Well, I’ve never done any exploring, read a lot about it but must confess I didn’t really get it. I just got into engineering, so I could do the engineering grind and build out a haz res beast, as combat was more my scene... or so I thought....
I go to read about the Palin mission - fly 5000 light years from home - and at first was apoplectic with fury: 5000 light years? FIVE? Five actual THOUSANDS??? what kind of game is this? What kind of pointless grindy torture??.... I had a lie down and a little bit of a cry.
But, I wanted those G5 dirty thrusters. I had to have them. How ironic that the one module that makes a ship so agile in action must be obtained by such a serene and glacial pursuit as ‘exploring’..... I just had to grit my teeth and bear it...
So I got into the stellar map and set course due galactic centre, to the Trifid sector.
Here are some notes from a newbie explorer:
1. Space is big. Really big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist, but that’s just peanuts to space.
Ok 5000 ly is over 100 jumps in my stripped down g5 fsd Aspx. Over 100... I have been playing ED for a long while now and anything over 8 jumps seemed like the farthest eternal distance to me.
2. After 30 jumps I was close to tears. My soul had left my body.
3. Spansh.co.uk seems like a good idea suddenly. I’d read about Road to Riches. I decided to give it a go to add some challenge and something to do. I decided to seek out waterworlds and high metal content worlds to get a bit of credits whilst travelling. I did a few planetary discovery scans. Messed them up. Made some decent dosh though.
4. One third distance or so. Getting the hang of the planetary scanning. Am now visiting more planets than doing actual long range jumps to grind out the 5000 light years. (Did I mention it was 5000 light years....?!). This is slightly addictive.
5. I am in nothing. There is nothing around me for miles and miles and ages and ages. Even in real time, I am now an hour or so away, at least, from star ports and bounty hunting and any action. I feel oddly nervous, but this is dissolving slowly into the first whiffs of a zen like comfort.
6. Space is big. Etc. Breath.
7. The sky is changing. In the distance I can see colourful blobs of ink, or watercolour stains. They are beautiful. I realise these are nebulae and I am heading towards them. They are actual physical things. I now look in wonder at the night sky in elite with a new found respect. It’s not just a star field picture, but an actual place where I can see something in the distance and then fly to it. Wow.
8. I have been going at this for several evenings. I am two thirds of the anticipated distance. I am getting slightly better at planetary scanning. I have avoided a few disastrous fuel scoops and managed not to totally cook my ship. The nebulae up close look amazing. I am wishing now that I could control the external cameras like I see on those beautiful videos I see on youtube. How the do I control the cameras? Aarrghhhh. Why is it all so difficult, opaque and complex? I am missing out on my holiday snaps here...!
9. I am now detouring to see some sights. Palin’s unlock can wait a little bit. It’s beautiful out here. It’s a strange feeling. If I even wanted to get back to my normal Elite routine it’d be halfway into next week before I could even think about it. What kind of game works like this...?
10. Somehow, a message has reached me from Professor Palin. He knew where I was even, though I’m 5000 light years away. Respect. Must be a clever chap. At 4000 he could at least have said ‘alright mate here’s the invite, I can save you 1000’.
11.i am halfway. I’ve reached my goal. I can go further. But then I’d take longer to go back. I have a massive uncontrollable headrush of scale and distance. This is only a game, I tell myself. Peanuts. Chemists. Mind boggling.
12.I feel the need to turn around and head back, but now I think I’d like to stay a while. But do I really want to? It took me four evenings to get here...! But it’s so quiet and peaceful and I actually think I like this. I think back to articles and posts from people visiting Sagittarius A and Beagle’s Point, and saying things like ‘I’ve been out of the bubble for months’. Months! Jeepers. But now it doesn’t seem so odd, actually, it seems faintly appealing.
13.I am on the route home. I remember reading something about module health before I left and that’s why I installed an AFMU. I cast my eye over the module health.... wowsers...! 72% on some of them. Must have really ballsed up some of the eternal fuel scooping on the way. Need to figure out how to use it... what if some of the modules die on me? I’m literally miles from home... I’ll be absolutely gutted if my ship dies on me now. By my estimation I am over 100 million the richer in mapping cartographics. As long as I get back that is...
14.I log in and decide to try my hand at the cameras again. Finally getting the hang of it and the controls. At last, progress. Hang on... Christ there’s a star right next to me...! Overheating.! I survive. Almost ballsed up the entire trip by fiddling with cameras and forgot I was parked outside a big red star.... close call.
15.Am nearing the home stretch... ‘only’ 20 jumps to go. I see something about an ‘anomaly’. Decide to investigate and find lots of floating star shaped things in deep space. Whoah....! What is this? I get scared and decide to leave. Is this something thargoid-y? Can’t get killed now... I have so much to lose!
16.finally I enter a populated system, triumphant, my home system. I request docking and it all feels a bit weird. I can remember how to dock and use thrusters. Although it’s been a while. I land. I take photos of the moment. I sell my data and make 150million credits and get some first visit notices (I think). This is good, right?
Well. What a trip that was. Now that it’s over, I kind of miss it. But I also realise it’s madness. But I miss it and respect it for its purity. But it’s still mad. My mind boggles....
I have my unlock to the prof. I think to the next engineer to close out some of the remaining grinds.
But my mind has been wondering to fitting out an engineered Krait Phantom and to far off places.....
I go to read about the Palin mission - fly 5000 light years from home - and at first was apoplectic with fury: 5000 light years? FIVE? Five actual THOUSANDS??? what kind of game is this? What kind of pointless grindy torture??.... I had a lie down and a little bit of a cry.
But, I wanted those G5 dirty thrusters. I had to have them. How ironic that the one module that makes a ship so agile in action must be obtained by such a serene and glacial pursuit as ‘exploring’..... I just had to grit my teeth and bear it...
So I got into the stellar map and set course due galactic centre, to the Trifid sector.
Here are some notes from a newbie explorer:
1. Space is big. Really big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist, but that’s just peanuts to space.
Ok 5000 ly is over 100 jumps in my stripped down g5 fsd Aspx. Over 100... I have been playing ED for a long while now and anything over 8 jumps seemed like the farthest eternal distance to me.
2. After 30 jumps I was close to tears. My soul had left my body.
3. Spansh.co.uk seems like a good idea suddenly. I’d read about Road to Riches. I decided to give it a go to add some challenge and something to do. I decided to seek out waterworlds and high metal content worlds to get a bit of credits whilst travelling. I did a few planetary discovery scans. Messed them up. Made some decent dosh though.
4. One third distance or so. Getting the hang of the planetary scanning. Am now visiting more planets than doing actual long range jumps to grind out the 5000 light years. (Did I mention it was 5000 light years....?!). This is slightly addictive.
5. I am in nothing. There is nothing around me for miles and miles and ages and ages. Even in real time, I am now an hour or so away, at least, from star ports and bounty hunting and any action. I feel oddly nervous, but this is dissolving slowly into the first whiffs of a zen like comfort.
6. Space is big. Etc. Breath.
7. The sky is changing. In the distance I can see colourful blobs of ink, or watercolour stains. They are beautiful. I realise these are nebulae and I am heading towards them. They are actual physical things. I now look in wonder at the night sky in elite with a new found respect. It’s not just a star field picture, but an actual place where I can see something in the distance and then fly to it. Wow.
8. I have been going at this for several evenings. I am two thirds of the anticipated distance. I am getting slightly better at planetary scanning. I have avoided a few disastrous fuel scoops and managed not to totally cook my ship. The nebulae up close look amazing. I am wishing now that I could control the external cameras like I see on those beautiful videos I see on youtube. How the do I control the cameras? Aarrghhhh. Why is it all so difficult, opaque and complex? I am missing out on my holiday snaps here...!
9. I am now detouring to see some sights. Palin’s unlock can wait a little bit. It’s beautiful out here. It’s a strange feeling. If I even wanted to get back to my normal Elite routine it’d be halfway into next week before I could even think about it. What kind of game works like this...?
10. Somehow, a message has reached me from Professor Palin. He knew where I was even, though I’m 5000 light years away. Respect. Must be a clever chap. At 4000 he could at least have said ‘alright mate here’s the invite, I can save you 1000’.
11.i am halfway. I’ve reached my goal. I can go further. But then I’d take longer to go back. I have a massive uncontrollable headrush of scale and distance. This is only a game, I tell myself. Peanuts. Chemists. Mind boggling.
12.I feel the need to turn around and head back, but now I think I’d like to stay a while. But do I really want to? It took me four evenings to get here...! But it’s so quiet and peaceful and I actually think I like this. I think back to articles and posts from people visiting Sagittarius A and Beagle’s Point, and saying things like ‘I’ve been out of the bubble for months’. Months! Jeepers. But now it doesn’t seem so odd, actually, it seems faintly appealing.
13.I am on the route home. I remember reading something about module health before I left and that’s why I installed an AFMU. I cast my eye over the module health.... wowsers...! 72% on some of them. Must have really ballsed up some of the eternal fuel scooping on the way. Need to figure out how to use it... what if some of the modules die on me? I’m literally miles from home... I’ll be absolutely gutted if my ship dies on me now. By my estimation I am over 100 million the richer in mapping cartographics. As long as I get back that is...
14.I log in and decide to try my hand at the cameras again. Finally getting the hang of it and the controls. At last, progress. Hang on... Christ there’s a star right next to me...! Overheating.! I survive. Almost ballsed up the entire trip by fiddling with cameras and forgot I was parked outside a big red star.... close call.
15.Am nearing the home stretch... ‘only’ 20 jumps to go. I see something about an ‘anomaly’. Decide to investigate and find lots of floating star shaped things in deep space. Whoah....! What is this? I get scared and decide to leave. Is this something thargoid-y? Can’t get killed now... I have so much to lose!
16.finally I enter a populated system, triumphant, my home system. I request docking and it all feels a bit weird. I can remember how to dock and use thrusters. Although it’s been a while. I land. I take photos of the moment. I sell my data and make 150million credits and get some first visit notices (I think). This is good, right?
Well. What a trip that was. Now that it’s over, I kind of miss it. But I also realise it’s madness. But I miss it and respect it for its purity. But it’s still mad. My mind boggles....
I have my unlock to the prof. I think to the next engineer to close out some of the remaining grinds.
But my mind has been wondering to fitting out an engineered Krait Phantom and to far off places.....
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