An explorers journal Voyages IV to VI (in brief).
06 Dec 2016Sekiou
Voyage 4: The Coal SackNow in an Asp Explorer, the first incarnation of Ugly Betty. It was March 3302 and I had actually done some reading on exploration and how to go about it. I was all set with fuel scoop, advanced disco, detail disco and the best of everything I could get. I had even bought an AFM but really wasn't happy with the idea of no weapons so kept the ship tooled up with the resulting reduction in jump range.
I headed out towards the Coal Sack and got my first clues as to just how much of the local area around the bubble has actually been surveyed.
When I got the Coal Sack, I hung a right for a couple of hundred lights and then headed back towards the bubble, this is when I noticed something important to exploring if you want to find undiscovered systems.
Voyage 5: Ugly Betty goes to Maia
Perhaps not exactly a voyage but Maia is outside the bubble. I worked up a bit of good will with the Ant Hill Mob running missions but got board of the time they took as every job involved a trip of over 200 lights and then head back for the next. I probably spent a week going back and forth between the bubble and Maia.
Voyage 6: Testing a Theory
In another incarnation of Ugly Betty, I headed out again. It was during this voyage that the Engineers first rose their collective heads.
For this voyage I decided to put my theory about finding undiscovered systems to the test.
So what was my theory?
Pretty basic really, don't head directly towards a visible galatic feature. How simple is that? It works too.
On my voyage 4 most of the systems that I passed through on the way to the Coal Sack had been discovered. When I said "right turn Clyde" previously discovered systems started to tail off and before I knew it, every system that I was passing through was undiscovered.
How did I prove my theory? I had decide my goal would be Barnard's Loop but rather than head straight there I headed off on a coarse between the Coal Sack and the Loop. Before I had traveled 1kly from the bubble I was finding new systems.
I kept on this heading for about 2.5k lights before turning toward the Loop, every system was new.
Scanning the galaxy map I spotted a small nebula on the route and headed towards it. Turns out it was Thor's Helmet and not until I was within around 100 lights from Thor's Helmet did I find a system discovered by someone else and not surprisingly the whole nebula had been thoroughly surveyed. At this point I decided that I had actually had enough and headed back to the bubble. I took a pretty direct route and not surprisingly, a lot of the systems that I passed through, even at range of 3k lights had been surveyed.
So here's my best shot at describing my theory:
Between the bubble and all galactic features there are highways where many explorers have been before and so there are few systems to discover for the first time. These highways are also to be found between the features. An explorer first travels to one nebula and then to the next, how many times has this been done before?
The counter to this phenomena is to head out the bubble or away from a feature at an angle rather than directly to your next destination and make a lazy curve around to your intended target system.
I tested this further on the next voyage.