Haha, same here. Luckily I figured it out or I might still be orbiting the darn thing looking for a landing pad.

Max distance from start is now 5,077 light years. Now I must decide if I wish to continue on to a different destination, or if I should turn for home. I'll spend some time in the galaxy map and have a look around.

I'll recommend another nebula, if it's in your neighborhood... The Fine Ring. A fantastic view going in, and once inside, the view and color are unbelievable.

Awesome, thanks for the recommendation, I was hoping for some. I will have a look and see how far it is from the Jellyfish.

And FWIW, after 5,000 light years and probably 120 jumps the integrity was 89% and cost like 6,800 credits to fix.

Excellent suggestion as it turns out Adlabs. It's actually close to the bubble, just on the other side from my current position actually. So I can fly there and be working my way back home almost the whole way. That nebula is very small, and I may have played this game for years without ever being aware of it, so thanks for the heads up. I see it's purple, and looking forward to seeing it from within.

It's 5,800 light years from the rock I'm in. And then another few hundred I imagine back to the bubble. In all that would make the expedition around 11,000 light years, which is good for my first real effort at this.

Mission update 1520 Hours 10 April 3304

Dawnbreaker casts her lines and sets sail from this most welcoming of all rocks. I sold a little more data to them so that relations reflected my appreciation for their being here, so far from Sol. (and I got a few more first discoveries locked in)

To the Fine Ring!

Mission Update, sometime later.....

On the way to the Fine Ring I was diverging from the basic corridor I had flown on the outbound legs of this expedition. Had come back about 2,500 light years when a new 1000-LY leg plot was required. But I ran in to an issue with a huge swath of space closed off due to an unknown permit being required. I would need to plot a way around, but with the 1000 light year limit, I was unable to plot a path that I was certain could circumvent the permit-closed space. So I've decided to make for home. Frankly, I'm a bit worn out. I haven't just gone quickly from A to B, but made sure to explore, and I'm ready for something different. On the return trip I've found uncharted system after uncharted system I have about 2,500 light years left until I am back in civilization.

Some images from this expedition


This is a fairly hot high metal content world. Usually these are not landable, but this one was, and to break up the routine I set Dawnbreaker down and had a bash in the SRV.



Looking for a suitable location to set her down



Scanning for stuffz. The scanner is indicating something off to 10 o'clock.



The Asp X from her good side



I have tried hard to chart virgin systems, and oftentimes that means a fairly long supercruise flight to outlying bodies. Here, Dawnbreaker gets a chance to spread her wings a bit and open it up. She would hit about 750c before the slowdown.



10-ball in the corner pocket



An interesting system. And very hot!




The holy grail of Elite exploration. This system had four water worlds, three of which are terraformable! Some other bastage got here first

Wow, nice. I love those systems with multiple water and earth-likes. And the planet surfaces are so very nicely improved since 3.0, I'm eager for their next update pass on the planets.

Me too!

While out in the black I received a message that the most recent CG had completed, and my little 630 ton contribution netted 7 million bonus! Thanks community!

It's nice to get such info while so far away from home. Let's just hope I survive to cash in.

Mission Update 0503 Hours, 12 April 3304

We have returned from the Void.What a cool trip it's been, but I'm glad to have finished. I don't know how folks can go to Colonia, Beagle Point or Sag A and back. Maybe I'll find out one day. As it was, this trip was testing my endurance by the end. In every respect though it must be considered a rousing success. I took no damage, completed the required distance, raised my Exploration rank, got tons of first discoveries, saw lots of cool stuff and made some serious bank.

On the way back, about 2,500 light years from home, I had an idea. The primary reason I went on this expedition was to cross the 5000 light year circle to unlock the invitation for Professor Palin. In order to get that invitation though, you also need to get good relations with another engineer, Marco Qwent. In order to get that, you need an invitation from him, which in turn requires Allied reputation with the Sirius Corporation to gain the permit needed to get to Marco. Yeah.

So I decided to make landfall at Sothis, where Sirius Corp is the controlling faction. Re-plotted the course and flew there. It took about 6 million in exploration data to get them Allied. I then flew to Sol, where I used the exploration data to get Allied with Mother Gaia, and then on to Achenar, to reach an alliance there as well. It was late at night at this point, and I wanted to clear all this data, and get my first discoveries, and not sleep on them, maybe allowing some sneaky, underhanded commander to turn in the same data while I snoozed the night away. I could have spread it around a bit more to better effect, but I'll get more.

Using exploration data for the Sirius Corp alliance saved me a whole bunch of data delivery missions, that's for sure.

A few more shots from the trip, and then I'll get in to figures.

In screenshots, in space, it's difficult to impress scale upon the viewer. I took this shot with the three suns. The binaries are about normal sized stars, maybe a little smaller than average. But look at how they are dwarfed by the C class star. It is MASSIVE! Coming out of the jump I was set back in my seat by the sheer scale of it. It took me by surprise, after hundreds of jumps to 'normal' stars. Awesome!





This single data cache is the only thing I picked up during the trip, aside from mats. I found lots of these, large and small. They are in USSs where an exploration vessel had met it's end. I left them because they have weight and it would compromise jump range, and they aren't very valuable. But here I am scooping one up. This shot also highlights the Asp X's fantastic visibility.




Upon entering the Sothis system I came across this megaship, a Freedom class survey vessel. Cool ship. Maybe I can become Captain of such a ship when I retire from the rat race




Civilization. At long last, back in the warm embrace of populated space.




In all I gained 40 million in exploration data and first discovery bonuses. Here are the most valuable systems. The highest value system indeed turned out to be the one I called the Holy Grail in a previous post. That's a poor choice of terms. Surely there are far more valuable systems out there. I saw no neutron stars, black holes, white dwarves or any oddities really. Still, it's worth some good coin, and nearly doubled my previous best system, and didn't even get a first discovery bonus. Damn you Commander Jinlong! Damn you!





The exploration stats after selling all of the data. 40 million profit, and exploration rank went from 72% Pathfinder to 41% Ranger. Still, a very long way to hit Elite!






The stats

Credits Earned : 40,000,489
New Systems Visitied: 262
Scans (all level 3): 803
Distance Traveled: 11,667 light years
Jumps: 268 (Average 43.5 LY per jump)

By my count I got 309 first discoveries! Wow! Awesome sauce.

Thanks for watching. That was good fun, and useful to boot.

Excellent trip!

Thanks Adlabs, I appreciate yours, and Oden's, comments in the thread, and the advice

Fun series DBond! I'm currently on my way back from the Heart and Soul Nebula with a very laid back passenger, so we are seeing some sights along the way.
Currently in a DBX with 53.something jump range, and cruising along. I've also found a stretch of space which is totally undiscovered, and it is awesome. Exploration really captures the "just one more jump" thrill pretty well, just like my real life exploring is "just one more bend in the trail!"

From CMDR CaptainFlint42

Hi and welcome to SimHQ, after a long time silent running!

There was a TKOS at the Frugal's World boards for many years. One and the same?

Thanks for the comment and good luck on your journey. What is the pay on your sightseeing trip? That Nebula was not too far from jellyfish.

On the DBX what class cabin and scoop do you run? And yes, I clearly felt the 'one more jump' thing the next morning at work

I would reckon that the plan to get the engineers unlocked worked a treat. I already have the Palin invitation, but not the sensor fragments. That was a fast-track method, with little grind.

I got the 25 modular terminals from a few short transport missions, and the Engineer Invitation from Davy Dock in Procyon. Upgraded the power distributor and power plant in my Python, which got me to grade 3 access with Marco, and then the Palin invitation as a result.

One and the same indeed! Elite has got me hooked on flying again, that's for sure! I also picked up Battle of Stalingrad, but haven't gotten into it much.
My sightseeing trip is $11M or so, for a ~6,000 LY one way distance. I'm not sure yet what my exploration payout will be.
The DBX max internal size is size 4, so I have a Size 4 fuel scoop, Size 4 first class cabin, size 3 AFMU, size 3 shields, and then the scanners.
I have an engineered low emissions power plant and enhanced low power shields, so the heat management is really good. I can hang out for a long time while scooping and scanning close-in planets. I even got too close to a star, dropped out of supercruise, but could supercruise right back out with no heat damage. I debated on SRV bay vs AFMU, but decided better safe than sorry.
I've definitely felt the "one more jump" thing at work!

So, with the Palin invite - can you sell your exploration data there and get the rank upgraded with him before getting the invite? Or do you have to have the invite and deliver the sensor fragments first?

Wow, great to hear from you after all this time. Hope all is well with you and yours.

Not sure about Palin, as I have yet to go there since I don't have the fragments yet. It seemed with other engineers that the Cartographics didn't open until the required donation was made. So I think you'd need the fragments first, then can turn in the data for rep.

Evidently these fragments are at Thargoid sites, so will need to work that out soon.

I did this yesterday. Stopped off at Palin's on the way to gather the sensor fragments, and Cartographics is indeed locked until you donate the fragments. Of course, all of this was after getting the invitation. But the bottom line is you'll need to unlock him, not just have the invitation, before you can work on access level. I will say it's worth the effort if you like fast and nimble ships. G5 thrusters are wicked

Now I can get on with my Courier build which was on hold until I unlocked Palin.

Vulture now has G5 Dirty
Asp X now has G4 Clean
Orca will get G5 Clean
Courier will be G5 Dirty
Python will be G5 Dirty

Grade 5 isn't necessarily the best choice, sometimes a G1 modification is preferable. However when it comes to speed and agility I want the best.

The G5 Dirty Drives gave my Vulture about 70 for pitch and made it way faster than a stock Viper III.

Whirlybird with extra whirly.

So from the time I landed from the Jellyfish Nebula expedition with all of that data, it took three days to go from zero rep with Marco to full grade 5 access with Palin. Fast track