Elite: Dangerous

[Egan]

Advice. let's see. Get the biggest damn FSD drive you can. You will need it. And the biggest fuel scoop too. Maybe not the top one for the asp as it's about 28,000000 cr but big enough that you don't have to hang around too long.

You WILL need an advanced disco-scanner and the surface scanner. Going exploring without them is pretty pointless. The Advanced Disco will pick up everything in a system straight away no matter how far out it is. You can, of course, find stuff by looking out for parallax scrolling but it is so time consuming and easy to miss things.

Don't bother scanning moons, or asteroid belts. Not worth the effort. Well, maybe moons occasionally, but that's a judgement call. They're sometimes terraformable, or water worlds etc. rarely, though.

People will tell you you don't need a shield when exploring. I would be loathe to go without one, though. The moment you get back you can guarantee some yahoo (NPC or player) will attempt to vent you. wouldn't bother with weapons, though. The information you will be returning with will be far more important and valuable to risk in a fight.

Likewise heatsinks and repair units. Some swear by them but I don't see the point. Given the sort of situations you'd use a heat sink in, by the time you deploy it it's probably going to be too late. And those situation are going to be pretty rare too (flopping out of witch-space into the middle of a contact binary, for example.)

Start off with one of the tourist spots - Mintaka or Betelgeuse - and see how you like it. Betelgeuse is a good one. I think it's the closest hypergiant, about 600 times the size of the sun. It's pretty impressive.

Ok, most of the stuff was on my list already. I gotta think about the shield though.
At the moment, I prefer Solo/Pirvate group over open for various reasons (also connection/performance, I get a lot less stutters and way shorter jump times in solo) and exploring is solo anyways so I guess I leave the shields behind, NPCs just never managed to scare me during interdictions due to the "everyone wins" FSD-quick recharge you can escape every interdiction without problems - unfortunately.
Sole exception, of course, is being mass locked but...the AI doesn't really try to do that.

As for destination. No clue. Should I pick one?
Right now I am near Lugh, I checked out the community event stuff there and made ~6-8million with combat bounds and other stuff, so I need a break from fighting anyways.

I thought about just pointing in one direction and go for it. The universe should be big enough to find awesome things everywhere anyways
Guess I check the galaxy before I set off...

Also, I found this: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=81653
The exploration topic is much more complex than I thought.
Love it.

[Egan]

Coming back from a trip out past the Eskimo nebula I did before Christmas, I hit the 500 LY 'Idiot Belt' that surrounds the Human bubble and got interdicted about 5 times in 5 systems. 4 of them were the usual pointless scrotes - Mostly harmless Sidewinders with no shields, no fuel scoops (I mean, come on, how the hell did they get out there?) - but the 5th one was a Master Dropship that chewed me up pretty badly before I destroyed him. I won't ever go exploring without shields. You never know what you are going to run into. FD have pretty much stated that when they DO get around to adding stuff like the Thargoids, they aren't going to announce it - they'll simply start making their presence felt. Going to be a lot of explorers moaning about getting whacked without shields...

Yeah, pick a destination. Like I said, head to a tourist spot first of all. Enjoy the sites. It'll give you a chance to see whether you enjoy it and it'll give you something nice to look at. After that, choose somewhere further away and go for it. Having said that, I tend to run in a direction for a few hundred light years and then change - There is always something out there worth seeing. Nutter's thread is a good one.

And Remember - The most important advice an explorer can get:

Oh, Be A Fine Girl, Kiss Me.

This is the mnemonic for the main sequence stars you can refuel from - O,B,A,F,G,K,M. All the others - proto stars, dwarfs, non and late sequence stars are non refuelable.

Finally, Don't screw with Neutron stars. They'll fry you for laughs. Vicious little buggers. I've scanned dozens of them and every time I am VERY careful. You come in so close there is no room for mucking about.

Funny, I just reinstalled a shield.
Changed my mind last night about it and had to check different places for different parts anyways.

In the end, I agree with the 'play it save' attitude.
I rather jump once more in a leg and have a shorter jump range but will survive a possible encounter.
I figured a lucky hit into my drives, without shields, and I'd be toast anyways.

The Thargoids, now... that is quite a good point you're making!
Didn't have them in mind and to think they might be out there already (it is a possiblity, who knows) is making exploration much more interesting.

Imagine to be the first one to actually run into them and survive to tell the story. Apropos story.
I'm curious as to how the internal story develops when the Thargoid threat arrives. Reminds me of Game of Thrones. The 9 families will have to unite, more or less, to fight the bigger threat, the White Walkers, in season 5
(I just assume you know what I'm talking about)

Will post a picture of my ready-to-go Asp in a few minutes and then pick an initial direction.

Edit: I'm thinking about adding a field maintenance unit, but I heard they are somewhat broken or add to the tear and wear cost... what exactly does that mean/how does that work?
I know what tear and wear is - but the mechanics are unknown to me. I suspect that part that are more expensive will add higher T&W costs?

Edit²: It seems they are a 'must have' now for exploring and have been fixed:
"- Add the Repairable component to several modules that otherwise couldn't be repaired by AFM modules. Discovery scanners, Detail scanners and Thrusters are all now repairable in the field."

[Egan]

Some shots of my current trip:

An Ammonia world.



A 7.8 mass black hole taken from 40 KM out - at the limits of the Body Exclusion Zone:



The icy rings of a gas giant:

Elite: Beautiful

Good to G.O.
(Changed sensors to E5 after that pic was taken, they weigh much less and I don't need them anyways...do I?)

[Egan]

I don't know about 'must have' - I've never needed a field repair unit - but a lot of people like them. They used to be utterly useless so they changed them to fix thrusters etc as you point out. I might have taken one with me but i had just left on the current circuit as they improved them.

Accidents happen I guess, and they have no mass, so if you have the room go for it. Can't hurt.

For an explorer you want everything to either be A class, or D. Why D? Because they are a low mass version so you will be able to jump further.

I'm outfitted with A class FSD, Powerplant and Distributer and fuel scoop. Everything else is D. I think the A class powerplant is important as it helps with heat issues. I'm convinced the distro does as well but that might just be me. I've also got A class thrusters as well as my Cobra is my only ride just now so it needs to be quick when I'm back in the bubble.

I don't know how important sensors are. There was a vague theory back in beta that better sensers helped you scan objects quicker but I have never seen any evidence of it. I think they're mostly a benefit for gimballed weapons. I'd go with D class anyway. Pretty sure they're the lightest.

Anyway, as promised, the Milky Way from 1200 LY below the central plane. I reckon I could get down another 400LY before I have problems route finding.

[Egan]

Huh! My screenies seem to have disappeared! Everyones a critic.

Probably Photobucket....

EDIT:

No, it's just opera decided to go proper metal after weeks of being utterly useless. Time for a new browser I think.

Expedition 01 has ended and I returned save and sound to Shinrarta.
I am glad I didn't explore before - because without the "select next waypoint in route" function, I would have gone bonkers.

Exploring is indeed very exciting - but also very boring or rather 'uneventful'.
It reminds me of subsims.
Long periods of nothingness, bad weather, no sightings, no luck... you suddenly see smoke on the horizon and the hunting fever kicks in, making it all worth it.

My initial goal was to return after discovering a new black hole and although I found plenty (~8 in total), all of them have been named already - no cigar for me today.
To not let it become a grind-for-the-hole fest, I decided to rather enjoy the trip and return, bringing my discoveries home with me to share and reflect on my first expedition.

While I made lots of pictures, I made the capital mistake to not note the location and astronomical data from the system map, as this could have been interesting to know and analyze - but I sure won't forget that again.

Some pictures:




















My first and not yet discovered Earth-Like World. Definitely the expedition's highlight.








General area of the expedition. After ~1000ly I 'jumped around' looking for interesting and more high value star systems.

There will definitely be an EXP02, but I will wait for FD to hopefully add some more exploration-related features and content before I leave again.
Sold my Asp and got my Vulture back, now even better equipped thanks to the ~3 million I made exploring.

[Egan]

Nice shots. Good work!

Yeah, the sub sim analogy is pretty much spot on. Take my last couple of days for instance. I seem to have spent a bunch of time jumping from boring red dwarf to red dwarf with nothing there but tiny, icy rocks.

But then I hit a rich seam. Jumped into a neutron star system. Hit the mighty disco horn and had a look at the system map. The second star, another red dwarf had a bunch of rocks. Two, in particular looked promising. Only 13,000LS away too.

Long story short: two earthlikes, a CFT Water world and 4 more CFT hi-metal worlds. Not bad, not bad at all.

Next system there were 4 gas giants with life, an ammonia world and another two CFT HMC.

Next one, another neutron star system with a more distant red dwarf (about 45,000LS out) another 6(!) CFT HMC and another CFT water world.

Makes up for all the ice balls. I've another three systems to look at tonight which i suspect may be just as good.

The thing with black holes (black hole especially) is that you have to go really far, or luck out, to find an undiscovered one. I've found about two dozen or so since gamma, but only three of them were undiscovered. There are so many guys out there who will sit and pour over the map, filters on, and then expressly jump all the way out just to get that one item. If you have any sort of real life at all you just won't be able to compete..

I find I only take a note of system where there are lots of high paying items - all three of last nights systems for instance. Doesn't always help anyway. For a long time the galaxy map search was bugged and I'm not too sure it is entirely fixed.

[Dowly]

Remember when I talked about VoiceAttack and HCS voice packs for it? Well, it looks like the HCS project has been really successful and now they're doing a William Shatner voice pack.

Preview:


Preview 2:


Behind the Scenes:

I don't play Elite anymore, it turned into a huge letdown for me.
But that Shatner joins small projects like that is really cool. Many other "stars" would have simply laughed it off I assume, he probably realized how much fans would love it.

[NeonSamurai]

Ya I am rapidly getting to that point as well after 2 months play time. The game is just so shallow and feels like nothing but a grind once you get over the visuals and realize how same-y everything is. It's a skinner box where the reward are the ships, and how the cost for the ships just increase exponentially (seriously 800 million for a corvette that is barely much better than the Anaconda or even the Python?). The game is designed to addict pure and simple.

Originally Posted by NeonSamurai

Ya I am rapidly getting to that point as well after 2 months play time. The game is just so shallow and feels like nothing but a grind once you get over the visuals...

Spot on.

I was wondering... are there any ED players here?
On which forums are you hanging out?
What ships is everybody flying?