Getting darker

Wregoe UL-C D13-16. Scans here are still unfinished and I slowly pick my way through the system, while I alt-tab to my web browser and sift through the first reports about impressions from players of the beta version of the 1.2 patch. I finally see the form of the Vulture, a nice little fighter, it seems. If everything goes according to plan, it should be life next week, along with the external camera and the "wings" feature. With it, up to four explorers could share data if working in the same system. I guess anything more would disadvantage the solo player a tad bit too much.

Concerning my unsuccessful tussle with that elite Anaconda some sessions back, I found a very helpful thread in the ED forums. I will for sure follow up on this, but in the meanwhile, I still haven´t satisfied my desire to play explorer. I would want to go out at least by 1000 ly, scan as much systems as possible, and my faint hope is also to find something rare and exotic, not only an earthlike planet, but, say, a neutron star, a black hole, or something I did not hear of yet.

In the meanwhile, two potential winners of the triple-elite contest have emerged. CMDR Onepercent answered some questions and told the community that he needed about 65 days, 12 hours each day. Wow. I knew I would not stand a chance to win this one.

Snap out of revery, interdiction, a Sidewinder was on the scanners before, but got replaced by a Cobra while I was reading the forums during supercruise. Boom, bagging 20,000 CR. I fear at some point alt-tabbing out will cause my destruction, when an Anaconda catches me thusly being unawares... but come on, supercruising for hours is a tad bit too monotonous, even for a relaxing do-nothing evening, dont you think?

- turned out, this was my last interaction with "civilised" spacefor this session








HIP 63420, a double star system with a class G giant star, check. The sky above me has become quite empty of stars. It will soon be time to shift over to a more horizontal heading, I guess.

For some time, I skip surface scans, just to get a bit more ahead; though, the word "ahead" hardly has much of a meaning. Not to sound overly romantic, but also from an achievement perspective: unexplored star systems are near and far now, and being the first discovering a system becomes more and more a normality. Ship encounters seem to have ceased by now.

While scooping fuel, I check the galaxy map for some anomalies, something which is different than the accumulation of red, yellow, white dots. Some black inkish cloud far below me is labelled "Coalsack", too far away from where I am headed. No black hole or neutron star, so far. Earth like worlds still elude me, too. HIP 62112´s last two planets are terrestrian virgin water worlds and two more with atmospheres which are terraformable; I had not seen one for some time now. If this simulation of our galaxy should be remotely right, any future colonist should plan for bringing sea-borne settlements with them. Pure water worlds seem to be a better choice for colonizing, anyways. Never can have enough water, right?

After a while, I check for my modules. The lowest condition is 87%, which is already bad, considering that I did not travel really far yet. I wonder, how did the CMDRs do who went out 10,000 ly and more? They probably just jumped very quickly without much pause in supercruise. Or maybe fuel scooping too close also causes module decay?

- apparently, Cobra does not compare to a german car









Plotting still courses upward, it is a bit weird with only mostly blackness in front of your cockpit. In truth, it varies from system to system; sometimes almost nothing is visible against the blackness, sometimes there are still enough stars so that you don´t think you are just floating around in a dark room. It is probably only the graphic lightning playing tricks, or it might be some dark matter which obfuscates the view a bit from this system, or it might be the angle of view containing only few stars.

The selection of systems becomes smaller, which probably lessens my chances to actually find something interesting. The best thing is probably to continue now anti-spinwards (i.e. counter-clockwise to the galaxy´s rotation), or rimwards. I am not so sure anymore if I should really try to reach some kind of outer rim; chances are I won´t reach it with my Cobra´s jump range. This should probably be postponed to a later expedition, with a super light and long range Asp? After all, I have learned now that ship encounters seem to totally cease after I am out from about 500 ly of settled space, so I do not really need a heavily armed Cobra as I though before; just quickly jump through the first 500 ly and it should be fine.

- seems I did by now cover a little bit of distance to home

Some jumps away, I spot an unusually named system, setting itself apart from all those Wregoe-xxx designations, namely 38 G Carinae. However, google does not give me an indication that or why it was named in real life like this, too. As I arrive there, of course, someone has already before me, and the system does not contain anything special.

It starts to feel a bit lonely, and add a bit of disorientation. As such, I am almost glad to see the occasional system where another CMDR already had left his mark. My expedition feels a bit aimless by now, I might want to re-think my goals for this one. Since it has gotten late, this is a good moment to log out.

- never leave without a fuel scoopable star