Some thoughts and results (credits and accreditations) from travelling from the Bubble to Colonia and back

[Capt. Hook]

I thought I would add some flavour and thoughts on my recent personal expedition to Colonia and back from Lave.
First of all a little bit of Context.
My ship: Asp Explorer. Jump range c64l/y. Engineered and Guardian drive added. 1 Auto Repair Fitted and SRV
Time Taken: Approx 4-6 weeks

So the good stuff about Colonia to kick things off. Well as a wannabe explorer I made it to Elite Rank just be getting there! Once there, undisovered systems are about 10 Jumps out. I found an Earth world 13 jumps out. Its very easy to pick up accreditations for first footfalls out there and there are heaps of exploring to be done in every direction. Other things? Well you have to get yourself into the mindset of self sufficiency as quickly as possible. As I've also mentioned on another thread, don't discount M class stars when exploring as I've found more no atmosphere moons in these sytems than any other I've been to as well as Earth, Ammonia and Water worlds. Oh and have shields on your ship, no matter how weak, as you will be scraping your hull when looking for things planet side! Weirdly Thargoid stuff would appear from time to time out there as well like probes and whatnot. I did find having a podcast to listen to kept me sane on the trip back to Lave as well! Something like 300 jumps in each direction...

Exobiology is abit marmite sometimes. The credits are nice when turned in for sure but the gameplay for searching out for lifeforms (plants, fungus and bacteria) gets a bit, well, samey after abit. Especially when the same species keeps cropping up 1000 l/y apart! I didn't realise puddles of bacteria had access to jump drives but who knew?!

End result? Some cool pictures, about 10BN credits and Elite II Explorer / Elite 1 Exobiologist (yay me). Also my ship hull integrity down to 28% and paintwork 11%! I would definitely recommend the trip to anyone. Going to put feet up now and wait for chance to build my own station when that starts again. Fly safe commanders.

 

[DjVortex]

If you are happy with your progress and experience as an explorer, I recommend as a next step in your "career" to learn how to use Spansh to get to remote places fast. Sometimes it's ok to go to places the old-fashioned "slow" way, because it's about the journey, not so much about the destination. However, sometimes you just want to get to a very remote place (eg. to Colonia from the Bubble) as fast as possible and don't care about the in-between systems at all.

That's where Spansh comes in: It will plot a route for you (it has several plotters but I recommend using the Galaxy Plotter) that takes into account your ship build and goes through as many neutron stars as possible, allowing you to make as many quadruple-sized jumps as possible.

This means that, for example, if you are going to Colonia from the Bubble, instead of having to do 300+ jumps you can do it in less than 90. At a good pace the trip should be doable in 2 hours, even less.

And this does not feel like some kind of cheap "cheesing" of the game because it does require a bit of practice in order to get a good jumping pace, and it gives a sense of accomplishment when you do travel those huge distances in a very moderate amount of time. Also, those neutron stars are beautiful.

It does require you to have an AFMU and learn how to use it (this is because neutron star supercharging damages the FSD by about 1%, and even if you are "merely" going to Colonia, which is under 90 jumps, it's cutting it a bit too close for comfort. You can still use the FSD if it's above 0% health, but below 80% you'll start getting failures. As scary as those might sound, they are just a delay, not a catastrophe. However, for optimal jumping pace you want to keep it above 80%. For longer trips, eg. to Sagittarius A* and beyond, it really is a necessity.)