Guide / Tutorial Nutter’s explorers guide to the Galaxy

Here's a toy for you (linky): a very rough-and-ready program (Windows executable) which accurately predicts the main habitable zone of (almost) any single star.
It also has a stab at setting boundaries for Water Worlds and Metal-Rich Worlds, though I don't have enough data to map those zones precisely.
It doesn't try to pinpoint Earthlikes or set a zone for terraformable Water Worlds but they all fall inside the main habitable zone.
It doesn't try to set a zone for Ammonia worlds, I need more data.
Use with caution in multiple star systems; if the stars are a long way apart it may be reasonably accurate.

Anyhoo, extract the archive and run JSHZC.exe and you should get this:

JSHZCpic1.png

Enter values for the radius (in Solar radii, as given in the game, e.g. 1.0834) and temperature (in Kelvins, e.g. 5942), press enter.
You should get a screen like so:

View attachment 21307

Which is pretty much exactly what it says on the tin. Look for good stuff between the boundaries of the Main Habitable Zone.
You may find Water Worlds (not terraforming candidates) further out to the Water World Upper Bound, and you may find Metal-Rich Worlds up to the distance shown.

(If you don't trust executables from strange people (and I'm nothing if not strange people) on the interweb, and/or if you're not running Windows the python source code is included inside the archive.
It depends on easygui for the display so you'll either need to install that or reverse engineer the display bit - the original python output to the python shell is in but commented IIRR.
The calculations aren't exactly rocket science... ok, well, they are rocket science, but of the very easiest kind... it's mostly just getting enough data from the game to be sure how things work.) ;)

In the future I will continue to narrow down the bands, pinpoint Earth-likes, find the zones for Ammonia Worlds, perhaps include the bands for Riceballs and Iceballs.
Should also be possible to map gas giants to some extent, and if I get really fired up I'll add a proper graphical output to show the bands as a pretty picture.

CAVEAT: This program should work on almost every single star system, but very occasionally there are bugged systems where the luminosity of the star is much higher than it should be from the stars parameters.
Be wary when you see any star that's a plain main sequence "V" and not "VA", "VB" or whatever as the ones I've encountered so far have all been lurking among those.

OTHER CAVEAT: There's (rudeword)-all error-checking so any non-standard inputs will crash it. ;)

Updated link to 0.11, added thing to show equivalent distance in ls and some error handling.
Updated link to 0.13, did the error handling properly, added new "best guess" at ammonia world ranges, slight tweaks, added gas giants minimum distances, added default settings and the option to check temperatures at particular distances.
 
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Awesome stuff jackie thats a great looking tool. Forgive me this is a stupid question, but why use au when the game uses light seconds, or can we see an au distance in game somehow?
 
Awesome stuff jackie thats a great looking tool. Forgive me this is a stupid question, but why use au when the game uses light seconds, or can we see an au distance in game somehow?

Yah, the system map uses au. I can put a ls equivalent in the displayed output as well though, I'll do that next build. (Done - link now goes to v0.11)
 
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Can't beleive I never noticed that before, so semi major axis in au is actually distance from star!! Something tells me I don't entire deserve that pioneer badge on my ship lol.
 
It still does not repair the Hull, Power Plant or canopy. Take one if you like, but 99% of damage explorers take is Hull from crashing out of SC. The only other thing apart from hull that could go first is the canopy. Neither can be repaired.

It's all about the PEW PEW you know - which is what the AFM is for... not exploring.

Does your jump distance go down if the FSD and/or thrusters are damaged?
 
Couple of quick questions while I'm zooming across 350,000ls toward what I hope is an earth like:

1: Was the Asp one of the ships that got a price cut in the last patch? Thinking of upgrading from my battered but trusty Cobra when i get home.

2: I've found a lot of tiny little HMC planets today. I mean, really small. Does size have that much of an effect on the payout? I'm guessing it'll be based on mass if anything?
 
Dunno about a discount on Asp but a trip to the Pleiades cluster and back netted me 1 million and that is a 1k ly trip. I am currently heading towards the core via a series of Nebula including the Eagle. If you are being diligent with your space horn you could be inline for a bumper payout.
 
2: I've found a lot of tiny little HMC planets today. I mean, really small. Does size have that much of an effect on the payout? I'm guessing it'll be based on mass if anything?

You'll get about 4000 to 5000 credits for a small HMC planet and maybe 8000 credits for a big HMC (plus an extra half of that for first discovery if appropriate) so it doesn't make a huge difference.

I don't think the Asp has had a price cut, so far as I know the Vulture, Ferdy and Dropship are the ones that were cheapened.


In other news, I'm finally Elite, and mostly I'm feeling a huge sense of relief - I can now go off to Sag A* or wherever I like without worrying about accidents setting my progress back. :)
 
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Dunno about a discount on Asp but a trip to the Pleiades cluster and back netted me 1 million and that is a 1k ly trip. I am currently heading towards the core via a series of Nebula including the Eagle. If you are being diligent with your space horn you could be inline for a bumper payout.

I'm pretty diligent with the Disco horn. This afternoon I've discovered 6 CFT waterworlds, about 10 CFT HMC, a CFT rocky moon (orbiting one of the CFT HMC) and four neutron stars. I'm also on my way to a cluster of neutron stars which, knowing my usual luck, has probably been entirely disco-harvested already even if it is pretty out the way.

It was just that I've been scanning every HMC I can find since I started exploring way back in gamma but I hadn't really given much of a though to how much the payout might be based on mass or something. Some of these worlds today were between Ceres and a largish asteroid in size. Started thinking about it the other night when the system i was in had three or four HMC that were huge - the smallest was 287 times the mass of the earth.

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You'll get about 4000 to 5000 credits for a small HMC planet and maybe 8000 credits for a big HMC (plus an extra half of that for first discovery if appropriate) so it doesn't make a huge difference.

That's with the new price changes? That's good to note. Means I've just made about 150,000cr from the system I'm in. :) Better than working for a living.

I don't think the Asp has had a price cut, so far as I know the Vulture, Ferdy and Dropship are the ones that were cheapened.

Cheers. Doesn't matter. I'll hopefully be able to afford one after this trip regardless.


In other news, I'm finally Elite, and mostly I'm feeling a huge sense of relief - I can now go off to Sag A* or wherever I like without worrying about accidents setting my progress back. :)

Congratulations! I'm still a while away from that.
 
That's with the new price changes? That's good to note. Means I've just made about 150,000cr from the system I'm in. :) Better than working for a living.
Yup - everything sells for twice as much now, and the new first discovery bonus (half the value) is the same as the old full rate. So we're making between two and three times more than we did to begin with. :)
Congratulations! I'm still a while away from that.
Thanks, I was quite surprised as I didn't expect to get there for a while yet. As a handy bonus I was selling my data to some of the new Sirius Corp outposts (Ceos, Sothis and Robigo) and managed to get my Sirius pass into the bargain - worth considering for anyone with a moderate (but not huge as you'll probably be better spreading it around) amount of data to sell.

I'm heading away from civilisation again - not sure whether I have the time and stamina to make it to the Galactic Core but it's beckoning me. :)
 
Yup - everything sells for twice as much now, and the new first discovery bonus (half the value) is the same as the old full rate. So we're making between two and three times more than we did to begin with. :)

Thanks, I was quite surprised as I didn't expect to get there for a while yet. As a handy bonus I was selling my data to some of the new Sirius Corp outposts (Ceos, Sothis and Robigo) and managed to get my Sirius pass into the bargain - worth considering for anyone with a moderate (but not huge as you'll probably be better spreading it around) amount of data to sell.

I'm heading away from civilisation again - not sure whether I have the time and stamina to make it to the Galactic Core but it's beckoning me. :)

Grats on getting Elite Jackie, and the core is well worth a visit, stick it out its worth the journey.
 
Discovering Life Forms

Made my first claim on a system last night, having spent a lot of time bounty hunting to kit out my Cobra - most significant discovery was a gas giant listing ammonia based life forms. Is this fairly common or a rarity - I can't seem to find any references to discovering life forms.

Cheers.


..slow
 
Made my first claim on a system last night, having spent a lot of time bounty hunting to kit out my Cobra - most significant discovery was a gas giant listing ammonia based life forms. Is this fairly common or a rarity - I can't seem to find any references to discovering life forms.

Cheers.


..slow

Well, not every system but it is pretty common. There are carbon based ones as well. Might be others. I can't remember.

Still, it's a nice find. Congrats!
 
... I'm heading away from civilisation again - not sure whether I have the time and stamina to make it to the Galactic Core but it's beckoning me. :)

I've not visited the core yet, but I have heard that there were some system stability issues with that region, causing various problems because of the stars being all so closely packed together. Is this still the case does anyone know?
 
I am approching the core of our galaxy and I have a lot of problems with the route planner of the galaxy map. I need to plan each jump one by one if I don't want the route planner to be stuck (and the game to run slowly).
Is it normal or not ?
 
I am approching the core of our galaxy and I have a lot of problems with the route planner of the galaxy map. I need to plan each jump one by one if I don't want the route planner to be stuck (and the game to run slowly).
Is it normal or not ?

Yes, the route planner slows down. I was able to get 1000LY jumps planned by switching to windowed mode, turning map resolution to low, turning off all but the "G" stars and taking a bathroom break while it calculated the route.
 
I am approching the core of our galaxy and I have a lot of problems with the route planner of the galaxy map. I need to plan each jump one by one if I don't want the route planner to be stuck (and the game to run slowly).
Is it normal or not ?

Raise a ticket.

Maybe they need to put a jump range slider in or something to help in these situtations, so you can limit the calculation to a smaller bubble?
 
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