Still Exploring...

It's been a while since my last post. The reason is because not much has happened. I'm still headed toward the Heart and Soul nebulae.

I'm just really taking my time. I'm doing complete scans on most of the systems that I find. So, that means that in an hour in game I may cover only a couple hundred light-years of travel. This is when Heart and Soul are a couple thousand light-years away.

I keep looking for interesting planets to explore or pretty pictures to take. I'm just not finding very much. I really want to find a gas giant with rings that also has a nearby explorable planet that can see the rings. It appears to be a pretty rare situation.

Oh well, just going to keep exploring.

Goodbye NGC 7822

I've decided to move on from the NGC 7822 nebula. I'm going to head over to Eafots LZ-H b10-0 D 1 and check out the abandoned settlement there. Here is great video from ObsidianAnt about it:

It will take me some time to get there. I'm a bit more than 4,000 ly away at the moment. So I think it might take me about a week to get there, maybe more—depending on how much detailed scanning I do on the way.

Landable Planet With Rings

I know I'm supposed to be talking about the recent alien incursions but that's happening several thousand light years away from me. And personally, I'm more interested in the fact that I found a landable planet that had rings. Just haven't seen one of those before.

My Type-6 Explorer

I thought I might give a little bit of a break down of my current ship—a Type-6 Transporter setup for exploration. Here is a breakdown of components from E:D Shipyard:

[Type-6 Transporter] [+1]


BH: 1C Lightweight Alloy
PP: 3A Power Plant
TH: 4D Thrusters [+1]
FD: 4A Frame Shift Drive [+1]
LS: 2D Life Support [+1]
PD: 3A Power Distributor [+1]
SS: 2B Sensors [+1]
FT: 4C Fuel Tank (Capacity: 16)

5: 5E Cargo Rack (Capacity: 32)
5: 5C Fuel Scoop [+1]
4: 2G Planetary Vehicle Hangar [+1]
4: 3B Auto Field-Maintenance Unit [+1]
3: 3C Shield Generator [+1]
2: 1C Detailed Surface Scanner [+1]
2: 1C Advanced Discovery Scanner
---
Shield: 94.5
Power : 10.73 MW retracted (89%)
        10.73 MW deployed (89%)
        12.00 MW available
Cargo : 32
Fuel  : 16 T
Mass  : 195.8 T empty
        243.8 T full
Range : 27.34 LY unladen
        23.75 LY laden
Price : 6,679,230 CR
Re-Buy: 333,962 CR @ 95% insurance

The challenge with this build was to get all of the components that I wanted while only having a 3A power plant. I do realize that some of the things that I wanted are not common on an exploration build. Many people drop shields—I'm a bit too much of a chicken to do that. Also, most people only take D rated sensors—I wanted a bit more range in case it was needed to find the Formidine Rift.

I could have afforded a fully kitted out Asp Explorer (minus engineering) but that would have cost me in the area of 20,000,000 credits and only get me a couple light years further in jump range. Taking the Type-6 allowed me to keep my main ship and if the worse did happen to me the insurance costs wouldn't hurt that much.

I do admit that if I could have afforded a Python or an Anaconda that I probably would have gone with that. But I'm just not that far along yet.

I Guess It's Bust

It does not look like I'm going to make it to the Formidine Rift. I've discovered this post in the forums that explains that there is a bug with the Formidine Rift and it won't be corrected till the next patch.

However, I'm still going to continue with my journey. After all I'm 109 jumps in and don't want to turn back now.

I've decided to target the NGC 7822 Nebula. As I went out I couldn't miss this nebula that seemed to have a line straight through it—a "rift" if you will. I'm sure it's almost completely discovered but I'll still go through and try to scan all the systems there anyway.

Why Elite Dangerous?

I have been playing computer games for the last 30 years. No game has ever had me interested as much as Elite Dangerous. I think it is worth asking why that is. I think the answer comes in two parts: the gameplay and the community.

When it comes to gameplay I think what Elite does so well is give players a lot of ways to “win”. I'm not that great at games that require a lot of twitch skills. To that Elite says, fine go do some trading or some salvage recovery. But, then when I get bored with that I can go grab a fighter and head out to a resource site and get some action. It has a great mix

That mix of action is also supported by a great community. There are some great video producers out there for Elite. Then there is a super active Reddit community and forums. And The community even manages there own special events in the game—like the Distant Worlds Expedition. When you look around at other games you don't see that that much. In World of Warcraft, for example, I've never heard of anything like that happening.

And, none of this would not be possible without Frontier Development doing superb execution. They not only made a game that can technically do all these things but they also managed to keep a consistent theme throughout. From visuals to sound design they have provided a game that makes people want to spend time there.

So, thank you.

Formadine Rift Or Bust

I'm going o head out exploring. I've setup myself up with a budget explorer and I'm going to try to find the Formadine Rift.