On the 24th I bought my copy of Elite: Dangerous for about $20 in the Steam Winter sale. I’ve taken a lot of screenshots so here’s what I think and what I’ve done, I guess. This isn’t my usual sort of post, and there’ll probably be plenty of pictures.
Despite having a Commodore 64 when I was younger, I never actually played the original Elite on it. In said original Elite game, you spent the game in a Cobra MkIII, so I figured that was a good replacement for my starter Sidewinder.
So, with that I got to trading, and got in on the community goal at the time, which was to deliver materials to Klimuk Ring in Guaras, which is a manufacturing site for Federal ships.
Said Federal ships are totally massive compared to the Cobra.
Of course, they don’t only make cruisers, so when the community goal finished soon after, the rank restriction on federal ships was temporarily lifted and a small discount applied to them, so I bought myself a Federal Dropship. Unfortunately, I didn’t take any screenshots but it’s not a very good looking ship, as it has backwards fins on the front. I called it the Pufferfish and blew up a few pirates but didn’t really get to combat until later.
Mostly, I used it to transport passengers between Allen Hub in Upsilon Aquarii to Smeaton Orbital in LTT 9360 for stupid amounts of money to save up for my next ship…
I don’t actually have any screenshots of Thargoids, despite running into one at one point while looking for barnacles. However, Thargoids want Hugs was the name of my next ship, an Anaconda - that is, the biggest non-faction ship in the game. Docking it is a bit of fun.
Like flying a pizza through a mail slot.
Not too long after getting my ‘conda, a friend and I went to a trip to the Pleiades hunting meta-alloys for engineering purposes. I’ll probably end up back there soon, but not for any reason other than to get some Thargoid pictures. We did find barnacles on the surface, though:
We didn’t find any that hadn’t been recently hit though, so we ended up buying some anyway.
A few days pass. I transport a few hundred more passengers with my sardine can of an Anaconda, I’ve started listening to Hutton Orbital Radio and I was starting to lose interest. And then my friend messages me:
i want to go to a nebula
So we begin planning a trip to the North America Nebula, which eventually ends up being a trip to the Sadr nebula because it has a station. I end up buying a Dolphin for the mildly insane jump range and call it Tracker, after an IRC discussion about ship names that ends on Nautilus but I never really liked the file manager called Nautilus but the file manager for Haiku is excellent and called Tracker.
So, we set off, and my friend gets distracted, so I end up going mostly alone, but damn it was worth it.
I found a binary star system on the way.
Arriving at the station in the Sadr nebula. (video)
The station I headed to was in the rings of a gas giant near the edge of the nebula.
After reparing at the station, I headed off towards the middle of the nebula to find interesting stuff to look at. I ended up on a planet with a very nice view.
Of course, there isn’t a huge amount to actually do that far from civilization, so I headed back to the bubble - that is, the 150Ly or so around Sol that is heavily inhabited.
Met up with vifino, did some more engineering, did more passenger runs, and set my sights on a Federal Corvette.
The thing about federal ships is that you need a rank in the Federal navy, which meant grinding out ranks. I’m not up to Rear Admiral yet, but while doing so my friend found a damaged Federal cruiser in orbit around a planet.
Apparently it was asking for help with pirates, who ended up warping in along with another capital ship and totally destroying us later.
Naturally, I flew through it. (video)
While listening to the Galnet News Digest on Lave Radio, I heard about the Enigma Expedition. To quote the thread:
You might have heard about CMDR DoveEnigma13 and his fight against cancer.
His name is Brandon Keith, 39, from Tucson, Arizona and he’s been battling tumors for almost 3 incredibly tough years now. After getting diagnosed with metastatic melanoma, without a skin primary, he had multiple surgeries and chemotherapies, none of which managed to kill the cancerous cells for good. Chances are, he will not be there to celebrate his 40th birthday together with his five-year-old daughter. But despite this grim lookout, he expressed, with inspiring strength, the wish to make a trip to Colonia while he still can.
We, the whole Elite Dangerous community, will support him on that journey and make it unforgettable for everyone involved!
The expedition starts at Jackson Lighthouse, the only main star Neutron star in the bubble, and goes on a scenic trip ending at the Dove Enigma megaship in Colonia. I spent an hour today kitting out my Dolphin a little more to get a jump range of 36.11Ly, which I will be using to go on the expedition.
I intend to use the boost you get from Neutron stars to get a decent bit further. So, that starts at 6AM tomorrow, and I hope it’ll be some fun.