An explorers journal Voyages VII & VIII
06 Dec 2016Sekiou
Voyage 7: To go further than 5k lights from homeI had been working hard to raise creds to buy parts for the Anaconda that I had bought. I was based in Nu Wana, an anarchy system, and taking as many Skimmer missions as I could find, good payout, minimal risk. I ended up working all sides of several different faction conflicts in the local area and making around 50MCr a week without having to risk cargo.
Whilst doing this I was also gathering bits and bobs for tweaks to Ugly Betty, she ended up with 35Ly jump range carrying 64 tons, not bad.
Finally I had the cash and also had the materials needed to finish my Anaconda, the Columbus.
During the refit stage of the Columbus I was interdicted by an Imperial Cutter, with no speed I couldn't get far enough away from the Cutter for the FSD to charge and the Columbus became the Columbus II, expensive.
For the Columbus's maiden voyage I had decided to go and see NGC 6357 as it is the first large object on route to the galactic center and then work out where to go from there.
Here was a chance to further test my theory on galactic exploration highways. But the main reason for this voyage was to travel farther than 5KLy from my point of origin in order to receive an invite from Professor Palin.
Rather than head directly towards NGC 6357 I headed out on a coarse at about 45 degrees up from the galactic plane and traveled for about 1KLy before turning towards the nebula. It seemed that my theory was true. In about 1kLy to 1.5Ly I started finding previously unexplored systems whereas before when I had headed straight out toward a feature the discovered systems continued for up to 2kLy+.
All this continued to prove true all the way to NGC 6357, it was not until I got within 200Ly that I started to run into systems already discovered and of coarse, the whole of NGC 6357 is thoroughly mapped.
On my way through NGC 6357 I visited all the Black Holes and Neutron Stars and left it at that. Scanning around the galaxy map I plotted to the Eagle Nebula in a lazy curve to avoid the galactic highway.
The Eagle Nebula was more impressive than NGC 6357. The wall of F class stars, all within 2 to 3Ly's of each other is something to behold. Shame I didn't have my SRV, otherwise I bet there would have been some nice photo's to take from nearby planets.
From the Eagle I headed to the Omega Nebula. Here there are many, nay lots of Black Holes and Neutron Stars to visit which I did before finally heading home.
Voyage 8: The Neutron Nebula and a 56MCr Passenger and more theory testing
I had set up my home in Zhao and was working the local area when passengers became available. Having run a few people around in Ugly Betty I had seen some pretty big payouts offered for long journey's when one came up that I couldn't refuse, take eight passengers to the Neutron Nebula, Stranaei LR-W e1-523; reward 56Mcr; distance 18.572kly from Sol.
Before plotting my coarse I thought about my galactic highway theory; would anyone have plotted directly to the nebula and will this nebula have been visited before?
My thoughts were that the nebula had a high probability of being visited but as this destination was not somewhere that you're not going to spot unless your within a few hundred or less Ly, a reasonably direct route wont be explored as it takes you away from the galactic plane, the most traveled area.
I was right, I took a gently angled coarse to lift me to approximately the height of the nebula over a distance of around 8Kly and then headed directly for it. Almost as soon as I got above the top of the human bubble I was finding unexplored systems that continued all the way to the nebula.
On my return journey I didn't loop around as much and guess what? I came across far systems previously visited.
Theory proved I think.
The next work.
As I was carrying a passenger with a time deadline I wasn't stopping to scan many systems but at the same time I was investigating another idea.
Scanning a system takes time, time is money and money is Explorer rank. Having read up on other people thoughts on time taken versus creds/rank gained I wanted to optimize my time/cred yield.
For last two voyages I've been recording how far away from a star the high metallic planets end and the gas giants/rocky icy planets start.
Detail scanning of rocky/icy's doesn't gain you a lot of creds compared to the time taken, it is postulated and I agree, that it is better to move on to the next system rather than detail scan these bodies. So I want to create a handy table that can be consulted based on star type so that after a run of your advanced disco you can then check the nav panel rather than wait for the system map to open and make a sound choice on whether or not to skip to the next system thereby saving time/increasing cred yield.
This is a work still in progress, I haven't gathered enough data yet but it is coming together. As an example of how this might work, it is very rare to find a valuable planet around an M class star past the 200Ls. In a data set of 31 M class stars, only 4 have had high metal content planets past 200Ls, two of those where less than 250Ls out and none had anything more valuable than an HM planet.
As a result, if there are no planets within 200Ls of an M class, I skip out to the next system. More data to gather...