The first journey: Dipping my toes

August 26, 2015

As mentioned in the conclusion of the previous post, space exploration in Elite: Dangerous has fired my imagination and my space romantic spirit. Abandoning all restraints, I have decided to celebrate my career as a galactic explorer as fully as possible - for my own enjoyment if not for anyone else's - by creating documentaries of each of my trips. Let's see where this leads.

I would like to begin the series with a brief report of my first journey, where I dip my toes into the space-cold waters of the galactic unknown. The goals: Leave the bubble of inhabited space, sniff the galactic wind, maybe find an unclaimed star and try to make it back alive to report the sights. Also, earn a few credits :-)

Writing this from memory, I don't recall where exactly I went. As far as I can remember, I just headed out in some random direction from Aisling Duval's sphere of influence, then came back in a loop when I got cold feet. All of the goals outlined above were met and the journey was a full success. I immensely enjoyed myself at the beginning, and a bit less so after a while when I realized that scanning every last planetary body in a system can become a drag, too. So one of the first lessons I learned in my new professsion is to skip most moons, icy planets and other unprofitable-looking bodies. It appears I am not a Vegan.

Even though I barely escaped from the bubble, I found two as-yet unclaimed systems and got back in one piece to report them and leave my mark on the Elite game universe. For nostalgic reasons, these are the systems:

R CRA SECTOR CQ-Y D106 (no bonus)
COL 359 SECTOR OZ-E B13-7 (12k bonus)

Last but not least, a few words about my ship. I made this journey in a decently equipped Asp Explorer, of course with an Advanced Discovery Scanner and a Detailed Surface Scanner, but without A-class frame shift drive (too expensive), merely a low-grade fuel scoop which was barely adequate to keep me going, and some unnecessary hardware baggage dragging down my jump range.

The name of the ship? Romancing the Stars. What else did you think?