Just thought I'd check in - I decided to get my 2nd Elite in Exploration, so I hopped in my trusty Asp and set a course for Sag A. Then about 50-60 jumps in, I decided to go to Eta Carinae Nebula first, so I made a little detour. So far it's been honk & scoop pretty much the whole way, though I've stumbled across a couple of water worlds and mapped them out, as well as a good number of high metal content worlds. As it stands, I'm about 70 jumps out of my target system in the nebula. I'm not in any hurry, nor do I like to sit for hours and honk/scoop/check FSS so it will be a few sessions before I get there. I'm hoping for some good screenies though!

I also got my invite from Professor Palin, so I'll be visiting him upon my return.

Right on JC, good luck hunting down double Elite! How far are you from Sol? Getting G5 thruster access is sweet, your whole fleet will get a big boost out of that.

Thanks Wingnuts, I checked your Inara build. Do you guys ever use the AFMUs? Do you neutron boost? I can see that would need AFMUs to keep up with the degradation.

I have this exploration bug nagging at me. Not that I'm particularly keen on deep dives, but I've not done it. Farthest out at 5077 LY from start, to unlock Palin. Part of me feels I just have to do it at least once, go 20,000+ at least right? We have this big huge galaxy with billions of stars and systems and I've never been over the county line really. Part of me sees it all as a system 200 light years from home is not any different from one 20,000 light years from home. So if I do this it's not because there is something I want to see, but because there's an odd sense of obligation tugging at me. In a sense I feel like by the time I wrap it all up, if I haven't been out there I've missed one of Elite's core experiences.

But then you're way out there and are thinking about doing it all over again on the way home, and the shine's long worn off and just another 250 jumps to go....

So that's what's got me asking about the Phantom. Right now though I'm leaning toward going light and taking the DBX, if I do it. I spent an hour re-engineering it in Coriolis, trying something, X-out, export from EDMC to reset the current build and trying something else. The obvious problem with the ship is it lacks the internals to pack all the stuff that most explorers take with them. It's surely a big part of the Phantom's appeal, with a number of good-sized slots, nothing needs to be left at home. It could backfire spectacularly with no means to repair the unexpected, but it'll be light and jump far

Right now I'm about 5,400 ly from Sol if EDSM is accurate.

I didn't put an AFMU on my Asp, though I probably should have for such a long trip. I haven't neutron boosted, though I may mess around with that at some other time.

Like you, I felt like I should do it at least once, and I agree that a system nearby isn't going to be all that different on the whole from one thousands of ly away. That's why I chose Sag A as a destination. At least I had something to take a nice screenshot of. There's also a thread on the Frontier forum for folks who have made the journey, so I'll get myself added to that list when I get there. I wouldn't call myself any kind of seasoned explorer, I'm really just flying by the seat of my pants. The trip itself was started on a whim.

I guess I decided to do it because I wanted to have a chance to find something unique, or at least interesting. I haven't been landing on a ton of sites, nor have I even scanned down a lot of planets, so my chances of finding something like that are kinda small I guess! My procedure has been to scan the system and see what kinds of planets are in it. If it has an Earth-like, water, or ammonia world I'll stop and map them. If it has metal content worlds and I'm in the mood I'll stop and map them as well. If not, I'll head out to the next system. I'm kinda making it up as I go. Maybe someone with more experience can give me a different approach?

I'm feeling a need to balance the desire to arrive at my destination in a reasonable amount of time vs the mapping opportunities of a system. I picked the planet types to map based on their payouts. If I read it correctly, Earth like, water, ammonia, and high metal all have pretty decent payouts. That's been keeping me moving along. I only play in short bursts, if I do 30 jumps in a session that is pretty good for me.

That's essentially how I go about it too. I'm glad you bring up visiting sites. So much has been added to Elite that I'm clueless about. But I'd like to find exotic and rare things. Like I hear about shards and I don't even know what that is. What are the types of places an explorer will want to land on to find these things?

I spent the morning getting Mad Hops ready in case I decide to do this. I have room for a size 2 or 3 AFMU, but I think back to the Palin trip and I never hit anything, took no damage of any type aside from the integrity loss that comes from repeatedly jumping. Speaking of this integrity loss, is it to modules or hull or both? I should pay closer attention. If I add a AFMU I'll have to do something about the power plant as she's right on the edge now. Do MRPs protect modules from things like heat damage or is it just for combat damage?

Anyway, here's Mad Hops as she sits now. I scrapped the clean drives it had and swapped over to dirty, which gained about 70 m/s. Lightweighted a lot of stuff, and put a hangar in. This kills the jump, adding six tons. I used to say I had a 70 light year DBX, but not in this configuration. Still pretty good jump.

Mad Hops

I'm not sure what types of places an explorer will want to land on, I guess that's one of my problems right now! I figure that when I arrive in the nebula I might scout a few systems and look for places that would have some nice views - moons around ringed planets, bodies with interesting georgraphy, that sort of thing. Then I'll land and look around a bit, and when I've had my fill of that I'll head out to the next stop.

I took a little heat damage when I temporarily lost control and dropped out of frameshift drive while scooping. It's weird and it's happened a few times - the dot in the middle of the screen goes away and I have no control for a few seconds, then it comes back and all is well. I don't know what causes it, but it's annoying when it happens, and a little frustrating when it happened upon landing in a system.

I'd say if you have the space, then throw in the AFMU or a repair limpet controller. If I was starting all over again that's what I would have done. But I'm out there now, and I ain't coming back until I do what I wanted to do.

Here's my ASP, it's probably not an optimum build, I didn't really review it before I set out.
Rat

That's a fine Asp and jumps farther than mine did when I took it on the Palin trip, before GFSDBs were a thing. Just have to be careful and pay attention when you don't have repair doodads. Wingy's Phantom has eight classes worth of AFMUs in two modules, so he must find it useful. I reckon he's on the neutron highway at times. Having two allows the AFMUs themselves to be repaired.

I think I'd be OK without that stuff, but could be famous last words.

The AFMU adds no mass, but does require power. I imagine it's something you just power down until you need it. To add a little power to my DBX I went G3 armored power plant. Makes sense in an explorer build since it's the one thing other than itself that the AFMU cannot repair. So a little extra integrity is good on the most important part of the ship. It adds a little mass but not much, and boosts power output enough to support the AFMU. Did a little more finish work elsewhere after a stop at the traders and I reckon she's ready.

DBX Deep Diver


500 boost, 64 unladen jump, cruises under 20% heat. Decent shields and integrity for what it is. The DBX really benefited from the additional slots we got last year. and the integration of the ADS. The jump's come down a bit, but I think it can handle the mission without much trouble. The DBX has such fantastic visibility out of the top of the canopy and I like the idea of flying this ship on a trip like this, which is crucial from a mentality standpoint. I have plenty of mats for SRV refuel and repair and to make more AFMU ammo if necessary. Now to decide if I will actually do it, and if so where to go or how far.

Personally I don't neutron boost and honestly having two AMFU's is overkill on this build. Better to dump the smaller one and power up the large one only when I need it, or replace the large AMFU with a two unit SRV, though that will increase mass. As DBond mentioned Phantom has great optional internals with many modules to choose from. Consider in addition to a moderate AMFU a Repair limpet controller to fix a damaged hull. As my mind wanders occasionally, I do heat damage to the ship, or land too hard and create hull damage. Repair is peace of mind if a long way from home. If choosing Repair limpet controller remember to add a cargo rack for the limpets (you can synth the limpets when you need them).

I was sure you were boosting. Not sure why. I just imagine you using all the most advanced techniques as routine for some reason

Too late for repair limpets as I've already set sail. Not sure where I'm going. I decided that not naming a destination would free me to return when I'm ready. I considered repair limpets and could have swapped them in place of the HRP, but in the end I chose to roll with the last build I posted.

I read a lot about players who want to find a virgin trail toward the center, so they'll fly off-plane a certain distance before turning in the general direction of Sag A. It seems to me that the majority of these posts say they went down. So I flew up. I planned to go up about 1,200 light years before re-orienting toward Sag A. I haven't even made it 400 light years and I've already got a dozen first-mapped on HMCs and also some lesser types. But if I spend this sort of time in every second system this will take a long time. I was going to ask in the last post how you guys had done recently getting first discoveries and maps. I think most of the regular posters here have done a long exploration trip in the recent past. But I'm already finding them unmapped so probably not too long before undiscovered.

I'm just about 1500 light years out and already have dozens of first-maps and entire systems first-discovered and mapped. I'm surprised so many, so close. First undiscovered was 999 light years from Sol. And it's been a steady flow of them since. This is great, as stamping my commander's name on the galaxy is good motivation. Plus it will pay a lot of money

I read somewhere that the Milky Way as modeled in the game has roughly about 400 billion different systems you can jump to.

I must be travelling one of the more well known routes then - I haven't had any first mapped worlds or systems.

My route took me toward Sag A, but about 1,000ly out then took a hard right turn toward Eta Carinae Nebula, thinking that would get me into some previously unknown systems, but still no luck.

Yep that's true, and only 0.003941 of it has been found thus far

I've bumped that a bit yesterday. When I was ready to shut down for the night, I had a look to see if I could find any stations or beta sites way out there. I found one called Hillary Port or something, but it was more or less on the highway to Colonia, meaning I had to fly sideways about 1000 ly to reach it, which I did. Turned in all data so far for about 20 million and a couple hundred first discoveries.

The DBX has done great, though integrity was down to 94% already and that was fixed at the station, which is planetside.

That number really is staggering to see when you consider it's the ENTIRE Elite Dangerous gamer community that has only managed to find that much so far.


Actually, I'd be very curious to find out how many registered users there are of Elite Dangerous and how many of those are "regular" players. By "regular" I guess maybe the player logs in at least once a week?

I don't know much about that, but I think Elite averages around 13,000 players at any given time.

So what happens to your ship if you suddenly disconnect while playing? We are having some vicious winds at the moment and I expect we might lose power. Let's say I was mid-jump in the game and lost power for two days. What would happen to my ship? I'm 3,000 light years from Sol.

The ship will remain in situ until you log back in. If you were in mid-jump your ship will reset to the system where you jumped from. I know because this has happened to me on a couple of occasions.

That's actually a pretty small community compared to some other high profile MP games.

Yeah and I might be high with that number. Steam charts average around 5,000 but only some players use Steam. What percentage I don't know. I'm sure a lot of players bought it through Frontier. And then there's X Box and PS4. So maybe I'm low? lol

https://steamcharts.com/app/359320

Fleet carriers and coronavirus brought a spike

Thanks PM, I think I can continue my journey, gale winds be damned.

This current iteration of ED has been out since about 2015 right? My gut feeling tells me that the majority of ED players do not have it in Steam but bought it directly from Frontier. I think ED has been on Steam for only 2 years or so.