My Grand Tour- Some Observations on Exploring

[Sapyx]

I determined some time ago that I'd head off on a grand tour as soon as 2.2 dropped. So after fitting some passenger compartments to my old Orca, the Queen of Arexack, and doing a couple of passenger runs, I re-confirmed my decision. So on the 1st of November 3302, after cashing in my last remaining uncashed CG (that cargo one down at Gyvatices) and with no outstanding missions, warrants or bounties, I switched ships and set off on a route I had been planning for a long time.

My planned route includes:
- VY Canis Majoris
- Eta Carinae
- The Eta Carina Nebula
- One of the stars with an Earthlike listed in the List of Earth-likes database as having "incomplete information". It's roughly on the route between Eta Carina and the Core. Roughly.
- The Eeshorps Nebula. For no particular reason.
- The Great Annihilator and Sag A
- Colonia and surrounding settlements
- The various outposts planted between Colonia and the Bubble
- Another "incomplete information" Earth-like system on the route home
- Home, hopefully in time for 2.3

My chariot: the Erebus, an Asp with a 41 LY Engineered-up jump range. Lightly armed, shielded. Two AMFUs but no dune buggy. Already used up half the original AMFU ammo while carelessly AFKing while jumping.

I should point out that I anticipate a slow trip. I'm not psychologically capable of pure honk-scoop-jump travelling. I've got to stop and explore every star I visit, especially if it's Untagged. I'll tag large HMCs, WW, Ammonia, ELW, and anything I think might be in the Terraformable Zone. And if the system is mostly tagged except for an iceball 7000 Ls away, I'll probably fly out and tag the iceball, jst so there's some evidence planted that Sapyx Was Here.

Week 1: passage to VY Can Maj. Pretty much as expected: the entire VY Can Maj flight corridor is mostly explored-out. Found an Earth-like (already tagged but was not yet in the database) not far from VY. Arrived at VY and stayed long enough to figure out a solution to the problem many long-range passenger-carriers seem to have had in trying to find the "Gargantuan" tourist beacon there (I posted it in this thread).

Week 2: across the Palin Line (for my first time ever) and on to Eta Carina. In real life, the Eta Carina Nebula surrounds the star Eta Carinae, but in ED, they're 1000 light-years apart, with the star closer to Sol than the nebula. Here's the interesting thing, though: because I wasn't flying a direct line from Sol "tourist route" any more, just about every single star I landed in was Unexplored. From the time I left VY until arriving at Eta Carina, I saw one other CMDR's tags. I even found three untagged Earth-likes within one 24-hour period, about halfway to EC; the only untagged ELWs I have found so far this trip.

EC itself isn't much to write home about, unless you've got a thing for giant blue unstable stars that are likely to explode at any moment. So, on to the nebula.

As I said, EC and the ECN are separated by 1000 LY, but they're still visually in a line. That meant that I was back onto a "tourist trail". And yep, you guessed it, once again, pretty much every single star I visited was already tagged to the max, or at least partly tagged. So the moral of this story is: you young explorers hoping to set off and make your mark on the galaxy: don't visit the tourist spots, don't aim for anything interesting at all. Aim for nothing. And when you get there, you can then aim for interesting things, and your path should still be largely untagged.

Week 3: In several places around and not far from the ECN, there are several "star rays". These are "beams" of in-real-life stars added to the ED database, picked up by deep-sky surveys that happened to be pointing at interesting things (such as nebulae). I spent some time hopping about these stars enroute, travelling down one of the beams, but every single IRL star I flew to had already been fully visited and tagged, some by multiple commanders. These beams apparently count as tourist attractions in themselves.

I did find one Earth-like near the nebula, but alas it had already been tagged and logged in the ELW database (Tr 14 Sector HR-W d1-13, for the curious). Nevertheless, a picture of it is warranted, as the view of the nebula from here is truly awesome.

I spotted a few isolated neutron stars in my travels (all already tagged, of course) and used them to good effect, boosting my jump range to about 170 LY. I used a neutron star hidden in one of the IRL "beam stars" near the nebula to boost me 160 LY away towards my next goal, and with that single jump I am already back in Untagged space. Coreward Ho!

 

[Whitmann]

Good luck and safe travels Cmdr. My grand tour also took in the Eta Carina Nebula - it's spectacular, isn't it?

 

[Yanick]

Good luck with your travels Commander.
Keep the pictures rolling in

 

[Sapyx]

Week 4 - I am now just over halfway between the ECN and the chosen destination of this leg, a system in the Blau Aec sector. It hasn't been a particularly interesting trip, as far as Earth-likes and other interesting sights goes. I've tagged one Earth-like, and found another which had already been tagged - how ironic, that the only other tagged system in 4000 LYs (besides a neutron star I popped into) is one of only two I found this leg with an Earth-like in it.

I'm beginning to wonder if sectors have built-in biases towards or against certain planet types. There was one sector I passed through, just after leaving the ECN, where giant ammonia worlds seemed to be in abundance - and I mean giant, over 16 earth-masses. One co-orbited with a gas giant, and the gas giant was actually smaller. I must have tagged nearly a dozen of them, but haven't seen one of those for the rest of the week. The Syralaei sector was completely devoid of Earthlikes, and even large terraformable HMCs were kind of rare. It seemed to be system after system of tiny dragon-spittle worldlets not even worth scanning.

Passed through one interesting system: Syralaei NM-M d7-25. It has five charcoal-black planets in very close orbits around a hot star. The two pairs of co-orbitals are the most curious. The first has rings at all kinds of odd angles, while the second has two small moons thrown into the mix. The orbital map of this second pair of planets looks like this:

The ring and two small moons are pretty normal, but not in proximity to that co-orbiting planet - it's relatively huge by comparison. Anybody living on tiny Moon B would be grateful that the path of Planet 5 doesn't actually follow that orbit, since Planet 4 co-orbits and wobbles away in the opposite direction when the planet is over there, making planet 5's orbit relative to 4 circular. But still, that's way too close to be "realistically" stable, long-term. This system is surely heading for a huge planetary-billiards smash-up in the astronomically near future.

My only other observation on this leg is my ship. It's deteriorating badly. I've never taken the Asp out for so long between servicing, and I'm usually pretty fastidious with paint upkeep. I've beam-surfed half a dozen neutron stars and gone out to visit more than one star more than 100,000 Ls away. I've also inattentively rammed into stars seven times, enough to blast my hull and powerplant down to 93% (two AMFUs are adequate to keep the rest of the ship at 100%). I guess all that rough-riding adds up on the paintwork. I hadn't realised these severe paintwork damage models had been added back in. I've lost a few more flecks since this was taken, so I think I haven't seen the Erebus at her worst yet.

 

[+vlas+]

I've also wondered about the planetary bias per sector. I was recently traveling through a sector in which I was finding lots of life bearing gas giants, and since entering a new one, I am now finding tons of high metal content planets with geysers. Though still haven't been able to see an actual geyser.

 

[Sapyx]

Week 5 - and I have arrived at my next waypoint, the Blau Aec DW-T d4-2 system. I chose it as it was (a) nowhere near anything significant or touristy, and (b) because it's one of the systems listed in the Earthlike Worlds Database as having "incomplete" data.

I'm glad I came here. Stars are sparse, but Earth-likes are by far more abundant out here than I've seen anywhere else. Not counting the target system (where I knew beforehand I would find a pre-tagged ELW) I've found five untagged ELWs (I just said "four" in the ELW thread I've just posted; I just found a fifth one ten minutes ago). That beats my previous sector record by, um, three, and I haven't left the sector yet. It certainly lends more weight to the theory that some sectors are more biased towards the generation of Earth-likes than others.

Also in this sector are a few white dwarfs. I've never seen procedurally-generated white dwarf systems before; I had assumed that all white dwarfs were either secondary stars or hand-coded primaries in the Bubble. Pleased to see I was wrong. Of course, given the reports of extra hazardousness in trying to superscoop one, I will eschew that aspect of them and go to neutron stars for my superscooping. But the white dwarfs and neutron stars seem to have been what's caused others to come to this lonely stretch of space, as most of those are already tagged, and by more than one CMDR.

Now I am in two minds. Should I continue with my original route (the next waypoint is the Eeshorps Nebula) or should I make a quick detour to the nearest starport to lock in these discoveries? "Quick" and "nearest" are both relative terms, of course; the nearest Jaques Highway pitstop is in Gru Hypue, 7500 LYs away; it would take a week for me to get there at current travel speeds and another week to get back on course. It would nearly be quicker to go all the way back the the Bubble.

I have no additional damage to report (93% hull/powerplant), though the paint is a bit more chipped, so that's not really a contributing factor.

OK, pics. What pics shall I add this week? I don't have much this time around, except some pics of the Earth-likes. Here's my favourite of them:

This region is far enough above the galactic disc that the sky is distinctly asymmetric. Life on this world would be... odd. One pole points almost right at the Core, so the night sky of that half of the planet would be ablaze with light. The other hemisphere would have the relatively dim, dark view of the sky out towards the Bubble. Not that anyone on this world would be living too close to the poles by choice; 'tis a cold one.

 

[marx]

Now I am in two minds. Should I continue with my original route (the next waypoint is the Eeshorps Nebula) or should I make a quick detour to the nearest starport to lock in these discoveries? "Quick" and "nearest" are both relative terms, of course; the nearest Jaques Highway pitstop is in Gru Hypue, 7500 LYs away; it would take a week for me to get there at current travel speeds and another week to get back on course. It would nearly be quicker to go all the way back the the Bubble.

I guess it depends: did you find anything that you absolutely must have your tag on? If you don't, then odds are very good they'll still be yours when you turn your data in. Reports of ELW-s being first discovered by someone but later tagged by others are fortunately quite rare.

As for Earth-likes being more frequent in some sectors: yes, that's a long-standing theory, and it's probably true, but it has never been proven nor disproven yet. To do that, we'd have to survey several sectors in different regions of the galaxy, and note down the ratio of systems having ELW-s and those that don't. Currently, Chiggy and Col. Frost have been surveying a sub-sector in the core, and even that has been taking months. I'd say that while we don't know for certain, odds are still good that some sectors have a higher frequency of Earth-likes - if for nothing else, then because they might have more stars around which conditions are more favourable for ELW-s.

Oh, and nice Asp skin!

 

[Sapyx]

I've decided to take the extra detour and cash them in. One more star-crash convinced me that maybe it's time for a proper powerplant repair (it's down to 90%). I can also restock on AMFU ammo without using mats, and restock on heatsink ammo as well.

I'm also figuring that it'll be a bit faster, because of (a) higher density of neutron stars (already had my first triple-neurton surf) and (b) since I'm crossing the Sag A line, I'm more likely to find stars already tagged, that I won't feel obliged to take time scanning and tagging. I guess we shall see.

 

[Sapyx]

Week 6 - And I've arrived, as predicted, safe and sound at Gigarin Gate. I'm pretty sure that's supposed to be spelled "Gagarin Gate", but anyhoo. I've spent most of the day locking in my Earth-likes and writing up my ELW findings in the ELW thread, while saving the bulk of my scan stockpile for any exploration CGs which might (hopefully) be happening if/when I return to the Bubble... unless Jaques decides to have one when I'm near there.

I made some comment on my route, and on the "clustering" of my ELW discoveries before, both here and in the ELW thread. Sometimes, it's easier to show things on a map.

The red line is my route. It's pretty much as planned, except for the last leg being the detour discussed last week.

The blue line is the direct line between the Bubble and Sag A, which has lots of already-explored stars so is therefore to be avoided. As I expected would happen, when the red line crosses the blue line, I encountered numerous systems that had already been scanned and tagged by others - something I practically never saw otherwise since leaving the Eta Carina sector.

The straight green line is the direct line to Colonia. The wobbly green line that winds around it is the join-the-dots route between the newly established waystations between the Bubble and Colonia. Again, this region of space is to be avoided as many stars within it will have been already scanned.

You can see the "four clusters" of my ELW findings clearly on the map. System scans of the ELWs are in the ELW thread, but let's add some more flavour pics.

Here's planet BLAU AEC VY-V c4-1 B 3; as I mentioned in the ELW thread, it could be just optical illusion or coincidence, but it seems to have a higher land-to-water than any other proc-genned planet I've seen; only Mars has smaller oceans, and Mars is hand-crafted. Planet 2, the co-orbiting HMC, is photobombing in the background.

Oddness of the week: Here's a funky, highly oblate gas giant I spotted simply by its odd shape from the system map. I know, I know, "oblate gas giants are old news". And yes, the Metallic planet that's egg-shaped recently posted elsewhere on the forum is much more spectacular. But I hadn't seen a planet this far out of round before.

And finally, here's the poor Erebus, zero paintwork, zero integrity, touched down at Gigarin. I have since done repairs on both. Tempting as it may be to keep the scrath'n'dented paintjob, it's worth remembering that paint and integrity degrade at the same rate. So, while you cannot see your Integrity damage until you dock, the paint damage is a visual representation of what the Integrity damage would be.

 

[Sapyx]

I knew I forgot to mention something.

Due to a mis-reading of the list of Colonia waystations, I happened to set course for Gru Hypue KS-T d3-3, instead of KS-T d3-31. KS-T d3-3 is an entirely uninteresting system (two stars, no planets) but the view of the Gru Hypue Nebula from there is... rather interesting.

"Horsehead Nebula" is already taken. So how about the "My Little Pony Head Nebula"?

 

[iain666]

Sea levels that low on an earth like doesn't seem to come up all that often.

I did see this one fairly recently

 

[marx]

For the record, the base's name ought to be Gagarin Gate, not Gigarin. Frontier have just messed up there.
Also, nice screenshots! I especially like the travel route comparison map. (Except the Gigarin part on it. Grrr.)

Oh, and the thing with Earth-likes is that you'd need some time to pass until the night side comes into view. While unlikely, it could still be that the other side will have more seas than the light side you're currently seeing.

 

[Sapyx]

Week 7 - I am almost back on track from the point where I made the major detour. I'm about 2/3 of the way from Gi(a)garin Gate to the Eeshorps Nebula. The route flies right past several other nebula, all in a line, and the Greae Phio and Eeshorks nebulae are both sitting right across my path ahead, so I have detoured long enough to spend a couple of days at each, then a few more at Eeshorps.

Earth-likes: another dry spell, though I did find one two days ago, un-Tagged and sitting pretty much directly on the Sag A Line, which I thought was unusual. Didn't notice as many Tagged stars crossing the Line this time, perhaps because I crossed it quite low Down.

I did find several neutron stars, and my first procedurally-generated Black Holes. One of the BH systems comprised the primary Hole, two neutron stars and nothing else; one of the neutron stars was close enough to the Hole that I could have easily warped into the system in the middle of the cone; I understand this is still a situation not covered by the recent patch that prevented most jumping-into-cones situations.

Pictures: I suppose the mandatory black hole pic has to be included. Black holes in high-density sectors look much cooler than they do out in the Bubble.

And here it is again, this time from just 50km away - about as close as you can get to a Hole these days before they start overheating you.

Not terribly much else. I'm well into the region of the galaxy where the weird "checkerboard stars" can occur. Here is an example, spotted in the Floarps sector. I had previously thought that this occurred at the four-point boundary between actual sectors, but all four quadrants here were in Floarps. The two "bright" quadrants here are rich in procedurally-generated B-class stars, the "dark" quadrants have few such stars. Each "cube" seemed to be about 150 LY a side, which presumably correlates to the 160 LY cubes calculated to be the "e"-groupings of stars in Jackie Silver's thread on star-name decoding; sure enough, all the B-class stars I clicked on in the bright quadrants had final prefix "e".

 

[+vlas+]

Very interesting pattern. Thanks.

 

[mikelowndes]

I assume FD know about this? They should 'smooth' it if possible - or are they leaving the galaxy 'as-is' regardless?

 

[Chronverge]

Yeah, I came across those star cluster blocks on my way to Colonia too. My immersion levels were drastically reduced once they came into sight.

 

[Sapyx]

It's been noted in many threads previously, which is why I wasn't too surprised when I saw it. Given at least some of the stars in these sectors are all Tagged-up by now, there's not much they can do to "smooth" it out in terms of deleting stars near the corners of the cubes - they could maybe add more stars to the "dark" sectors, but even then I think the galactic cubes would still be visible. In hindsight, they could have tweaked the algorithm to concentrate the stars towards the centres of the cubes, so that they looked more spherical, like a globular star cluster - but it's too late for that now. The only other alternative is to not make B-stars visible from such a long way away, or to make the other star types more visible, but then there'd be all sorts of trouble with the visible-from-Earth skybox - all the blue stars disappearing and a bunch of bright new stars suddenly appearing. So I'd say we're stuck with it.

My character is religious (he's from Arexack) so he's not phased by it; to him, it's simply more evidence that the universe was Designed, rather than having been formed purely by random chance. But he's not sure exactly what message the Creator is trying to send here, other than "I like cubes".

 

[Sapyx]

Week 8 - Arrived in the Eeshorps Nebula sector, and let me tell you, the place is dry. By which I mean, there is a surprising dearth of water worlds and, correspondingly, Earth-likes. I spent three days jumping around the nebula, looking for them. I found bucketloads of terraformable HMCs and two or three Ammonia worlds, but only a grand total of three water worlds and one Earth-like - and I found the Earth-like after giving up, and was on my way out of the sector, so the view of the Eeshorps Nebula from there is less than spectacular.

Just north of Eeshorps is the great Dryoea Flyao neutron field, spanning 1000 LYs between Eeshorps and the Core - the first such field I have encountered in my travels. Since my goal is exploring-while-travelling and not neutron farming (I'm pretty sure I'll reach Elite in Exploration once all this is over, whether I neutron-farm or not), I'm not stopping to scan everything - but I am collecting a "full set" of carbon star scans as I pass through. I'm not aiming straight for Sag A, but rather, the Great Annihilator - Sag A's less-famous twin baby brothers: two supermassive black holes that orbit each other. I'm still 5000 LY away from it at the moment, so unless I do a lot less sightseeing than I've been doing lately, I'm not going to get there within a week.

I wasn't the first to visit this sector, as I decided on my way out to visit some of the h-series systems in the sector (mostly blue supergiants, Wolf-Rayets and large black holes) and fund that all but one of the ones I visited had already been Tagged. Those were the only Tags I saw in the sector, however.

OK, pics of the week. First, the Earth-like, and not having seen one all week, 'twas a sight for space-mad eyes. That's the Eeshorps Nebula away in the distance, above the system's star, behind all those B-class background stars.

This was my view jumping into one system: there's a "hot Jupiter" Class V giant sitting in real close orbit around the nearby secondary star; it had visibly moved in the time between deciding to take the shot, and taking the shot. It's not Mitterand-Hollow-fast, but it's not bad for a proc-genned speedy planet.

 

[Sapyx]

Week 9 - and quite a busy week it's been.

First stop for this week, the Great Annihilator. Found two more Earth-likes on this stretch of the route, one just outside of Eeshorps sector and one just a couple jumps away from the GA. Also stumbled upon a proc-genned planetary nebula, one of the purple-blue ones, so I stopped for some scenery before moving on.

Enroute, I was contacted by CMDR Marx, who'd read in my previous post that I was heading for the Core and hoped to meet up with me there.

The Great Annihilator. Talk about a triumph of marketing over substance. It wasn't as impressive as I'd hoped, or as the name implied: two slightly-bigger-than-average black holes (198 and 66 solar masses), 200,000 Ls apart, with a few protostars and planets scattered about. Still, being a much less popular tourist stop than Sag A, there were plenty of nearby stars not yet explored.

Meanwhile, Marx had arrived in the Core and had even found an Untagged Earth-like just 60 LY away from Sag A that he was hoping we could dual-tag. I got there as quick as I could - I don't "do fast" very well - and made it in time. However, my scanner didn't seem to want to work while we were winged up and in the same system, so I don't know if I'm going to get to share the Tags. Which wouldn't really bother me, as it was Marx that did the hard work finding the place.

On to Sag A, and for some more screenshots. Most people reading this thread have probably already been there, so no need for me to go on about it.

Most of the stars within easy jump range of Sag A have already been explored and Tagged, long ago - as have many of the stars on the two main routes to Sag A, the lines from Sol and from Colonia. As I was heading out bound for Colonia, I found lots of tags up to 100 LY away, even given the high density of stars here in the Inner Core, so I decided to fly up 60 LY before heading across. Lo and behold, no more tagged systems. I've made reasonable progress since then, and I'm currently slightly less than halfway between Sag A and Colonia. I do have one planned detour to stop at on the way.

Just after leaving Sag A yesterday, I had a moment of inattention: I stopped at refuelling distance and went AFK, not realising I was just a smidge too close. Came back and my heat was at 104%, with modules slowly going into meltdown. I pulled out and my modules seemed to be down to about 80% damage on average, some (fortunately the powerplant) seemed barely affected while a couple of others were down to 30%. I have two AMFUs on board and I completely drained them both undertaking repairs. I also used up all my vanadium restocking the AMFUs; I did manage to fully repair, but now one AMFU is completely drained and the second is down to 1000 repair points. Sure hope I don't have too many more inattentive moments before arriving at Jaques.

I had already typed a concluding sentence, "And no further Earth-likes to report", but just now, sensors have picked up another. So I'm going to have to sign off soon so I have time to finish up scanning and logging this new planet properly. A nice Christmas gift for me.

So, the pics for this week.

First, I really like this view of the Earth-like I found in the Dryoea Flyao sector. The three prominent background nebulae are, clockwise from left, the Eeshorps, Greae Phoea and Mynoaw nebulae.

Next, I stumbled upon a procedurally-generated planetary nebula in the Dryio Prao sector. Alas, the neutron star at its heart was already tagged (the only previously tagged system I saw on this leg) but I could still snag some pics from the surrounding stars; here it is from just a couple of LYs away.

So, the Great Annihilator isn't much for views (though with a few planets and protostars about, I'm sure someone with more artistic skill than me can do something interesting with them), but you can get screenshots of two hole-distortions on the screen at once; not many places you can do that. This is the view from "behind" the smaller one, looking back at the pair of them. Thae one on the left with the red companion star in the middle of the ""eye" is the larger of the two.

Next, here's CMDR Marx and I at the Earth-like we'd (hopefully jointly) tagged. Marx is in the Courier.

On to Sag A, we have the two of us appreciating the view of the tourist beacon planted there. At least this beacon is easier to find than VY Can Maj.

And finally, here's one I literally just took, of the now much-worse-fo-wear-looking Erebus in close orbit of the terraformable co-orbiting planet of the ELW I just found, with a nice view of an Earth-like-rise.

 

[Sapyx]

Week 10 - It's been a fairly slow week aboard the Erebus.

I did find one more Earth-like before arriving in the Colonia region: Kyloarph LI-S d4-5745. You can read about it in the post I made in the Earth-likes thread, but it's quite an odd-looking system to find an Earth-like in; it's definitely a cinematic "sci-fi planet".

I made one other stop off to view the hyper-weirdness of the Great Glowing Giant of Kyloall. You can read about this creepy place in this thread, where I contributed my images.

So I finally arrived in Colonia, and spent the next few days selling off much of my exploration data to the various non-anarchist factions that control the various planets in the Colonia region (an act which also finally earned me Elite Explorer rank). Also did a bit of casual mission-running for them and temporarily swapped out the AMFUs for cargo space and a space-buggy so I could go hunting for vanadium, which I'd completely used up on my way here. I think I've found enough mats to tide me over until I return to the bubble. I'm now on my way zig-zagging back Solwards, with my next stop the next outpost along the Colonia Road. Oddly enough, even though I'm following a pretty much straight line from Colonia to Boewnst KS-S c20-959, most of the systems I land in are still Untagged, including one Earth-like. I'm guessing this Road is still not a very well travelled one yet, or perhaps most of the people travelling the Road are taking the neutron star shortcuts and missing most of the stars in the region.

Anyhow, all I've got to add in terms of pics are the obligatory screenshots of Jaques and other Colonia stations, most of which have pretty impressive views from the landing platforms.