Hello and welcome to my guide, as mentioned in the (global) Galnet News article in the game in the 3rd paragraph. 
As you know, exploring can be a very aimless career for the most part, and you never know what you're going to find in the next system. That is part of the fun of exploring in ED, and there will still be a lot of that even after you follow my guide. However, sometimes you just want to know where all the best systems are so you can grind up your rank faster when you finally turn in the data. As such, at the end of my guide, you will find a short list of systems to visit should you be in the area and only want the cream of the crop that this region of space has to offer. If that's all you care about, then just skip to the bottom and have fun. Otherwise, read on.
But before you do, I want to give a shout out to the "First Great Expedition" group for serving as an inspiration, and to the East India Company for providing that all important escort wing to 78 Ursae Majoris when I was still flying with next to no defenses. I am very grateful for that.
Pretty Pictures!!
Yes I did take lots of pictures. Enjoy.
About 150 pictures have been uploaded, which can be viewed via this link below:
http://imgur.com/a/eec9V/all
However, here are a few samples I like.
Yes my friends, it's a giant space.....chicken? Bird? Phoenix? We totally have to re-name this space cloud the "Chicken Head Nebula".
The space chicken head eats stars.
It eats gas giants in its sleep.
And it's not a picky eater cuz it will even eat icy planets!
It also shoots MASSIVE lasers out of it's mouth! It's a very dangerous space creature, no?
Yes, there is even a pair of Earth-likes in the sector (but I won't say which one)
Nice view of the Nebula behind an earth-like planet.
My Story
So basically I decided to set out for the butterfly nebula a week before 1.1 come out, thinking it was unexplored and unclaimed. However, once I got there (a 6700 LY trip) and rechecked the list that Mike Brooks released, it turned out that someone did in fact already claim the system. So I went out in search of another nebula that I could explore that hasn't been claimed yet, and after some browsing and checking, it turned out that NO ONE has been to NGC 3199 yet (as of 3 Feb 2015). So I set off on what ended up being a 2 day trip covering over 13000 light years, and I made a point of at least scanning every star I stopped by.
Once I got to NGC 3199, I got to work and started scanning random systems, starting with the ones inside the nebula itself. However, I got to thinking maybe I would scan the whole sector. Easy right? So I got a pen and paper and started going down the list writing down every star.
The way I did this was with the help of the Galaxy Map search function. You see, most systems have the name of the sector ("NGC 3199 Sector" in this case), followed by a string of 3 letters (AF-A), and a suffix with a letter and 1-2 numbers (B1-1), followed by further sub-groupings. So for example, you have the name "NGC 3199 Sector DL-Y D13". But that "D13" can be followed by another dash followed by numbers, eg "NGC 3199 Sector UE-Q B5-5".
Now the key is the fact that if you simply put in NGC 3199 Sector, if you keep pressing enter it will go from one system to the next until you eventually return to the original system. However, this isn't specific enough (nor alphabetical). So you would start with "NGC 3199 Sector AA" in the search, and see if anything comes up. If it does, you keep pressing enter and write down what comes up till you go back to the original result before moving on. If not, you also move on. You repeat this process with AB, AC...etc etc... all the way to ZZ.
By doing this, I was able to effectively catalogue the names of every system within the NGC 3199 Sector, which turned out to be a total of 750 systems. After my list was complete, I got to work and started going down the list. If I had to travel from one end of the sector to the other, I scanned every system, fully, and marked it down on my list.
Now most people would scan a system, maybe scan the star, and move on if all there was was a few icy planets. But I decided to scan EVERYTHING in the system because I wanted my name everywhere. I wanted to CLAIM this sector, which isn't something anyone has done yet. However, the process took FOREVER. There were systems with one two stars, and the other star was 600k ls away. I went there. I scanned every icy planet, even if they were 25k ls away. I scanned every moon. There were systems with 12 Gas giants and icies, all with lots and lots of moons. I scanned every....single....one. And once I was done, I went down the list and double checked my list and made sure, even going back and scanning the few bodies that I missed (750 systems, it was bound to happen). It was only then that I realized that someone had turned in data on a small handful of systems in the sector before me, which was somewhat demoralizing for me, but I got over it.
It took 5 and a half weeks. I will never do it again like this. But I'm glad I did.
After I verified the complete scan, I headed back to civilized space, which was 15000 LYs total. My first stop was 78 Ursa Majoris, where I sold 7.1M credits of data, getting me allied status with the Alioth Independents. Influence was 68.4%, which jumped to 77.6% the very next day.
Next stop was Anotchadiae, where I sold 11.2M credits worth of data to the Chapter of Isinor. The influence was 33.2% before selling, and jumped to 47.3% the next day.
3rd stop was Sirius Corporation at HIP 8396, where I sold 6.7M credits worth of data, resulting in influence increase from 81.0% to 82.0%.
4th stop was sublime Order of Van Maanen's Star at Tau Ceti, where I sold 8.5M credits worth of data. No increase in influence was observed.
Last stop was an empire system controlled by Patron's Principles where I sold the remaining 37.3M credits worth of data over the next 2 days. Strangely influence jumped only 3%, but that might be because the system may have had multiple colonies. Plus, I sold roughly half this value when logged the 3% increase, but then when I sold the rest, there was no additional corresponding increase. In fact the influence went down after a few days, so there may have been other interference.
During this entire time, I jotted down the values (to the nearest 100) of every NGC 3199 system as I sold each page, selling each NGC 3199 system individually after I wrote down the value. It took hours, and the entire data selling process took about 3 days for me.
The Results of My Expedition (the good stuff)
Before Selling the Data:
After I finished selling all the data:
After every system was accounted for, I transcribed my data to an excel spreadsheet and sorted the data. Here are my findings:
Total (approximate) Exploration Value of NGC 3199 (before 50% bonus was added for me):
24,645,900 Credits.
Of this, the top 100 systems accounted for a little over 50% of this value, and the top 200 systems bumps up this value to 73% of total value. The value of the 200th most value system is about 38,900 credits while #100 is worth 73,000 credits. It's safe to say that you'll be spending a few days here to get the full value, but it would be well worth your time.
Top value system (above 400K credits):
NGC 3199 Sector DL-Y D13 (401.1K credit value)
System Map Screen shots here: http://imgur.com/a/4OK66
I dub this system, or at least the earth-like world there, "Newmerica". This system could arguably serve as the engine for any expansionist colonization empire and a great candidate for any lore that FD would like to introduce for this particular nebula.
Systems valued 100-400K:
NGC 3199 Sector GW-W C1-5 275.2
NGC 3199 Sector BQ-Y D9 266.3
NGC 3199 Sector DQ-Y D1 263.0
NGC 3199 Sector GB-X C1-2 256.8
NGC 3199 Sector ZU-Y C2 228.2
NGC 3199 Sector IR-W D1-5 225.0
NGC 3199 Sector FW-W D1-4 222.5
NGC 3199 Sector AF-A D11 218.3
NGC 3199 Sector NI-T C3-0 214.3
NGC 3199 Sector EQ-Y C6 206.1
NGC 3199 Sector IM-V C2-5 203.8
NGC 3199 Sector AF-A D6 202.0
NGC 3199 Sector HW-W C1-2 197.8
NGC 3199 Sector CG-X C1-2 193.1
NGC 3199 Sector CQ-Y D6 188.7
NGC 3199 Sector YJ-A D2 178.0
NGC 3199 Sector IR-W D1-3 160.9
NGC 3199 Sector XZ-Y C5 160.8
NGC 3199 Sector FW-W C1-1 157.3
NGC 3199 Sector JH-V C2-8 152.9
NGC 3199 Sector DG-X C1-8 149.1
NGC 3199 Sector FW-W D1-8 148.6
NGC 3199 Sector BQ-Y D6 147.9
NGC 3199 Sector WZ-X B1-0 143.6
NGC 3199 Sector BQ-Y C2 143.2
NGC 3199 Sector DG-X C1-3 142.4
NGC 3199 Sector BQ-Y D5 139.8
NGC 3199 Sector YJ-A D12 139.7
NGC 3199 Sector FM-U B3-0 139.5
NGC 3199 Sector LX-U C2-8 139.0
NGC 3199 Sector BG-X C1-0 137.9
NGC 3199 Sector CQ-Y D3 134.4
NGC 3199 Sector XJ-A D10 130.9
NGC 3199 Sector HH-V C2-5 126.8
NGC 3199 Sector AL-X C1-0 124.5
NGC 3199 Sector BQ-Y D2 124.0
NGC 3199 Sector IM-V C2-1 121.5
NGC 3199 Sector YJ-A D14 119.2
NGC 3199 Sector DQ-Y D0 116.0
NGC 3199 Sector DL-Y C2 115.2
NGC 3199 Sector AF-A D0 114.0
NGC 3199 Sector AF-A D9 114.0
NGC 3199 Sector IM-V C2-2 114.0
NGC 3199 Sector BQ-Y D4 113.7
NGC 3199 Sector BQ-Y C5 112.9
NGC 3199 Sector UE-Q B5-0 111.4
NGC 3199 Sector IR-W C1-7 110.6
NGC 3199 Sector HW-W C1-8 107.6
NGC 3199 Sector DL-Y D9 107.1
NGC 3199 Sector DL-Y D14 106.8
NGC 3199 Sector YZ-Y C0 105.6
NGC 3199 Sector YJ-A D13 105.1
NGC 3199 Sector XZ-Y C3 104.9
NGC 3199 Sector EB-X C1-8 104.4
NGC 3199 Sector JD-R B5-0 103.9
NGC 3199 Sector HH-V C2-7 103.5
NGC 3199 Sector IN-K B8-0 102.9
NGC 3199 Sector DL-Y C4 102.6
NGC 3199 Sector FW-W C1-5 102.5
NGC 3199 Sector BQ-Y D13 101.8
NGC 3199 Sector ON-T C3-1 101.7
NGC 3199 Sector WO-A D9 101.6
NGC 3199 Sector ZU-Y D7 100.3
Dangerous Binary Systems to Avoid
This was as close as I dared to go to one of these systems. Not exactly efficient fuel scooping two stars at once, and this was with an A6 fuel scoop!!
The full 750 system list, if anyone is curious, can be obtained at this link:
http://www.megafileupload.com/en/file/621281/Exploration-Data-xlsx.html
For the love of all things Elite Dangerous, why did you put yourself through such agony? And why bother with a guide?
Two reasons. 1) Bragging rights. I'm pretty sure I am the first explorer to ever, no kidding, scan every single planetary body in an entire sector.
2) I want to inspire people to visit this Nebula, since it's actually a really cool Nebula when you look at my pictures. And it seems like only 2 other people besides myself have been there (I saw someone make a thread about NGC 3199 a few weeks back, which got me all the more motivated to pick up the pace and turn in the data before that other guy did.). So hopefully this guide will generate a lot of extra traffic in that direction.
3) I want to inspire other explorers to actually take the time to actually target specific areas and start cataloging them, then publishing the data so that future explorers can better target their exploration targets while optimizing how much they earn. There may be 400 billion stars, but there are far fewer Nebulas and sections. I want to show people what one person can accomplish, and how to go about doing it. Larger expeditions can easily catalog much larger regions of space in a shorter amount of time.
Hope you enjoyed my guide. I hope this serves as an inspiration for future guides for regions of space much closer to home. While I won't go through the trouble of scanning EVERY body if it's clear there isn't anything of note, I may make a similar guide like this at some point in the future when I get the exploration bug again.
As you know, exploring can be a very aimless career for the most part, and you never know what you're going to find in the next system. That is part of the fun of exploring in ED, and there will still be a lot of that even after you follow my guide. However, sometimes you just want to know where all the best systems are so you can grind up your rank faster when you finally turn in the data. As such, at the end of my guide, you will find a short list of systems to visit should you be in the area and only want the cream of the crop that this region of space has to offer. If that's all you care about, then just skip to the bottom and have fun. Otherwise, read on.
But before you do, I want to give a shout out to the "First Great Expedition" group for serving as an inspiration, and to the East India Company for providing that all important escort wing to 78 Ursae Majoris when I was still flying with next to no defenses. I am very grateful for that.
Pretty Pictures!!
Yes I did take lots of pictures. Enjoy.
About 150 pictures have been uploaded, which can be viewed via this link below:
http://imgur.com/a/eec9V/all
However, here are a few samples I like.
Yes my friends, it's a giant space.....chicken? Bird? Phoenix? We totally have to re-name this space cloud the "Chicken Head Nebula".
The space chicken head eats stars.
It eats gas giants in its sleep.
And it's not a picky eater cuz it will even eat icy planets!
It also shoots MASSIVE lasers out of it's mouth! It's a very dangerous space creature, no?
Yes, there is even a pair of Earth-likes in the sector (but I won't say which one)
Nice view of the Nebula behind an earth-like planet.
My Story
So basically I decided to set out for the butterfly nebula a week before 1.1 come out, thinking it was unexplored and unclaimed. However, once I got there (a 6700 LY trip) and rechecked the list that Mike Brooks released, it turned out that someone did in fact already claim the system. So I went out in search of another nebula that I could explore that hasn't been claimed yet, and after some browsing and checking, it turned out that NO ONE has been to NGC 3199 yet (as of 3 Feb 2015). So I set off on what ended up being a 2 day trip covering over 13000 light years, and I made a point of at least scanning every star I stopped by.
Once I got to NGC 3199, I got to work and started scanning random systems, starting with the ones inside the nebula itself. However, I got to thinking maybe I would scan the whole sector. Easy right? So I got a pen and paper and started going down the list writing down every star.
The way I did this was with the help of the Galaxy Map search function. You see, most systems have the name of the sector ("NGC 3199 Sector" in this case), followed by a string of 3 letters (AF-A), and a suffix with a letter and 1-2 numbers (B1-1), followed by further sub-groupings. So for example, you have the name "NGC 3199 Sector DL-Y D13". But that "D13" can be followed by another dash followed by numbers, eg "NGC 3199 Sector UE-Q B5-5".
Now the key is the fact that if you simply put in NGC 3199 Sector, if you keep pressing enter it will go from one system to the next until you eventually return to the original system. However, this isn't specific enough (nor alphabetical). So you would start with "NGC 3199 Sector AA" in the search, and see if anything comes up. If it does, you keep pressing enter and write down what comes up till you go back to the original result before moving on. If not, you also move on. You repeat this process with AB, AC...etc etc... all the way to ZZ.
By doing this, I was able to effectively catalogue the names of every system within the NGC 3199 Sector, which turned out to be a total of 750 systems. After my list was complete, I got to work and started going down the list. If I had to travel from one end of the sector to the other, I scanned every system, fully, and marked it down on my list.
Now most people would scan a system, maybe scan the star, and move on if all there was was a few icy planets. But I decided to scan EVERYTHING in the system because I wanted my name everywhere. I wanted to CLAIM this sector, which isn't something anyone has done yet. However, the process took FOREVER. There were systems with one two stars, and the other star was 600k ls away. I went there. I scanned every icy planet, even if they were 25k ls away. I scanned every moon. There were systems with 12 Gas giants and icies, all with lots and lots of moons. I scanned every....single....one. And once I was done, I went down the list and double checked my list and made sure, even going back and scanning the few bodies that I missed (750 systems, it was bound to happen). It was only then that I realized that someone had turned in data on a small handful of systems in the sector before me, which was somewhat demoralizing for me, but I got over it.
It took 5 and a half weeks. I will never do it again like this. But I'm glad I did.
After I verified the complete scan, I headed back to civilized space, which was 15000 LYs total. My first stop was 78 Ursa Majoris, where I sold 7.1M credits of data, getting me allied status with the Alioth Independents. Influence was 68.4%, which jumped to 77.6% the very next day.
Next stop was Anotchadiae, where I sold 11.2M credits worth of data to the Chapter of Isinor. The influence was 33.2% before selling, and jumped to 47.3% the next day.
3rd stop was Sirius Corporation at HIP 8396, where I sold 6.7M credits worth of data, resulting in influence increase from 81.0% to 82.0%.
4th stop was sublime Order of Van Maanen's Star at Tau Ceti, where I sold 8.5M credits worth of data. No increase in influence was observed.
Last stop was an empire system controlled by Patron's Principles where I sold the remaining 37.3M credits worth of data over the next 2 days. Strangely influence jumped only 3%, but that might be because the system may have had multiple colonies. Plus, I sold roughly half this value when logged the 3% increase, but then when I sold the rest, there was no additional corresponding increase. In fact the influence went down after a few days, so there may have been other interference.
During this entire time, I jotted down the values (to the nearest 100) of every NGC 3199 system as I sold each page, selling each NGC 3199 system individually after I wrote down the value. It took hours, and the entire data selling process took about 3 days for me.
The Results of My Expedition (the good stuff)
Before Selling the Data:
After I finished selling all the data:
After every system was accounted for, I transcribed my data to an excel spreadsheet and sorted the data. Here are my findings:
Total (approximate) Exploration Value of NGC 3199 (before 50% bonus was added for me):
24,645,900 Credits.
Of this, the top 100 systems accounted for a little over 50% of this value, and the top 200 systems bumps up this value to 73% of total value. The value of the 200th most value system is about 38,900 credits while #100 is worth 73,000 credits. It's safe to say that you'll be spending a few days here to get the full value, but it would be well worth your time.
Top value system (above 400K credits):
NGC 3199 Sector DL-Y D13 (401.1K credit value)
System Map Screen shots here: http://imgur.com/a/4OK66
I dub this system, or at least the earth-like world there, "Newmerica". This system could arguably serve as the engine for any expansionist colonization empire and a great candidate for any lore that FD would like to introduce for this particular nebula.
Systems valued 100-400K:
NGC 3199 Sector GW-W C1-5 275.2
NGC 3199 Sector BQ-Y D9 266.3
NGC 3199 Sector DQ-Y D1 263.0
NGC 3199 Sector GB-X C1-2 256.8
NGC 3199 Sector ZU-Y C2 228.2
NGC 3199 Sector IR-W D1-5 225.0
NGC 3199 Sector FW-W D1-4 222.5
NGC 3199 Sector AF-A D11 218.3
NGC 3199 Sector NI-T C3-0 214.3
NGC 3199 Sector EQ-Y C6 206.1
NGC 3199 Sector IM-V C2-5 203.8
NGC 3199 Sector AF-A D6 202.0
NGC 3199 Sector HW-W C1-2 197.8
NGC 3199 Sector CG-X C1-2 193.1
NGC 3199 Sector CQ-Y D6 188.7
NGC 3199 Sector YJ-A D2 178.0
NGC 3199 Sector IR-W D1-3 160.9
NGC 3199 Sector XZ-Y C5 160.8
NGC 3199 Sector FW-W C1-1 157.3
NGC 3199 Sector JH-V C2-8 152.9
NGC 3199 Sector DG-X C1-8 149.1
NGC 3199 Sector FW-W D1-8 148.6
NGC 3199 Sector BQ-Y D6 147.9
NGC 3199 Sector WZ-X B1-0 143.6
NGC 3199 Sector BQ-Y C2 143.2
NGC 3199 Sector DG-X C1-3 142.4
NGC 3199 Sector BQ-Y D5 139.8
NGC 3199 Sector YJ-A D12 139.7
NGC 3199 Sector FM-U B3-0 139.5
NGC 3199 Sector LX-U C2-8 139.0
NGC 3199 Sector BG-X C1-0 137.9
NGC 3199 Sector CQ-Y D3 134.4
NGC 3199 Sector XJ-A D10 130.9
NGC 3199 Sector HH-V C2-5 126.8
NGC 3199 Sector AL-X C1-0 124.5
NGC 3199 Sector BQ-Y D2 124.0
NGC 3199 Sector IM-V C2-1 121.5
NGC 3199 Sector YJ-A D14 119.2
NGC 3199 Sector DQ-Y D0 116.0
NGC 3199 Sector DL-Y C2 115.2
NGC 3199 Sector AF-A D0 114.0
NGC 3199 Sector AF-A D9 114.0
NGC 3199 Sector IM-V C2-2 114.0
NGC 3199 Sector BQ-Y D4 113.7
NGC 3199 Sector BQ-Y C5 112.9
NGC 3199 Sector UE-Q B5-0 111.4
NGC 3199 Sector IR-W C1-7 110.6
NGC 3199 Sector HW-W C1-8 107.6
NGC 3199 Sector DL-Y D9 107.1
NGC 3199 Sector DL-Y D14 106.8
NGC 3199 Sector YZ-Y C0 105.6
NGC 3199 Sector YJ-A D13 105.1
NGC 3199 Sector XZ-Y C3 104.9
NGC 3199 Sector EB-X C1-8 104.4
NGC 3199 Sector JD-R B5-0 103.9
NGC 3199 Sector HH-V C2-7 103.5
NGC 3199 Sector IN-K B8-0 102.9
NGC 3199 Sector DL-Y C4 102.6
NGC 3199 Sector FW-W C1-5 102.5
NGC 3199 Sector BQ-Y D13 101.8
NGC 3199 Sector ON-T C3-1 101.7
NGC 3199 Sector WO-A D9 101.6
NGC 3199 Sector ZU-Y D7 100.3
Dangerous Binary Systems to Avoid
| NGC 3199 Sector KR-W C1-0 | |||
| NGC 3199 Sector KR-W C1-8 | |||
| NGC 3199 Sector ZE-A E1 |
This was as close as I dared to go to one of these systems. Not exactly efficient fuel scooping two stars at once, and this was with an A6 fuel scoop!!
The full 750 system list, if anyone is curious, can be obtained at this link:
http://www.megafileupload.com/en/file/621281/Exploration-Data-xlsx.html
For the love of all things Elite Dangerous, why did you put yourself through such agony? And why bother with a guide?
Two reasons. 1) Bragging rights. I'm pretty sure I am the first explorer to ever, no kidding, scan every single planetary body in an entire sector.
2) I want to inspire people to visit this Nebula, since it's actually a really cool Nebula when you look at my pictures. And it seems like only 2 other people besides myself have been there (I saw someone make a thread about NGC 3199 a few weeks back, which got me all the more motivated to pick up the pace and turn in the data before that other guy did.
). So hopefully this guide will generate a lot of extra traffic in that direction.3) I want to inspire other explorers to actually take the time to actually target specific areas and start cataloging them, then publishing the data so that future explorers can better target their exploration targets while optimizing how much they earn. There may be 400 billion stars, but there are far fewer Nebulas and sections. I want to show people what one person can accomplish, and how to go about doing it. Larger expeditions can easily catalog much larger regions of space in a shorter amount of time.
Hope you enjoyed my guide. I hope this serves as an inspiration for future guides for regions of space much closer to home. While I won't go through the trouble of scanning EVERY body if it's clear there isn't anything of note, I may make a similar guide like this at some point in the future when I get the exploration bug again.
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