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.