Elite: Dangerous exploration - Weekend at Barnard's Loop

Ravenpoe

Ravenpoe

I've mentioned before, I've been playing a lot of Elite: Dangerous lately. It's a space trading/combat/exploration sim that allows you to do pretty much whatever you want, set in the 34th century when humanity has expanded into the cosmos and colonized a small 400ly wide section of the milky way typically known as "The Bubble."

What's unique about Elite is even though most of the action takes place within that bubble, it still gives you the entirety of the Milky Way to explore. The galaxy is scientifically accurate, with 400 BILLION stars, set within about 100 billion star systems. Naturally, only a fraction of them have been mapped so far, and I'll be heading into the black to see if I can't put my name on some systems.

As for me, I am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas, and land on barbarous coasts.

--Herman Melville, Moby Dick
Click to expand...
Meet my ship, The Melville


This 250 million credit investment has been transformed from a large cargo ship to a fully autonomous deep space exploration and science vessel. This exploration will likely take a few months, and this thread will be updated with screenshots of the adventure. Hopefully I won't fly into a neutron star on the first day (though, thankfully this ship is equipped to potentially survive such a mishap)
 
Ravenpoe

Ravenpoe

Day 1 of the expedition isn't all that exciting. It's equipment checks. The plan is to travel a few hundred lightyears outside of the bubble and make sure all of our shit works together. The systems installed on the Melville are somewhat complex, as it has a very undersized power plant installed in an effort to reduce mass and get a further jump range. Because of this, it doesn't have enough power to power everything at once, and keeps most of its non-essential systems offline most of the time, activating them only when needed with a complex priority system. If everything is set correctly, I shouldn't suddenly lose power to life support while traversing a star system, or suddenly lose power to thrusters when trying to land on a planet... hopefully.


First test is to make sure I can successfully fuel scoop from stars to replenish my fuel supplies without overheating, and to make sure I can actually land this beast on a planet surface, as this is easily the largest ship I've ever piloted.


Around 200 ly outside of the bubble, I find something I hadn't expected to find so quickly. An unexplored planet. The system itself had been explored, and every other planet in it, but this one outer planet had never been scanned, probably because it was so far out from the star (it's worth noting that when you jump to a system, you always jump to the main star of that system as the anchor point, and have to fly out to the planets from there)

Here it is, the first planet to get my name on it as the discoverer, good ol' SYNUEFAI WF-L D9-38 C 1. It practically rolls off the tongue.


Since this planet has no atmosphere, we can also test our landing on it. Unfortunately, I lack the ability to land on planets with an atmosphere. This is a spaceship, after all, it's not really meant for atmospheric pressure.

We're gonna land right in that crater


The surface of this planet honestly isn't that exciting... it kinda looks like Arizona. It's a high metal content rocky planet, pretty common, but it's going to be the first of my exploration legacy, so I'm gonna ride around on it!



Landing was a success, vehicle hangar deployment works perfectly, the priority system successfully cut power to engines before deploying the bay, so I wouldn't have messed anything up even if I had forgotten to do that myself.

Since it is a metal rich world, I was able to drive around with my prospecting scanner and gather some supplies for later in the mission. Things like carbon, iron, and nickel all get collected and brought back to the ship, where it can be synthesized into material for the auto maintenance units that ensure I can fix anything that gets damaged on the trip.

That's it for day one. All systems are functional, all emergency equipment works perfectly, and my power priority system keeps everything functioning despite the limited power. I even tested the weapon systems by blasting some asteroids to pieces. Most explorers don't take weapons, but I know there are thargoids out there... and with unknown probes showing up in odd places and whole stations mysteriously vanishing, I'm not taking any chances.

Onward, to discovery!

 
Last edited:
Jay

Jay

This thread is totally 5/7

Would read again.



Btw how many expansions is expected? I played the original and want to play this but can't bring myself to pay more than once for this game.

Also have you met other players? I dislike that option.
 
Ravenpoe

Ravenpoe

Jay said:
This thread is totally 5/7

Would read again.



Btw how many expansions is expected? I played the original and want to play this but can't bring myself to pay more than once for this game.

Also have you met other players? I dislike that option.
Click to expand...
I think they expect an expansion a year, supposedly for 10 years. That's what I've heard, at least. The way the expansions work are as 'seasons.' You buy the expansion, for example the first and current one is "Horizons," and then it gets more and more content added to it over the year. I don't actually mind this business model, as if I'm not interested with whats in a season at the moment, I can choose not to buy it until it does have something I'm interested in.


As for other players, the galaxy is a really big place. Like, really big. Unless you are in a very densely populated, active system, or at some event site, you usually won't see more than the occasional other commander. You can certainly find them if you go looking. And if you are heading out into the black like me, odds are you won't see anyone. There is a solo mode, if you truly hate other people, which still has you within the simulation (so your actions still have effects on influence and the powers and so on) just without running into any human controlled ships.
 
Ravenpoe

Ravenpoe

Calleja said:
Holy shit, I really want this game now. I had been on the fence until your thread.
Click to expand...
Be warned, it is very much a sandbox. You have to be willing to find your own adventure, and to fund this expedition I did a lot, A LOT, of space trucking.

Space trading isn't overly fun, but it will make you rich. And being rich is fun.

Also, you really need a flight stick.
 
Ravenpoe

Ravenpoe

Calleja said:
Oh pooey :(
Click to expand...
I haven't tried it myself, but I do know people who pretty successfully use an xbox controller for flying. I only use one for driving the SRV, because buggy driving with a stick feels weird.

I have used keyboard and mouse, when first starting, but damn if a HOTAS stick setup doesn't make it so much easier.

This is what I use

 
Soupy

Soupy

Lots of negative/mixed reviews on Steam, though the game still intrigues me. 3 days left on the sale to decide.
 
Ravenpoe

Ravenpoe

Soupy said:
Lots of negative/mixed reviews on Steam, though the game still intrigues me. 3 days left on the sale to decide.
Click to expand...
Recent reviews are likely negative because the newest feature added, engineers, earned a lot of ire from players for being too grindy and rng based. And they're absolutely right, it is as issue, and it's in the works of being addressed. The latest update also made NPCs more dangerous and aggressive, and everyone is complaining about getting all their shit blown up, but I haven't had any problem with it. Git gud, etc.


The game has its flaws, and it'll never be perfect, but I just love flying around in space.
 
Ravenpoe

Ravenpoe

So, my expedition to Barnard's Loop and the surrounding nebulae along the way is going to be postponed. Just one day out into the expedition, I received comms from my faction (aka a friend IM'd me) about an event that's going to be happening over the weekend. We'll be celebrating July 4th with explosions of a different kind, doing some fighting in a system in civil war to try to return control of it to our faction. I want to help in this, so by turning back now I can get back in time to outfit my combat ship and go do some pew pewing.

In the meantime, if anyone is still interested in this game, you can see what some early gameplay is like with this let's play, where an experienced commander starts out on a brand new account.

 
Gruebeard

Gruebeard

I have the next two weeks off. I'm glad I don't have this game, because I'd probably science all my time away in space.
 
Ravenpoe

Ravenpoe

Gruebeard said:
I have the next two weeks off. I'm glad I don't have this game, because I'd probably science all my time away in space.
Click to expand...

I've heard people call many aspects of the game, trading, mining, exploration, as being dull and boring. I find them all pretty soothing. Trading is basically Euro Truck Simulator: Space Edition, mining is a lot of shooting at rocks, and exploring is what you've seen me doing in those screenshots, flying out into the unknown to scan planets and see what you can find... basically sight seeing. The graphics in the game can be really beautiful. Even the skybox is accurate, with the position of distant stars and nebula accurately rearranged based on where you are.
 
Ravenpoe

Ravenpoe

I had planned to turn around, plot a direct course to where my other ship is stored, and just book it back to civilization as fast as possible... but I kept discovering stuff along the way!

Like this T-Tauri star



By the time I did make it back to civilization to turn in my data, I had a better list of firsts than I expected from only a day. Mostly plain, rocky planets though, so not worth a lot, this short trip didn't make me rich (although slavery did... that's another story)


And now it's official. I've got my name on the map.


*note: Ravel Poe is the name I use in this game, it was the name of a star wars rp character I made for a tabletop game long ago in a galaxy far away
 
Ravenpoe

Ravenpoe

Alright... I'm in the middle of a warzone, shields are down, and engines are damaged. There's no need to panic, let's take this one step at a time. How many of them are shooting at me?

*checks*

All of them... Well -
*transmission ends*
 
Ravenpoe

Ravenpoe

Nebulae make for really pretty screenshots. Strange things are happening in the Pleiades Nebula, and here's a shot from a planetary base inside of it.

 
Dave

Dave

Staff member
I bought this game and thought it was kind of -meh-. But when I got my desktop back up and running it's listed in the VR section! So I have a feeling I'll be trying this one again!
 
Ravenpoe

Ravenpoe

Dave said:
I bought this game and thought it was kind of -meh-. But when I got my desktop back up and running it's listed in the VR section! So I have a feeling I'll be trying this one again!
Click to expand...
I've played it in VR, and it's amazing. Unfortunately, I don't as of yet own my own VR headset, so I'll be sitting here being jealous.

At least I have really cool ships.
 
Ravenpoe

Ravenpoe

I've still been playing a ton of this game, but as I've become more active in the factions within the game lore, I've had less time to explore. And it's hard to take screen shots when people are shooting at you. The Federation and the Empire are gearing up for war against each other, the Alliance is... doing something, no one really cares about them, and out on the galactic edge are continued rumors of strange sightings in hyperspace, as well as recovered shipwrecks with messages claiming that a "terrifying sound" came from space, which is impossible, before something pulled them from hyperspace and made them crash. So who knows what is out there in the beyond.


But who cares about any of that? I've become a Baron in the Empire, which means I can buy an Imperial Clipper!




This ship is sexy as hell.
 
Ravenpoe

Ravenpoe

Gruebeard said:
Can you get it to stop glowing, and arm it to the teeth, then name it The Black Death?
Click to expand...
Unfortunately I cannot stop it from glowing. Actually, activating silent running might turn off the neon, I'll have to check.

All the blue turns red when I deploy my weapons, though, which is awesome.
 
Ravenpoe

Ravenpoe

Ok, so... weird shit has been happening in Elite the past few months, things that seem to point to an alien presence.

A quick rundown on aliens in the Elite universe: Extraterrestrial life does indeed exist in the universe of Elite. But it is very rare, and typically pretty simple. While there have been planets discovered with life on them, that life is almost always very simple single-cell organisms. I myself was pretty stoked to discover a gas giant that had life in the form of ammonia-based protoplankton floating around in the clouds.

Sentient life in the universe... that's another story. While life in the universe is there, but rare, sentient life is almost unheard of. There is at least one known sentient race to have existed outside of humans, as ruins with pictographs were discovered in the Soontill system, though the planet they were discovered on is long since dead.

And then there's the Thargoids. The Thargoids are rumored to be an extra-dimensional race of space faring aliens that live somewhere beyond our universe, in hyperspace. As hyperspace technology advanced, more and more odd occurances would happen, strange encounters during hyperspace jumps with ships experiencing something 'attacking' or 'pulling' them out of hyperspace. Strange sights, strange sounds (which shouldn't be possible in space, but that is a part of the mystery) to the point where some oldtimers even refer to hyperspace as witchspace, believing that it holds unknown horrors. There was a brief but violent encounter between the Alliance (the smallest of the three galactic superpowers) and what appeared to be an alien race coming from hyperspace, henced dubbed the Thargoids, that appeared in insect-like ships with no apparent propulsion system to attack, before vanishing without a trace. Even those that were shot down left behind no wreckage, so whether or not the alliance is believed in this encounter is iffy.


That brings us to now. As I said, strange things have been happening in the galaxy. Shipwrecks discovered with badly corrupted logs that seem to point to being attacked in hyperspace, which should be an impossibility. Mentions of strange 'sounds' coming from weird objects. Even a whole space station, being transported via hyperspace to a new location, managed to go missing, and wasn't discovered until some time later a full 22,000 lightyears away from where it was supposed to be.

Strange objects, which have been named "unknown artifacts" have been discovered, seemingly alien in design. No one knows what they do, but they will scan your ship, emit a strange chittering sound (and again, no one is certain just how they are emitting what we perceive as sound while in space) and will badly corrode your ship should you try to scoop it into your cargo hatch, doing continuous damage until you eject it again. They also have a habit of causing technology around them to malfunction and shut down, which was discovered when players began amassing them within space stations, only to find the station soon shutting down from unknown causes.


This brings us to the newest discovery. Objects similar to the UAs but different in design, which have been dubbed Unknown Probes. These probes are even more rare than the UA's, and people are in the process of researching them. One person discovered that scanning them with a discovery scanner will cause the probe to emit an EMP pulse that will temporarily shut down your ship, making you unable to scan it, and will also cause your ship to resonate with a strange sound. This person recorded that sound and ran it through a spectrograph, and was surprised at what they found.



There appears to be an image encoded within the sound.



This is now what everyone is trying to decipher. So far it is believed that it is a description of a specific planet or moon, though as to which planet that is still unknown.


As for me, well...

 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top