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.