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.
