Benie's Games Blog

It’s been just under a week since I came back to the bubble from completing the old CNE route. I’ve been doing Sothis runs, and I nearly have enough… for my own ANACONDA!! 😀
Yes, you heard right. My.. own.. Anaconda! Biggest player-purchasable ship (that doesn’t require rep) in the game! However, it didn’t start like this.

I actually wanted a Python, because I had thought it was a pretty big ship. But it’s 71 mill..a LOT more than I had. So as I said before, the guy that was trying to help me tried to get me into Sothis.
I’ve been trying to focus on it, but it hasn’t been easy. Started innocently enough by doing data delivery missions to Ceos. They didn’t pay much, but they helped to get rep up with the four factions.
There is also a war that’s been going on (possibly since I started doing this), which limits the profitable missions. The factions are pretty much fighting eachother for reasons unknown to me. All I do know, is with lack of missions has really put a hamper on me.

Speaking of missions, the real money-makers are when you’re no longer Neutral with them, and you start to see deliveries of Biowaste and Hydrogen Fuel for 1 to just over 5 million. Yes, your ship is being used as a HAZMAT tanker. But no problem, the canisters are airtight, and they won’t stink up your cargo hold.
The way I went, is looking for 2-4 mill jobs that are 24 or less canisters. The really good ones are “Deliver 24 for 4.8 mill” or even higher.
I had to continiously flip gamemodes in order for the mission board to reset (similar to what I did in Robigo). But unlike that place, these missions are perfectly legal. And what’s better? Pirates don’t want them! 😀

And due to extreme persistence, I finally had enough to afford a Python! ..And then I sold it. Even due to it being two times bigger than my ASPX, it still requires a Medium pad. And that felt like a slap in the face. I wanted something BIGGER. I wanted something new. I wanted something that felt like I’m finally advancing my player progression.
I wanted..an Anaconda!

But getting one would be no easy feat. 143 mil alone, just to afford the ship all by itself. Outfitting it raises this pricetag to nearly 160 mil. Plus, I kept getting these ‘bad’ attempts, no matter times how I flipped the gamemodes. I was getting these ‘good’ missions, yet they required me to have a large cargo hold to do them (something like 55 or so).
And today (later on today anyway).. finally, I had enough to afford the ‘conda! The most money I had, was 173 mil. Now I’m down to 18 mil. That just tells you how much this ship is, and the outfitting to make it a ‘tradeconda’. And man, is she a BEAST!!
I even did something I swore I was never going to do, which is to purchase paint packs. But from what I went through to get this ship, I felt they finally deserved some money out of me. And this red on black paintjob..it just looks so badass. I also bought a paint pack for my ASPX.
Flying around in this behemoth, I could feel just how big and bulky this ship is. Because bigger ships are slower ships. But DAMN does it feel fun to fly around in!

Am I happy with my purchase? Honestly, I’m not 100% sure yet. I still need to practice on getting through the mailslot of stations without scratching the paint on the way in. Sometimes I feel I have to physically duck to fit through. It’s a really tight fit.
Landing is somewhat of a problem. With my ASPX, I can just fly down head first towards the platform and line up. With this, I got to see it and -hope- I’m lined up enough and start to slowly lower down. Not much I can do with limited downward visibility. Though I feel (in ways), that I can’t wait to attempt to land on a planet — let alone a high G planet. Though I don’t think the landing is going to be problematic..the takeoff could be (as even taking off from a station pad takes a bit to get off the floor).

But what I’m going to be doing is more Sothis missions with a much..much larger cargo hold. It also has weapons (turret pulse cannons) to deal with any would-be pirates that might be trying to go after me, including for the first time I’ve ever used them; shield boosters. They are reported to be passive(or probably made passive in 2.1), which is good for me (as I don’t have any buttons on my HOTAS to assign for them).

Once I have enough credits (and feel comfortable flying around in this thing (aka being able to cover at least 10 rebuys)), I’ll flip to an explorconda build (that my friend is currently working out the bugs on) and then focus on getting to Farseer and improving the jump distance even further (before the GNE, anyway). Plan to get at least the Grade 3 FSD Boost upgrade.

Half an hour before we try this again. Hopefully I’ll get to Farseer before my birthday. Already, the same two IW pilots that escorted me yesterday have returned to the little mission room that was setup for me, awaiting the launch time. Both are away ATM.

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And it’s DONE! I’ve made it to Farseer with absolutely NO problems! Well, minus once again the servers chewing us up and spitting us out. Though one of them believes my cable modem may be to blame for the instancing issues.
It started with me leaving the station. They were going to meet me there, but they couldn’t get to me. So I had to go into supercruise (which I immediately lost connection to the matchmaking servers), but that “helped” for them to see me.
With the lack of cargo, I never got approached or even interdicted by a pirate. Was awesome. As I had said yesterday, I could had gotten to Farseer on my own. But I wanted the escort to make sure I would.

Approaching Farseer Inc, I saw a fellow commander right infront of me in supercruise that I was following in. Thankfully whoever that was, wasn’t a threat to me. Mainly because I had two really good fighters protecting my ass. 🙂
Landed without incident, and proceeded to see how much I made from planet and system scanning. This is the main payout, for almost two weeks of being away from the bubble.
And..well, it wasn’t the 20-40 million that everyone thought I would get — it was close, though. And that total, is 17,742,603 CR. It felt like a real slap in the face when I first saw it. I expected A LOT more than that. But really, it’s not bad for what I was scanning. Plus I got so..so many first discovered systems under my belt, that any future explorers will see my name when they jump in.
With that, the escorting service is completed and I’m free to go where I need to. And where I need to, is to visit Alliance and Empire systems to sell my SRV scan data. There, I’ll get my grand total.
However, I don’t expect much. I right now have 34 million credits, and I doubt that will go any farther than that.

And I’ve just took care of that. Drumroll please…
The grand total, of how much money I made from this expedition is…
18,066,353 CR! Again, not too shabby. I felt making that detour and scanning all of those black holes and neutron stars that were south of the Heart & Soul Nebula cluster, helped. Plus heading back and scanning all of those black holes in the NGC 7822 Nebula, also helped. At least I really hope it did.

I just wish it was enough to afford a Python. Hopefully the GNE (with enough patience on my part), will give me what I need come early September.
Until then, I might go back to Farseer, buying a wake scanner, and then try my luck on the RNG madness by sitting at the edge of the no fire zone and waiting for any ships to jump out and then scan their wake.
The only reason I say “might”, is because an acquaintance of mine who’s part of the EDEX Discord server, claims he will give me the cargo canisters I need (expensive ones) to be able to afford a Python tomorrow. Though I’ll need to downgrade my fuel scoop to get a 64T cargo rack to do so, and then buy a few collector limpets (and a controller) to let them scoop up the cargo for me (instead of doing it manually). It’s a lot more time efficient.
Would be a pretty awesome birthday present; flying around in a large ship. Plus I hope to be good enough with it to use it for the GNE (and let my ASPX have a well-deserved rest). However, I’m not going to hold my breath. I don’t really know the guy enough to trust him, but he seems honest (and I haven’t heard anything bad about him of this aspect).

Another thing I can do, is go to a Federation system and do some data collecting missions to finally get my hands on a Sol permit. And that’s what I’m going to do. To finally jump into OUR system and see Earth (and all of the other planets) is going to be pretty cool.
But, I promised you guys I would do more review posts. But since tomorrow’s my birthday, I won’t be. I’ll start on the 21st.

The escort is prepping as I speak. About 33 minutes to go ’till the escort happens as I type this. And to calm my fear, they sent me a thing to show just how professional they are. But due to the confidentiality of this mission, I cannot share said thing with you guys.
What I can say, is I have full confidence in them to get me to Farseer alive. They know what they’re doing, and I trust them. They’re going to protect me as if I was the President of the US. It feels so awesome! 😀

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Ok, so.. I haven’t reached Farseer’s place -yet-. I’m currently at the ‘Bernard’s Star’ system which is in the bubble, safely docked at ‘LEVI-STRAUSS INSTALLATION’.
We are to meet up again at 1900 UTC (3pm EDT). The reason is it was late for them and they needed to go to bed. But that wasn’t the only reason. There was two more.
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The first one is I was carrying illegit cargo (hence why the pirates wanted me dead). It was the 5 canisters of Narcotics, and two canisters of Personal Weapons. The odd thing is, when I picked them up during my solo expedition, they said they were “LEGAL CARGO”.
It seemed like every occupied system banned these. Surprised I never got scanned by an authority vessel when in these systems. Was scanned once, and it said I was clean (but this was outside of these systems).
Due to this (and how the IW couldn’t help me during NPC interdictions because of the second thing that is listed below), I had to do an emergency jump out of there (to save my ass). Which is how I wound up in Bernard’s Star, and was suggested I dump my illegit cargo and sell what I got at the nearest port, which I did.
I’ve also managed to sell my SRV scan data that was for the Federation (as this system is controlled by them).

And finally the second thing…
ED’s servers were really being annoying, mainly due to instancing in a system. In order for the IW to escort me safely to my destination, we must all see eachother at all times. And the servers made this really hard, frequently having them (or myself) having to log out completely and back in and rejoining the Wing with them.
Sometimes, the plan works perfectly – with the lead pilot calling out a system, jumping, making sure it’s safe, then set my course and go follow him (with the other IW pilot behind me).
Other times after jumping in, we can only see our Wing beacons and not the actual ship and told “explorer, please move away from the star and drop out to normal space” in order for them to see me. And most of the time after I do, I have to log out and back in (due to the servers being a prick).
It’s quite annoying, but I’ll do whatever it takes to ensure a safe arrival.
There was also this issue (happened twice to him) of one of the IW pilots not able to hear me or the other IW pilot. This lead to large delays of attempting to acknowledge requests between me and him (like being told to go into supercruise, yet not able to tell me that I’m the one that needs to).

But now that I’m at this station, I managed to repair my hull (and as said, sold my cargo).
Calculated how much of a difference it was before (including hull repair costs) and after the cargo price (and selling my SRV scan data to the Federation), and it totals around 294,566 Credits. Almost 300,000 CR. Not bad. I wasn’t expecting much from the cargo anyway. The real payout will be from the system/planet scanning.

But that’s about it. Despite the delays, I really enjoyed the professional protection of the Iridium Wing. If only if it was possible to hire NPC escorts, and have them attack pirates (while I watched from a safe distance). But I imagine I would need something like an Anaconda (or any other large-sized ship).
There’s still that highly-wanted feature coming in either 2.2 or 2.3, to give us AI fighters (not to mention multicrew — aka having real players in your ship).

And if you were to ask me if the IW is worth hiring? Definitely. They know what they’re doing! Again, really love the professionalism. Just wish I could had gotten back to Farseer.
Well, hopefully it’ll be easier on Friday at 3pm EDT. Closer to Farseer then I was before. And with no cargo, pirates -should- leave me alone.

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Also, I hear your complaints of “where are the game reviews”. ED has taken my interest tenfold right now (if you couldn’t tell). But between when I get to Farseer and the GNE’s launch date (which I’m pretty hyped about as the trailer was shown during GamesCom 2016), I’ll be showing off other games (including PS+’s games for this month that I have yet to play).
So don’t worry, readers. You’ll get what you ask for, quite soon. 🙂

I’ve completed the old CNE route, and I’m ready to head back to the bubble to see how much the fruits of my efforts were paid. Unfortunately, I must wait for the Iridium Wing to come ‘save my ass’ at the appointed time (2pm on Thursday).
They told me that I need to be within 150Ly away from the edge of the bubble. I.. went a bit further than that (just a bit) and tried to go near to Khun(the home of another engineer, but was outside from the bubble). Yet I wouldn’t get that close.
Jumped into a system, and as I finished my ‘honk’ to reveal the system, I got the familiar “Ahoy matey! We got booty to claim!” pirate talk. Quickly moved away from the star and tried to jump out of there, but he interdicted me as I was charging up.
After the interdiction, I tried to set the left panel to jump to the nearest system I could to hopefully get the fucker away from me, and it had worked for the time being.

Thought I was safe, so I reported into my little mission panel of the Iridium Wing Discord channel they setup for me that this system, they can use as the rendezvous point. I was 133Ly away from the edge of the bubble. A ‘bit’ too close, now that I look back at it.
After reporting in, I decided to head to the only landable planet (thinking the pirate wouldn’t follow me). As I did, somehow the same pirate managed to reach me and interdicted again. This time I was in trouble, losing 14% of my hull (down to 78%). Again, I jumped out of there as quick as I could, and now I’m in the ‘COL 285 SECTOR GF-T B18-8′ system, near the star, where I’ve logged off and won’t come back on ’till then.

In my defense, it was a perception failure of telling the distance of the edge of the fucking bubble. I also failed to read the part where they told me that any further than 150Ly, pirates will start to spawn in and try to kill me.
But now I know, and how to prevent this from happening again. But since the damage has (literally) been done to my hull, I might as well stay there and await rescue. Pirates won’t attack an offline player. 🙂
I am curious how this escorting thing is going to work. Are they just going to follow me and make sure my ass is clear of a pirate biting on it? Or even better, take my cargo for me and them being the target (instead of me) until we get to Farseer. Though reloading all of that cargo is going to take time.
What gets me is they never asked me for my laden jump range. How odd. Guess I’ll find out when that time comes. I just pray this works. Heard they’re pretty good at what they do, so… yeah. Going to be..interesting. To say I’m not worried is an understatement, especially what just happened to me (the frequency of the interdictions).

Anyway, moving on (or should I say moving backwards to before this happened), I went back to the NGC 7822 nebula and scanned every single black hole I could find. Getting to the nebula got a bit tricky, as I wanted to go on a more direct route instead of using the Cave Nebula. More of that unfortunate crap of my jump range not being high enough (with a low star density). But I managed to do the same thing I did to originally get there on my return trip.

After then, I headed to Veil Nebula East and the Sadr Nebula. The Sadr Nebula bored the hell out of me. It looked boring. The planet looked boring. But I did find an interesting POI, where instead of seeing cargo canisters, were 6 occupied escape pods. Very odd. There was no crashed ship or any idea how they got there.

After that, the expedition was over. So I did what I said I was going to do in the last blog post — bookmarking and scanning the WPs of WP1 and WP0 of the GNE. No problems there.

Time to get back out into the stars. Made my way to WPB 9 (the Pelican & North American Nebula cluster.
Also, I’ve arranged escort via the Iridium Wing. Told them I’ll likely be back at the bubble by either tomorrow or Thursday. And they’ve arranged it for Thursday at 2pm EDT to get me to Farseer, so I can safely sell my valuable exploration data (and cargo) and then not be a target for pirates anymore.
I haven’t picked the final WP that’ll be outside of the bubble (and connect me to Farseer’s base) yet. I’ll cross that bridge when I get there (and use that as a ‘beacon’ for them to rendezvous with me).

Because of this, I’m actually going to backtrack back to the NGC 7822 Nebula and scan those black holes, as according to this chart, they’re worth a lot of credits. And really, I can hear them screaming at me from over here in the Pelican Nebula; “Scan us! Scan us! We’re worth a LOT of credits to you! 😀 ” And so I say “fuck it, fine! I’ll go back and scan you!”, and they’re all “yay!!”

..Erm, right. Thursday’s gonna be busy. But I believe I can make it before then. It’s not like I’m going to be going 4kLy again. I’ve past those hurdles (of this expedition).
And due to Tea_Rex marking what systems are going to be the WP (of WPs 1 and 2 of the GNE), I’ve decided I’m going to go to them and slap down a bookmark of what moon was picked for it (to help me in the future). Thought of waiting ’till a few days (or even a week) after returning to the bubble to do that. But I’ve decided since I’m going to be going in that direction to get back to the bubble, I might as well do it.

All day yesterday, due to the feeling of “going too fast”, I decided I needed a day-long break to recharge my own frame shift drive (and also to be a wee bit more social in the EDEX Discord server.
I’m being told that I have “a huge payout” once I get back to the bubble. Looking forward to it. I estimate I should be back before my birthday (this coming Saturday).

Also went to the movie theater to watch the WarCraft movie. Gave it a 3/5 (an ‘Average’ score). But, I could see they really tried their best to capture a few of the zones seen in WoW. And Gul’dan was once again a fucking badass.

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Moving on from that totally not an excuse to make the blog post longer, I’ve learned how large-scale expeditions work. And surprisingly, it’s not like I thought. But it should had been, because there’s just no real way for it to work like that.
Tea_Rex, the head of the expedition, explains that the really long (5kLy) jumps that require a lot of waypoints (depending on the jump range of the ship), we’re on our own for the rest of the journey (until we get to the next waypoint).

In other words, it’ll be me doing -exactly- what I’ve been doing in this solo expedition; dropping bookmarks near every 1kLy point on the route and jumping there until I reach the next point. Which is why I REALLY should consider upping my jump range to make my journey not as boring. However, I hear that selling my data to her will NOT improve my chances with the rolls. So, FUCK!! >-:(
He also says not to burn yourself out — to land on an occasional planet and check it out (and send pictures if you wish). I’ve only sent pictures of systems not at the next WP if they’re really interesting to me, such as seeing this trinary beauty on the way to the Elephant’s Trunk Nebula (a pair of B-type and an A-type next to it). Gorgeous!

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So yeah. More of.. solo-plotting that I just ‘love’ so much! 😀
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Currently at WPB 8. Guys, I’m nearly done with this expedition! Yet I feel I’m going WAY too fast with every Nebula within plot range (with how distant the GNE’s launch date still is). Mainly because I didn’t scan all the black hole-holding O-type stars back in WPB 6.
There’s actually two counter-arguments for this. One being I didn’t want to take all day jumping from system to system, and go 10+ minutes to reach a black hole (as some are pretty distant from the main star).
The other one feeling a “if I didn’t make a lot of credits by now, I’m not going to.”

Yet I still feel like I’m going too fast. And there’s also another reason. One of the people I have as a friend in ED, is trying to recruit me to do bounty hunting. Not to mention getting in an argument with me that all ships look the same in ED (plus saying there’s no ship manufactures). And I really don’t want to have to mess with all of that in the bubble.
The final reason is my cargo hold is full. The moment I jump into the bubble, I fear droves of pirates are going to take turns trying to pick me off. Though there is this ‘Iridium Wing” that’s rumored to get explorers like myself back to a safe place in the bubble to sell my valuable stuff.

I’ve already picked where I’m going to go once I get back to the bubble, and that’s Farseer’s place. I read that if you sell exploration data to her, you’ll get reputation for her. And that’s what I’m going to, as it might help my chances with the RNG rolls of increasing the range of my FSD.

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Nevertheless, I’m going to continue to explore until I run out of nebula. Currently at the Elephant’s Trunk Nebula. Also found my 7th NAV Beacon. Nearly at the point where I’m going to deviate from the plan, and use the Sadr Nebula to get me back to the bubble.
Also, before the GNE launches, there is one other place I want to visit. A friend in the EDEX Discord Server suggested this to me, saying it might change my mind of the Bubble Nebula being my favorite. And that is the “Spirograph Nebula”, a ‘PN'(Planetary Nebula); mainly what was left after a supernova. Inside this really tiny nebula is a single star.
The location is near Bernard’s Nebula, which has me somewhat worried I won’t be able to reach it because of the barrier. But if I can make it, it would take me a day or two to get there and back to the bubble.

(Note that these opinions aren’t from me buying the game, but watching a Youtuber play it)
2015 (to me) started the video game space race (even though games like Mass Effect already had a really early lead in it). Back then, Elite Dangerous was a thing in its infancy.

As most gamers know, No Man’s Sky has finally been released last week for $60 USD. Back last year, I saw the teaser trailer of it and it was pretty cool. And this was comparing it to Elite Dangerous, that (in that game) you can only land on airless moons. In No Man’s Sky, you can come up on planets with breathable life that’s made to that planet. Even meet alien creatures that look like they’re straight out of Spore.
Well… that was back in 2015. With the game released, hopes have been broken and the raging/refund requesting is commencing.

So what happened to it? What made this potential awesome game for 2016, turn into a mess? Some say it was because of a small development team. Others say that players’ hype was so extreme and literally collapsed into a black hole of rage, feeding off of it.
But I, and Dan say (I agree with the guy), that the developers failed to understand the purpose of making gameplay not get stuck in an infinite loop in the core.
What I’m trying to explain, is basically crafting-based games as a whole (being the core gameplay). But with NMS, mining becomes the core mechanic. Because it requires you to mine pretty much everything in the game. There’s no real progression from one mechanic to the next. And what’s so bad about this being the core mechanic, is you’re mining the same old things. They didn’t even add a progression on mining levels (such as “this requires a Level X laser to mine”).
For example, the start. The player is tasked to repair their crashed starship. They’re given a blaster-type of weapon, and it’s used to harvest everything they can.
All of this time, you’re mining objects for fuel and other resources — constantly having to ‘repair’ items with.. yep, mining.
Everything, is pointing to Mining being the core aspect of the game. That’s all you really do. You mine. You harvest for resources.

Sure, you can encounter waypoints and maybe a few things left over by highly-advanced aliens. But really, you’re still mining to get to them. It’s an endless loop, of mining.
And when you finally fix your ship and are able to leave the planet.. guess what? You are running out of fuel. Which requires…? Yep! MINING! Get the pattern? I thought so. That’s the problem.
And if you don’t see it, well.. here’s another gem. Space stations. You can talk to locals there and do some trading. But if you don’t have what they require? Ha ha. Back to the MINE with you!

But mining being the core game mechanic is the least of the game’s problems. The colors alone, remind me so..so much of Spore. I believe the devs were intrigued of Spore’s Space Stage so much that they decided to use most of the colors from it.
And then there’s the problem with the way the ship handles when traveling in planets. It has collision avoidance that cannot be turned off. So if you want to fuck around, the game says “NO FUN ALLOWED” to you. Even something like an arch, you cannot fly through it as it’s ‘not safe’.
There’s also this thing. Say you’re flying around in your ship and you want to land. The ship will suddenly come to a dead stop and lands for you. There’s no requirement to slow down. No requirement to land by yourself. No risk of crashing. No freedom to experiment. Feels like way…WAY too much hand-holding. It’s ridiculous!!
There’s also the AI voice in your Exosuit, which sounds somewhat like the computer from Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared 4.

And the crafting GUI, it’s a mess. It doesn’t feel clean. It feels like the work of 5-10 minutes of coding. And what’s with all of the camera moving when interacting with things? Just so much stuff that could had been scrapped from the game.

And so, that’s my thoughts of No Man’s Sky. I don’t recommend buying it. The devs might fix most if not (hopefully) all of these problems and make it a -proper- space simulator that could even rival Elite Dangerous. But I have my doubts of that ever happening. ED, and NMS are in their own leagues. But this game needs some serious work on it. Hell, I would even go as far as them refunding everyone’s purchase price, removing the game from Steam and working on it for another year.

NMS is…such a bad game. It needs a lot of work.

So, Update 3 of my ‘Southern’ Nebula Expedition. After leaving the Heart & Soul Nebula cluster, I went on a small detour below the galactic plane to this open cluster of bright B-type stars, rumored to have a lot of profit potential in them — a bunch of Neutron Stars, black holes, and even a few very young AE/BE Stars.
I’ve also, in a way, gotten over my fear of black holes. Getting past space warping infront of you and going into the exclusion zone, it’s actually quite peaceful. It’s like the eye of a hurricane, where the winds are calm inside of it.

I also saw a binary of rare (to me) O-type stars. And I now agree as to why they are so beautiful. They are the brightest and the hottest (known by NASA) stars in the galaxy. But due to being very bright, they have a lifespan of up to 10 million years (due to burning through their fuel quite quickly). Aka, they’re most common of turning into black holes when they reach the end of their lives.
They’re also scoopable, sharing the same characteristics as A and B-type stars.

After scanning everything I could (they were all tagged, which makes sense), I then headed to the next WP. And after about 50 or so jumps, I decided instead of stopping at another generic Nebula (the same one used for Witch Head and many others), I went on for the Bubble Nebula.
And I have made it as well! And WOW.. being inside this thing is everything I wanted, and more. It makes me feel it was well worth coming all the way out here beyond my comfort zone. You really feel like you’re inside a giant radiation-filled bubble. It is pretty wild.

There is one problem, though. And it’s not a small one — it’s a ‘mountain-sized’ one. Basically after landing on the chosen moon of the former CNE, it really felt like Christmas. The ground was white, and the sky was this lovely blue color. Even the rocks looked frozen (the big ones are still ‘dick rocks’ for causing my SRV to get knocked off-course, and damaging its hull).

I was heading towards the ringed gas giant parent planet, who had this REALLY awesome green hue around it and wanted to get a better picture of it. This was more trouble than it’s worth, as I felt like I was climbing through the Swiss Alps (but in an SRV).
There was also a POI that caught my eye. It wasn’t another crashed NAV beacon (BTW, I’ve encountered 6 in total so far).
I had to cross this, and it had me doing a lot of “GET THE FUCK UP THAT LEDGE!! PRETEND YOU’RE THE FUCKING MAKO FROM MASS EFFECT!!” And after a lot of swearing, I finally wiggled my way up and made it to the POI. It had a few unique items I’ve never seen before, including some standard cargo containers.
Finding an LZ for my ship to land was a bit tricky, due to how remote the area was. Thankfully it was smart enough to land a bit close to me, instead of having to go back down this mountain to get to it.

With the cargo (and the SRV) secured in my ship, I’m now debating if I should just go back to the bubble or continue with the expedition. But really, I can’t make that decision yet. I still have to go another 4kLy to head in the direction towards either thing. That’s gonna be FUN, which is why I’m hesitating from doing so by typing all of this.

And I’m currently heading that way. However, due to a serious snag, I feel I need to end the expedition ‘early’ and just get back to Maia ASAP. My poor ASPX is crippled, its jump range is being reduced due to wear, which is causing the number of jumps to increase to get to the next bookmark (past the point of my Viper Mk3).
That snag was heading to the next WP. I was (and still am) between the Perseus Arm and the Orion Arm. Went through an area of very…very sparse stars. I did my best to navigate the field, until it got to a part that the jump ranges were too extreme to continue.
There was this gap that required me to go 42.05Ly, I didn’t know what to do, except try an FSD boost. I had a 25% and a 50% boost from what minerals I had gathered from the WP planets. I tried the 50%, but that didn’t help once. I discovered that even if I tried to go forward, there wouldn’t be anything to ‘catch me’ to get even further.

My only hope (that I’m still using), is this lower field of denser stars. I thought, hopefully it’ll get me to the Nebula. So I plotted a course to get me close to under the Nebula as I could, and then saw “48 JUMPS TO (system name here)”… 48 jumps. I felt my ASP was crippled, as before it was 38 jumps. Though it has been steadily increasing, making me feel I need to get this ship back to the bubble ASAP.

And that’s what I’m currently doing. Fuck the rest of the expedition until I either get a faster ship, or repair the one I have. Getting back and repairing is now top priority.

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….Or did I? Actually, no. For what I failed to understand, it wasn’t damage done to my FSD — it was fuel. A full tank of fuel adds mass, which decreases the jump range. I’ve never had that issue happen before, as I’ve been lucky. But out there, I wasn’t.
So this is a thing I’m forced to learn — the balancing of fuel VS jump range.
I want to rage at someone over this, but I cannot as this is a realistic thing.
But I managed to get to WPB 6 (the NGC 7822 Nebula, that I unofficially name the ‘Dog Nebula’ (as I saw what looked like a dog’s head).
The striking point of this nebula, isn’t the nebula itself. But its very large (but compact) array of very bright O-type stars that can be seen for over 3 million Ly away. Some of these contain a single black hole, or a black hole binary (even one with three). And a friend of mine says that a distant system from the nebula (close to 1kLy), which has a whopping FIVE black holes in it, has a rare black hole with no exclusion zone. In other words, it is possible to go INSIDE the fucking thing. If that’s not the stuff of nightmares, I don’t know what is.

Anyway, it looks like I’m going to be continuing my expedition (with this acquired, but also annoying) logic. Plus, I’m now closer to the bubble. Only 2kLy away compared to 7kLy. So really, what I did was probably the biggest hurdle of the entire expedition. And I feel good for crossing it and still having everything I had back then.
I’m probably NEVER going to go on this expedition again, though. 😛 Not until I get a faster ship that can easily go to the Bubble Nebula and back (as easy as it is to go to Maia and back).

Speaking of Maia, it’s possible I’m not going back there for awhile. Mainly due to the discovery of the Barnacles, the Empire and the Federation are fighting over control of the entire nebula, causing Maia to have a ‘Retreat’ state.
I hope this doesn’t mean I’ll never be able to go to my home away from the bubble again. At least, not without being forced to join one of the factions.

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Just a little update of this update. Landed on the dark moon of this system that the CNE picked as their waypoint. I’ll be doing my normal scouting runs here, seeing what minerals the moon has (and look for any POIs).
After that, I’ll be heading to the Cave Nebula, which is well within plot distance from me. Then onward to the Pelican & North America Nebula cluster. By then I might be within plot distance of the bubble.