Expidition - week 1 summary
03 Sep 2019Jonny_saturn
I left Mars High without any great fanfare or lengthy contemplation, I just lifted off from the pad and went for it. I began the 100kly trip in the worst possible way, for a mere few hundred metres down the station I saw a huge lumbering type-9 coming through the mist of the slot in the opposite direction, heading straight for me. I took evasive action but ended up tangling the Anaconda at the exit of the station with no shields left, 40% hull and a 100cr fine. I realised that I'm not flying the Krait anymore and should take a whole lot more care on such manoeuvres. Embarrassed, I returned to the station, but was glad I hadn't landed an eight figure insurance buy back cost. I was also glad I hadn't fully powered up the ships computer at this point as if `ten` had seen it she would be going on and on about it for the next 6 weeks as some sort of running gag. I stopped by a few more planets in the sol system, flew by Earth and over Chard in Somerset, England, paying homage to the birthplace of modern powered flight. From there, I made my way over to Sedna. This is somewhere I had always wanted to visit. This cold, dim, frigid world is right on the edge of the Sol system, the sun looking just like a bright star from this distance. I landed the `Sanctuary` and picked up a rock sample, before heading out into space once again.
I plotted a waypoint some 9000 light-years away and got going, bounding 60ly at a time between systems. The first few thousand light-years were fairly uneventful, a few close encounters with brown dwarfs, where I had underestimated cruising distance from them and forced an emergency drop out of super cruise, but I soon got the hang of long range exploration once again. I must have chosen a less well trodden path, since I was surprised to see that the majority of systems, from 5000 light-years out, were un-scanned or unvisited. I could not help but put the FSS into action and start looking in more detail, hoping for an earth world find early on or other notable phenomenon. My progress slowed, but I was ahead of schedule and so this didn't matter too much.
My first noteworthy find was some metallic crystals some 6000 light-years out from the bubble. I had heard of these before but not seen any up close, so thought it would be worth approaching them for a closer look and a scan. I found a few water worlds here and there, but then kept running into brown dwarf after brown dwarf, with not much to see except for icy bodies and the occasional gas giant. At around 10000 ly out and with the higher concentrations of stars, I figured it was time to switch the stellar filter on to jump to heavier, scoopable stars only. This partly avoids getting marooned with no fuel, but mainly allows me to focus on finding more interesting planets and increase my chances of finding earth like worlds.
Filtering reduces average jump distance, but I was surprised to see by how little, still making 50-60ly jumps, but now to much more interesting systems, some of which with 40 or more previously undiscovered bodies.
I eventually find my first Earth like world, along with further water worlds and ammonia worlds. Soon after I found more ELW's, with two together in orbit about each other. I was tempted to land and have a closer look, but the atmosphere was not quite for roaming around on the surface without breathing gear. I continued in my search, hoping one day soon to make a landing and check out the life forms in more detail, maybe even do some fishing.
