Guide / Tutorial Nutter’s explorers guide to the Galaxy

[Krunchie]

Well that sucked.
Did they remove the black hole lensing effect? The first one I approach, going in slowly waiting for the lensing effect to start showing, no effect, suddenly heat suddenly rises and I get dropped out of super cruise. Now I'm stuck, 98% hull. After managing to escape I'm down to 78%. That was the shortest exploration trip so far, 250ly out and time to turn back already
I didn't have that problem with my Asp Explorer. I got too close to a black hole in an Asp once and escaped without any damage. Difference in black holes? A weakness of the Anaconda? Maybe I got off lucky before?
I made it back, 130k gained from exploration, 932k repair bill for the hull damage. Exploring in an Anaconda is expensive.

When you got close to a black hole in an Asp, did you drop out of supercruise? Since I'm playing with orbit lines turned off, I'm always crashing into neutron stars and black holes. It ususally happens after coming back from galaxy map and preparing to jump, I throttle up forgetting the star is in front of me and I drop out at 0.13 ls from a star, but I have no problem escaping without any further damage . It happened 8 times, and 6 times I lost 1% hull dropping out of sc, the other 2 times I lost nothing.
Feels strange to loose so much hull in an Anaconda.

 

[NeilF]

There is one good advantage over the Asp, unobstructed screenshots by tilting the camera up 30 degrees. With the Asp it was always tricky to get into position with the camera tilted 90 degrees, plus you still have the 2 bars in the way. I should be able to get some lovely shots with the Anaconda.

Spoiler

View attachment 17090

I nearly faffed about getting an Anaconda just for this better screenshot ability. Bonkers isn't it that two months into the game we still can't get decent screenshots from it without a cockpit/HUD in the way.

 

[Varrag]

The 3rd spoiler left most hologram is also the one that's always used for Earth-Like, Ammonia and Water worlds (aka it must have that hologram to be one of those). When it's applied to gas giants it is to represent Class I, II and helium gas giants.

Thanks, I missed to notice the pattern there. Although I think that gas giants should always use the same typical hologram, no matter what class they are. Could be a bug with the HUD, maybe?

Did they remove the black hole lensing effect? The first one I approach, going in slowly waiting for the lensing effect to start showing, no effect, suddenly heat suddenly rises and I get dropped out of super cruise.

What they did was to apply more realistic approach to gravitational lensing for stellar mass black holes - apparently, they thoght that the old effect was too exaggarated for current safe distance to black holes where we can idle without overheating. Which is aproximately 0.15 Lss or ~50.000 km. It could be true, but on the other hand, there is no reason why we shouldn't be allowed to come MUCH closer. Sleeping black holes are colder than the space vacuum and do not emit radiation so all this "overheat near dormant BHs" business is kinda moot. At the end, we're stuck with this half-realistic, half-unrealistic black holes. I hope that they're going to fix it, one way or another.

 

[NeilF]

No but it seems to have been tweaked and toned down. Although here it's quite obvious, approaching a binary pair of black holes with total mass of about 20 solar:

View attachment 17133

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IORq2s4MIwY

The effect does seem wrong IMHO. At no point do you see curves/circles of light. ie: If a large star was directly behind the black hole, you'd see a halo around it. Slight to one side, you'd see an arc of light.

 

[Chris M Fortune]

I just got back from my maiden cruise and I have to say I am very disappointed in the way "rare" stars are treated. I found a Wolf-Rayet and Carbon star (not first dicoverer) and both an S and a pair of Hertig Ae/Be stars. The values placed on these unusual finds was very poor. I will post screenshots for those interested later when I get over the funk this has put me in.

Planets is where the cash is, exploration is about exploitation (of resources) not about discovery.

 

[Krunchie]

I just got back from my maiden cruise and I have to say I am very disappointed in the way "rare" stars are treated. I found a Wolf-Rayet and Carbon star (not first dicoverer) and both an S and a pair of Hertig Ae/Be stars. The values placed on these unusual finds was very poor. I will post screenshots for those interested later when I get over the funk this has put me in.

Planets is where the cash is, exploration is about exploitation (of resources) not about discovery.

Yes, all stars are <2000 cr, except black holes, neutron stars and white dwarfs. It's probably because you scan them (almost) automatically when you jump into the system, while pinging. It's easy.

 

[Nuruodo]

Thanks, I missed to notice the pattern there. Although I think that gas giants should always use the same typical hologram, no matter what class they are. Could be a bug with the HUD, maybe?

Not accurate.

 

[SvennoJ]

When you got close to a black hole in an Asp, did you drop out of supercruise? Since I'm playing with orbit lines turned off, I'm always crashing into neutron stars and black holes. It ususally happens after coming back from galaxy map and preparing to jump, I throttle up forgetting the star is in front of me and I drop out at 0.13 ls from a star, but I have no problem escaping without any further damage . It happened 8 times, and 6 times I lost 1% hull dropping out of sc, the other 2 times I lost nothing.
Feels strange to loose so much hull in an Anaconda.

I'm not using orbit lines either and had gotten used to judging safe distance by the lensing effect, no lensing effect visible at all this time. It dropped me out of super cruise in the Asp at 0.14ls, escaped damage free. With the Anaconda it dropped me out at 0.17ls but it was a bigger black hole (8 solar masses), close to another star. I lost 2% dropping out of super cruise and the heat stayed at 92% even with all non essential systems turned off. After lining up with the escape vector and making a run for it, heat went up over 500% before finally starting to go down again.
Maybe it was the presence of the other star. What is a good strategy to escape without too much damage? I went full out trying to get distance as fast as possible. Maybe it's better to drop back out and make small steps allowing the ship to cool back down in between? Overall the Anaconda runs cooler than my Asp. In my Asp I'm over 100% heat at max fuel rate, with the Anaconda I'm still under 100%. Not sure why the black hole was so deadly.

 

[SvennoJ]

This is one of the reasons I explore in my Cobra. It's cheap to maintain and, if necessary replace. (That and the fact that I'd rather explore in a Land Rover than a Bentley.)

True, yet as long as you don't lose the Conda by not paying attention to the insurance costs you can make that money back quickly. 932k seems like a lot, yet it's less than a single 2-way trade trip. At max I can lose the insurance cost of 10M, less than 2 hours of trading. it does make exploration profit pretty insignificant.
What worries me is the extensive damage from 1 encounter. I'm worried now I won't survive jumping in between a binary pair.
.
Maybe a mirrored surface composite hull would help, yet with that the jump range is less than an Asp defeating the primary purpose of choosing the Conda. (Besides the hull costing 312 million. I'm crazy but not that crazy)

 

[Chris M Fortune]

True, yet as long as you don't lose the Conda by not paying attention to the insurance costs you can make that money back quickly. 932k seems like a lot, yet it's less than a single 2-way trade trip. At max I can lose the insurance cost of 10M, less than 2 hours of trading. it does make exploration profit pretty insignificant.
What worries me is the extensive damage from 1 encounter. I'm worried now I won't survive jumping in between a binary pair.
.
Maybe a mirrored surface composite hull would help, yet with that the jump range is less than an Asp defeating the primary purpose of choosing the Conda. (Besides the hull costing 312 million. I'm crazy but not that crazy)

Prior to taking out an Asp for a long run I did try a short run (250 ly) in a python, the wear and tear costs and the level of damage sustained by a single scooping incident was very significant hull was at 88% and integrity was down to 70% if I recall correctly. In the Asp I totally around 15,000 ly and suffered 4 scooping incidents including a close binary leaving me with 90% hull and 88% integrity. Personally whilst I can see the benefit of taking an Annie out I do think the costs would be prohibitive even with its massive earning power.

 

[Jackie Silver]

Well I'm about 1/3rd of the way done analyzing all he data collected on the last exploration but I figured I'd share the datapoints I have so far for the value of different stellar bodies/planets.

Here is the data I've been collecting in my Super-Secret Single-Star Project - I've been trying to pin down the habitable zones where various bodies are found, looking at only single main-sequence stars for consistency. (Except M9s - there are no M9 Vs so far as I can see, so the data given are M9s apply to M9 VI subdwarfs.)

This is not as straightforward as it might seem for a variety of reasons (there's a high degree of variability even between stars of the same subtype, there are occasional baffling outliers where stars have habitable zones wildly different to others in their class, even when the stellar parameters are almost identical, and the way in which the different zones overlap is sometimes non-intuitive) so take the values given as guidelines rather than absolute rules.

I'm wondering about starting from scratch taking into account the A / B / AB / Z divisions (I treated all e.g. G2 V stars as the same, whether G2 VAB or G2VB or whatever) but I suspect it won't make much difference - there'll still be oddities and overlaps.

My ultimate goal is to leave a trail of systems in which the valuable planets, and only the valuable planets, have been scanned. But in retrospect that's rather cocky.


In Adventuring News, I've been out trying to reach a star cluster some way out of the Galactic plane, but had to turn back for lack of jump range.

 

[SvennoJ]

Prior to taking out an Asp for a long run I did try a short run (250 ly) in a python, the wear and tear costs and the level of damage sustained by a single scooping incident was very significant hull was at 88% and integrity was down to 70% if I recall correctly. In the Asp I totally around 15,000 ly and suffered 4 scooping incidents including a close binary leaving me with 90% hull and 88% integrity. Personally whilst I can see the benefit of taking an Annie out I do think the costs would be prohibitive even with its massive earning power.

That's a problem with scaling in the game. Trading in my Anaconda or previously the T9, I can make as many credits in 4 hours as I got from my 4 week intense exploration tour. The repair costs for my Asp after 4 weeks was only 68k. (down to 68% hull, 0% integrity)
It would be nice if there were higher class scanners, faster, longer range, more details, better resolution zoom-able hologram pictures. Or allow multiple scanners that can scan moons separately without having to point at them. The Anaconda has a 64t sensor array, doing exactly the same as the 8t version in the Asp.
The only choice between ships to use for exploration atm is jump range vs repair costs. What I would love to see is the ability to take a small ship inside the Anaconda, specialized in exploring a system. Lightweight, no jump capability, yet twice as fast in super cruise. An exploration spec sidewinder would only reduce the Anaconda's jump range by 2.3 ly. If you could swap out the FSD with a faster super cruise only drive, then that would be perfect.

 

[NeilF]

That's a problem with scaling in the game. Trading in my Anaconda or previously the T9, I can make as many credits in 4 hours as I got from my 4 week intense exploration tour. The repair costs for my Asp after 4 weeks was only 68k. (down to 68% hull, 0% integrity)
It would be nice if there were higher class scanners, faster, longer range, more details, better resolution zoom-able hologram pictures. Or allow multiple scanners that can scan moons separately without having to point at them. The Anaconda has a 64t sensor array, doing exactly the same as the 8t version in the Asp.
The only choice between ships to use for exploration atm is jump range vs repair costs. What I would love to see is the ability to take a small ship inside the Anaconda, specialized in exploring a system. Lightweight, no jump capability, yet twice as fast in super cruise. An exploration spec sidewinder would only reduce the Anaconda's jump range by 2.3 ly. If you could swap out the FSD with a faster super cruise only drive, then that would be perfect.

Detailed Surface Scanner video close up - https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=118841
Turreted Detailed Surface Scanner (allow multiple?) - https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=117901
Discovery Drones - https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=111757

 

[carazvan]

Here is the data I've been collecting in my Super-Secret Single-Star Project - I've been trying to pin down the habitable zones where various bodies are found, looking at only single main-sequence stars for consistency. (Except M9s - there are no M9 Vs so far as I can see, so the data given are M9s apply to M9 VI subdwarfs.)

This is not as straightforward as it might seem for a variety of reasons (there's a high degree of variability even between stars of the same subtype, there are occasional baffling outliers where stars have habitable zones wildly different to others in their class, even when the stellar parameters are almost identical, and the way in which the different zones overlap is sometimes non-intuitive) so take the values given as guidelines rather than absolute rules.

I'm wondering about starting from scratch taking into account the A / B / AB / Z divisions (I treated all e.g. G2 V stars as the same, whether G2 VAB or G2VB or whatever) but I suspect it won't make much difference - there'll still be oddities and overlaps.

My ultimate goal is to leave a trail of systems in which the valuable planets, and only the valuable planets, have been scanned. But in retrospect that's rather cocky.


In Adventuring News, I've been out trying to reach a star cluster some way out of the Galactic plane, but had to turn back for lack of jump range.

Yes trying to find the habitable zone per star is what I'm looking at also and I figure we'll need lots of datapoints before we can try to fit any theory to it.

One thing I've noticed is that some of the terraformable water worlds seem to pay out like regular water worlds so I'm wondering if they're just mislabeled as terraformable, that might skew the zones incorrectly and those might need to be ignored.

 

[mostly__harmless]

Blue Marbles

Greetings fellow explorers!
First of all, thanks for the informative thread, very helpful.

Taking my trusted exploration Adder on a little loop around the neighborhood. Attracted by the light I jumped into a A0 V system just ~100ly outside the interdiction belt and had one of those blue marble moments after pinging!

The first three planets are normal HMC with atmospheres.
The fourth planet is a terraformable HMC with a rocky moon that is also terraformable!
Planet 5 - terraformable HMC.
Planet 6 - Water world with carbon life & rocky terraformable moon!
Planet 7 - Water world with carbon life. And another water world with carbon life as a moon!!
Planet 8 - HMC
Planet 9 - Icy

New to me that rocky moons can be candidates for terraforming. Also new to me a water world for a moon.
Very nice system. Worth 124k$.

Just imagine the possibilities if you start your civilization in that system, for example on planet 7. You fly your Apollo mission to the moon and find alien life there!


Anyway, one of those awesome moments, I wanted to share. Check the system out, its not too far away and quite close to the well trodden path to the center.

Now trying to see if I can reach the center with my Adder.

mh

 

[lecrop]

Nice system mostly__harmless

 

[Jackie Silver]

I just got back from my maiden cruise and I have to say I am very disappointed in the way "rare" stars are treated. I found a Wolf-Rayet and Carbon star (not first dicoverer) and both an S and a pair of Hertig Ae/Be stars. The values placed on these unusual finds was very poor. I will post screenshots for those interested later when I get over the funk this has put me in.

Planets is where the cash is, exploration is about exploitation (of resources) not about discovery.

I agree - I was saddened when I realised the focus is more on exploitation than unusual finds (though with Earth-like worlds there is an overlap.) It's the same with the purely mercenary focus of the Elite rankings - credits or nothing.
Though after some reflection I grudgingly concluded it fits with the dystopian Thatcherite "spirit" of the Elite universe.

 

[mitchman]

I agree - I was saddened when I realised the focus is more on exploitation than unusual finds (though with Earth-like worlds there is an overlap.) It's the same with the purely mercenary focus of the Elite rankings - credits or nothing.
Though after some reflection I grudgingly concluded it fits with the dystopian Thatcherite "spirit" of the Elite universe.

No other activity can get anywhere close to the income you get from trading, which is a shame as it means less people are likely to do exploration, bounty hunting etc.

 

[carazvan]

Greetings fellow explorers!
First of all, thanks for the informative thread, very helpful.

Taking my trusted exploration Adder on a little loop around the neighborhood. Attracted by the light I jumped into a A0 V system just ~100ly outside the interdiction belt and had one of those blue marble moments after pinging!

http://s5.postimg.org/ta6t4a3nb/Screenshot_0120.png
The first three planets are normal HMC with atmospheres.
The fourth planet is a terraformable HMC with a rocky moon that is also terraformable!
Planet 5 - terraformable HMC.
Planet 6 - Water world with carbon life & rocky terraformable moon!
Planet 7 - Water world with carbon life. And another water world with carbon life as a moon!!
Planet 8 - HMC
Planet 9 - Icy

New to me that rocky moons can be candidates for terraforming. Also new to me a water world for a moon.
Very nice system. Worth 124k$.

Just imagine the possibilities if you start your civilization in that system, for example on planet 7. You fly your Apollo mission to the moon and find alien life there!


Anyway, one of those awesome moments, I wanted to share. Check the system out, its not too far away and quite close to the well trodden path to the center.

Now trying to see if I can reach the center with my Adder.

mh

Nice find! ... I'd suggest checking the sizes of the moons vs the smallest entries in the records thread:
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=50952&page=127

That way the blue marble scene makes it into at least 1 list

 

[Ambivalent]

I agree, it sucks that the whole exploration proffession is based around planetary resources, tourism should be an equally important aspect of it at the very least giving more value to rare phenomena