More Tales From The Frontier

So I left yesterday's post with a picture of the Searching For Biscuits, landed at a space port ...

I had a chance to do a little more flying around yesterday, following a new expedition route.

This route has nebulae ... lots of them. I'm hoping to find some amazing screenshots from this route. As always, click for bigger. Most of these are in 1440p from the game, although there's a reduced hi-res one later.

About that one though, I'd been looking for a Voyager Surfs The Rings shot for a little while now. If you've watched Star Trek Voyager, you'll know the shot I mean, it's from the intro sequence. A rather fine intro sequence too, although flying through the rings like that is kinda vandalism. You can't do the astronomic vandalism in Elite but you can acquire some very pretty screenshots. In this case, there's an asteroid base tucked inside one of those inner rings. More later.

I did 3 stop offs on the route yesterday and found things more mysterious than nebulae ...

What is this ? A crashed ship ? Looks like a Cobra Mk3, the ship of the first game. Investigating further, you find various logs from the pilot. Who could it be ?

It's a little faint but the word Jameson emerges from the dark ... (That's the default name from the ancient BBC B game and there's a fair bit of game lore built up around him).

Turns out there is various skullduggery going on. The story goes that our Commander Jameson was dispatched on a mission to protect human space by planting a virus that disables the hyperdrives of the Thargoids, preventing them from using faster than light travels. Except .... the virus doesn't just target the equipment, it targets the life forms too. Skullduggery indeed. Our nameless, faceless skullduggers go even further, by planting a bomb on Commander Jameson's Cobra Mk3, disabling all power systems and stranding him on this desolate, airless planet.

It's great when lore like this finds its way into the game. You get the impression that there is an absolute tonne of stuff to find.

Also bases, carved out of rocks in the rings surrounding the gas giant, with a great view overlooking the Hind Nebula. I found another mystery out there too :

A quiet, dead looking ship going by the name of Alcatraz. A prison ship apparently ... and crippled by an attack by unknown forces.

You may spy the words "Cell Block" around there. I wasn't going to get too close. But. What's this ! The computer announces "Frame Shift Surge Detected" and out pops a new object.

It's small compared to Alcatraz megaship but you may be able to pick it out on the right hand side, just below the far end of the megaship. There was a scary moment as it pops out into real space, as the surge makes the ship computer drop offline. Totally immobile, drifting, powerless, lightless. A definite enigma, with capabilities we don't fully understand.

A closer look at this mysterious octagonal object that seems to fly around through pure anger at the presence of humanity in this system. Perhaps it still remembered the anger at what Commander Jameson's mysterious masters attempted to do to its Thargoid ancestors. It allowed me to close and follow and while missiles from the megaship were bouncing off it, it allowed me to follow along without incident.

Time to move on though.

I've actually been to this station before. It's the Witch Head Nebula science station, in the rings of another gas giant. A quite beautiful sight with a very white looking gas giant and very bright rings. One thing I missed with the trading and combat interludes was how pretty this game can be when you're getting out and about.

On to the next destination and we see the Orion Nebula, albeit somewhat occluded by the rings of another gas giant.

And another view, this time of the other side of the nebula emerging from above the ring.

That was it for Sunday's investigations. Maybe more tomorrow. We shall see !

Last post for today ... sometimes the screenshots don't go quite as planned :

This was an attempt at a high res special screenshot of the Searching For Biscuits closing in on the central node of the Alcatraz in order to scan for communications logs. The high res screenshots work by rapidly capturing many images to build up a higher resolution whole. For my set up, the standard 1440p screenshots become 5760p, or 16 times the pixels. (4x4). Except sometimes it doesn't quite work ... I suspect being inside the gas cloud messed up the lighting and you should be able to see the resulting patchiness.

Still, it was a good interlude, hanging around while the Thargoid Medusa Interceptor had a good look around the megaship. And a fun session too.