I have arrived at home base! Now docked in Jameson Memorial in Shinrarta Dezhra.
The ship looked a little ragged before getting it repainted. But it was in sound, mechanical condition.
On this trip, I passed scanned and mapped in 1,385 systems. Selling the data earned me a total of 420,425,919 credits. There was an additional 332,500 CR for codex vouchers. A nice income for 34 days of travel!
Here are my exploration statistics as of this date:
Today I made it to the region called Sanguineous Rim. It was a bit of a convulted route that took me back into Hawking's Gap, then the Outer Orion Spur then back into Achilles's Altar. This was because I was following a route with neutron stars to reduce the number of jumps.
Along the way, I found 2 neutron stars for which I am "first to discover". I found a system with four water worlds; I'm not first to discover but I am first to map! Also, I found 2 earth-like worlds and will get first to discover and map bonuses for both.
I arrived in Wregoo LA-A d3 and will be camping here before heading home to Jameson Memorial in Shinrarta Dezhra.
Yesterday I arrived on the north end of the region called Achilles Altar. I am now making my way to the next region, Sanguineous Rim, which is counter-clockwise from Achilles Altar.
I was making my way across Hawking's Gap and found myself arriving in systems which were previously explored. I seemed to be following the path of a Cmdr Dr. Feelgood 01 in particular.
When you forego scanning and mapping every body you come upon, you can still make a decent credit just by being the first to discover the stars. I wasn't getting those first discoveries. I don't know why Hawking's Gap was proving to be so heavily explored, but apparently it's a popular destination for a lot of commanders!
One thing I've learned in my 9 months of exploring the galaxy is that most commanders fly close to the galactic plane (zero on the Y axis). So to get off of the beaten trail, I went "down" to -150 light years. I then scrolled across to the other end of the region, found a star sitting near the -99 LY mark and plotted a course to that. Now I'm passing through undiscovered systems, except for the odd one here and there.
I found a very interesting little body to camp on for the night. This area had multiple meteor strikes, giving it a very rugged landscape.
I've been making slow progress across the end of Hawking's Gap. This included 3 sessions of surface mining on 2 different world looking for arsenic, vanadium and polonium. Found the first two but not the third. These materials are needed for FSD injections.
However, I finally made it back to a more densely populated part of the galaxy and I can now plot long routes across the region.
I'm calling it day before starting a 70 jump trip.
Today was very productive. I was able to make a series of about 20 to 30 jumps towards the region called Lyra's Song before I started to run out of stars.
Once that happened, it became a very fun and interesting challenge. It involves locating a star that will take you in the desired direction and determining its distance. If it's beyond your ship's maximum jump range, you determine if an FSD injection (a temporary boost to jump range, good for one jump) will get you there. If so, do the injection, make the one jump and repeat the process.
In this manner, I sometimes managed to get to a small cluster where the navigation computer could plot a 2 to 4 jump route without using the injections. The injections consume resources and resources are limited! It's best to not use the injections if you don't have to.
I found a very pretty earth-like world, way out here in the middle of nowhere.
Later, I found a metal rich planet. I decided to land and do some mining to see if I could get some of the resources needed for FSD injections. This may be the smallest planet (moon) I have ever landed on. It has a radius of only 170 kilometres!
I made back into Hawking's Gap, which sits beside Lyra's Song. It finally became very difficult to find a path into Lyra's Song, so I parked it for the night. I may need to move further clockwise along the region before trying to go outward into Lyra's Song again. I'm right on the edge of the border, but the closest star inside the other region is about 140 light years away. Even with an FSD injection, my maximum jump range is 127.24. That just doesn't work!
I finished scanning (but not mapping) the Meamoea AQ-Y c16 series of systems.
I then decided to continue my plan of going as far out towards the edge as I can, then circle back to the bubble.
After forty some jumps, I came to Ooscs Aoc IB-q b46-0. On the trip out here, I hit the jackpot! A system had not one, but two earth-like worlds! Orbiting each other just 1 light second apart. That pair should fetch anywhere from 2 million to 6 million credits.
I have no way of knowing for certain, but I'm guessing my total for this trip is somewhere in the 50 to 100 million credits earned so far.
