I asked promptly to ease his mind a bit.
"Have you heard of Cmdr Chiggy Vonrictofen?" He asked.
"Of course, everyone has. The guy who can cross the whole Galaxy at the time I need to go to the loo, wash my hands and do an engine warm-up in my AspX." I said.
"Have you met him in person?"
"Yes, of course!" I confirmed.
"No, never." Antarxis denied at the same time. I was not sure whether he forgot that we really had met the guy or I forgot that we hadn't...
"Ehm... Whatever. He had inspired me to build a device I want to offer you. A speedometer!" His face was shining from a pride. He looked like a 3-year-old kid showing his parents the first ever picture of them.
"Look, we have speedometers on our ships. Most modern ones. Measurements in m/s, km/s, even speed-of-light scale up to 2001c! We really don't need another one." I started to regret we hadn't asked the guy to simply get lost.
"Speed of light you say?!? Don't be ridiculous. Speed of light is good for little girls in their slow space-cows like traders or miners! My device is scaled in chiggis! It's a chiggy-o-meter!"
"What the... is chiggy-o-meter?" Antarxis still tried to be polite. But I saw it cost him more and more effort.
"Such great pilots, such slow minds..." He looked really disappointed. "One chiggy is 60 kylies per 48 hours. Or 30 kylies per day. It's the standard pace of Cmdr Chiggy. The device is scaled from one thousandth of chiggy, so you can easily measure your speed even if you're much slower than him." Now he looked like a math professor from one of the Bubble's academies. I missed the students, especially the one with ginger hair, who...
"What is the maximum indication? How many chiggis can this thing measure and display?" Antarxis evidently saw an incoming challenge.
"You nuts?" The old man started but my friend's facial expression told him to not try to question his questions. "Ehm... Should show up to 2 chiggies with no problems. Not sure what happens if you're faster, but guys, it's not gonna..."
"How much?" Antarxis cut his incoming statement and probably saved some of old man's last teeth.
"Almost free. Just buy me a meal and drink here and provide me with some iron, vanadium and germanium which I used to build the device."
"Sounds fair." Antarxis waved the robo-waiter. "Give this man whatever he orders, on our account."
"Certainly, sir." Robo-waiter played the answer recorded decades ago by a girl with a voice of a sex-bomb-on-fire (despite it looked like one-handed washing machine with built-in holo projector) and moved away.
"She knows what I usually order." The old man reacted to question marks painted on our faces. Something was wrong, but I didn't know what. Or maybe I knew but forgot...?
"I see one problem here." I said finally, very proud of my acute mind, holding a small box in my hands. "The device is single and we both have ships. Do you have another one?"
"I wouldn't call it a problem. Just do your journey together this time." He said with a smile.
We all started to laugh. The guy had a sense of humor! But... "Hey! Wait! How did you know that we..." Understanding what he had just said took me a while and he must have used this time to disappear.
"What the...?" Antarxis was as surprised as I.
"That's strange. I don't remember we told him that we got to Colonia separately. And he didn't take the mats." I still couldn't understand.
"Whatever. I'm glad he's gone. Creepy one. And smelly. We have the device, we can beat Chiggy's pace on the way to Ishtar and this thing will provide us with the proof." His eyes were shining, hands were shaking, he was obviously in his "hunting mode". I had seen it many times when an ELW or terraformable WW appeared on his ship's radar.
"Unless it's a crap and simply doesn't work..." I doubted, showing the robo-waiter that I want to pay and still holding the small box, the chiggy-o-meter.

Several minutes later I was holding Antarxis as strong as I could to prevent him from destroying the sex-bomb-on-fire-robo-waiter, the bar, two big guys at the entrance and everything and everyone he could grab in his hands. The old man ordered meals and drinks with unpronounceable names and we had to pay almost 950k Cr for them. Even though he hadn't touched anything before he vanished. For comparison - we paid 15k for our orders. It became pretty obvious why he was able to enter the bar and why he didn't need to explain his order...

We'd been played like kids. Not the first time, though. Almost 1M Cr were painful but luckily we could afford it with no major consequences.

We hit the docks and our ships were ready. Antarxis' rage was still not completely gone, so he had to dock back twice to repair some take-off scratches before he finally managed to leave the station. We met at about 20 km from the station to do a memorial photo of our voyage and... reverse thrust switch malfunction made us crash into each other and he had to pay another visit to station's dock to have it fixed. I discreetly switched our comm link off when they proposed a 10%-discount loyalty card to him...

So we departed to Ishtar, with a pit-stop in Oob Brue Nebula. As fast as we could, took the "Chiggy challenge" quite seriously. Almost entire route in jump/scoop/jump/scoop mode. Almost no exploring, almost no scanning.

The nebula itself was not really interesting. No rare stars, no super-fancy systems, normal-fancy ones already discovered. So after a little break we resumed jump/scoop/jump/scoop and arrived at "green" Tyreanie GU-D d13-56 system, the "virtual border" of Ishtar, a waypoint of Mercury 7 Expedition. Nice place. Hunting for mats under two suns had been really pleasant.

Surprisingly, the chiggy-o-meter seemed to work during the flight! But the old man messed the scaling up, obviously. It never showed more than 0.25 chiggies...

...to be continued

LifesAJourney · Jan 30, 2018

Stage 3 - Exploring Ishtar

Cmdr Yanick wrote above that Ishtar looks better from the distance than at close quarters. Well, we have to admit that he was right. After arrival and bit of relax in our SRVs we started to explore the vicinity.

We flew in different directions. Antarxis was moving alongside x-axis and y-axis through the region, even took a little detour to Zephyrus. I limited myself to Ishtar only but did some vertical detours - up to 2301 Ly above the plane and down to 2491 Ly below. Although we had some interesting findings, there always were details that disallowed us to fulfil our goal - make a new POI inside Ishtar.

Examples? I found a neutron star over 2400 Ly below the plane, which had 4 planets, all landables. There were all jumponium materials available on these planets... except for Polonium. Well... Several hundreds of Ly later I found a gas giant with 10 landable moons. There were all jumponium materials available on these moons... except for Vanadium. Well...

But let alone POIs, we managed to catch some really cool findings:

Really foggy planet and my perfect timing of arrival -an eclipse! The landing itself was scary as hell, no visuals, instruments only until about 70-80m to the surface left. Amazing views!

Beautiful ringed ammonia world

Something I was looking for from the very beginning of my ED adventure - an ELW with landable moon orbiting close enough to make really nice photos!

There is also an observation made by the Mercury 7 expedition - an increased level of oxygen comparing to other regions of the Galaxy. More oxygen plus the most frequent element in the Universe - hydrogen - should give water. Lots of water. Cmdr Antarxis probably confirmed this observation - he managed to find enormous number of water worlds.

So, we left Ishtar with some disappointment but also with good memories. OK, no rarities found, but the region itself is quite nice to explore and, assuming little of explorer's patience, can provide quite interesting findings. Obviously we were really far from discovering everything in Ishtar, we traversed it several times only. So we're pretty sure that many mysteries are still waiting to be revealed.

What now? Well... We planned to go further, through Zephyrus to Mare Desperationis, maybe even to Beagle Point. But yet another set of stupid mistakes made us considering going back to Colonia, doing some repairs and resuming the expedition from there. So we hesitated what to do next until Cmdr Antarxis started complaining of his AFMU. He needed to restock his mats since single 80%-100% FSD repair required two AFMU reloads. Oh, that was really strange as in my case it was 4-5 of such FSD repairs per one AFMU reload! Quick verification of repairing/restocking bills from Colonia revealed something frightening and ridiculous at the same time. Believe it or not, he fitted 1D AFMU by accident...

So, we are heading back to civilization now. After quick refresh we'll resume the journey, the route yet undecided.

...to be continued

Hans v Martell · Jan 30, 2018

I like good stories, so I'll stay tuned [up]
If I don't forget, that is

Good luck on your journey, CMDRs! o7

ITZC0ATL · Jan 31, 2018

"You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to LifesAJourney again."

Really enjoying your detailed accounts of this trip so far, and great photos! Keep on updating us

antarxis · Jan 31, 2018

Something unforgettable!

Cmdr LifesAJourney has certainly done his best to describe the whole stage thoroughly. However, he forgot some unforgettables. This is fully understandable, we all know these time dilation things at lower speeds...
So traditionally, let me add a few words, before I forget what the whole Ishtar thing was about.

Having had just a 5k Ly warm-up before, Ishtar was the first real expedition to me. The Expedition.
The maiden one, same as to some extent this part of the Galaxy seemed to be. Expectations were high: whole distant worlds, black holes, ELWs, complex star systems, Wolf-Rayet stars...! So much to discover, so much to see, so much experience!

Yeah, and with the 10%-discount loyalty card from Jacques Station, 1D AFMU was cheap as chips, indeed!

The reality turned out to be so-so. After kylies from one Ishtar end to another... dozens of water worlds - checked. Second (and following) ELW discovery - checked. Some complex systems, well, not so many, not so complex. 3-neutron star-system? Here you are. OK, checked. And the black hole! It is always a kind of mysterious phenomenon, so exciting for the human imagination. No wonder I badly wanted to discover it on my own. Out of the blue - I found one, about 50 hypercruise jumps away, nothing to mention when you're talking "black hole". That was the real reason for my visit to Zephyrus. Finding that the black hole had already been discovered was even more real. Damn, this was to be mine!

On the way back to Ishtar (or somewhere there, seriously, I cannot recall) I came across a sign of Banksy. Not a smart graffiti though. Remember the movie "Exit through the gift shop"? My HC exit was more than that - through A-star, hot as hell. The more so I had another one, M-star, just ahead. Hey, with heat exceeding 100% heat sink is so natural. And I had one left (did I already mention all other had been deployed by accident?), the last one - I shall be fine! Joystick button, nope! 105%... Must be "H" key, surely! 112%... Overheat damage! What the hell (I mean it)?! Then the flash of light: of course, I had hidden the last heat sink to save it from accidental deployment. Here I am! And that's A Geriatric Expedition! At some 120% Crtl+H was the miracle I needed. Lessons learned? The game may have some bugs, which make you try deploying landing gear while in SC or displaying Galmap unexpectedly. You will not see the overheat percents then, cool.

Seconds from disaster (reconstruction)

Other tough lessons, you could ask. Absolutely!

Non-geriatric, rapid and brave horizontal planet takeoff is feasible, however a planet's high g doesn't have to share this point of view.
No, you cannot turn it off with a predefined key.

Pull up, pull up, pull...

Speeding searching for some materials on a planet's surface? You have found one and you're heading directly into it?
Well, let's just say lower speeds are somehow justified for elderly people (Cmdr LifesAJourney, I'm with you!).

Is it really your stone with materials...?

Looking for some great photos? Certainly the one with deep red HMC-planet being just 5-10 Ls from a madly blue neutron star is a lottery win. You should approach it as close as possible, ideally making HMC cover the whole neutron star with its jets joyfully bouncing around. Then take your time to compose the frame the best way. Don't let some annoying warnings like "overheat warning!" or "taking heat damage!" disturb you. Photography is all about the focus...

... and right time (reconstruction)

So much to discover, so much to experience...
Having said that, usual orange or white giants, a water world with a tiny ring, a brown dwarf with rings pretending to be a planet, with a planet pretending to be a moon and some other... are really not worth mentioning.

I could only expect more in future...

LifesAJourney · Feb 1, 2018

Yeah! I think I'm sure I remember all of that now! But I think I'm not sure why I didn't remember all of that while was writing my log.

LifesAJourney · Feb 17, 2018

Stage 4 - Back to Colonia

The long way back to civilization was a perfect opportunity to rethink some things.

I finally understood what I like the most in this game. I like to be far from the galactic plane. I like crazy non-sequence systems, AA-As, rare types like wolfs, carbons and herbigs. I prefer them to ELWs, WWs and terraformable HMCs. I can joyfully fly 3 kylies to a massive black hole while 100-times shorter jump to another red dwarf with a handful of rocky/icy balls makes me mad. I also understood something more - even though I'm not a billionaire, I gathered enough credits to stop doing anything for the money in this game. I don't need billions. That gave me a total freedom in plotting the course.

When I was leveraging this freedom I discovered the biggest disadvantage (in my opinion, of course) of in-game galaxy map. There is no way to plot the course using one filter (other than "no filter") and then view the map using another one. Such ability would give me a perfect tool to avoid the most common and boring systems and eye-pick the most interesting ones at the same time, just by scrolling the map in all six directions.

Two important events happened after my arrival to Colonia.

First - I docked to Dove Enigma mega-ship. Since there is a cancer survivor in my closest family, docking here was really emotional. The ship, the expedition and the whole story behind it. Amazing. I'm sure it did, does and will do a lot of good things to cancer awareness among the people.

Second - When I was selling my exploration data, after 6 or 7 of almost 30 pages I reached 300M Cr of exploration income and became an Elite! To be honest - I thought that it would take more time and more effort. My mileage doesn't even reach 200 kylies so far! No ELW farming, no focusing on ELW-rich systems, lots of almost worthless (in terms of credits) non-sequence/carbon/neutron/white dwarf systems scanning. But it's nice anyway. Although I don't feel like Elite at all.

Cmdr Antarxis presented much more ambitious approach on our way back to Colonia. When I was jumping light from here to there, he installed the chiggy-o-meter on his AspX and did a second try to break the speed record. After a short warm-up and another dozens of water worlds found, he pushed the throttle as far ahead as he could and started the sprint. He was jumping like a madman. I heard that some stars changed their positions just to not appear on his way. To not feel his rage the original positive commitment quickly turned into. I don't remember who told me that, but since I know Antarxis for ages, I'm sure it must be true. The disappointment came at the vicinity of Colonia - chiggy-o-meter showed a modest 0.5 ch. And Antarxis was so exhausted that was almost unconscious for nearly three days after arrival. I don't really know how did he manage to dock to Dove Enigma with no ships destroyed and no ground crew members killed.

When he finally woke up, we met at the bar to summarize the trip to Ishtar.

The most important conclusion was related to Chiggy. We agreed that some kind of magic and/or alien (Thargoid?) science must be involved. It's just not possible for a real, living, not genetically modified human being to travel at 1 ch and not die of exhaustion in several hours. This conclusion and several beers definitely made Antarxis feel much better. We also agreed that we're leaving chiggy-o-meter in a safe-deposit in one of Colonia's banks. Just to make sure it will not tempt us again. For heaven's sake, we are too old for speed records! And we are living, unmodified humans, so we have no chances to break them after all.

We also decided about the next stage of our journey. We postpone the original idea to go back to Ishtar and then via Mare Desperationis to Beagle Point. Instead we chose the black holes/white dwarfs/neutron stars field several kylies south from Colonia. Short distance, slow pace, with regard to our age and Antarxis' condition after the speed record attempt. Hopefully we will manage to discover some crazy Stellar Forge productions. Something like Elmo's Highway or Pealagan Dubha.

...to be continued

Hans v Martell · Feb 17, 2018

Congrats for the unexpectedly gained Elite status! Thumbs up and o7

LifesAJourney · Feb 24, 2018

Intermission - We wanna have fun!

OK, exploring the Galaxy is really cool and we do love it. But as a wise man once said - you cannot live your life eating only caviar and drinking champagne. For the sake of sanity you must sometimes switch to hot-dogs and coke. Antarxis and I switched exploration routine to a small, low-gravity, icy planet located in a beautiful nebula near Colonia. We met there, deployed our SRVs and did things old men should probably not do.

That was really funny! We quickly found out what thousands other Commanders knew for years - SRVs, with their high-torque electric 6x6 powertrain are perfect for ice-racing! Making WRC-like donuts around another SRV, a ship or whatever is a piece of cake. Their shock resistance makes them almost impossible to destroy assuming the driver thinks a bit from time to time (and docks the ship for quick repairs). Thruster-powered jumps, crazy rolls from the slope, in-air crash-tests. Once I stuck upside-down under Antarxis' ship and he tried to push me out from there using his SRV and trying to hit me precisely enough... I laughed almost to death.

So, regardless of how serious explorer you are, we strongly recommend doing a break from time to time and just make some fun. Even as dumb as doing donuts in your SRV.

Hans v Martell · Feb 24, 2018

... things old men should probably not do.

Old men should not have fun?

For the first time Sir, I seriously disagree!

-

Just kidding. I was sure you weren't that kind of guy.

... we strongly recommend doing a brake from time to time and just make some fun.

Yeah, that's the spirit

RolloTreadway · Feb 24, 2018

LifesAJourney said:
So, regardless of how serious explorer you are, we strongly recommend doing a brake from time to time and just make some fun. Even as dumb as doing donuts in your SRV.

Absolutely! I always take some time with my SRV to break up a long journey. It's fun to just get out there and feel the wind in your hair, so to speak, not that there really is any wind, not that I really have any hair left. And of course, come Tuesday, the planets are going to be a whole lot nicer.

antarxis · Feb 27, 2018

Don't stop me now 'cause I'm having a good time!

They say: a picture is worth a thousand words.
How many these make...?

As I soon forgot what actually Cmdr LifesAJourney had asked me for, I just turned my SRV and drove away.
o7

LifesAJourney · Apr 1, 2018

Stage 5 - Black Holes, Neutrons and White Dwarfs hunt

There is a nice place not far from Colonia with loooots of non-sequence stars. I'd run across it on my way from Bubble to Colonia and promised myself that I would return there in the future.

This area had been explored by many Commanders before. Their search resulted in two very nice POIs that were added to the EDSM map - Elmo's Highway or Pealagan Dubha. Really extraordinary combinations of stellar bodies. We used these POI as our waypoints to establish a start point for our search. The area looked very, very promising.

Before we left Colonia, I'd repainted my AspX. And guess what I found maybe 10 jumps after leaving the dock? A gas giant in exactly the same colour as my ship! Ain't that cute?

We got to appointed area and started exploring.

And at first it was really intriguing. Tons of BHs, Ns and WDs in many multi-star configuration.

There were also many systems containing more common star types, but offering some rare impressions - red giants, O-class stars and others.

But quite quickly it turned out that the area was probably too close to civilization and there were too many Commanders before us exploring. When we run into some heavier, more interesting system, there was 99% probability that it had been explored and tagged before. Well, our chances to find something worth creating a POI suddenly and dramatically decreased.

So after several hundreds of jumps in total we turned back to Colonia, sold exploration data and decided to go West, to remote parts of the Galaxy. The plan assumes proceeding West to the rim, turning right, heading North and eventually reaching Mare Desperationis, which we'd been so close to when we were visiting Ishtar. Hopefully more remote and therefore less explored areas will reward us with many interesting findings.

...to be continued

Hans v Martell · Apr 2, 2018

I do happen to know the meaning of "kurwa"

Keep exploring (and reporting), CMDRs! o7