About 4 weeks ago I started something new in ED... exploration.
That means... yes Ive spent 4 weeks out there exploring the galaxy. That sounds much but considering that I didnt have much time to play Id say that Ive spent about 40 hours mapping the galactic neighborhood.
The milkyway is about 100.000 light years across. Sol and populated space in elite are realistically located at the edge of a spiral arm in an mid-outer region of the galactic disc.
How far did I go?
The most distant area I went was a bit more than 3000 ly away from populated space. Thats not very much.
But it is enough to realize how big, empty and lonely space is.
At this point I probably should mention that flying 3000 ly actually only takes 3-4 hours... if you plot a route with very large jumps.
I started with the objection to visit a few interesting placing out there while also scanning pretty much every system on the way there in order to earn some money for the scan data when I get back home.
So I took the economic route, doing minimalistic jumps from one system to another, scanning them all and saving as much fuel as possible (afterall you find a gas station out there).
The most interesting objects (in my eyes best looking objects) are nebulas which is why they have become my target.
The first one I approached was the Elephants Trunk Nebula 3000ly away.
Ive set course to it and started my first expedition into deep space.
On my way there Ive mapped many systems and also did many detail scans of interesting solar objects. Mainly that were suns, gas giants, metal rich planets, water planets and a few earth like planets (very rare).
After traveling about 2000 ly I noticed a strange light in the distance. First I thought that it might be a distant galaxy in the background but as I was getting closer to the Elephants Trunk Nebula these strange lights also appeared to grow bigger.
That must mean that these lights which appeared to look like a disc could not be a galaxy far away. It must have been much closer otherwise the size wouldnt have changed.
I decided to make this my secondary target of this flight.
The approach on the Elephants Trunk Nebula went pretty smooth but in the end I was a bit disappointed that the texture quality of the Nebula was a bit low res.
Next to that didnt I find anything special there.
Here are the screenshots I took on my way to that Nebula.
Now that Ive reached my first Nebula it was time to explore what the strange lights were that Ive noticed on my route to the Elephants Trunk Nebula.
Being much closer to it already revealed that this strange object was only 1200 ly away from my current position.
It was NGC 7822.
Now I desperately wanted to go there as this name was familiar to me. Its an active Nebula, birth place for new stars and I expected that the bright band that looked like a galaxy would be young super giants.
Ive set course on NGC 7822 and after about 1000ly when this bright band of stars came closer and close all of a sudden I wasnt able to plot a course to it.
A rift of empty space was blocking my way.
The distance between the starts in that region was so big that even my ASP Explorer with 29ly jump distance couldnt pass this rift.
There was no way into that Nebula... eventually I turned around and flew ~3000ly back to populated space.
Reaching Diaguandri where most of my ships are stored, I dediced to rip every piece of equipment out of my ship that I dont need in deep space.
Weapons... sold;
cargo racks... removed;
A grade power plant... too heavy... I dont need that much power so a light D grade one will be enough;
shields? nobody needs such a shit out there.
A grade power distributor? nope, i dont have weapons and shields anymore so a light D grade distributor will do the job.
I made my ship truely lightweight and increased the max jump distance to 33,5ly.
Of course while already back Home it was time to sell my exploration data... lots of data. I had scanned more than 600 systems and hundreds of planets on my tour.
Many planets were scanned by me for the very first time and now show my name on them and granted me a bonus reward. Even one of the 3 earth like planets is now labeled with my name. I think I call it Bob.
Well, exploration is not the most lucrative part of the game... clearly not... 7,2mio credits for 600 systems. Thats alot of work and alot of time. Trading or doing missions certainly is much more efficient if you want to earn money. But well yeah... that doesnt get you close to a Nebula.
After collecting my money I started again... into the direction of NGC 7822.... another 3000ly.
This shows my approach:
As it turned out my assumption was right. Blue-White super giants, often just a few million years old. And there were many of them.
Some of them were sitting in that Nebula alone. The majority however as surrounded by large amounts of smaller suns.
Systems containing 10-15 suns and large amount of gas giants were no exception in that Nebula. Most interesting however was the amount of black holes in this area.
I have only scanned the systems where I personally expected black holes to exist. I can at this point not exclude that other systems in that region of space also contain black holes.
Altogether I have discovered and scanned 23 black holes in NGC 7822 and the scans of all these big suns and all the gas giants also were worth it.
Here are a few images I took of special places or situations inside the Nebula (such as meeting another player so far out there close to a blue-white star).
Time to fly home again... or maybe not.
On the way back to populated space I decided to give the Pleiades Nebula a short visit. It was pretty much on my way so it didnt hurt to spent a few hundred light years extra just to visit it.
Pleiades was pretty actually not very interesting... it was on the border to populated space and many other players were exploring it aswell.
The only thing that was a bit interesting was a single blackhole.
Instead of flying back to Diaguandri which was only a few hundred light years away I decided that since the Horsehead Nebula located in Barnards Loop isnt that far away I also could give it a short visit before I finally return home.
So I started the last 1400 ly route.
I didnt explore the Horsehead Nebula that much. Infact the stars in there didnt look like they could offer anything thats worth to be discovery. Proto stars... a few T Tauri starts... and some Red Dwards.
I decided that its time to finally fly back home... and get my paycheck.
13 mio credits for another 800 systems... again with many planets that now have my name on them.
The whole exploration has lead me to ~1400 systems. Ive earned a bit more than 20mio credits and have reached the exploration rank "Ranger".
I am slightly disappointed about the money you can earn but on the other side it might be even justified because outside of populated space you have nearly no risks. There are no other players or NPCs which want to kill you. The only things that can kill you out there is when you get too close to a sun and your ship systems overheat, when you crash into something like an asteroid or when you run out of fuel.
Other than that there are no dangers out there. That probably justifies the low rewards compared to the time you have to invest.
Another thing that I considered a bit disappointing was the quality of the Nebula textures. I clearly understand that the game can not render them 100% correct for the fact that the game has to render them in 3d while we only have 2d Hubble images. But the Nebulas in game dont even look anything like what we know.
e.g. Horsehead Nebula
or NGC 7822
Here Frontier Development clearly has to do improvements. It does not have to look 100% exact... but it also should not look blurry.
Will I ever do exploration again?
Well, there is still the Omega Nebula.... and Sagitarius A.... and actually Ive not even been to SOL O_o
it is really nice to see that you found something what really offers to you fun in ED space. And great report from your journey, it is something what I never try yet, but its really tempting when reading such stories ..
