(5,416 hours) - Phase 4 - Formorian Frontier, The Abyss and 65k LY from Sol
11 Aug 2020Evolution
--------------| Overview |
--------------
The overall mission can be found here.
The log is structured into the following sections:
------------
| Phase 4 |
------------
This phase has taken 41 hours effort since the Phase 3 update.
Starting from the THUECHAEI JN-A D1-6 system (in the last log), it wasn't possible to plot a course to Beagle Point with only scoopable stars but it was possible with L-Type stars included. The distance needed was 14,014LY / 340 jumps away.
24 jumps into the route, I arrived in the system BLAA BLAO UR-D C28-12. The system had 2 water worlds 234k LS from the star. I wouldn't usually fly that far out but decided to travel over there, whilst updating my material and data log (spreadsheet). Luckily for the elements, only 40 were needed to get everything filled again so I'll visit a planetary surface later in the phase. The water worlds were mapped and it was time to press on:
5 jumps later and using EDD's 3D star map, my route was going to join with another commander's course to Beagle Point on the next jump to GREAE BLAO LX-R B9-0. Due to that, a 25 jump / 1,141.91LY route was plotted to take me forward at a different angle, towards GREAE BLAO DG-E B58-0.
As the detour progressed, it was clear that most of those systems weren't having many planets to scan or terraformable worlds to map. However, there were still some high value metal rich words that I could quickly map. With 9 jumps left, here was one of those in the system GREAE BLAO LT-T C19-3:
I arrived at the detour destination GREAE BLAO DG-E B58-0 and tried to re-plot a course to Beagle point but unfortunately, it wasn't possible from there. I decided to re-disable L-type stars and head off-centre towards Beagle Point, to the first system in The Abyss region. The new target was SKUEQAO HB-F C14-0, which required 85 jumps / 3,390.8LY.
On the 3rd jump, I was in the system BLAA BYOEA ML-B C2-2 and felt glad to see a terraformable planet on sensors, at last... but to my disappointment, it wasn't much to look at! I mapped the planet and then went over to its moon and mapped there as well. Both are shown below with the moon in the foreground:
19 jumps later (63 jumps to go), I got to the BLAA BYOEA DC-J d10-6 system, where there were 3 terraformable planets discovered. Planet A6 looked interesting so an image was taken for the log:
Another 21 jumps later (42 to go) in the system PLOXU AW-T D4-2, a terraformable moon was found. The colour contrasted well with the light (and lack of light) from our galaxy, this far out. I decided to take a break there to have some food and enjoy the view:
When Viatorem's computer was replotted, it managed to find a slightly more efficient route of 40 jumps.
Just over half way there with 18 jumps left, I arrived in the system SKUEQAO GY-D C1-0. The system had a water world and a high metal world worth mapping. I thought the HM planet definitely looked better to add to my personal gallery and to the log:
The target system SKUEQAO HB-F C14-0 and The Abyss Region had been reached. From there, the distance was 8,524LY away from Beagle Point - so not bad for a day's work! Luckily, I could also plot a course again which was then 219 jumps.
When I progressed with the journey, 6 jumps were covered and the system SKUEQAO GZ-M D8-1 was reached. The system had already been visited by 3 commanders at least: one person who only discovered the star, another who scanned a water world and another who mapped that world and scanned the rest. Luckily for me, there were another 3 unmapped terraformable worlds as well as the already mapped water world. Here was planet 6, a beautiful high metal content world with a blue scattering effect in its atmosphere:
Unlike most of the Phases, there were now more and more systems that had been previously visited. Luckily, I'd taken a very long route or I'm sure everything would've been scanned & mapped before. As my overall mission is firstly for the scans and secondly for the credits from mapping, I still continued scanning everything and mapping any high value planets (thanks to EDDI).
3 jumps later, I arrived in the CHAA EORK DS-U C19-0 system which had its star and first planet already scanned. Luckily, I was able to scan the rest of the planets and map a terraformable water world:
With 18 jumps covered today, I uncovered an ongoing issue for 4 years between our ship computer data and the galactic network (Elite vs EDD).
|
Every match in CQC since 2016 where journals were uploaded, logs were showing I'd jumped thousands of LY to one of 4 systems then back again. I manually removed every single entry which cut off a million LY from my EDD and EDSM journeys. |
|
Please be aware of this if you've ever played CQC and uploaded your journals to EDSM - you'll need to search EDSM and EDD to remove these 4 systems: |
|
THETA URSAE MAJORIS, BOEPP SU-E D12-818, ETA CEPHEI and BLEAE AEWSY GA-Y D1-14. |
|
The issue is caused because they appear in our journals and if you import those to EDSM and have it linked to EDD, you'll need to delete those lines if you want your EDD totals to be correct. I've raised a report with EDSM for that to be fixed. |
10 jumps in on the next day travelling, I reached the system PYRODE EORK OI-Z D1-0 where I found a terraformable high metal planet. Like most of the recent systems, these hadn't been mapped but had only been scanned before. I mapped the world I wanted but also travelled out to the furthest planet from the sun as it looked interesting. I wasn't disappointed and managed to capture a few images of its methane lakes and its atmospheric scattering effect. In this image, you can see the blue effect and also the red effect with the faint galaxy lights in the distance:
In this image, you can see some of its significant amounts of methane surface liquid. Some areas were as large as oceans with archipelago islands scattered everywhere:
After 27 jumps that same day, I reached the system PYROOE EORK FA-H C13-0 which hadn't been visited before. Planet 1 was a terraformable high metal content world which looked a lot like an Earth Like planet, partly due to its water rich atmosphere:
There were 175 jumps remaining on the next day. 17 jumps into the route, I arrived in the system PYROOE EORK BE-E D13-0 which had been scanned but no planets were mapped. There were 3 worthwhile mapping planets and the last was a Water World with a reddish atmosphere - due to its 9.57x atmospheric pressure of 81.3% Ammonia:
32 jumps later (49th of today), I stopped off next to a water world in the system CHOI DRYOAE SS-S C20-0. Like quite a few of the more recent systems, it hadn't been visited before. From there, the distance was 4,944LY from Beagle Point and 61,283LY from Sol:
After 15 more jumps and many systems with only stars, I was pleasantly surprised to find a system with a terraformable high metal content world, a terraformable water world and most surprisingly, an Earth Like world.
I suspected this might be one of the last, if not, the last Earth Like planet I would see, being this far out. The system was PYRAE DRYOAE FX-A D1-2. Only the Earth Like and Water world had been scanned or mapped. I visited all of them to do the honours and take some images for the log:
28 jumps onwards (92nd today), I arrived in the system PYRA DRYIAE HY-F D12-0 which hadn't been visited before and there were 4 terraformable worlds. The system was only 3,216 / 78 jumps from Beagle Point. Here were the first two worlds from the system:
On the 107th jump of the day, I reached the system FLECKEAE TU-V D3-5 which had 6 terraformable worlds that hadn't been mapped before. Here were the planets B7 & B8:
17 jumps later, the system FLECKEAE HS-S C20-1 was reached, which had been visited before. For some strange reason (luckily for me), only one of four terraformable planets had been mapped even though it was right next to another terraformable world. I can only assume they hadn't taken the free COVAS upgrade (EDDI). As always, I mapped all the worthwhile planets and continued on the journey:
With 142 jumps done today and 28 left for to go, a terraformable world was found in the system CEECKIA JS-W C4-0. It wasn't much to look at but I thought the simplicity worked well with our entire galaxy as the backdrop:
A lot of distance had been covered meaning it won't take long to reach Beagle point tomorrow.
The next day, the last 28 jumps were covering 1,054LY but after 4 jumps, an economical route was used to gain more scans on the final approach. It would have a higher chance of gaining unmapped / undiscovered places and this increased the jumps to 45 from there.
39 jumps left. 6 jumps in (10th of today), I found an unmapped terraformable world in the system CEECKIA BV-Y B20-0 (the brown world below). Its sister planet wasn't terraformable but looked more interesting, so that was mapped as well and they can both be seen below:
32 jumps left, 13 jumps later (17th today), I decided to stop off at a medium gravity world to visit some Silicate Vapour Furnarole Geological sites on the planet CEECKIA DO-K C11-1 A1:
While there, 22 Tin and 7 Vanadium were collected to fill their capacities. After those, I only needed 4 Niobium and 7 Tellurium for all elements to be at 100%. As I'd planned to use FSD boosts later, I can focus on gathering any elements after then.
After re-plotting the course, the route added 3 jumps meaning 35 were now needed to cover the last 675LY.
5 jumps away / 125.55LY, nearly every planet in every system had been mapped - even worthless ice worlds. Luckily in the CEECKIA TE-P C22-0 system, there were some planets over 161k LS away, so I took a long flight to map two high metal planets with a value of 224k:
Then the time was finally here:
Beagle Point had 2 active carriers and a decommissioned carrier. Before docking, I had to record my totals as they get reset when docking. So those will be manually added to the new totals at the end of the phase.
When I docked, the repair fee was 864,402 for Viatorem's integrity which was at 44% since the last carrier 662 jumps before (Phase 3). I was able to sell my 64 limpets and hand in some exploration data to offset the cost for today.
Seeing as the carrier had outfitting available, I also stored a lot of modules and increased my unladen jump range from 68LY to 74LY.
By doing some research, I found the furthest point away from Sol is OEVASY SG-Y D0, so that was my next destination.
I wasn't able to plot a course directly (even with 148LY jump using Boost level 3!). So, this was the method I used:
There are 3 terraformable worlds in that system which are 130,55LS from the main star.
As you can see, the background is completely devoid of any nearby stars. I'd selected Sol to show the vast distance (65,647LY) from there:
It was just after taking that screenshot, that someone tried to trick me into killing me, as I warned the community about here.
The next day, a course was set back to Beagle point (in reverse order as I bullet pointed above). With 4 jumps left in the system CEECKIA WX-F D12-1, a nice looking terraformable world was found with a water rich atmosphere:
I arrived back at the DSSA Distant Worlds carrier, safe and sound. Viatorem was restocked with its modules from storage. limpets etc, some wear and tear was covered and a small amount of exploration data was sold to cover the small fee.
It's taken a lot of effort to get here as you'll see below. I feel even more lucky, considering it was nearly stolen from me at the finish line.
Even that has added to sense of achievement knowing that the log I left last night has hopefully helped other people as well.
-------------------
| Progress Stats |
-------------------
The progress values for Phase 4 were:
Combining the totals from the 4 Phases gives the overall progress of:
----------
| Route |
----------
These 3 images show different angles of the route I'd taken between Phases 1-4 since the Eagle Nebula.
Shown in ED:
In EDSM:
In ED Discovery:
---------------------
| The plan ahead |
---------------------
On the return journey, I'll go back to Sagittarius A as it has been over 4 years since I was last there on 10th June 2016.
The distance between Beagle Point and Sagittarius A is 39,386.35LY so this will need to be split into phases again.
However, going forward, rather than produce massive logs of 20k LY per phase, they'll be broken into smaller phases of 10k LY.
Also, like before, I won't take a direct route but I'll take a scenic path to avoid the previously explored main courses.
-----------------
| Ship details |
-----------------
Exploration ships are usually as light as possible which sacrifices some usage when they reach their destination.
Although Viatorem is an exploration ship, it can also be used for other aspects as well. Some features of Viatorem include:
The ship description and full information can be found on INARA here and Coriolis here
-----------------
Thank you for having a read through. Feel free to give me a shout if you have any comments or questions.
Stay safe and fly safe.
o7, Evo