Exploration - the way back home

After completing our trip to the Nebula, it was time to return to populated space (Federation space for me), and sell the exploration data. Whenever you scan a system, and discover new objects, you can take this data to a station and sell it to the faction who runs the station for credits. The rarer the finds the more credits involved.

The following is a selection of the things I came across on the way back to the Federation. The first picture below is a 3-star system with a single planet next to the large main star. Metal rich, but for now in the game, we cannot mine these planets, this will come in the future when we will be able to land on planet surfaces and explore around (a future game expansion).

The following three pictures show the variety of planets you can find, all of these are classed as metal-rich. The game colours the planets according to the composition, so the colours indicate the types of minerals and metals you would expect to find on these planets.

 The next picture shows the entry view when I arrived at a twin-star system.

At least I thought it was a twin-star system, I checked the system map, and found it had other stars in the system.

As you can see with the grouping lines, some of these stars orbit each other in groups that then orbit around other stars. My twin orange stars had their own orbit around the middle brown-dwarf star, while the other couple of stars had similar orbits with each other.

If you have the time, you can place your ship in position in the system, and watch these orbits taking place. Every planetary body has it's own orbit in the game, and follows it, so it is possible to watch sunrises, sunsets, and eclipses on alien planets.

Check out YouTube for a series of amazing looking videos created from game footage, called "Wonders of the Galaxy".

The next couple of pictures show some of the details you can see when you get close to planets, below you can see a ice planet and a gas giant.

I also found another planet which had life, so scanned the system. These systems are worth a bit more credits than the others. A water world, so not as exciting as an "Earth-like world", but it has life non-the-less, and may be of interest to the Federation for colonisation.

I finally made it to a Federal station, a platform, so I docked, and looked to sell my exploration data.

Here you can see the value of some of the systems I scanned during the trip, and the varying amounts of credits. Exploration, if you find the right things, can be very lucrative.

This doesn't leave me at home. I have set myself up at a system called Aulin, so need to return there, which I will cover in my next post.

Exploration - the final stops to the Nebula

The next waypoint of the journey was HIP 4674, a system with a number of metal rich planets and a gas giant.

The first planet in the system (closest to the sun) is a blue gas giant shown here.

However the bonus of this system was the outer-most planet, a metal rich planet with high volcanic activity and planetary rings.

I have seen just a few planets like this in my travels, it's an amazing sight as you approach it.

But when you get to these planets, it seems a shame to not get really close to those rings. I entered the rings so I could assess them for mining, but also to get some amazing views from within the rings.

As you can see the rings themselves are made up of rocks, and you can fly around inside the rings, mining minerals or metals. It's these places where you quite often find some pirates hiding out, who will scan you for your cargo contents, and attack if they find the contents interesting. Even out here in the wilds you can see a couple of ships on my scanner.

My ship is equipped with mining equipment (a mining laser and a refinery), so I can cut pieces from these rocks, scoop them up, and let the refinery convert them into tonnes of cargo which I can sell on. Depending on where you are, this can be very profitable.

Here you can see a piece I cut from a rock which is 27% Lepidolite. I will do another post purely on mining in the future.

The next waypoint was the system HIP 4755. Not a remarkable system, except for one thing... LIFE... Life in the galaxy is a rare occurrence outside the human-populated systems, so these planets are prized when you find them, and factions pay extra credits for these finds.

This is the sort of planet that will encourage a faction to expand it's territory, as it's ideal to set up a station nearby, and start fresh human colonies. This planet was described as a "Water World" in the scanned description, but it appears to have quite a lot of land mass to support human colonies so will definitely be worth exploring.

The next waypoint was HR 266, which was recommended for it's mining potential. It had a large star (and a smaller brown dwarf star), and a number of metal rich and gas giants with ring systems to be mined.

This is what the closest planet to the star looked like on approach. A very impressive ring system.

I didn't spend long in this system, I will return another time, there were other sights to be had, and I really wanted to get to the Nebula.

27 Gamma Cassiopeaie was my final waypoint before I got to the nebula, a black hole and neutron star. Both are deadly bodies, getting too close can overheat your ship because of the gravimetric distortions or the radiation pouring off the star. I scanned the phenomena and moved on.

From here I made my final jumps to the nebula, where I took some pictures of the ships that accompanied me that night.

The nebula is a beautiful sight. We found a system we could jump to so we could get a picture of everyone in-front of it.

Here are a couple of the ships that made it to the Nebula, the one on the left is called an Asp, and is the same ship I fly for my exploration trips (I have two other ships docked in Federation Stations back in civilized space). You can acquire custom paint jobs for your ship, the Asp here is in yellow and black, mine is in what I called "Space 1999 white". The ship on the right is a Lakon Type-6, typically a trading vessel, but it has a long jump range, so can also be used for exploration.

My next post will be the journey home, a few more planets to look at, and an encounter with a pirate.

The Galaxy

"Space," it says, "is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mindbogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space, listen..." - Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy

The Galaxy is big, and in this game you are given a true insight into the size and splendour of it all. The year (in the game) is 3301, so the human race has made technological advances which allow us to fly spacecraft, build space stations, etc.

Frontier Developments (FD) have created, within the game, all of the currently known star systems according to the information we have today (from Hubble, etc.), with a little artistic license to indicate where human advances in technology have impacted these systems (e.g. in the Sol system, our star system, Mars is now terra-formed, so it is more Earth-like). Space stations and platforms have been liberally scattered amongst these "populated" systems.

The stars beyond these populated areas have been procedurally generated using the rules of astro-physics to create the rest of our Galaxy. This means that the game has 400 Billion star systems, adventure on a truly grand scale. These star systems are things of beauty, David Braben the owner of Frontier, is a real astronomy fan, and they are constantly tweaking the look and feel of the planetary bodies you will encounter to give you a real sense of you being "out there".

The distances between these stars, asteroid fields, planets and moons are also realistic, so you get a sense of the vastness of space. Planets appear as small dots until you approach them, suns are enormous compared to them, but disappear into the distance as you make your way out to the furthest planets in a system.

All of the planets, etc, have their own orbits as well, which are implemented in the game, so you can literally watch a sun rise on an alien world if you have the time (and to be honest, you will catch yourself just staring in wonder at some of the sights).

Planetary rings can also be seen, and these are not just eye-candy. You can enter the rings (these will be composed of rocks which may contain rare minerals or metals), and you can simply travel around, or you can equip your ship with mining equipment, and start mining in these rings. The views you get from inside planetary rings are absolutely stunning.

Even the star filled backdrop of space as you fly around is not just a painted canvas. The game generates the backdrop based on where you are in the Galaxy, so you will be seeing the stars positioned in the sky exactly as they are from your view-point. Fly to another part of the Galaxy, and the backdrop will be different. The attention to detail here is staggering.

So, all of this sounds great, but let's see some evidence to back it up......

Exploration - The first few waypoints

The expedition for the night have been scouted by members of the FGE, and there were a number of waypoints set a different intervals established for their points of interest. These were the following:

Schedar
26 Upsilon-1 Cassiopeiae
32 Cassiopeiae
HIP 4674
HIP 4755
HR 266
27 Gamma Cassiopeiae
LBN 623 Sector PD-S B4-5

Along the way we would encounter black holes, neutron stars, planets with life, metal rich planets, and plenty to just basically stare at in wonder. This was a trip of over 500 light years out of civilized space into the wilds.

A route was plotted to the first waypoint, a large star called Schedar. There will be no stations or platforms on this route, so it was essential that your ship was equipped with a fuel-scoop. These fuel-scoops can scoop fuel from the surface of stars into the fuel tank to allow you to take on such long journeys. Fuel scooping is not without it's dangers as the ship heats up quickly when skimming over a star's surface, so you need to be careful.

Because my ship has a good jump range (28+ light years without cargo), this first leg of the journey was only 3 jumps.

When you arrive in a system, you arrive next to the main star. Here we can see Schedar in all it's glory. It is an Orange Giant sun, a bit larger than the typical suns you come across. It was a fuel-scoopable star, but you didn't need to get too close before you started heating up. The suns in the game look amazing, with solar flare activity on the surface, and bubbling surfaces. Later in this post we will see some other star types.

Because this star had not been surveyed before, my discovery scanners were used to identify it and scan for other bodies in the system. In the game you can collect this exploration information, and return it to a faction and sell the data to them. This, under certain circumstances, may result in that faction exploring the system themselves, and establish their own stations there. This way you can be a factor in how the population of the galaxy evolves over time.

The next waypoint was "26 Upsilon-1 Cassiopeiae"

An interesting system with a number of planets to look at. The one that particularly caught my eye was the metal-rich 3rd planet on the right. I did not spend time here scanning, but I plan to come back here again some time to take a look. Another planet, like the 3rd one here, came to my attention later in the journey, and I got some good pictures then, in a later post.

The next waypoint was a very interesting one for all of us, "32 Cassiopeiae". It has 13 stars, around 80 planetary bodies, and a Black Hole. The next few pictures are exploring this system. I didn't manage to scan everything there.

This is a gas giant in the system

Approaching a cluster of bodies with a large Gas Giant with rings at the centre

Here's the Gas Giant a little closer, you can now see the details of the rings. The rings here were mainly Ice, but there are other planetary rings (of which we will see in a later post) that contain metal and mineral deposits that can be mined.

Here we are approaching a Brown Dwarf star with a large ring system. Ringed stars are not common, and this system had a number of them.

 
Another ringed brown dwarf below.

 Of course what everyone wanted to discover was the Black Hole. Quite often you can't see the actual black hole (not like the movies), because they are sometimes remarkably small. However the power of these objects is immense. They distort space around them, and will cause your ship to heat up very quickly if you get too close, so you need to be careful when flying around them. The next couple of pictures show the back hole in this system, and the space distortion around it.

Here you can see the distortion of the galaxy in the background in the middle, and to the left is another bright white star.

The distortion is much more visible here as I approached the black hole. It was shortly after this that the temperature of the ship started to rise, and rather than risk damage, I moved off.





 

That's all for this post, more to see in the next as the exploration moves closer to the nebula.

 

 

 

Exploration - Arriving at the start point

I am a member of a group in the game called FGE (First Great Expedition), a group of like-minded people who are keen to explore the wonders of the galaxy. Every few weeks we all plan a meet-up and organize a trip to a particular area of the galaxy. It's a social thing, but it allows us all to just stare in wonder at the sights out there, and have a few laughs along the way.

The ultimate aim for the group is to set off as an armada to the centre of the galaxy, and beyond. Up to this point only a few players have made the trip to the centre of the galaxy (around 4-5 at time of writing), but a large group have yet to try it.

The FGE are well organised with people who help out with planning routes, and identifying weypoints by which we can navigate, a number of us are keen astronomers, and have a lot of experience and knowledge around the types of stars and planets we encounter out there.

This post is related to the most recent meeting, a trip to the LBN 623 Nebula (around 1000 light years round trip distance). It was completed in an evening by all.

Our starting point was a system called Pi Dimshi. Here is the approach to the planet with the station orbiting it. The bright light with the "comet tail" is another ship in Supercruise (this is the faster than light speed travel mode you can use to traverse large distances).

Once you are close enough to the station, you can drop out of Supercruise to normal space travel.

Here we can see the approach to the station, I have requested docking, and will enter the station to find my landing pad, and dock.

Here is a view of inside the station docking area, the landing pads in use are lit up, you can see mine straight ahead, pad 32. Tot the left you can see a ship lifting off from pad 40. Stations can get quite busy at times, and you may have to queue or manoeuvre around ships to get in and out of the station.

I arrived early for the meet, so once I landed, I checked out the local commodities market to see what was trading well at this station, and I was pleasantly surprised to find that metals were a bit of a market hit here.

Demand was high in pretty much every type of metal available. So where did they get their metals from? On the right, it suggested that they were imported from a couple of systems, one was called Mafdeta. So, let's find out where this place is.

I found it, just below Wolf 52 on the local map (slightly obscured text here, oops). So I took a look at the local system map.

It was a large system with a couple of stars and quite a few planets and asteroid belts (good for mining), and there were two platforms there. Perfect, let's go.

Once I arrived, a chose Turzillo Dock (it was the closest), and made my way there, you can see the approach above, I have requested docking, and my pad is highlighted at the top of the station in this view.

Here's a shot of me approaching the landing pad, with the silhouette of the planet and the sun in the background.... sometimes landing pads can be vistas in their own right.

I fill my hold with gold, and make my way back to Pi Dimshi, and make 110,000 credits profit on the venture... very nice little bonus before I meet up for the exploration.

I came back to Mafdeta afterwards to see what the mining opportunities are like around the system. Given that metals were fairly cheap, this would mean that they have some pretty good mining sites in the system. I checked out one of the asteroid belts around the sun, which were metal-rich. However, I did not get much of a chance to mine, because the place was crawling with pirates.

I killed a few until I made a mistake, and accidentally attacked a pirate before I had finished my scans (a light scan automatically happens when you target a ship to give it's identity, and it's status in the local system). This scan had not completed when I opened fire, so I was fined, and my status was set to WANTED.

At this point, the local authority ships (who were not aggressive towards me to this point), started attacking, and I had to escape, so very little mining occurred.

I made may way to Turzillo Dock, and paid off my fine, which meant I was CLEAN in the system again. I also made 42,000 credits for killing a few pirates before this happened, so it was a profitable venture.

If you don't pay your fines, and they build up, eventually the systems you owe the money to will put a bounty on your head, and this will be visible to all the bounty hunters, local authority vessels, and other players in the game, effectively painting a bullseye on your ship, so be careful.

The next post will cover some of the amazing places and sites we found on our trip to the LBN 623 Nebula.

The Galaxy..... part 2

So, now that I have waxed lyrical about the galaxy, let's see how it looks in the game. There is a galactic map that all players have access to, and initially shows you local position, the star systems around you.

Here you can see I am currently at a populated star system called Aulin (more pictures of this system later). You can see some other star systems nearby, and the blue lines indicate direct routes from your current system to them. You can also see near the bottom of the picture regions of space (Vega, Altair, Achenar, Sol), which themselves have hundreds of star systems within them.

Let's zoom out a little to see some more.

Now we can see a lot more star systems in the general vicinity of our system Aulin, the lines indicating routes plotted to get to these systems. Systems are a factor of light-years (LY) away from each other, and the ships in the game are fitted with a hyperdrive which allows you to jump to other systems.

OK, this looks like a lot of places to visit, but now let's zoom out a whole lot more.

So, now you can see the whole galaxy (the position of Aulin is still there, but it is an insignificant dot in the grand scale of things). Frontier have created the whole galaxy to explore. Every dot in this picture is a star system, and you can visit every dot.

This galaxy map, also has the ability to show you the make-up of a given star system (if it has been explored, more on exploration later).

The star system we see here is LHS 6309, a system close to Aulin, which has a number of stars, planets, asteroid belts, and stations/platforms populated by the game.

As you can see, you get a lot of astronomical information about the objects in the system, you can spend hours reading about all of the different star types and planet types. The planetary rings are also detailed, so you can see their composition.

That's all for now. In my next post, I will show you what it looks like travelling to this system in a ship.

Introduction

I have been involved as an Alpha backer of the Kickstart campaign to bring the latest Elite game to the masses, Elite Dangerous. After playing the game through it's early Alpha scenarios to the current on-line implementation, I felt the need to start to record my experiences in the game.

I hope this blog will be a good read for people who may not want to play the game, but are interested in space-sims, and for those who may be just starting out and looking for any hints and tips.

I want it to read more like a commander's personal log, than just a manual, so for those looking for those hints and tips, you will find them in there somewhere.