Sightseeing and Exploration Project

[Romeo India Charlie]

Thanks, @Orvidius. I think with the feedback I got here and some experimentation, I found what I was looking for: postcards. I want to invite the visit, not spoil it.

On other news, after the crash some days ago I decided to learn a bit more about shields, hull and repair limpets. It's funny how preconceived ideas for ship builds can create ships that don't really fit how we play. To make a long story short, my Repair Limpet Controller was way too big and my Shield Generator way too small. This is a problem on my other exploration vessels too because I've built without considering my strengths and weaknesses. Refitted the Phantom, flew to a 6G planet, slammed myself to the ground and survived. All at the cost of 2 light-years and a downgrade to a Repair Limpet Controller that doesn't waste materials. Why? Well, although this was the first time I actually lost a ship, I had crashed with all my exploration ships because I'm clumsy or get distracted with something. All of them had small shields, big repair controllers. It's clear the other way around is safer for me.

After it, I flew for some hours. It should be obvious what I'm up to for CMDRs following the rings or the GMP threads: I'm going after the rings @Heavy Johnson asked for submissions. I've used EDSM and the GMP POIs so much that the least I can do is to try to get the content they want. Fits nicely into the project since the only thing I did was to add some lines of code to filter for the rings' locations and proceed as usual. I'll also work on "postcards" for each ring.

Overall, a great day with a slight drought of newly discovered systems.

Fly safe CMDRs. RIC out.

 

[Romeo India Charlie]

9148 light-years travelled in a couple of hours after work. That's got to be a record! Continued my journey through the largest rings and got to check three more. One is absent, more on that one of these days... the other two were impressive, to say the least. The problem is that the distance between "visits" is getting longer and longer. Luckily I've been finding some unexplored systems to break the jump monotony.

And since I chased large rings since the end of last week it's only normal that I got a bunch of videos coming this week with exactly that: rings. I have one for each day of the week. Here's the first.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oqyWy8k1ngk

 

[iain666]

9148 light-years travelled in a couple of hours after work. That's got to be a record!

So long as you only mean a personal record

The bubble-beagle record currently stands at just over 6 hours - so a couple of hours is more than 20kly at that pace...

 

[Romeo India Charlie]

Yes, I meant it as a personal record... and 6 hours from Beagle to Bubble? Geez... I thought I was fast when I returned from Sagittarius A* in an afternoon.

 

[Romeo India Charlie]

The vast majority of my time was scanning new systems. The space I'm currently travelling, along the border between Elysian Shore and Sanguineous Rim, is somewhat untapped. Unfortunately, there is nothing to report from those systems.

In the middle of today's jumps was Col 107 Sector UY-Q b34-4. Planet AB3 is referenced in the largest rings thread and I went to pay it a visit. The target ring itself was invisible but the system presented itself as an interesting surprise. A binary system where each star had its own set of bodies and then a third set of bodies orbiting the binary. AB3 itself had a surprise for me: 15 moons, 14 of them pretty standard, the 15th though was another ringed gas giant.

After this I tried to push to the next destination, but 9kly more was too much and called it a day.

Last but not least, today's released video.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2-FwPcg6zI

 

[Orvidius]

Pretty cool. One thing to keep in mind of course is that these top-10 lists can and do change as people discover things, so the titles might end up out of date eventually. But yeah these little showcases are fun.

 

[Romeo India Charlie]

Pretty cool. One thing to keep in mind of course is that these top-10 lists can and do change as people discover things, so the titles might end up out of date eventually. But yeah these little showcases are fun.

I know. In the GGG videos I include a caveat "at the time of the recording" but I didn't want to add that to the title of the ring videos. I'm aware that they will be outdated but I'll cross that bridge when I get there. Speaking of videos, here's today's release.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kw_CM4I5dQ


As for the daily "CMDR's log", today was mostly uninteresting. The distance between the systems currently on the list is quite large for the time I'm able to put on a weekday, so most of the time is done travelling. I arrived at yesterday's final destination relatively early but the 2nd largest ring in mass is somewhat disappointing. While the other planets with large rings I've visited have something interesting about them, this one is... boring...

The only thing that caught my eye was when I dropped in the ring itself. Maybe it's my mind playing tricks on me but I could swear the asteroids in this ring are a lot more packed than in other rings. Are they or is it my imagination?

I'm currently 3000 ly away from DROJAU IX-R D5-23 where I'll find the 8th widest ring. This will be an interesting one because it will shed some light on the mass of a ring being a determinant factor in the game rendering it or not.

See you all tomorrow. Fly safe (or not!), CMDRs.

 

[Romeo India Charlie]

I was able to reach both yesterday's target and today's target. The good news is that yesterday's target offered this tremendous spectacle.

This is DROJAU IX-R D5-23 7, a Class IV Gas Giant slightly larger than Saturn. If you can spot the little red dot in the middle of ring A, that is it, the "slightly larger than Saturn" planet, completely dwarfed by the amazing 8th widest known ring that surrounds it. In fact, this planet's inner ring is almost 4 times larger than Saturn's. The important part of this ring is its width which is 33,538,100 kms. I found this width particularly interesting because I drive roughly 33 kms to get to work, so I did some math and concluded that I had to work for 2,099 years to drive this distance.

Between the two rings, we will find three shepherd moons, all of them completely different from each other with the one closest to the planet showing sort of an atmosphere. The other two have a close co-orbit which allows for some interesting views.

I made a bet with myself that this ring would be invisible and, if I'm honest, I'm glad I was wrong! However, today's target, Traikeou RY-Q d5-1 10, the 9th largest outer radius ring, was invisible and I was not expecting it.

Between the two waypoints, many unexplored systems. None interesting, not even the one that is probably going to cash in 20M+.

More flying tomorrow, but until then, not the last video of the week, but the last ring video of the week.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7hrTGi42JQ

 

[Romeo India Charlie]

Some virus-related changes in my work and family life hurt the regular flying schedule. But worry not, everything is fine and today I returned. Edited a handful of videos from last week's trips and flew as much as I could. Ended up visiting 3 waypoints, 2 of the largest rings list and 1 glowing green giant with a nice total of almost 8,000 light-years travelled. The GGG didn't pop up by accident. The distances were getting rather large so I decided to include GGGs into the rings list.

None of the rings was rendered. That would be a bummer but one thing I've learned visiting these systems is that several of them are quite interesting on their own. The glowing green giant, number 12, was fantastic with a nearby moon offering quite a view to the emerald beauty. Several systems were also discovered but none is worth mentioning.

Has for videos, I have four scheduled for this week, with the first being already released almost 24 hours ago. Here it is!

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NsMM5lShODI

 

[Romeo India Charlie]

6,395 light-years took me from my last waypoint yesterday to two beautiful GGGs, numbers 2 and 21, respectively. Both of them have the company of landable moons which just add to the show. I love GGGs, they are just fantastic. I can only hope to be lucky enough to find one myself one day.



The next waypoint, GGG 15, is more than 7,000 light-years, which means that tomorrow will be mostly scanning new systems and, fingers crossed, find some new cool thing or, at least, get to that waypoint in one session! I wonder when will I cross paths with top 10 rings again. GGGs are taking over and my plan to add them to reduce distance between waypoints only lasted a couple of days... more flying tomorrow!

Fly safe, CMDRs. RIC out.

 

[Romeo India Charlie]

I knew days like this would come, sooner or later. It was today. 67 jumps, more than 7,000 light-years to reach GGG #15. Most new systems were a single star, or an awkward dwarf surrounded by ice. The ones that weren't, showed nothing but a couple of uninteresting gas giants with as much ice surrounding them as the dwarfs before them. The second criteria to stick around in a system - aesthetics - was nowhere to be found. I got to a point that I thought that if only a water world popped up, just to have the credits as an excuse for flying... but nope, not even that.

But then, after many jumps, I arrived at the final waypoint. I opened the recording software and rushed to the GGG. What I found was my first GGG disappointment. A planetary heart-break. I tilted my head back and thought "that bad day has finally arrived". And it did. GGG #15 is not any more interesting than many gas giants. Other than the text that confirms it is a GGG, there's nothing outstanding about it. The aesthetics criteria didn't stick either. I mean it's a cute planet, but for a GGG is the ugliest thing I've ever visited.

As the final act of resignation, I decided not to record any video for this GGG, close all the software and like any other mature middle-aged man, complain in the forums with quasi literary refinement, which serves to create the illusion he is not tilting.

There's some good news though, today's video is from one of my favourite rings. It's magnificent.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zs-pv92nNgQ

 

[Orvidius]

Hehe, yep. There are those days where everything is boring, boring, and more boring.

 

[Romeo India Charlie]

Hehe, yep. There are those days where everything is boring, boring, and more boring.

I was reading your sentence and thinking that a couple of weeks ago I was very excited asking if it was normal to have a dwarf with multiple icy bodies! Now I can't seem to get rid of them.

The good news is that today was quite a bit more entertaining. 6.9kly flown to get to the 4th Most Massive Ring. I'll get to it in a bit because before that I found a couple of beauties I want to show you.


The first one kinda tricked me in the FSS. The rings looked thinner, but I like the shot so I kept it. The second and third images are from a close binary of small planets. They were distinctly orbiting each other at some speed and they are very close, which offered a nice view both from space and on the ground. Nothing super interesting but aesthetically pleasing. As my wife calls it, "it's pretty, it cleans the sight".

Then I got to the waypoint itself. It doesn't look big. It's not one of those huge magnificent rings. But it is gorgeous especially because of the F star that illuminates everything around it.


I have a couple more waypoints for tomorrow. Fly safe, CMDRs.

 

[Romeo India Charlie]

There's an old saying in my country "there's no hunger that doesn't end up in abundance." Sounds better here but you get the idea. After the worst day yet followed by an average one, today was just outstanding. I set my course to SYNOOKIO EI-J D9-1 to check the GGG there. Every single system I entered that wasn't a neutron star was undiscovered and most of them were not ice after ice, which was nice for a change. While most were not exactly interesting, at least they'll allow me to put some money in the bank.

Later I arrived at GGG 18 which is a pretty cool planet with a very distinct colour, a ring and a couple of landable moons.


Then I set my course to check the 7th largest planetary ring radius. The story of the first leg of the session repeated itself. Cute and "rich" systems entertained me between unhealthy amounts of jumps until I found this:

To be clear, the system map doesn't fit the screen in maximum zoom out. There are a bunch of moons in the lower planets. The system's topology is just bonkers, to the point that navigating the FSS was actually fun. The orrery map of this system is just a never-ending kaleidoscopic toy.

Finally, I arrived at my final destination: BLAE PHOE BP-Q D5-376. To my surprise, the system is undiscovered in-game. And the previous 50 something bodies weren't enough, my waypoint looks like this:

83 bodies! My personal maximum! However, much simpler than the one above, which meant that FSS was just a headache. Between my handwritten notes and Elite Observatory, I have 15 locations to visit close and personally in this system, one of them the "largest ring". When I saw the amount of flying, checking, recording and screenshots I had in front of me, I decided to call it a day and do all of that tomorrow. This is a monster of a system with a lot of potential, so I'll be there for some time.

Thank you for reading, stay safe CMDRs.

EDIT: Completely forgot that a video was scheduled for today. Here it is.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kv7ry-mpZx8

 

[Orvidius]

I was reading your sentence and thinking that a couple of weeks ago I was very excited asking if it was normal to have a dwarf with multiple icy bodies! Now I can't seem to get rid of them.

It's gotten to the point where I leave M-class unselected in my filter, unless I need to turn them back on to get through a sparse area. Sure, I miss out on some red giants, but it cuts down on all those icy body systems tremendously. I'll often turn off K-class stars as well.

There's an old saying in my country "there's no hunger that doesn't end up in abundance." Sounds better here but you get the idea. After the worst day yet followed by an average one, today was just outstanding.

As we sometimes say around my area, it's nearly always feast or famine.

 

[Romeo India Charlie]

I've not been able to play this weekend but this video was scheduled to be released yesterday, so I'm sharing it here. Although it is not different from any other video, I had a blast editing it because of the music. Like all other videos, I try to make transitions flow with the music, but this one doesn't have a rhythm section, so instead of just transitioning scenes with the beat, I transitioned mood. I know that this won't seem any different from any other video, but it was to me.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07V51fqMuWw

 

[Romeo India Charlie]

Hey everyone, just want to drop a line to say all is well. I didn't quit, the project is not dead, but I'm working in this same chair, desk and screens where I play, so I had to break the routine, get some books (I love reading and haven't read a book since I started playing ED) and play other games.

Hope everything is great with you, your family and friends. I'll be back when I'm a bit more settled.