EX A Log, Entry 04: SRV-Time
30 Oct 2016Lothal Vanderheim
Slowly I'm getting closer to the end of the first stage of what I optimistically called "Expedition A" because I'm planning to survive it and do more later. Jacques' Station is still a couple thousand light years away, but every jump now brings me closer.The approaching end of "Expedition A: Stage 1" made me start planning for the time after. Stage 2 is supposed to be travelling from Jacues' to the galactic core and jump range isn't really a concern in the core regions, but what about Stage 3? In the last leg of my grand expedition I'm planning to travel to the other side of the galaxy, until I hit the edge and have to turn back. That could be stressful, if my experiences in journeying to the edge on our side of the galaxy are anything to go by.
Of course, my Imperial Cutter has an impressive 33 light years jump range, but what if that isn't enough? To try and push through the thinner regions on my way to the other side's edge, I've been writing done what materials I need for boosting my FSD. Turns out I already had some of them, but there were several materials bottlenecking me to 1-2 jumps of each level. Not enough!
To test out how long it takes to collect the necessary materials, I marked down two otherwise unimpressive moons orbiting a gas giant: One of them had 1 rare material and 2 less materials I wanted, the other the same less rare materials and another rare one. After landing on the first moon, I drove around in my SRV and re-acquainted myself with the scanner of my SRV. Soon I had collected far more stuff than I had planned for!
This experiment has been worthwile. To top this off, tomorrow I'll land on the second moon and see if I can reliably find the rarer materials there, too. If it works, good for me! Since there is still a godawful amount of distance to traverse, I can just stop a couple of times a month, collect some materials and can continue on, totally relaxed. When I finally need to boost my jumps, I should have amassed enough for dozens of jumps at maximum boost level. Nice.
Maximum boost level is +100%, by the way. This means the FSD of my Imperial Cutter has an emergency jump range of 66 light years. Now that's what I call jumping!