Exploration en route to Colonia
13 Apr 2023Scorandum
What started as a very mundane "jump, recharge, jump" cycle has turned into a newfound passion. System discovery and exploration; a great way to swell the credit balance!My goal for the past few weeks is to save enough credits to purchase and outfit my own fleet carrier. I performed many missions within the Sol bubble but quickly became bored with the tedious grind OR would switch directions from performing missions to mining (for example), causing me to spend credits to re-outfit my ship. This was SLOWLY building my credit balance. Then, a friend within the squadron decided they were gonna make a trip to Colonia with his carrier and I decided to travel with them. So, I transferred my ships and modules to his carrier and we set out on a multi-week journey. Our schedule had us stopping after around 8-10 carrier jumps and allowed us to explore the systems outside the bubble.
This was my first time truly exploring and the learning curve was steep, but I quickly got into my rhythm. I would depart the carrier, pick a system some distance from the carrier, set my routing for economical, and start jumping. I have voice attack and EDDI installed on my system and I configured EDDI to tell me if a system was logged into Universal Cartographics. I also utilized ED Discovery tool to tell me the approximate value for scanning bodies within the system. I would jump, honk, then travel to high valued bodies to perform the detailed surface scan. I would also take the time to stop by any bodies that had Biological signals.
This is where things got VERY profitable for me. At first, I would ignore bodies with only one Biological signal. That was a HUGE mistake. Turns out that those signals are usually worth more credits, upwards to $10 million BEFORE the discovery bonus. Once I started discovering those, my credit balance quickly shot up, as so did my ranking for Exploration and Exobiology!
Now, we are sitting about 3,000 LY away from Colonia and my balance has swelled from $2 billion credits at the start of the trip to just short of $5 billion. My goal of $6 billion is so close now! Another few days in our area, then finishing our journey to Colonia for some engineering, then the same cycle to return to the Sol bubble. Once back near Sol, I will purchase my carrier, get it outfitted and fully stocked with Tritium, then I may plan my first excursion. Perhaps to Sagittarius A???