Well done!... I saw the first part of your journey, when you were still in the core... personally, I am right now 9k LYs from Sol, heading corewards in my trusty Cobra.
Sagittarius A* to Sol Endurance Run Live on twitch
- Thread starter torquedsoul
- Start date
Best of luck on your endeavour! You're in the right ship for the job.
Congrats man! Well done, have some rep!
Epic journey dude. Congrats. 22 hours though, ouch!
Congratulations! It was awesome getting to see what I did of your journey last night. Also, thank yo for replying to me in the Twitch chat. Sorry if I asked too many questions.
"Following the light of the sun, we left the Old World." -Christopher Columbus.
Have fun, and happy gaming.
Razar.[FONT=verdana,arial,helvetica][FONT=verdana,arial,helvetica][/FONT][/FONT]
When I headed out I wasn't really sure what I was looking for so data collection wasn't a top priority. It was always more about the experience than the data.
However, when I was confronted with an seemingly endless sea of stars, I became obsessed with trying to move faster.
At first I was doing detail scans of systems as I was going. I found that nearly everything had been explored (or at least it felt this way) After all, the path to Sag A is a well worn path so it is no surprise. So I stopped scanning systems along the way. A that point it became about speeding up my journey.
I considered the factors that defined the rate at which I could move such as: Jump turnaround, Refueling rate, Max jump distance.
Jump turnaround which I define as the time from one jump to the next without interruption. This is fairly fixed at 40-45 seconds. I don't know if different frameshift drives charge at different rates. All this data comes from a sample size of one (me).
Refueling rate. It really is all about the fuel scoop. I have a 3A and I estimate that this added at least 5 hours to my trip. Ideally you want the fastest fuel scoop you an afford for long journeys. My crappy Fuel scoop led to an interesting problem related to the max jump distance.
Max jump distance. This was the most interesting factor as it impacted fuel consumption and navigational complexity. You consume more fuel per Ly on longer jumps than on shorter ones. So while conventional wisdom would tell you to all set the jump distance as high as possible this results inefficient fuel usage.
It's important to note and I learned this the way back chatting with others, that if you lack a cargo hold you cannot tweak your max jump distance, which means you have no control on managing your fuel consumption. Of course, if you have a fast enough fuel scoop this really isn't an issue. My fuel scoop was on the crappy end. I was forced to balance my fuel consumption against my refueling rate when when taking into account time. The end result was that the fewest number of jumps (that is the greatest jump distance) wasn't always optimal for me. Because I never removed my cargo bay (which is why I still had the crappy fuel scoop) I was able to explore a wide range of max jump settings in the navigator. I ran some simulations an found that I could get a better time by lowering my jump distance (usually set to 26.22Ly, this is case dependent). Again, this is a moot point if you have a great fuel scoop. You can waste fuel and fill up quickly.
There is always economy mode but using that would make you insane on a long trip. I only use that when I am running low on gas an need to find a scoopable star.
This game I was playing with setting my max jump distance inadvertently shielded me from a problem many people experience in the core. It seems that the density of stars can reek havoc in the route plotting for some players. This is something I rarely experienced. One thing was clear, the closer you get to the core, the slower you plot routes. And some said they couldn't get the route at all and were forced to select jumps manually. I was routinely reducing my max jump distance and I wondered if this was actually helping me avoid the problem. I suspect it was. Based on my anecdotal evidence, it seemed that reducing the max jump distance helped the route plotting. But if you plot an economical route in a star dense region, that also took forever to plot. I speculate that this a combinatorial problem with pathing and that somewhere between the short distances and the long distances is a combination well where there are fewer possible routes and this results in faster plotting. I'm not a mathematician or a computer scientist so I could be wrong about this. It is interesting an I plan to look into it. If it true that max jump distance can impact the capacity of the navigator to efficiently plan a route in dense star fields, it might be helpful to have that feature added to the navigator. That is, allow pilots to arbitrarily set their jump distance. This could also help those with crappy fuel scoops as well as they would be in a better position to optimize their travel times.
Once I have some time to digest my experience and explore them a bit more I will provide more concrete and detailed explanations of my findings.
I learned that most interesting human endeavors are the result of imagination, courage, persistence and poor judgement.
Also, special thanks to Ulysses, Compass and Pw4x3r (Twitch handles) for keeping me company through most of the trip. They are a great reflection of the quality of the Elite: Dangerous community.
It was a pleasure, I only wish I could have dragged my sorry ass out of bed a little earlier to watch the final approach.
Good blokes. I'd have stayed longer but had a gig to shoot!
Hmmm, interesting theory. I only ran into problems on the final run to Sag A* where it wouldn't generate a route in ~10minutes (but would to the star next to it in seconds). I only had a max range of ~23LY so you might be right that the further your range the more it's struggling. Maybe I should take my Asp instead of the Cobra for a second trip to see if the theory is correct.
Hmmm, interesting theory. I only ran into problems on the final run to Sag A* where it wouldn't generate a route in ~10minutes (but would to the star next to it in seconds). I only had a max range of ~23LY so you might be right that the further your range the more it's struggling. Maybe I should take my Asp instead of the Cobra for a second trip to see if the theory is correct.
I've just got there in my Clipper with about a 23ly jump range. The last 3000ly plotting routes would cause immense slowdown in the galaxy map - to the point where sometimes it would appear to hang the game. I found that if I did anything on the map after hitting plot then I should give up. Exit the map. Have another go.
It sure doesn't like densely packed stars!
@TheMarshall, Can it be epic without being 22 hours?
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I suspect long races will happen. And it should.
I think you underestimate the willingness of a gamer to participate in an all day event. The truth is that a well equipped ship could make this trip in 16 hours or less. Anuranium says he made it in 13 hours a couple days ago. So an annual race to Sag A* is not crazy. Its no different than any other all day event in your life.
Congratulations. I'm still heading to the core. I can't imagine doing the return trip in less than a day. I've done a couple of "swift thousand light-years" which have been forty jumps in less than an hour, but your epic makes anything I do pale into insignificance.
How much money would you say you earned on the leg back? I'm assuming here that you pretty much did nothing but Discovery Scan each system, which is a method I'm more than likely going to be employing on the way home (or just once I get bored of flying around every system on the thousand jump trip out). It's just that I'd ideally like to use my exploration proceeds to purchase a Clipper on my return.
On my merry way into the core today I happened to Hollyhop into a system right between the two big ones in this picture... it quickly got really hot there.
I have a few questions about this journey. The long time it takes for it to set a path on long destinations, is that because of how much it just needs to process, or is it because the game is just not able to handle that many calculations at one time?
How long does it take a high quality scoop to refuel most ships?
Also, if you scan a system that others have scanned, will you get less for it? And if so, does the price drop the more other players have scanned them?
The more I learn about the trip that was made, the more impressive it is to me. This is so awesome, I never imagined that they made the game this precise.
Razar.
How long does it take a high quality scoop to refuel most ships?
Also, if you scan a system that others have scanned, will you get less for it? And if so, does the price drop the more other players have scanned them?
The more I learn about the trip that was made, the more impressive it is to me. This is so awesome, I never imagined that they made the game this precise.
Razar.