Newcomer / Intro Tips for travelling unimaginably vast distances?

2Karl

2Karl
Hi all,

I've clocked up some 80+ hours in game so far, mostly just wandering around marvelling at the universe. I'm currently well on the way to getting a Sol permit (about to do a navy mission to get a promotion to Midshipman, then just one more promotion and I'm there, right?), which has been a major goal of mine from the start. However, once that's done...

I posted here a while ago about how beautiful White Dwarfs were, and someone suggested I go see a neutron star. So I made the trip 176Ly to Jackson's Lighthouse and sat and marvelled at it. I have a couple of other places in the universe I want to go, namely VY Canis Majoris, and Sagittarius A*. However the distances involved are several orders of magnitude higher.

So I guess I have two questions - 1. How feasible is it to get to these places, 2. What sort of ship should I be looking at doing this is and 3. Will the cost of such an expedition mean that I will be saving up credits for the next 10 years before I can even attempt it? (that's three questions, I know)

Any thoughts or suggestions welcome, along with suggestions of how to save money if I need to, or also other interesting systems in the universe for me to add to my list of places to visit.

Thanks!

Karl.
 

Chris Simon

Chris Simon
Hi.
First of all, although it is possible to go exploring in any ship, as long as it is properly equipped (scanners, SRV,...), it is really a good idea (if you want to keep your sanity and the times reasonable) to buy a proper exploration vessel. The best of the best are Lakon Type-6, Diamondback Explorer, Asp Explorer and the Anaconda. All of them have 30LY+ stock jump range when outfitted properly, some of them even more (AspX has around 35LY and Anaconda can be pushed over 40LY). Plus if you have the time and resources, further engineering of the ship can make that about 50+60% better. (My current Explonda has 56LY jump range)
With such ship it's much easier to cover vast distances.

That being said, you'll still need a lot of time and patience to reach your destinations. The Sol -> Sag A* record for unmodded Anaconda is around 8 hours, 9 hours for AspX. That is if you're really pushing it. Otherwise count with 20-30 hours to cover the almost 30.000LY distance to the centre of the galaxy. Because I think it's a good idea to do some proper exploration and sight-seeing on the way. A good thing to do (what I usually do) is to set nebulae as waypoints and travel from one to another. Nebulae usually mean a lot of really cool wallpapers for me, plus there are interesting stars and planets, inside.

VY Canis Majoris is a nice mid-range target. That way you can find out if you've got what it takes. If I may, I'd also suggest other interesting supergiants - Betelgeuse is really close, and X Carinae is another nice one. You can also visit Maia, which is the closest black hole I know of.

Though I really can't suggest to just simply plot the route and jump like crazy. Unless you have some nice audio book or other things you can do while jumping, it gets tiresome pretty fast. So take it easy.
 
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Klab

Klab
You can travel into the 'black' in any ship really, some players have taken a sidewinder to the other side of the Milky Way! The main things to consider is what to put on your ship. Firstly you want the biggest A grade FSD your ship can take, a good sized fuel scoop, and an AFMU (optional) so you can repair your modules if you take heat damage from a star. Not forgetting the advanced discovery scanner and the other scanner that scans the bodies (forget the name sry) The cost of this can be quite cheap if you choose say a Hauler, getting a little more expensive if you decide on an Asp, ending up very expensive if you choose the best exploration ship which is the Anaconda. Module costs scale with the cost of the ship you are using so bear that in mind. Other things to consider taking is an SRV (you may want to collect materials, or just look around on an interesting planet). There is a lot more help and information in the exploration forum by the way. Finally, don't think you have to spend a fortune to go exploring - you don't. Good luck CMDR!
 
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Alex Brentnall

Alex Brentnall
Generally jump range is king although fuel scooping is an important aspect. Even if you don't use the range having the ability to travel distances faster if you want to is very nice as you can decide to get home in a hurry if you want to.

Ship advice has been given above. I'd always aim to have a level 5 jump range engineer boost as this can be achieved fairly quickly with the starting Engineers. Also I'd keep 2x 100% synthesis FSD boost on hand in case you get into a tricky patch. (If low on fuel you can use a synthesis boost to get further which has saved me on a few occasions. For everything else there's the fuel rats) :)
One further bit is to get a low emissions powerplant. Not vital but lower heat means you can often speed up your jumps by charging FSD whilst fuel scooping.

Generally advice as others said above.

Now, the ship and oufitting is challenge 1. Challenge 2 is the route and challenge 3 is keeping yourself from going insane. No one has yet passed challenge 3.... :D

What I'm trying to say is a lot of people do the endless jump jump jump thing. I can do that for hours especially when shooting for something like a fuel rat rescue but most people can't. I highly advise breaking your trip up into waypoints 2000-3000ly between is a good distance for a waypoint in my book but thats up to you. Keeps you moving but interested. I spent a lot of my exploration time hunting planetary nebula and various other things, visited Jaques station in the Colonia system etc.
Generally what you want from a waypoint is a break from the norm. My usual is to go land on some planets, play some CQC or combat on my 2nd account or even jump in a different game for a playsession or two. Fly a ship launched fighter down a canyon or through an asteroid belt, do some mining.
Then the next day/week/whatever depart and head on to the next one.

Also netflix or podcasts or music etc. My last trip (8 months, 560kLy) I alternated between youtube, livestreams, films/series and listening to music from Artists i've not heard before. It's great to cross a lot of things off the "to watch" list if you have one of those. :D

Edit:
As for places to go I used this a lot:
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/237956-Exploration-Achievement-System-(EAS)

Also my personal fav places in the galaxy in order:
Betelgeuse
Messier 78 nebula
Veil Nebula West
Barnards loop in general
Sagittarius A*
Bubble Crab nebula area
Beagle Point
All the planetary nebula with my first discovered tags on :D
 
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2Karl

2Karl
Alex Brentnall said:
Also my personal fav places in the galaxy in order:
Betelgeuse
Messier 78 nebula
Veil Nebula West
Barnards loop in general
Sagittarius A*
Bubble Crab nebula area
Beagle Point
All the planetary nebula with my first discovered tags on :D
Click to expand...

Excellent! Really appreciative of the support, I love the enthusiasm here (much better than the usual "pvp is rubbish"/"the game is boring" stuff.

I need to read up on engineering. I also need to buy Horizons (I knew I'd be kicking myself for not buying it while it was on sale).

My current list of places to visit:

VY Canis Majoris
Betelgeuse
Messier 78 nebula
Veil Nebula West
Barnards loop in general
Sagittarius A*
Bubble Crab nebula area
Beagle Point
Eta Carinae (assuming it exists in game)
Maia

Open to any and all suggestions for expanding this list (either with locations inside the bubble or outside) - I'm interested in beautiful things, incomprehensible things, ancient things, alien things.

I'll be blogging about the whole trip, like a travel blog.

Couple more questions if you'll indulge my enthusiasm - are there many systems left which have not been visited and discovered by other players? If I were to stumble across one, do I get the credit just for being there or do I need to sell the data to Universal Cartographics before I get recognition? How much is the exploration data worth? Oh and finally, I was considering going to Hutton Orbital and filling my hold with those rare mugs and then taking them to the furthest station away. What's the literal "last outpost" in the bubble before I hit the great black?

Oh yeah, Considering I'm currently in a (fully upgraded) Cobra MK III, is the best way to save cash to get trading? When I trade in my Cobra, can I keep the upgrades I've installed or should I just cash it all in and then upgrade my Asp (for that is what I shall be buying)?

SO HYPED FOR THE END OF MY SANITY!

Oh PS - THANKS so much for that link to the exploration achievements list that Sooden made. Lots of great ideas there!
 
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goemon

goemon
2Karl said:
Excellent! Really appreciative of the support, I love the enthusiasm here (much better than the usual "pvp is rubbish"/"the game is boring" stuff.

I need to read up on engineering. I also need to buy Horizons (I knew I'd be kicking myself for not buying it while it was on sale).

My current list of places to visit:

VY Canis Majoris
Betelgeuse
Messier 78 nebula
Veil Nebula West
Barnards loop in general
Sagittarius A*
Bubble Crab nebula area
Beagle Point
Eta Carinae (assuming it exists in game)
Maia

Open to any and all suggestions for expanding this list (either with locations inside the bubble or outside) - I'm interested in beautiful things, incomprehensible things, ancient things, alien things.

I'll be blogging about the whole trip, like a travel blog.

Couple more questions if you'll indulge my enthusiasm - are there many systems left which have not been visited and discovered by other players? If I were to stumble across one, do I get the credit just for being there or do I need to sell the data to Universal Cartographics before I get recognition? How much is the exploration data worth? Oh and finally, I was considering going to Hutton Orbital and filling my hold with those rare mugs and then taking them to the furthest station away. What's the literal "last outpost" in the bubble before I hit the great black?

Oh yeah, Considering I'm currently in a (fully upgraded) Cobra MK III, is the best way to save cash to get trading? When I trade in my Cobra, can I keep the upgrades I've installed or should I just cash it all in and then upgrade my Asp (for that is what I shall be buying)?

SO HYPED FOR THE END OF MY SANITY!

Oh PS - THANKS so much for that link to the exploration achievements list that Sooden made. Lots of great ideas there!
Click to expand...

- put the eskimo nebula on your list - it is visually the most stunning nebula from the inside.

- put the ancient ruins and the alien shipwrecks on it ---- a forum search should bring those up. all aren't far out from the bubble.

- there are over 100 billion star systems in elite dangerous .... plenty of them left to discover ;-) .... to find undiscovered ones <1000 ly from sol you'd have to leave the usual routes.... but after >1000 ly from sol you will find plenty, and >5000 ly from sol you'll have a hard time finding a discovered one outside of touristic hotspots.

- you need to sell the data before getting any CR

- don't go exploring for CR, it pays pityfull (still the only CR counting towards exploration rank).

- AspE has bigger internals than your cobra, so you'd need to sell your moduls first

- i have earned my first exploration AspE by exploring in an Adder ... you can simply do so with your cobra. one of the explorers being out longest (15 month now?) is circumventing the galaxy in a cobra.
 

Miklos Atreides

Miklos Atreides
Basically there is some need for higher jump ranges in your ship where you are to consider that
longer jump range doesn't mean that much. It depends on where to go how fast.
Jump range is needed at the outer rims where you can catch more systems at the far edge.
Longer jump ranges can reduce number of jumps to reach a specific target. That's it.

If you are looking for the quick visits long jump range is a must. If you are going to cartograph
you path to your destination you are fine with less too.

My recommendation would be a fairly fitted ASP wit AFMU and SRV. You can bring it to >30 LY for
around 20 Million bucks. It can take you almost anywhere.
Additional check your intensions on exploring because it will make a difference in timings. Only jumping
to Sag A* is 8 - 10 hours. But taking me to Colonia will run for 4 Months in a 25 LY ship.
You get the idea of planning first behind.

Regards,
Miklos
 

CMDR Mr. Boombastic

CMDR Mr. Boombastic
Jaques and Colonia (Bubble 2.0) is a nice detour if you are going to or coming back from Sag A*.

 
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Rob_the_Sparky

R
I would do some test runs to somewhere fairly local (say <5000ly) both a as a shakedown for your ship but also to get into the right frame of mind for properly long trips. This will give you an appreciation for the size of the galaxy that no one can give you from describing it.
 

CMDR Mr. Boombastic

CMDR Mr. Boombastic
Here's a ~1 hour video with everything you need to know about exploration (but was afraid to ask ;)). Although pre 1.6/2.1 so features old-style screens:
[video=youtube_share;7bUXHhMjX0c]https://youtu.be/7bUXHhMjX0c[/video]
 
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2Karl

2Karl
CMDR Mr. Boombastic said:
Here's a ~1 hour video with everything you need to know about exploration (but was afraid to ask ;)). Although pre 1.6/2.1 so features old-style screens:
https://youtu.be/7bUXHhMjX0c
Click to expand...

Cool, I'll watch it while I'm heading to hutton orbital :)

One more question - Are all the stars we currently know about in real life present in game? I'm looking through some lists of pulsars on wikipedia and considering visiting.
 

goemon

goemon
2Karl said:
Are all the stars we currently know about in real life present in game? I'm looking through some lists of pulsars on wikipedia and considering visiting.
Click to expand...

around 95% of HIP stars are ingame, the same goes for the gliese catalogue.

it is always worth to check all designations given by a cross reference catalogue like simbad (simbad.u-strasbg.fr/simbad/)

i have identified 80 real galaxy hypergiants that way, and visited around 40 till now.
 

CMDR Mr. Boombastic

CMDR Mr. Boombastic
2Karl said:
Cool, I'll watch it while I'm heading to hutton orbital :)
Click to expand...
Off-topic but interesting nonetheless......
Hutton Orbital has cult status in E: D and also has its own radio station: http://huttonorbital.com

And now has even more significance as the exoplanet it orbits was only confirmed to exist a few months ago.

The '93 version of Elite (Frontier: Elite II) first had a planet called Eden orbiting Proxima Centauri. (It's also in E: D).
Alpha%20C%20E2_zpsa4lhmq89.png~original
In August 2016 the ESO (European Southern Observatory) discover an exoplanet orbiting Proxima Centauri. Coincidence or alien conspiracy? :eek:[alien]
[video=youtube_share;VaePksPGMTQ]https://youtu.be/VaePksPGMTQ[/video]
EXCLUSIVE: This Video Game Predicted Exact Location Of ‘Second Earth’ By 20 Years

In Elite lore this planet was discovered in 2038:
Eden was the first planet on which liquid water was detected by spectroscopic methods in 2038, and so it was a major driving force for the exploration of space. However, Eden turned out to be extremely inhospitable with the added danger of hard radiation from Proxima. There is now a small research station on Eden, but little else in the rest of the system.
Click to expand...
 

BarbusMaximus

B
Great thread, not much I can add to the excellent advice given already. The most important piece of equipment for me was entertainment - music, audio books, radio documentaries etc. Some players watch movies etc but id end up crashing into a sun.

If you go in an Asp, don't get too hung up on saving 28 million for the 6A fuel scoop as I did. Scanning each system slowed me down more than scooping.

I found felicity farseers fsd mod upped my asp to 44ly jumps (level 4 only). Grinding for this took me longer than my exploration but then I kind of love pimping my ships up with engineers so didn't mind.

Neutron stars are cool and can increase your range for a single jump by up to four times. They are like lamps and you are the moth though, don't do what I did and keep getting closer just to find out what happens!

Heat sinks, as many as you can carry!
 
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2Karl

2Karl
CMDR Mr. Boombastic said:
Off-topic but interesting nonetheless......
Hutton Orbital has cult status in E: D and also has its own radio station: http://huttonorbital.com

And now has even more significance as the exoplanet it orbits was only confirmed to exist a few months ago.

The '93 version of Elite (Frontier: Elite II) first had a planet called Eden orbiting Proxima Centauri. (It's also in E: D).
http://i1003.photobucket.com/albums/af156/Gervfr/Alpha C E2_zpsa4lhmq89.png~original
In August 2016 the ESO (European Southern Observatory) discover an exoplanet orbiting Proxima Centauri. Coincidence or alien conspiracy? :eek:[alien]
https://youtu.be/VaePksPGMTQ
EXCLUSIVE: This Video Game Predicted Exact Location Of ‘Second Earth’ By 20 Years

In Elite lore this planet was discovered in 2038:
Click to expand...

This whole response highlights just a small facet of what I adore about this game.

- - - Updated - - -

So, any tips on the best way to actually save up for my Asp and associated modules? Trading? Bounty hunting? Missions? I did consider doing that Centum Imperialis 100 route trade circuit I saw mentioned on here when I was just getting started, but I'm not sure if that's the most efficient way of saving.
 

Ashnak

Ashnak
There are many get-rich-quick possibilities in ED. However, if you focus on them, you'll run into what a lot of people call "grind".

I've never done slave trading or long distance biowaste hauling, so I can't comment on those (i.e. the sothis-ceos runs). Trading in a small vessel won't make you rich, but there are two excemptions which can be fun and still make quite a bit of money even in a small ship: rares trading (see e.g. http://eliteraretrader.co.uk/ ) and community goals https://forums.frontier.co.uk/forumdisplay.php/176-Community-Goal-Discussions for what's currently up - no trading CG except the long distance Jaques one, which is different).

Bounty hunting can be fun and make you money, but also may lose you money. Missions are supposed to be ok once you're friendly or allied with the factions so you get the lucrative jobs (haven't gotten there since 2.2 dropped, though).

Wht can be very lucrative, if you have the right ship, is mining - especially if there is a mining CG on.

However, although everybody recommends the AspX as "the" exploration ship, it's not necessary. The Hauler and Adder can make perfectly ok exploration ships, if you can live with the restricted view. The Diamondback (either) or the smaller Asp are also useable. And don't forget the Type-6 and the Keelback. I've been to Sgr A* in a FAS (ok, with a modded FSD, admittedly).

There are even (right now) a few people on the way to Jaques in an essentially stock Sidewinder (ok, upgraded, but not modded, FSD) - or with fully loaded, unarmed freighters with a 15 ly jump range. Ok, admittedly, being in a convoy with easy access to escorts and fuel tankers helps somewhat - but so far, we had no refuelling call that I would be aware of. As long as you go into the direction of the core, any ship can make the trip.
 

Chris Simon

Chris Simon
2Karl said:
I haven't actually tried mining yet. Is it feasible in a Cobra?
Click to expand...

Any ship can do it. You need a mining laser, refinery and cargo space.
If you want to do it quickly, you'll need the collector limpet controller and limpets. They will collect chunks for you.
If you want to do it efficiently, you will also need prospector limpet controller. the prospector limpet will probe an asteroid when you shoot it at it, which means that you know the asteroid composition beforehand and you are able to mine more minerals out of it.

So that means three optional compartments plus as much cargo as you can fit in. So Cobra can do it quite comfortably, you will only need to be picky and return to the station often as the cargo will be limited. If you have at least 2-3 million, I'd recommend T6, though.
 
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