I've been grinding missions out for Sirius Corp to get my permit and decided to take a break and go out in the black for a bit. Scan some stuff, and turn the exploration data in at Procyon to help get my reputation up. So I hit a few White Dwarfs in the Bubble that I missed in my initial WD/Bubble expedition from a couple years ago, for easy credits. Jumped into the first WD system and was blown away at the new graphics--these look nothing like the last time I saw one!
I was pretty thorough in my old WD expedition and couldn't find any others. I zoomed out the map, and there it was. The Pleiades Nebula. I'm thinking, What? It's right there. Just a few hops out of the Bubble! I've visited Sag A* but not Maia? I've heard about it, of course, but for some reason I thought it was thousands of light-years out in the middle of nowhere.
So I set course for the nebula, honking and scooping the entire way, stopping to scan some HMC's too. Finally got to the nebula and scanned all the B-type stars, ending with Maia itself. Then a 300,000 Ls supercruise out to the black hole. As I was out there, I got a transmission from some NPC wanting me to take a 4M credit black box salvage mission, so I scanned the BH and jumped out to go searching. Jumped to a system 12 LY away. Dangit, the salvage location is 100,000 Ls away. Spent another good chunk of time supercruising.
I got out to the planet I'm supposed to search around, and couldn't see it. Got closer, and closer, and closer, and still couldn't see it. 0.5 Ls away and I can just barely pick out not one, but two little marbles orbiting each other. I'd never seen anything like it before, and I have about 170 KLY on my odometer. These were the smallest planets I've ever seen, maybe 1000 km in diameter each, orbiting each other at about the same distance. And their own orbit around the star was so fast that if I dropped to minimum throttle in supercruise, they got away from me pretty quickly.
I quickly found the salvage site and dropped out of supercruise. Holy mother of wreckage! I've done quite a few salvage missions lately but never seen this much junk lying around! I pulled up the contact list, located the black box, and made for it. Suddenly, "Ship Scan Detected." Usually that means pirates, and the AspX I was flying was not equipped for combat at all, so I got ready to high-tail out of there...but then I didn't see any ships on the sensors. So I calmed down a bit, deployed my scoop, and weaved through the wreckage towards the black box. "Ship Scan Detected." Still nothing on sensors. "Ship Scan Detected. Ship Scan Detected. Ship Scan Detected. Ship Scan Detected."
I have never been creeped out in this game before. I scooped the black box and instantly high-waked back to Maia for my reward. Checked the local mission board and saw a 1M credit job to ferry some weapons back to the Bubble, and took it. Still feeling creeped out and made best speed to get away from whatever was scanning me earlier, stopping only twice to scoop fuel.
A few minutes later I was back in civilized space. I dropped the weapons off (got promoted to Broker for doing so), went to Procyon to turn in my exploration data, and instantly ranked up to "Friendly" with Sirius Corp with about 3M credits worth of data. As I was coming into Davys Dock, I noticed Procyon B is a white dwarf. Lol. I was so amazed at the new white dwarf graphics before, and hadn't realized I'd been operating out of one for several days now...
Anyway, as someone who hadn't played the game in at least a year now until about last week, it looks like I'm back, and hooked again. And the Pleiades is weird, weird stuff. (No screenshots because I forgot how to take them lol.) I think I'll finish up my Sirius and Sol permits and maybe relocate to Maia for a while to see what's going on out there.
I was pretty thorough in my old WD expedition and couldn't find any others. I zoomed out the map, and there it was. The Pleiades Nebula. I'm thinking, What? It's right there. Just a few hops out of the Bubble! I've visited Sag A* but not Maia? I've heard about it, of course, but for some reason I thought it was thousands of light-years out in the middle of nowhere.
So I set course for the nebula, honking and scooping the entire way, stopping to scan some HMC's too. Finally got to the nebula and scanned all the B-type stars, ending with Maia itself. Then a 300,000 Ls supercruise out to the black hole. As I was out there, I got a transmission from some NPC wanting me to take a 4M credit black box salvage mission, so I scanned the BH and jumped out to go searching. Jumped to a system 12 LY away. Dangit, the salvage location is 100,000 Ls away. Spent another good chunk of time supercruising.
I got out to the planet I'm supposed to search around, and couldn't see it. Got closer, and closer, and closer, and still couldn't see it. 0.5 Ls away and I can just barely pick out not one, but two little marbles orbiting each other. I'd never seen anything like it before, and I have about 170 KLY on my odometer. These were the smallest planets I've ever seen, maybe 1000 km in diameter each, orbiting each other at about the same distance. And their own orbit around the star was so fast that if I dropped to minimum throttle in supercruise, they got away from me pretty quickly.
I quickly found the salvage site and dropped out of supercruise. Holy mother of wreckage! I've done quite a few salvage missions lately but never seen this much junk lying around! I pulled up the contact list, located the black box, and made for it. Suddenly, "Ship Scan Detected." Usually that means pirates, and the AspX I was flying was not equipped for combat at all, so I got ready to high-tail out of there...but then I didn't see any ships on the sensors. So I calmed down a bit, deployed my scoop, and weaved through the wreckage towards the black box. "Ship Scan Detected." Still nothing on sensors. "Ship Scan Detected. Ship Scan Detected. Ship Scan Detected. Ship Scan Detected."
I have never been creeped out in this game before. I scooped the black box and instantly high-waked back to Maia for my reward. Checked the local mission board and saw a 1M credit job to ferry some weapons back to the Bubble, and took it. Still feeling creeped out and made best speed to get away from whatever was scanning me earlier, stopping only twice to scoop fuel.
A few minutes later I was back in civilized space. I dropped the weapons off (got promoted to Broker for doing so), went to Procyon to turn in my exploration data, and instantly ranked up to "Friendly" with Sirius Corp with about 3M credits worth of data. As I was coming into Davys Dock, I noticed Procyon B is a white dwarf. Lol. I was so amazed at the new white dwarf graphics before, and hadn't realized I'd been operating out of one for several days now...
Anyway, as someone who hadn't played the game in at least a year now until about last week, it looks like I'm back, and hooked again. And the Pleiades is weird, weird stuff. (No screenshots because I forgot how to take them lol.) I think I'll finish up my Sirius and Sol permits and maybe relocate to Maia for a while to see what's going on out there.
