While waiting for 3.0 to cure the planets of their galactic sickness, I decided to circumnavigate a planet in an SRV and document the trip for the Planetary Circumnavigation Club:
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/390451-The-Planetary-Circumnavigation-Club
I'd done this once before just for the heck of it without documenting anything, but this time I did. However I also wondered how much salvage I could pick up along the way and what that would be worth? With that in mind I decided to bring my T7 loaded full of cargo racks and pick up every bit of salvage I'd come across while driving around the equator. 256T of cargo space, would I fill it up or have room left at the end?
The planet I chose was Coltan in the Dahan system, a moon of the white gas giant Hathor:
Seemed like an interesting small world, and with a radius of only 167km it wouldn't (shouldn't?) take forever to drive around it. That equals a planetary circumference of 1049km, which would be roughly the distance I would need to drive to complete this trip. I decided to go around the equator rather than north to south, mainly because the terrain looked more interesting but also because I felt it would provide more sunset and sunrise opportunities.
I actually started the drive a bit before the beta started, took a break to test in the beta client, and then finished the journey up a couple days after the beta closed down.
So how did the circumnavigation go?
It was fun but rather uneventful. I drove 1120km around the planet so 71km extra than I needed to, most likely due to my regular diversions to investigate junk sites. It also took me a total of 65 hours and 9 minutes to complete it! That equals an average speed of 17km/hr, much slower than I'd hoped to be driving but the salvage stops along the way did a lot to slow me down I suppose. I also have a bad habit of enjoying the views too. Came across a lot of salvage along the way, scanned a few downed nav beacons, and blew up a lot of skimmers too, but nothing challenging. Had a few low flying pirates take interest in my landed T7 loaded with salvage but I always dismissed it safely up into orbit where they wouldn't follow, and they never bothered my SRV. At the end of the trip I had collected 225T of salvage, not quite filling my T7 up, but still I earned myself a cool $1,143,128 credits from salvage, data scans, and skimmer bounties.
My circumnavigation stats:
Distance driven: 1120km
Time spent: 65hrs, 9min
Salvage collected: 225T
Credits earned: $1,143,128
Skimmers destroyed: 101
Downed Nav beacons scanned: 5
Downed Satellites scanned: 6
Installations pillaged: 11
SRV Refuels: 8
SRV Repairs: 12
Here is a list of the cargo I cleaned up (a large variety of junk!):
5 Indium
2 Tea
8 Scrap
1 Osmium
3 Silver
7 Beryllium
8 Superconductors
1 Appliances
5 Platinum
3 Polymers
2 Cryolite
2 Uranium
2 Semiconductors
17 Explosives
11 Taaffeite
1 Animal Meat
7 Synthetic Reagents
18 Bauxite
14 Occupied Escape Pods
8 Gold
6 Resonating Seperators
3 Structural Regulators
10 Uraninite
1 Painite
2 Skimmer Components
2 Bertrandite
1 Battle Weapons
3 Thallium
9 Consumer Technology
8 Jadeite
3 Goslarite
2 Power Generators
12 Computer Components
7 Gallite
10 Palladium
7 Pesticides
14 Moissanite
Surprisingly the terrain was not as interesting as I'd hoped. Honestly the drive was fairly ho hum with not a lot of fanciful scenery along the way, I could have picked a more interesting planet (come on 3.0!!!). Still there were moments of beauty which made me "pause to smell the flowers" so to speak. Here are a few of my favorite pics I took on this journey (LOTS of pics, spoiler tagged to be considerate!):
To document the trip I stopped every 10° along the equator to take both a coordinate pic and a surface map pic showing my progression. Here is a link to the full album of all 155 pictures I took along the way:
https://imgur.com/a/LtEIu
Start location pic and end location pic at coordinates 0,0, along with in game time & SRV distance stats:
So, in the end it was a fun experiment. I find surface salvaging fun but I was surprised that I didn't even fill the T7's hold on this long trip. I also really thought I'd earn more than I did, it's certainly not a way to make lots of credits. Still, it was a nice change of pace but I don't see myself doing something like it anytime soon again. One day maybe, just not for a bit.
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/390451-The-Planetary-Circumnavigation-Club
I'd done this once before just for the heck of it without documenting anything, but this time I did. However I also wondered how much salvage I could pick up along the way and what that would be worth? With that in mind I decided to bring my T7 loaded full of cargo racks and pick up every bit of salvage I'd come across while driving around the equator. 256T of cargo space, would I fill it up or have room left at the end?
The planet I chose was Coltan in the Dahan system, a moon of the white gas giant Hathor:
Seemed like an interesting small world, and with a radius of only 167km it wouldn't (shouldn't?) take forever to drive around it. That equals a planetary circumference of 1049km, which would be roughly the distance I would need to drive to complete this trip. I decided to go around the equator rather than north to south, mainly because the terrain looked more interesting but also because I felt it would provide more sunset and sunrise opportunities.
I actually started the drive a bit before the beta started, took a break to test in the beta client, and then finished the journey up a couple days after the beta closed down.
So how did the circumnavigation go?
It was fun but rather uneventful. I drove 1120km around the planet so 71km extra than I needed to, most likely due to my regular diversions to investigate junk sites. It also took me a total of 65 hours and 9 minutes to complete it! That equals an average speed of 17km/hr, much slower than I'd hoped to be driving but the salvage stops along the way did a lot to slow me down I suppose. I also have a bad habit of enjoying the views too. Came across a lot of salvage along the way, scanned a few downed nav beacons, and blew up a lot of skimmers too, but nothing challenging. Had a few low flying pirates take interest in my landed T7 loaded with salvage but I always dismissed it safely up into orbit where they wouldn't follow, and they never bothered my SRV. At the end of the trip I had collected 225T of salvage, not quite filling my T7 up, but still I earned myself a cool $1,143,128 credits from salvage, data scans, and skimmer bounties.
My circumnavigation stats:
Distance driven: 1120km
Time spent: 65hrs, 9min
Salvage collected: 225T
Credits earned: $1,143,128
Skimmers destroyed: 101
Downed Nav beacons scanned: 5
Downed Satellites scanned: 6
Installations pillaged: 11
SRV Refuels: 8
SRV Repairs: 12
Here is a list of the cargo I cleaned up (a large variety of junk!):
5 Indium
2 Tea
8 Scrap
1 Osmium
3 Silver
7 Beryllium
8 Superconductors
1 Appliances
5 Platinum
3 Polymers
2 Cryolite
2 Uranium
2 Semiconductors
17 Explosives
11 Taaffeite
1 Animal Meat
7 Synthetic Reagents
18 Bauxite
14 Occupied Escape Pods
8 Gold
6 Resonating Seperators
3 Structural Regulators
10 Uraninite
1 Painite
2 Skimmer Components
2 Bertrandite
1 Battle Weapons
3 Thallium
9 Consumer Technology
8 Jadeite
3 Goslarite
2 Power Generators
12 Computer Components
7 Gallite
10 Palladium
7 Pesticides
14 Moissanite
Surprisingly the terrain was not as interesting as I'd hoped. Honestly the drive was fairly ho hum with not a lot of fanciful scenery along the way, I could have picked a more interesting planet (come on 3.0!!!). Still there were moments of beauty which made me "pause to smell the flowers" so to speak. Here are a few of my favorite pics I took on this journey (LOTS of pics, spoiler tagged to be considerate!):
To document the trip I stopped every 10° along the equator to take both a coordinate pic and a surface map pic showing my progression. Here is a link to the full album of all 155 pictures I took along the way:
https://imgur.com/a/LtEIu
Start location pic and end location pic at coordinates 0,0, along with in game time & SRV distance stats:
So, in the end it was a fun experiment. I find surface salvaging fun but I was surprised that I didn't even fill the T7's hold on this long trip. I also really thought I'd earn more than I did, it's certainly not a way to make lots of credits. Still, it was a nice change of pace but I don't see myself doing something like it anytime soon again. One day maybe, just not for a bit.
