Hello everyone,
since reading exploring tales here greatly helped me combat space madness while out in the black, it is now my turn to contribute!
Starting from scratch, it took me a few weeks to trade my way up to an ASP explorer, and even after selling my T6 and stripping down my Hauler to the bare metal, I had just enough to outfit it and buy insurance.
My build: http://www.edshipyard.com/#/L=70g,0Wg0Wg,2-4s6u7_6u5K8S8I,52M7TC0Ko0Ko5DI2UI2jw
- shields because I'm paranoid
- just enough power to boost away in case of interdictions on the way in / out of the bubble
- no weapons
- a little extra fuel reserve
- couple of heat sink launchers (used a few, but never really needed them)
- couple of AFM units (completely depleted them, will bring bigger ones next time)
As soon as I got it, out in the void for my first trip into the unknown!
I departed at the start of June and I took my time heading towards the core.
First I headed to the Coalsack nebula, which I found incredibly boring. But I found my only Wolf-Rayet along the way
While there I spotted a corridor of bright blue stars, so I went and visited them. Here I also found my first black hole!
From there I kept going in the directions of the core, visiting a couple more nebulas along the way.
The last nebula I visited was some 1000 ly below the galactic plane, so by getting there I accidentally discovered the neutron fields.
After that, I followed the netron field all the way to the Core. While sparse at first, the neutron stars got increasingly dense, to the point that it was possible (manually plotting of course) to jump from neutron star to neutron star, with only the occasional detour to fuel scoop.
Pro tip: remember to always throttle to zero while jumping to a neutron star or a black hole, otherwise your ship will suffer. By the time I reached the core, after tens of emergency dropouts, I was down to 80% hull and 50% canopy!
Also, when space madness sets in you start doing really silly things.
I got reckless: I discovered a system with binary stars orbiting only a few ls apart. Needless to say I decided that spercruising between them would be fun. While I did so, I also had the brilliant idea of switching to debug camera to take a few pictures of the stunt. When I turned it off, my heat was at 280% and my cabin was on fire! Luckily I didn't get kicked out of supercruise and managed to get away before things got too nasty.
After I first heard the ominous sound of my canopy cracking, I sobered up a little...
In another occasion I turned off my life support system because I liked the sound of my increasingly rasping breath, and turned it back on only after I got down to 6 seconds of reserve oxygen.
Pro tip: reserve oxygen does not replenish when you turn life support back on, so from that point onwards I could no longer repair my life support!
I also discovered a black hole without a body exclusion zone. With normal propulsion I managed to actually enter the star sphere that you normally see from outside! Inside was... emptiness.
At the end of July I finally reached the inner core and performed the obligatory visit to the Great Annihilator and Sagittarius A.
My original plan for when I reached Sagittarius A was to head directly upwards of the galactic plane and fly as high as my jump range would allow me to, in order to sight-see the spiral arms of the galaxy from above. However, my less than ideal ship health made me thing better about it and I started back towards home.
For the return trip I decided to follow the neutron field above the galactic plane and opposite (in recpect to the center) to the one I visited before (before it was the bottom-right one, now the top-left if looking from Sol towards the center).
Pro tip: in the Straneou sectors I discovered vast clusters of black holes. These areas contained virtually no neutron stars, only black holes. They were spaced further apart than neutron stars, but with careful planning it was possible to jump from black hole to black hole without hitting other star types. I believe I scanned 100+ black holes in this area.
Once, when jumping to a black hole the game crashed on me. When I logged back in, I logged into absolute, perfect darkness. Panic! Where am I? HONK! System map. Select main celestial body (aka the black hole). Distance: 0m. What? The game logged me perfectly in the center of the black hole?!? Panic! What now? Power to engines, forward 5%. Instantly, an explosion of stars! Out of the black hole the cosmos were still there waiting for me! Phew...
End of August, I'm leasurely making my way home following the neutron field, still 15000 ly from Sol. While skimming Galnet news (how the hack can Galnet signal reach me so far out is beyond my comprehension, but I'm certainly not going to complain) I read about a new exploration-oriented community goal (Mapping the cosmos). Since I already had about 2000 between stars / black holes in my pocket (and believe me, after 2000 of them you begin to be *a trifle* bored), I decided to rush towards home and contribute my discoveries.
I spent another day scanning the neutron fields (heck, there was another cluster of black holes, I could not leave them alone unscanned!), during which the community goal jumped to 80% completion. Panic!
From this point on I entirely stopped scanning, it was all scoop / honk / jump / scoop / honk / jump. Suffice it to say that I travelled the remaining 12000 ly in 1.5 days (8.5 hours of gameplay). The grind would have been unbearable if not for a few notable distractions along the way.
I was plotting my routes in legs of 1000 ly. At the end of a leg, before planning the next one I peeked at the system map and behold, a ELW / terraformable WW binary not 1000 ls away from me!
Another leg landed me squarely in the middle between two galactic arms; as I tried to plot the next leg I kept getting 'no route available' error messages. I tried to plot shorter and shorter legs to no avail, there was no way to get past that point. I even tried to manually plot my jumps, but star systems were spaced 40-60 ly apart from each other. Panic! After a good hour sweating and scrambling I remembered I had been following the neutron fields, and thus I was still 1400 ly above the galactic plane! However, in that location there was no direct route down. In the end I had to retract my steps for some 1000 ly (30 jumps), then go right another 500 ly (15 jumps), after which I could finally plot my way down to the center of the galactic plane (another 45 jumps). Finally, I was able to plot again towards home!
Plotting computer must passionately love brown dwarfs, since it insisted on plotting routes that crossed scores and scores of them. Since they are non-scoopable, several times I had to detour to find a scoopable star to avoid running out of fuel.
At one point I dozed off while jumping, woke up to a loud bang and the sound of my canopy going critical. Now *this* was truly frightening. A web of cracks completely crisscrossed my canopy and I had still 5000 ly to go! Needless to say, I was no longer sleepy afterwards!
When I finally reached the inhabited bubble, my heart started pounding faster and faster. My ship was seriously battered at this point (75% hull, 25% canopy, several modules well below 50%). What if someone tries to interdict me? Should I evade or submit? Will my canopy survive boosting? I literally jumped at each signal source! Luckily, no one messed with me and on September 1 I safely reached my destination system, Cemiess. As I approached Mackenzie Relay I started sweating in hearnest. Back to normal propulsion. Approach. Request docking permission. Approach. Stop. Steady. Approach. Line up. Approach. How come they made the station slots so much smaller while I was away? Passed through. Where is the blasted landing pad? Approach. Stop stop STOP TOO FAST! Phew, this ship really takes its time to stop. Landing gear. Steady. Align. Stop. Descend. Did it always take me a full minute to descend 30 meters? Thump. Docking successful! I made it back!!!!!
I was relieved to see that the community goal was still open (90% completed). I subscribed and started selling my hard-earned exploraton data. One hour later (I confess that even the 'congratulations, you are the first to discover' messages can get boring after a while), I contributed data for roughly 2500 systems and made it to the top 5% contributors. In the morning the comminity goal ended and I was rewarded with 15000000 credits
As for numbers, in the end I:
- honked about 2500 systems
- performed about 3200 detailed surface scans
- discovered about 2000 neutron stars
- discovered about 150 black holes
- discovered about 100 water world (many of them terraformable)
- discovered about 20 earth like worlds
- discovered 2 or 3 red giants
- discovered 1 orange giant (scannable from a distance of 100000 ls)
- made about 90000000 credits
- went from scout to 34% pioneer
First thing, I'm going to take some rest and enjoy some earthly pleasures.
After that I'm going to spend part of this money on some spiffy combat ship (vulture, python, imperial clipper, I have not decided yet) and go blast things up, until the void calls me again!
Pictures of my expedition can be found here: http://cmdr-moonrays.tumblr.com/
since reading exploring tales here greatly helped me combat space madness while out in the black, it is now my turn to contribute!
Starting from scratch, it took me a few weeks to trade my way up to an ASP explorer, and even after selling my T6 and stripping down my Hauler to the bare metal, I had just enough to outfit it and buy insurance.
My build: http://www.edshipyard.com/#/L=70g,0Wg0Wg,2-4s6u7_6u5K8S8I,52M7TC0Ko0Ko5DI2UI2jw
- shields because I'm paranoid
- just enough power to boost away in case of interdictions on the way in / out of the bubble
- no weapons
- a little extra fuel reserve
- couple of heat sink launchers (used a few, but never really needed them)
- couple of AFM units (completely depleted them, will bring bigger ones next time)
As soon as I got it, out in the void for my first trip into the unknown!
I departed at the start of June and I took my time heading towards the core.
First I headed to the Coalsack nebula, which I found incredibly boring. But I found my only Wolf-Rayet along the way
While there I spotted a corridor of bright blue stars, so I went and visited them. Here I also found my first black hole!
From there I kept going in the directions of the core, visiting a couple more nebulas along the way.
The last nebula I visited was some 1000 ly below the galactic plane, so by getting there I accidentally discovered the neutron fields.
After that, I followed the netron field all the way to the Core. While sparse at first, the neutron stars got increasingly dense, to the point that it was possible (manually plotting of course) to jump from neutron star to neutron star, with only the occasional detour to fuel scoop.
Pro tip: remember to always throttle to zero while jumping to a neutron star or a black hole, otherwise your ship will suffer. By the time I reached the core, after tens of emergency dropouts, I was down to 80% hull and 50% canopy!
Also, when space madness sets in you start doing really silly things.
I got reckless: I discovered a system with binary stars orbiting only a few ls apart. Needless to say I decided that spercruising between them would be fun. While I did so, I also had the brilliant idea of switching to debug camera to take a few pictures of the stunt. When I turned it off, my heat was at 280% and my cabin was on fire! Luckily I didn't get kicked out of supercruise and managed to get away before things got too nasty.
After I first heard the ominous sound of my canopy cracking, I sobered up a little...
In another occasion I turned off my life support system because I liked the sound of my increasingly rasping breath, and turned it back on only after I got down to 6 seconds of reserve oxygen.
Pro tip: reserve oxygen does not replenish when you turn life support back on, so from that point onwards I could no longer repair my life support!
I also discovered a black hole without a body exclusion zone. With normal propulsion I managed to actually enter the star sphere that you normally see from outside! Inside was... emptiness.
At the end of July I finally reached the inner core and performed the obligatory visit to the Great Annihilator and Sagittarius A.
My original plan for when I reached Sagittarius A was to head directly upwards of the galactic plane and fly as high as my jump range would allow me to, in order to sight-see the spiral arms of the galaxy from above. However, my less than ideal ship health made me thing better about it and I started back towards home.
For the return trip I decided to follow the neutron field above the galactic plane and opposite (in recpect to the center) to the one I visited before (before it was the bottom-right one, now the top-left if looking from Sol towards the center).
Pro tip: in the Straneou sectors I discovered vast clusters of black holes. These areas contained virtually no neutron stars, only black holes. They were spaced further apart than neutron stars, but with careful planning it was possible to jump from black hole to black hole without hitting other star types. I believe I scanned 100+ black holes in this area.
Once, when jumping to a black hole the game crashed on me. When I logged back in, I logged into absolute, perfect darkness. Panic! Where am I? HONK! System map. Select main celestial body (aka the black hole). Distance: 0m. What? The game logged me perfectly in the center of the black hole?!? Panic! What now? Power to engines, forward 5%. Instantly, an explosion of stars! Out of the black hole the cosmos were still there waiting for me! Phew...
End of August, I'm leasurely making my way home following the neutron field, still 15000 ly from Sol. While skimming Galnet news (how the hack can Galnet signal reach me so far out is beyond my comprehension, but I'm certainly not going to complain) I read about a new exploration-oriented community goal (Mapping the cosmos). Since I already had about 2000 between stars / black holes in my pocket (and believe me, after 2000 of them you begin to be *a trifle* bored), I decided to rush towards home and contribute my discoveries.
I spent another day scanning the neutron fields (heck, there was another cluster of black holes, I could not leave them alone unscanned!), during which the community goal jumped to 80% completion. Panic!
From this point on I entirely stopped scanning, it was all scoop / honk / jump / scoop / honk / jump. Suffice it to say that I travelled the remaining 12000 ly in 1.5 days (8.5 hours of gameplay). The grind would have been unbearable if not for a few notable distractions along the way.
I was plotting my routes in legs of 1000 ly. At the end of a leg, before planning the next one I peeked at the system map and behold, a ELW / terraformable WW binary not 1000 ls away from me!
Another leg landed me squarely in the middle between two galactic arms; as I tried to plot the next leg I kept getting 'no route available' error messages. I tried to plot shorter and shorter legs to no avail, there was no way to get past that point. I even tried to manually plot my jumps, but star systems were spaced 40-60 ly apart from each other. Panic! After a good hour sweating and scrambling I remembered I had been following the neutron fields, and thus I was still 1400 ly above the galactic plane! However, in that location there was no direct route down. In the end I had to retract my steps for some 1000 ly (30 jumps), then go right another 500 ly (15 jumps), after which I could finally plot my way down to the center of the galactic plane (another 45 jumps). Finally, I was able to plot again towards home!
Plotting computer must passionately love brown dwarfs, since it insisted on plotting routes that crossed scores and scores of them. Since they are non-scoopable, several times I had to detour to find a scoopable star to avoid running out of fuel.
At one point I dozed off while jumping, woke up to a loud bang and the sound of my canopy going critical. Now *this* was truly frightening. A web of cracks completely crisscrossed my canopy and I had still 5000 ly to go! Needless to say, I was no longer sleepy afterwards!
When I finally reached the inhabited bubble, my heart started pounding faster and faster. My ship was seriously battered at this point (75% hull, 25% canopy, several modules well below 50%). What if someone tries to interdict me? Should I evade or submit? Will my canopy survive boosting? I literally jumped at each signal source! Luckily, no one messed with me and on September 1 I safely reached my destination system, Cemiess. As I approached Mackenzie Relay I started sweating in hearnest. Back to normal propulsion. Approach. Request docking permission. Approach. Stop. Steady. Approach. Line up. Approach. How come they made the station slots so much smaller while I was away? Passed through. Where is the blasted landing pad? Approach. Stop stop STOP TOO FAST! Phew, this ship really takes its time to stop. Landing gear. Steady. Align. Stop. Descend. Did it always take me a full minute to descend 30 meters? Thump. Docking successful! I made it back!!!!!
I was relieved to see that the community goal was still open (90% completed). I subscribed and started selling my hard-earned exploraton data. One hour later (I confess that even the 'congratulations, you are the first to discover' messages can get boring after a while), I contributed data for roughly 2500 systems and made it to the top 5% contributors. In the morning the comminity goal ended and I was rewarded with 15000000 credits
As for numbers, in the end I:
- honked about 2500 systems
- performed about 3200 detailed surface scans
- discovered about 2000 neutron stars
- discovered about 150 black holes
- discovered about 100 water world (many of them terraformable)
- discovered about 20 earth like worlds
- discovered 2 or 3 red giants
- discovered 1 orange giant (scannable from a distance of 100000 ls)
- made about 90000000 credits
- went from scout to 34% pioneer
First thing, I'm going to take some rest and enjoy some earthly pleasures.
After that I'm going to spend part of this money on some spiffy combat ship (vulture, python, imperial clipper, I have not decided yet) and go blast things up, until the void calls me again!
Pictures of my expedition can be found here: http://cmdr-moonrays.tumblr.com/
