SleepyDelegate's Chronicles - taking the DBX around the Galaxy

My initial intention, when starting this game, was exploration. ED is the closest thing to space exploration I will probably ever get... I don't want to ruin the game by exploiting any features of the game, so i do not seek any "do this and make zillions in an hour" advices...

I first completed couple of mission, mostly Boom deliveries or similar. By mistake I took two Navy delivery missions, both set me back by roughly 5M credits, as I did not know, that Navy is not paying for the goods they order. At least not in full. So after purchasing the goods and delivering it and then receiving the rewards, the result was a loss of 5M credits... That was quite a setback, but I kept doing other missions and eventually managed to make up for it...

So my first personal expedition started.

Beginning of the journey: LHS 20 - Ohm City (I purchased my DBX there and made some outfitting)
Ship: DBX
Outfitting:
4A SHIELD GENERATOR
4A FUEL SCOOP
3C AUTO FIELD-MAINTENANCE UNIT
3E CARGO RACK
2E CARGO RACK
2E CARGO RACK
DETAILED SURFACE SCANNER
1E ADVANCED DOCKING COMPUTER
4A POWER PLANT
4A THRUSTERS
5B FRAME SHIFT DRIVE
3D LIFE SUPPORT
4A POWER DISTRIBUTOR
3A SENSORS
5C FUEL TANK
1I LIGHTWEIGHT ALLOY
2F MULTI-CANNON [GIMBALLED]
2D BEAM LASER [GIMBALLED]
HEAT SINK LAUNCHER
POINT DEFENCE

I tried to balance the equipment in a "Best money can buy at the moment/decent jump/decent survivability/decent exploration capability" way... However, I did not know, that for the AFMU, you need some materials, so I probably just carry a dead weight... Not sure, didn't check whether it works or not yet...

Anyway. I decided to go up and climb as high and far away from the bubble as possible. The first 700-1000ly, it was pretty much thoroughly explored already and I first found an unmapped body after that... What a joy! I mapped my first "unmapped" body! Now what... It does not say "First mapped by SleepyDelegate"! Oh, you need to return with the data to a station and turn it in at the cartography service... OK... No problem...

I continued and started finding systems with more and more unmapped and undiscovered bodies... I even found my first (unfortunately already discovered and mapped) ELW! What a beauty!
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My journey continued to a system called Blu Thua TZ-N d7-1, where I parked my ship yesterday and called it a night. At that time, I was roughly 2500ly from my starting point... Today, I decided to set a destination, so that I do not just fly blindly. I decided to do what every explorer must do first. I'm going to Saggitarius (my destination is Stuemeae FG-Y d7561).

My observations so far, after visiting roughly 350 systems:
  • ELW's are rare, very rare
  • black holes are rare
  • white dwarfs are rare
  • neutron stars are rare
  • amonia worlds are rare
  • water worlds are rare
I can honestly say, that the space can be pretty boring place... Rocks and ice everywhere... Every star is the same... Every gas giant looks similar... Whenever you get excited, that you are the first explorer in the system that has 52 bodies (!!!), just to fire up the FSS and find out, that most of them are pieces of rock orbiting around couple of gas giants, or huge ice bodies...

But the views can be so amazing and you press the Jump button with excitement and expectation every time! :)

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So what I need to figure out:
  • how do you find something interesting? Like how did people find all those strange things, like ruins, xeno life, volcanos etc? Do you need to search the system inch by inch and look in every corner, or does it pop up on the scanner?
  • how do I survive without hitting anything? (I almost hit a planet, I was supercruising towards it, getting ready to stop, my mind got carried away with some explorations stuff and "BANG!!!" - emergency drop out of supercruise... All I saw was the planet plummeting towards me at a speed I could not evade, I thought I'm dead, all the progress lost... Luckily the emergency brakes worked... But my heart stopped for a second... Then I almost hit a star, as I accidentally pressed 75% thrust instead of a FULL STOP and as a consequence panicked and turned my nose towards the centre of the star... humans can panic really fast!
  • If I make it in one piece to the Explorer's Anchorage, should I sell all the data immediately, or travel back to the bubble and sell something there?
So, this will be me explorers chronicles, I will occasionally share my progress here and I wholeheartedly welcome any useful tips from the experienced ones. But please no roads to riches or exploits... :)

Thank you!

CMDR SleepyDelegate

EDIT: Figured out all of my questions from this post already... :)
 
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For life and volcanism, when you're zoomed in on the FSS there's a box labelled Features top right of the screen which will show none or a likelihood of bio or geo signs (if you wait a bit you'll get a count, and it will also show up on the system map). The exact locations are revealed by mapping the planet.

You can't hit anything but landable planets. If you emergency stop against a planet then you'll just sit there until you fly away, for stars you can also overheat trying to get away so be careful. The only way to avoid it is to be careful, with practice it'll hardly ever happen unless you're flying while too tired and/or drunk.

Sell it all at EA, why not? By the time you get back to the bubble you'll have loads more from the return trip :D Also sell the guns and PD, no need. If your FSD is unengineered and you can buy an A-class one at EA do that too, you'll easily afford it once the data's sold.

Don't fly straight from the bubble to EA - go up or down a bit and fly most of the way offset from the direct route for more virgin systems.

The AFMU should have come loaded with ammo for many repairs, if you use it a lot (neutron boosting degrades your FSD, otherwise you won't) then the ammo can run out and you can make more - that's what you need materials for. You'll need to pick up an SRV to collect them though.

Fly safe and have fun out there.

PS - if you're on PC some of the third party software can enhance the experience. ED Discovery I recommend for obvious reasons (see my sig) and Elite Observatory is also very good for highlighting likely photo opportunities.
 
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For life and volcanism, when you're zoomed in on the FSS there's a box labelled Features top right of the screen which will show none or a likelihood of bio or geo signs (if you wait a bit you'll get a count, and it will also show up on the system map). The exact locations are revealed by mapping the planet.

You can't hit anything but landable planets. If you emergency stop against a planet then you'll just sit there until you fly away, for stars you can also overheat trying to get away so be careful. The only way to avoid it is to be careful, with practice it'll hardly ever happen unless you're flying while too tired and/or drunk.

Sell it all at EA, why not? By the time you get back to the bubble you'll have loads more from the return trip :D Also sell the guns and PD, no need. If your FSD is unengineered and you can buy an A-class one at EA do that too, you'll easily afford it once the data's sold.

Don't fly straight from the bubble to EA - go up or down a bit and fly most of the way offset from the direct route for more virgin systems.

The AFMU should have come loaded with ammo for many repairs, if you use it a lot (neutron boosting degrades your FSD, otherwise you won't) then the ammo can run out and you can make more - that's what you need materials for. You'll need to pick up an SRV to collect them though.

Fly safe and have fun out there.

PS - if you're on PC some of the third party software can enhance the experience. ED Discovery I recommend for obvious reasons (see my sig) and Elite Observatory is also very good for highlighting likely photo opportunities.

Thank you, iain666. Regarding that FEATURES box, I suspected something important could be showing there, but it was empty most of the time, if not all the time, so I figured I'd rather ask...

Yeah, I should have gotten 5A FSD, but it wasn't available at Ohm City and I was so eager to start my journey... :)

I don't do neutron boosting, from my occasional experience with white dwarfs and neutron stars, I'mm very cautios when being close to these... So unles I take some heat damage, I probably won't need the AFMU...

I did signup for some third party services, EDDiscovery could be one of them, not sure, I'm not at my Windows machine now) and INARA... I'm just learning how to use their potential... So far the EDDIscovery helps me plotting my course...
 
You have lots to learn My Padawan.. Take the journey step by step

First step is to get a 5A FSD (and perhaps the FSD booster) You might be sorry later on ;)
I will buy it on the first occasion, which will be probably at Explorers Anchorage... And yes, I have a lot to learn and I'm very happy for that! (y)
 
I still come back to exploring, despite trying most other things in the game. looking forward to seeing your tales.

I highly recommend EDDB as well (and Inara for general play), I keep it running on a different screen when I'm exploring.

See you out in the black, Commander.
 
I still come back to exploring, despite trying most other things in the game. looking forward to seeing your tales.

I highly recommend EDDB as well (and Inara for general play), I keep it running on a different screen when I'm exploring.

See you out in the black, Commander.

I usually have my other laptop open next to my PC laptop, so that I can check stuff, like How things work (when I don't know how to do something" or where to find this and that... That was mostly useful when doing the mission in the beginning, when I was looking for comodities... Now I dont need that anymore...

I look forward to meeting some fellow explorer... Haven't seen a ship around me for couple of days now... :)

See you out there, Commander and best of luck!
 
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Also sell the guns and PD, no need.

You're right... I carry them, as when I was doing the missions, I got into some fights and I thought the same could happen when exploring as well... But I haven't seen a soul in the last 200+ systems and even if I did, I doubt it would be hostile and even if it did, I wouldn't fight it, I would just try to avoid interdiction, or if unsuccessful, just boost my way outta here... So dead weight for sure...
 
Well I'd say ditch those weapons asap, they are dead weight on exploration ship likewise a-rated shields. They just weigh a lot, but really being unengineered they just eat your jumping capacity. Engineer at least FSD to grade 5....

Also ditch the heatsinks. Have three exploration ships and don't have heatsinks on any of them. If you just are a bit careful and vigilant you never get any damage from heat.
 
Welcome to this vast Milky Way, Sleepy Delegate! Exploration is my favourite gameplay by far. On a first glance the galaxy may look all the same, but as you gain experience, you'll be able to recognise patterns and search to rare and interesting things.

I can honestly say, that the space can be pretty boring place... Rocks and ice everywhere... Every star is the same... Every gas giant looks similar...

It appears you are visiting a lot of brown dwarfs. These stars are small and lack energy. Being cold, they can't develop big planets, having only boring, tiny little worlds. I recommend you to skip them. In the galaxy view, set the filter by star type. Then deselect the brown dwarfs (Y, T, L and M types). Done! Now you'll mostly visit main-sequence stars (K, G, F, A, B and O types), therefore having access to a lot of interesting planets, such as water or ammonia worlds, high metal content planets or even the Earth-like worlds. This way, your voyage will become more appealing.

See you out there, commander o7
 
I recommend you to skip them. In the galaxy view, set the filter by star type. Then deselect the brown dwarfs (Y, T, L and M types). Done!

Point of information, M class stars are red dwarfs, not brown, and are on the main sequence.

When you do find something else in a brown dwarf system it's really special though, and an ELW in a brown dwarf primary star is one of the rarest of rare things any my personal holy grail.
 
Point of information, M class stars are red dwarfs, not brown, and are on the main sequence.

You're right. However, I don't have patience to scan M systems, so I skip all of them. But I like to find and visit M and K supergiants, because they are easy to spot in the realistic view. Yesterday I discovered an ELW on a K giant. I landed on it's moon and took some great screenshots.
 
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how do you find something interesting? Like how did people find all those strange things, like ruins, xeno life, volcanos etc? Do you need to search the system inch by inch and look in every corner, or does it pop up on the scanner?

As others above have stated, the best way to increase your chances of finding "interesting things" is to eliminate stars that rarely have interesting things around them. Use the Star Class filter on the galaxy map to get rid of brown dwarfs and the smaller main sequence stars (M and probably K too).

Example of how much this can help: my survey results of the top seven star classes show that Water Worlds occur in only 1.5% of Class L Brown Dwarf systems. They occur in about 20% of Class F and Class A systems. If you restrict your star class filter to Class F and A only, you won't think "water worlds are rare" any more.

Of course, "everybody knows this, and everybody is doing it". So if you're travelling on a thoroughly explored route (like to Sag A*), you're probably better off leaving the G and K stars in your filter parameters, on the assumptino that, although they're "less interesting", anythign interesting you do find is less likely to already be explored.

how do I survive without hitting anything? (I almost hit a planet, I was supercruising towards it, getting ready to stop, my mind got carried away with some explorations stuff and "BANG!!!" - emergency drop out of supercruise... All I saw was the planet plummeting towards me at a speed I could not evade, I thought I'm dead, all the progress lost... Luckily the emergency brakes worked... But my heart stopped for a second... Then I almost hit a star, as I accidentally pressed 75% thrust instead of a FULL STOP and as a consequence panicked and turned my nose towards the centre of the star... poopoo humans can panic really fast!

One piece of kit you haven't installed, which can save you from forgetful faceplanting into stars, is the Supercruise Assist module. I have it installed on most of my ships, not for the Supercruise Assist function (which I almost never use), but for the ability to switch on "come to full stop when Arriving", which you only get if you have Supercruise Assist installed. Well worth the space taken up by it, in my opinion.

If I make it in one piece to the Explorer's Anchorage, should I sell all the data immediately, or travel back to the bubble and sell something there?

This depends on (a) how "accident-prone" you are, both normally and while out exploring, and (b) if you have any factions back in the Bubble that you care about. Selling exploration data to a minor faction is one of the most powerful tools a player has to boost that faction's Influence and control over their star systems. It seems a shame to "waste" it on the ruling faction on some deep-space outpost in the middle of nowhere that you don't care about and you're unlikely to ever visit again, and who are usually already locked at 99% Influence because mostly everybody who visits there is selling all their data to them.

My own personal modus operandi is to sell only the data for Earth-likes, and any other super-interesting discoveries, at the first starport I dock at after making the discoveries, but I leave the bulk of exploration data onboard, selling it back in the Bubble to boost my favoured factions. I have about 50 ruling factions I like to support, and after my last survey leg I had 76 pages of data to sell - so, I spread it around, one page per faction, and maybe another one or two pages if that faction was in trouble, losing an election or some such.

Doing this has two obvious downsides. First, that "selling only the Earth-likes" step involves combing through the entire unwieldy list of my system scans in Universal Cartographics, searching for the specific systems that I want to sell. ED doesn't make doing this a simple task, as the system scans are unsorted either alphabetically or chronologically. It took me two days to find the 17 Earth-like and other systems I wanted to urgently sell, amongst those 76 pages of scans (that's 76x50, or 3800 star systems, to be clicked through one at a time). Real needle-in-a-haystack stuff, and if you miss one or two (as you inevitably do), then you have to go through the whole list again, until you find it. Very tedious.

The second downside is, of course, flying back to the Bubble, and then flying here and there all over the Bubble, all the while carrying over a billion credits worth of data, and not getting blown up by pirates, irritable cops, or a cranky docking computer that decides that today is indeed a good day to die. Because, if you weren't yet aware, getting blown up with unsold exploration data on board means you lose all your data. It's happened to me two or three times now. Do NOT play in Open while carrying all that data, unless you're happy to risk losing your months of hard work just so some player-killer can have their 5 seconds of yuks.
 
As others above have stated, the best way to increase your chances of finding "interesting things" is to eliminate stars that rarely have interesting things around them. Use the Star Class filter on the galaxy map to get rid of brown dwarfs and the smaller main sequence stars (M and probably K too).

Example of how much this can help: my survey results of the top seven star classes show that Water Worlds occur in only 1.5% of Class L Brown Dwarf systems. They occur in about 20% of Class F and Class A systems. If you restrict your star class filter to Class F and A only, you won't think "water worlds are rare" any more.

Of course, "everybody knows this, and everybody is doing it". So if you're travelling on a thoroughly explored route (like to Sag A*), you're probably better off leaving the G and K stars in your filter parameters, on the assumptino that, although they're "less interesting", anythign interesting you do find is less likely to already be explored.



One piece of kit you haven't installed, which can save you from forgetful faceplanting into stars, is the Supercruise Assist module. I have it installed on most of my ships, not for the Supercruise Assist function (which I almost never use), but for the ability to switch on "come to full stop when Arriving", which you only get if you have Supercruise Assist installed. Well worth the space taken up by it, in my opinion.



This depends on (a) how "accident-prone" you are, both normally and while out exploring, and (b) if you have any factions back in the Bubble that you care about. Selling exploration data to a minor faction is one of the most powerful tools a player has to boost that faction's Influence and control over their star systems. It seems a shame to "waste" it on the ruling faction on some deep-space outpost in the middle of nowhere that you don't care about and you're unlikely to ever visit again, and who are usually already locked at 99% Influence because mostly everybody who visits there is selling all their data to them.

My own personal modus operandi is to sell only the data for Earth-likes, and any other super-interesting discoveries, at the first starport I dock at after making the discoveries, but I leave the bulk of exploration data onboard, selling it back in the Bubble to boost my favoured factions. I have about 50 ruling factions I like to support, and after my last survey leg I had 76 pages of data to sell - so, I spread it around, one page per faction, and maybe another one or two pages if that faction was in trouble, losing an election or some such.

Doing this has two obvious downsides. First, that "selling only the Earth-likes" step involves combing through the entire unwieldy list of my system scans in Universal Cartographics, searching for the specific systems that I want to sell. ED doesn't make doing this a simple task, as the system scans are unsorted either alphabetically or chronologically. It took me two days to find the 17 Earth-like and other systems I wanted to urgently sell, amongst those 76 pages of scans (that's 76x50, or 3800 star systems, to be clicked through one at a time). Real needle-in-a-haystack stuff, and if you miss one or two (as you inevitably do), then you have to go through the whole list again, until you find it. Very tedious.

The second downside is, of course, flying back to the Bubble, and then flying here and there all over the Bubble, all the while carrying over a billion credits worth of data, and not getting blown up by pirates, irritable cops, or a cranky docking computer that decides that today is indeed a good day to die. Because, if you weren't yet aware, getting blown up with unsold exploration data on board means you lose all your data. It's happened to me two or three times now. Do NOT play in Open while carrying all that data, unless you're happy to risk losing your months of hard work just so some player-killer can have their 5 seconds of yuks.

Thank you Comander, that is some useful guide... :)
At this moment, I don't have any factions I want to support, so I guess I will just sell part at EA and then head back and make my mind before I arrive in the bubble... Also, I guess I will switch to solo when returning, I never had any trouble with gankers, but I guess that's because I never been to any system they like to reside in... Sure enough I already experienced NPC pirates, but those were often easy to evade interdictions...
 
And so my journey continues... 2 days ago, CMDR Crumley messaged me in ED, announcing his plans to visit me and join me on my trip for a while... I thought "Cool, my plan was to only do couple of jumps, explore some systems and go to bed, but having a companion for a while, that sounds cool!"... Then he told me, that he is 2800LY away and it will take him couple of days to catch me up... :) Thats when you realize, you are not in a game, but in a simulator... It was funny... :)
Anyway, while CMDR Crumley is catching up on me, I continue my exploration... Installed Elite Observatory... Very nifty utility! I don't know how to make it display overlay over my screen, but I switched to voice announcements only...

Some cool stuff I saw (I'm sure you've seen it before milion times, but for me, this is still kind of exciting! :) )

Beautiful ringed amonia world...

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A gas giant that has real balls...

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And look at the size of those rings! Almost 2ls! :)

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here's some forum posts that might be worth a read...

this might save that issue with forgetting which key puts the landing gear down...
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threa...ence-card-of-your-controller-bindings.464400/

here's the stations on the colonia highway, which is roughly parralel to your course.

this is the tale of a rescue that became an epic and deserves to be remembered. The finest moment I've seen in ED so far.

I swear I had a guide to exploration bookmarked, but it's gone missing. Maybe someone else can provide a link.

good to meet you tonight!
 
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