Trip to SAG A - any tips?

[Lord_Itchybum]

I just completed the Buckyball run to Sag A about a week ago. I used a DB Explorer and that ship is amazing with heat. You don't need shields, but if you absolutely have to have them disable them as they contribute to heat of the ship.
Have at least 2 heat sink launchers and a good sized AFM.
Once I was about 4000-5000 LY out from SOL I did not encounter a single previously discovered system until I reached the core.
If you are doing it for money then it will take a long time as you need to scan as much as possible.

Lastly stay away from the Neutron fields until after I have been through them. I want to collect as many first discovered by bonuses as possible

 

[SirAdelaide]

I left at Easter, and got back to Cat's Paw last night. So, yeah, taking the slow route. I scan anything interesting, and have 27 LY jump range. 3000 systems visited this trip.

It's about 1000 jumps to get there, and 1000 back, more if you look around nebulae etc. If you spend 5 min average in each system scanning things, that's 160 hours of play time.

I filled my compartments with heat sinks, repair modules, and hull reinforcement to double my hull strength (does it help against heat damage?), but haven't used any of it. Other than when I accidentally launched a heat sink while taking photos. I left before fuel tanks were a thing. Probably would have packed one if I'd had the chance, but it's not really necessary.

 

[gooddoc]

I set off on 21/4/15 & made it to Sag A* on 13/6/15 - that's about 53 days to get there, although i did spend 2-3 days in a Neutron/Black Hole field. My route to the core was off the beaten path, so it took me quite a while to get there. If i saw something on the galaxy map that looked interesting then i plotted there.

I'm taking a more direct line back to my 'Explorer Base System' & I'm not veering from the route, so I should get back quicker. Currently im 13.5k LYs from my return System.

I'm in an A grade Asp with a 27-28LY range. All that i made sure that i had was 2 AFMU's (iv just started on the second one - accidents will happen).

I do spend some time scanning, leaving out only Asteroids, Ice & rock worlds. But time taken on this trip does not matter to me.

When I started to get to the denser part of the galaxy, I gradually reduced the route planner to 100LYs plots - this helped to get to the core without having to wait ages for the plotter.

However, now on my way back I'm plotting at around 350-400LYs routes - which at my scanning rate is 2-3 hours gameplay.

Iv enjoyed the trip so far & look forward to my next trip out when i return.

 

[kec]

You can make the journey in anything. I've seen people go exploring in a sidewinder. I did it in a Type-9 - just because I could. There are some great things to see, and much to find. As has been said many times, what you get out of it depends on what you want to do with it. Speed racing, scanning, finding interesting things on the way. The galaxy is big - enjoy it.

The journey back can be worse than the journey there. I found my ship beginning to fail due to some "accidents" on the way there and back. Getting FSD failures every 300 LY wasn't the best thing, and was really hoping to find an unexpected outpost to repair - but I never found one. Perhaps a future community goal!

 

[Nazdakka]

How to travel quickly while still getting some exploration done:

(for when the space madness is setting in and you want to go home):

On exiting witchspace:
1) Select next system
2) Dip into star's corona to scoop some fuel. Don't worry about filling to the brim every time.
3) Toot your Discovery Scanner.
4) Steer away from star and toward destination as FSD cooldown finishes.
5) Begin FSD charge
6) Open system map and check for anything super-interesting (any non-gas giant planet that looks kinda blue)
7a) If there's a possible Earth-Like or other body of interest, cancel FSD charge and go and scan it.
7b) If there isn't, let the FSD do its thing.

I can get through a boring system in ~50s like this, so with a 32ly jump range and no delays you can do over 2000ly/hour, although the more shinies you stop to look at the slower you go.

How to plot long routes near the core:

The route planner performs very badly near the core because the density of systems causes the number of possible routes for it to check to grow massively. On 'fastest routes', it first optimises for #jumps and then for fuel usage, which is nice in the bubble but suicidal in the core.

Find your ship's jump range, and plot a long route which is a little bit less than a round multiple of it. So if your range is 32.5ly, plot for 320 ly. This means that the route planner will only check 10-jump routes, which there aren't so many of.

Memo to FD: Please stop the route planner calculating routes and give us the best one so far after it's been working for... say 30s. Good enough now is better than perfect next year.

 

[Whiterose]

Dont go in a straight line. Loop it. That way you find a lot more undiscovered systems. Any ship will do, take plenty of beer and pizza, and dont listen to the nebuli.

 

[maddog_uk_69]

I set off in early March with an ASP kitted out with 2 Field Repair Modules, Heat Sink, Advanced Discovery Scanner and the biggest Fuel Scoop and FSD I could afford. As others have said, I recommend going up above the galactic plane a few hundred LY to get off the beaten track. I also dog-legged to the right to try and make sure I got the maximum number of unvisited and unexplored systems. I alternated between 1000 LY legs of scanning almost everything, and then just honking and jumping, unless there was something particularly scan-worthy like an Earthlike, black hole, neutron star etc.

My (first) aim was the roof of the galaxy, so I slowly aimed upwards as I headed in towards the centre. Then, once I'd reached the central axis, headed straight up, picking my way through the thinning star field whilst paying close attention to the stars on my route so that I didn't end up jumping into a system with an un-scoopable star and not enough fuel to get out again.

I reached the 'highest' point within my ship's range on 26 June.


And found this Earthlike world with an amazing night-time view of the galaxy!


From there it was a straight dive down to Sag A*, which I reached on 4th July


I've carried on down, and am currently ~750 LY from the 'lowest' point I can reach in the galaxy. My return plan is to visit The Great Annihilator, the Neutron fields and any interesting nebulae that I come across.
Maybe I'll get back just in time for the bugs to be fixed with the galaxy map and needing to double-scan everything...

 

[Slippery Jim DiGriz]

Just to add to the discussion, I've been to Sag and the journey got me to Elite status. Personally I don't bother with heatsinks, in all the exploring including popping into the system between the stars in a tight binary I've never needed them, a pair of AFMs however are vitally important and for some reason don't weigh anything so don't impact your jump range. Heatsinks don't work in super cruise and except when I parked up at the end of a session I never came out of SC so they didn't seem worth the weight, YMMV so that one's up to you.

As has already been stated: Get the biggest and best fuel scoop you can afford. It may only save a few seconds per jump but you are going to do a minimum of 1500 jumps so it all adds up.

My explorer Asp now has a 34ly range - no weapons but I do pack a weak shield as I'd hate to lose everything by docking too hard at the end of the trip (after a few thousand jumps, remembering how to dock can be embarrassing). I've also downgraded the fuel tank from 32 to 16 tonnes and added a 8 tonne extra tank to give me 24 tonnes of fuel - 16 tonnes only gave me 3 full jumps which is too few but 24 gives me 5 full jumps which I feel is adequate, I've also downgraded the power supply and a few other parts to maximise the range.

Actually for a trip to the core the range is not that vital as everything is reasonably close except when you cross the inter-arm voids and even then it's not too much of a problem, if at some point you want to head out to the edges then a long range is important. Of course a longer range will mean fewer jumps so it will speed things up a little bit.

How long you take is up to you, you can go the direct route and with just a few hours play a day you can get there in a week if you scan every primary and other items of interest, if you just scoop and scoot you can do the run a lot quicker but in a terminally dull way. As has been mentioned keep off the direct route and you'll find far more virgin systems, take small detours if you spot something of interest, look for off-sequence stars for way-points on the journey as they are worth a lot and the more credits you earn the quicker you'll climb through the rankings.

Good luck.

 

[streki]

For an enjoyable, lazy, we'll-get-there-eventually, I'm-not-in-a-hurry, scanning-every-interesting-body-along-the-way, the-journey-is-the-fun-bit, type experience, you'll need netflix, spotify, or a good audiobook.

I signed up to kindle unlimited's free month and picked up a free copy of Ready Player One read by Wil Wheaton - its pretty good

 

[Aewarin Jameson]

Don't forget a towel ...