On a trip

More Elite !

I've been enjoying my time back in the game since resetting (as I've said a few times). Well, mostly enjoying. Sometimes it feels like a job, working to a goal instead of enjoying the trip to that goal.

The mining was definitely feeling like work, although that's pretty much done now (There's another engineer who wants stuff you get from mining). The combat was feeling a bit like work too, there are certain places in the game where bad guys gather but there's also a certain random element to what bad guys appear. Plus I'm not in the class of ship yet where I can happily take on all comers with a good chance of success.

But I'm still enjoying it. Not much holiday left actually - I'll be back at work on Monday. Not all healed up but in a lot better condition than I was before the week off started. It's getting there, slowly, although I still have to be very careful to not make the condition go backwards rapidly. My outsides are still very delicate, so it's quite easy to attack the half healed wreckage of my ankles and set the healing back.

It's getting closer though.

Pictures of spaceships time !

That's where I've settled the ship down for the night. It's Amundsen Terminal in the Lagoon Nebula. The tiny ship on a very large landing pad is a Diamondback Explorer, which has had a fair bit of attention from the ship customising people. When I took a ship to the galactic core a couple of years ago, that ship could do 35 light years to a jump. This one does 54 ... That speeds things up a fair bit. Every 1000 light year leg I was doing took 34-36 jumps last time, this time it's 20 maximum. (The exact course isn't a straight line because you're jumping from star to star ... and they aren't conveniently lined up !)

That's the plan at the moment. Start off in the Populated systems, jump between Colonia outposts on the way out to the galactic core and race back along the galactic arm you'll see on the left. I'll add a link to the route map on the right. And ... here's the link for here ! That green line will steadily grow as I do more of the journey.

It's curious though. Game playing can vary wildly in whether the experience is actually fun or tedious. I was finding the mining tedious. And the combat between fights when I was looking for another ship I could take on. I've given up on several gaming video series lately because I was finding the game they were playing tedious to watch despite the efforts of the presenters. Sometimes the game seems designed to frustrate, not purely out of bad mechanics but out of making the game awkwardly stupidly silly hard. I gave up on Battlefleet Gothic early because the mechanics of most of the fights were just annoying.

And if you're not enjoying something, it's time to do something different. The game I'm listening to HeyChrissa play at the moment just sounds so annoying (Evil Within) due to looking like it's designed to frustrate instead of enjoy. It's not one I'd play.

In Elite's case, it's taking doses of the game of sufficient length to enjoy but not burn out on.

And it's pretty.

In the game, sights like the one above of the Lagoon Nebula are generated as you jump by the game. It checks what's around you and generates what's called a skybox (spacebox?) that is quite eerie and beautiful. At 4,500 light years from the populated areas, I'm starting to see more stars in the backdrop as I'm moving out of a relative gap between galactic arms and the star density goes up as you enter the core regions. And then there's that nebula ...

(As per usual, click for bigger on the pictures).

I'm up to 15 out of 31 ships now, starting to slow down but still rattling through them. The speed bump comes from being able to afford the new ship and fit it out to the point where it excels at the job, that gets much more expensive with the bigger ships.

The other two were a pair of cheap fighters :

Nik is a mod for HeyChrissa, that's the Viper class ship called Nik's Hammer. One thing about naming the ships like this, it definitely adds something to being invested in keeping those ships alive and enjoying flying them and giving them a purpose. Even when the ship itself just isn't very good. So the Diamondback Scout (a pretty bad ship) will be the Pilgrim, making trips to places like Fisher's Rest and Pratchett's Disc. I was going to name the other Viper over Chrissa's other main mod (and a keen Elite player) but had better ideas.

Meet - Space Viking :

Yeah - it's very much like the other Viper isn't it ... I didn't enjoy flying this one much to be honest, although that's because I gave it too many lasers and not enough cannons.

And the ship for the trip to the galactic core is :

Something appears to have gone wrong with that name ... (I had an idea that I couldn't resist !)

Yep. I've had a chilled out week off, I should be pretty much ready to head back into work on Monday if I can get decent sleep ! My sleep pattern gets disrupted on holiday especially when I don't do enough to get tired. I've been going to bed at reasonable times (cough - occasional 2am - cough oops) but not falling asleep. Need to figure out something for that.

So yep - not perfect yet, not healed yet ... but in better shape than this time last week. Just gotta keep up the discipline and not disrupt the partially healed bits of me that actually do want to get better.

Plans for next week ? I want to see our aircraft carrier whenever she makes her way down south. That should be an incredible sight. Haven't seen Spiderman Homecoming yet. First ever day-night Test Match starts on Thursday. Been enjoying watching the cricket on the telly this week. It's odd actually, I've almost cleared the tv box of recorded stuff ! I'm just not recording much new at the moment - Dark Matter, Killjoys, Deadliest Catch and Mountain Men ... but no dailies like I'd usually be recording.

Need to do more reading actually !