It's Alive! (Well, Sort Of :D) Deep Space Muppet Surfaces.
18 Apr 2019LongDistanceClara
Uncannily accurate picture of my current mental state.
So first of all, sooooorry to the nice people who msg'd me for going AWOL! Long story short - vacation/work trip for a couple of weeks led to coming home and getting a really grotty 'cold' which had me completely out of it for the better part of a month. Still can't get back on Elite and look at spinning screens without going green and hurrying off to the bathroom! But can manage typing so going to try and "close off" my last logs - in time for next Elite chapter of Clara :D My rubbish cold is more or less over but feel absolutely knackered all the time, so apologies - this isn't the "end of trip" log I was hoping to do, with vids and pics and tons of fun stuff; but I didn't want to leave it unfinished so this was the best I could do.
Last post was February 19th I think - the day I finished my Andromeda Run Challenge. And although I'm stupidly proud of it, as dumb as that sounds about a computer game, it was by a very clear margin the most painful, exhausting and utterly retarded thing I've ever done in any computer game, ever. Ever ever. I know I say that a lot but this one takes the cake, the plate the cake was on, the furniture in the room and most of the street. And will absotively posolutely NEVER be doing anything like it again! I've been going back over my screenies, notes and spreadsheet logs to pull some silly stats together anyway and thought just for giggles, I'd pop em down here for posterity.
So as a quick recap:
The Challenge:
To cover the approximate distance to the Andromeda Galaxy, that being 2.5 million light years, in the space of 80 consecutive days.
The Rules:
- From the moment of undocking, no re-docking allowed until completion of the trip
- No outside assistance of any kind (apart from cake deliveries), so no refuelling, repair limpets etc
- Cannot simply pinball back and forth between two perfectly spaced neutrons in a stripped down max range ship - must actively explore, scan and travel throughout the entire galaxy
The Stats:
Start Date: 01 December 2018 15:00
End Date: 19 February 2019 15:00
Duration of Trip: 80 days
Final Distance Travelled: 2,500,932 light years
Average distance covered each day: 31,262 ly
Longest distance recorded in one day: 48,164 ly
Shortest distance >0 logged in one day: 11,951 ly
Number of rest days: 9
AFMU Refills synthesised: 29
Hull repair limpets utilised/synthesised: 4
Systems discovered: ~35,600
Scan data payout: I'm going to be a little coy with this one but it was a lot. A lot a lot. I don't think I or my crew ever need to work again, I'll put it like that
Approx time spent in witchspace: 149 hours
Approx time spent charging and jumping the FSD: 174 hours
Approx fuel consumed during trip: 285,000 tons
Fun Comparisons:
Soooo what would this distance equate to!
~38 trips to Beagle Point
~113 trips to Colonia
~96 trips to Sadge A*
~6,510 trips to Maia from Sol
~10 circumnavigations of the Milky Way around the rim
The funny thing is, looking at some of those numbers, it doesn't seem that crazy, but it was doing it day after day for 80 days straight that was the grind - the analogy that brings it home the most was "it's like going from the bubble to Colonia, turning around and coming nearly half way back, every day for 80 days". Doing it over Xmas and New Year (which is also my work's busy season!) was just the icing on the cake!
The Ship:
I am freakishly, VERY geekily attatched to this ship now
I always liked my dear old Clair de Lune, ever since I came back to Elite a while ago, but after this trip, she's gained full legendary status in my mind now I was trying to work out how far she has carried me over the last 17-ish months since I came back, and my best estimate is just under six million light years - so she's been around a bit and fairly quickly too!For this trip, she was built to be indestructible - in an exploration context! So that meant 3 AFMU banks (had the slot spare), four SRVs and a mining laser, along with a hull repairer and a size 6 power plant that could continue to power all primary systems (fsd, booster, thrusters etc) at 0% integrity. Barring REALLY stupid mistakes, she could live in space forever, even headbutting stars now and then. I also had a fighter bay for joyriding, sightseeing and snapping piccies
Bottom line, she was over 10 light years below the max jump range of a conda - she topped out around 71 light years and change. So yes, if I'd just wanted to tick distances, it would have been easier with the full barebones race-spec 83ly conda - but that would have kinda been cheating in my eyes and not really "exploring", so newp, proper deep space beastie she is!
I love her to bits anyway and though there are many condas out there - this one is mine
Thank Yous!:
Again, not to sound overly "oh give it a rest, it's hardly like you're curing cancer!" but really - thanks to the ppl who supported via the odd ping and pm, said it a thousand times but will say it again - you have no idea how much of a shot in the arm your encouragement was when work was being sucky and the last thing I wanted to do was sit down and bash out 700 systems
So thanks once again!Also thanks to Styker Aune and SidetrackSam for acting as independent discord adjudicatory types - I pinged my start and finish odometer to them, just in case anyone calls shenanigans
Ty you guys!Now what...
Right - end of this challenge. And not the end of Clara's silliness as such, I've learnt that from before! But as all the other logger types know, these logs take a fair bit of time to bash out, what with the pics and so on - not a huge amount of time, but it adds up! So I'm going to go a lot easier on it I think once I'm back in playing. Stupid amounts of work to catch up on after my illness, plus a couple of titles released that I REALLY want to have a futz with!
So will probably be a bit of a gap between this log and my next ramblings. That having been said - I'd quite like to carry on Clara's story, but more involved in the bubble, meeting and interacting with more other players, getting involved in the BGS a bit? So she'll be hanging up her explorey boots for a bit and getting stuck in to some Tales of the Bubble more I hope!
Anyhoo, brain rambling and utterly fried. So, look forward to seeing what trouble I can get Clara in in the bubble but till then, have an awesome time whatever you're up to in Elite and fly fun!
CB