It's a little bit ... yellow ...

Internet spaceships !

And pretty pilot pics too.

Been back in the game today. Which in one way is a sign that I'm getting a little bit of mental energy back again :-). They've just updated Elite with 3 new ships and a whole new political metagame thingy.

I'm going to avoid the metagame for a while (it would restrict me too much and the benefits are not clear) but I have acquired one of the new ships. Sooo ...

The old Sidewinder is in my garage in one of the old systems called Zaonce (it could probably fit into the Python's holds). It's joined the Python and the Clipper. I'll go back to it after two Plans :

Explore.
Trade.

There are two community goals going at the moment where you get handy bonuses but most of all, a direction to go in. You can get lost in open world / galaxy games like this. There's literally so much you could do, you end up doing nothing. The Eve people call it Ship Spinning. However, in Eve it's a bit different. That game has gone towards it being essential that you go multi player. If you venture out on your own, it's very easy for player-griefers or just the local player security force to come get you. Elite is very different, the biggest player group you can have is 3 (Eve is essentially unlimited) and you can avoid even that by using the Solo mode. You're still connected to the online servers and the partly player driven economy but you're not fighting players.

Pretty pilot pics ?

That's one of the new ships, it's called a Diamondback Explorer. And it's very yellow indeed.

It has replaced an Asp :

The Asp is a bigger ship. Both ships have the same job, to go out into the black and see what's out there. I might well do a bit of that this week - the trading community goal is a bit far away from that Zaonce garage.

The explore mission would involve heading off to the galactic core for the pilgrimage that quite a few Elite players are doing.

There's 220 lightyears between the blue diamond (current location) and the red spaceship (Zaonce garage) and another 27000 light years to the galactic core. What's there ? A supermassive black hole called Sagittarius A*. And lots more on the way.

I plan to go west for maybe 1000 light years (this is the max distance you can set up a route for) and then go pretty much straight in. So I'll do a box pattern coming back to the blue diamond.

We'll see. Judging how the other pilots report their trip, it might actually take a month to do the run. I don't plan to be buried in the game that much this week.

Wait - there hasn't been a glamour shot yet ... Here we go :

The original was too dark, that's been Gimp-i-fied for extra brightness. Looks awesome doesn't it ? If yellow.

I've been ignoring the Grand Prix while tapping this out. At least it's been better than the football was earlier. I actually turned that off midway through the second half because it was so boring. Plus the cricket was starting on the other side.

One last pic ?

Go go Pilot Dragon !