back from the Void, the bills won't pay themselves, and DBond's Interstellar Transportation Company is back in bizness. A few shots from the most recent fares.

This is outside my home port, I often cast off to see a beautiful scene like this



One of the tourist destinations. Well worth the trip!




A little canyon running in the Asp X



At 13m, this is the highest paying sightseeing job yet. Good money to be made in this racket.

The Interstellar Transportation Company has done well enough to afford to add to it's fleet, and tonight I plan to buy an Orca. Who was it, Adlabs? that had an Orca?

Looks like I can get one for about 100m (85m in LRY) ready to roll and then throw a grade 5 FSD and Clean Drives on it. We're moving on up!

Something like this, but with more whizbangs on it.

Orca Template

What a ship!

I flew to a LYR system and bought the Orca. Gave her G5 FSD with Mass Manager, a G1 Low Emissions power plant (G3 as soon as I can stop off at Marco's place), lightweight sensors, G3 Clean Drives and Reinforced shields. This is my first weaponless build. This ship runs exceptionally cool, so with the high speed and low heat signature she is great for criminal transport, which pays a little better. If being interdicted, the good boost and low sig means I can escape as the enemy's sensors can't track it very far. She makes a fine smuggler too. Requires a large pad.

Biggest ship I've owned so far, but slipping through the slot and setting her down is no problem. It has great supercruise handling and fantastic yaw authority. As pictured, this Orca has one class 6 First Class cabin and two class 5 First Class cabins, for 24 FC passengers. This of course is reconfigured as the mission demands.I can drop scoop class and add a class 5 cabin if necessary. I will keep an eye out to see how common and lucrative Luxury missions are. It also has a class 5 scoop and all of my sensors plus wake scanner. I dropped to a 4A shield to free the class 5 slot, save weight and jump farther. With a reinforced mod and the same on a shield booster or two it gives around 400 mj which is plenty considering the plan is to beat feet whenever I'm in peril. And it's sufficient protection for portside bumps and misjudged gravity. Awesome view out of the front, and I am putting together a roller hockey league to be played in the cockpit. It makes a 'ding' sound on boost like the 'fasten seat belts' tone of airliners. This thing is awesome!

Spacious




Love that front canopy pane, already needs some cleaning

An Orca update. I am really digging this ship. I'm using it for sightseeing and passenger transport, and posting in this thread because sightseeing missions are probably the best way to boost Exploration rank, even better than actually exploring. The rank is based on profits, and surely you can make it faster with sightseeing than probing the depths of the Dark.

It would make a great Exploration ship anyway, and I may just take her on one such expedition. Jump range isn't as good as the dedicated exploration ships, but 40+ is fine and will get you anywhere. And in the Orca, you travel in style. It has plenty of interior space for all you'd need, and by far the best frontal visibility of any ship I've flown. Glorious panoramic view out of this thing.

It is, of course, also fantastic for passenger stuff. You can really pack them in with multiple cabins. For sightseeing, I equip one class 6 and two class 5 first class cabins before checking the passenger lounge board. I select my mission, then store any cabins that aren't needed to maximize jump range. Most sightseeing missions have a low passenger count, I think 8 is the most I've taken on board. Ideally, it's 6 or fewer so I can go with a single class 5 cabin, which weighs 20t, half of that of the class 6. All three cabins weight 80t and drops the jump range about 6 light years. But that's for passenger transport, which are usually short distance anyway.

My Orca is moderately engineered now, and has G5 Clean Drives with thermal experimental. G3 Low Emissions power plant, also with thermal. Shields are reinforced 4A, I will experiment with others, as the A rate uses the most power, and therefore generates the most heat. FSD is G5 of course with Mass Manager. Sensors are lightweight class D. Life support is D-rate as well. My intention was to make the ship run cool, fast and jump far. It has no weapons or defenses of any kind aside from the shields. I can submit to interdictions and be gone in a blink, no shots fired and the interdictor wondering where that big ship got to. It was just here a minute ago....

It runs at 18% heat in supercruise, sometimes even lower. Great speed and jump range. Here she is again after a bit more engineering in single-cabin sightseeing trim.

Zoom zoom. Boing. Zoom zoom

Group tours with the Orca brigade

Another group tour, this time teaming up with Saud Kruger's flagship, the Beluga



For any fledgling explorer, this system is worth a visit. I had taken a 3-stop sightseeing tour, and Jardonnere was my final stop. It was unexplored (not to be confused with undiscovered) and it contains an ELW and several water worlds. Get a Detailed Surface Scanner and this system will net you close to 2 million in discovery data! It's less than 200 light years from Sol so easy to get to. Just one explorer trying to help his brothers out



The best reason to get a Python is so you can get out of it and admire it's magnifigence from afar. Just look at that beast!

This is the reason you throttle off when jumping....




That could have been a bit of a pickle. The Python's my hottest ship too.

You can squeeze through there no problem

No sweat, just a little rudder....

It says two astronomical objects discovered. Yeah, where's that then?

Shot of the Day

Some planets are really cool. Sightseeing is great because it takes you to the best spots in the game., which otherwise I'd never have seen

I came across this yesterday. I only really noticed it because the Fuel Rats had hit the headlines recently. Do they have their own faction or something?

Yes, they do and their own system, Fuelem. Plus the one you're in.

In another thread I mentioned that one of the things I have been doing lately is 'bubble exploration' What I mean by this is searching out valuable unexplored systems within the bubble, and there are lots of them. The bubble is the inhabited space and extends roughly 150 light years out from Sol. There are exceptions of course, some people live far outside this radius. But in general that's the distance you will enter uninhabited space.

So there's this opportunity to make good explorations data money and advance the exploration rank without having to travel all that far. No need to go deep in the dark, though that has it's own charms.

Here's how I've been doing it. I use this site

http://edtools.ddns.net/expl.php

By entering your current system, you'll get results showing some of the best unexplored systems in the bubble, provided you haven't already been there. What I do is pick a likely looking system (say that has at least three of either water worlds or ELWs) that is a good distance away, then plot a course and scan the systems along the way. You could be more efficient and plot jumps to each system in line with the results from that site. But that's a bit too tedious for me, though it would be a more optimal path.

Here's the results of one such bubble exploration trip. I ended the trip some distance outside the bubble, I think I was about 220 light years from Dvorsi. I chose a system called HIP 23036 and set course, scanning some decent systems along the way. Once there, and having scanned it all, I then pasted this system in to the site as the reference point and went to a different one, scanning along the way. In all I did three or four of these, then headed for home, total time investment about 2 hours. I was using my Asp X which is getting exactly 50 jump range. I set a new personal system value record when finding the HIP 13425 system, which netted 4.5 million on it's own. This trip took me to Pioneer rank, and we're almost there!

I keep thinking that I will never run into virgin territory (I think I've had one so far) but then I looked in to the facts. So far only around 0.007% has been discovered by the players. I just need to man up and go out a lot,lot further.

By virgin territory do you mean never discovered, so that you get first-discovery credit? In the trip I took to unlock Palin (5,000 LY) I began finding these systems around 900 light years out.

If you mean 'unexplored' so that they require scans, but have already been discovered by another commander, then they are nearby, as indicated by my last post.

If you have a ship with good jump range, like 40+, you can get out to the undiscovered stuff within an hour or so. Just pick a destination, say 2,000 light years away, and go.

I meant never discovered. My best jump range is only 29LY atm.

Well, even 29 is plenty, and as some may argue, means you'll see and scan more systems as a result, meaning more data and more space ducats!

Is that 29 LY ship optimized for exploration? I mean, with a few tweaks could it get even more?

It's a dual-purpose ship atm.I need cargo space and shields. It explores and runs all my ranking missions. In fact it's my favourite ship out of all the ones I've ever purchased.

That's cool, 29 jump range is fine. That'll get you out there to get your first discoveries.

Matter of fact, consider a trip to the Jellyfish Nebula. It's exactly 5000 light years, which you need to unlock Professor Palin. And maybe you'll see my tagged planets along the way

I got 309 first discoveries on this trip, so you're bound to get a bunch as well if you head in that direction.