Sunday, April 12, 2020

Short Trip, Long Trip, Shopping Trip, Round Trip

Hello everyone,

I have to report that I've ventured out of the house again ... Needed food. And an egg. Food and egg have been acquired ... I wanted to give the car a little run as well because in this current climate, it isn't being used much at all. So instead of going directly to the supermarket, I went the slightly longer way around ... (Not too far, just a fairly quick circle to make sure battery ok and all things that like to turn had a chance to turn !)

That's the in real life stuff out off the way ... I tried a little bit of speed running yesterday. I vaguely remember doing speedy runs of games like Alone In The Dark (a long time again) but it's not really my style of game play any more. But a challenge is a challenge and it got me back into one of the smaller ships again.
That's me at the start, in a Cobra Mk3 named Warp Factor Potato, given a special paint job and with the callsign TEA-89. Various references there to the online communities I enjoy nattering and sharing screenshots with.

(words for a bit, couple more screenshots later)

The challenge is to see how quickly you can make your way from the home of humanity, Sol, to the centre of the galaxy. The distance is 25,899.71 light years. Well, Galileo Station, in orbit of the Moon. Pretty station too. I didn't want to have it take too long, so I set up a ship for the Unlimited class. There are 3 classes ...

Classic - no engineering modifications or boosters, no help from neutron stars.
Neutron - no modifications again but you can use neutron stars to cut the time down.
Unlimited - you're free to use enhancements and neutron stars.

(Before I go any further, here is the Frontier forums link with the challenge)

The difference between classes is that my Cobra was capable of doing jumps up to 51.2 light years, which boost up to just over 200 with a neutron star. The unmodified version of the ship would be able to jump 26.4 light years. It's not just a doubling of the distance, it's being able to go in a straighter line. The stars aren't exactly 26.4 or 51.2 light years apart, so the ship with the shorter distance may have to go on a more wiggly side to side up and down route in order to make forwards progress.

The record for a Cobra Mk3 in classic is 14 hours 26 minutes. I made it in 6 hours 7 minutes. It should be possible to knock probably 2 hours off that. Let's see ... there are times for the Cobra Mk4 of 16 hours 12 on classic and 4 hours 30 on unlimited and I'm seeing the jump ranges as being 23.3ly classic or 46.2ly on unlimited. So I should be quicker than the Mk4. Ok for a first shot and I've learned more for later. The fastest time is just under 98 minutes in an Anaconda, which is a big ship that can take advantage of the fitting systems to get massively long jump ranges around the 77ly range.

There's a site called Spansh (link) which lets you plot a route with the neutron stars to speed things up, the mk3 comes out at about 200 jumps whereas the mk4 reckons 242. The next attempt is likely to be in a little Dolphin passenger ship and I've already forgotten the name I picked out. Gotta get home first though.

Too much theorycraft !
The competition rules ask you to post two screenshots, the first of which sees you in the departure station, ready to launch ... with the time stamp. (I'll post the other one later).

The route mapper has been vastly improved since the first days of the game. It used to be able to plot up to 1000ly with you having to go down to perhaps 250ly skips near the Core (it would crash). Now you can plot up to 20,000ly. You still have to use a couple of waypoints with that but it is way better.
That was taken just as I was about to embark on the last leg of the trip, with the blue light being the light of the neutron star I was about to get a boost from.

Another of the conditions is that you make the trip in Open ...
There we are part way through the trip. I don't like playing in Open because I'm not a fan of the people who are able to put way too much time into a game which then enables them to take out their sociopathic tendencies out on other players. But that's me. I'm just not that in to multiplayer gaming and spend most of my time in this game in the Solo mode.
Not too far to go and about to enter the Galactic Centre sector. The stars come out much more around the Core, as the star density is much increased over the density of stars near our star system.
Final jump !
And emerging from hyperspace at the monster which is Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole which is the engine of our galaxy.
And the other condition for the competition is to post a screenshot of the galaxy map when you arrive at the destination, this has a time stamp on it as well.

Not much time for sight seeing on this run, as it's pretty much just Jump-scoop-jump whoosh but I took a couple at the end :
Silhouetted by the Core ...
And then looking on at Sagittarius A* from the safety of a planet just over a light year away. (Sagi A* is the white dot just over the horizon that's down and left from the black dot which is another planetoid.)
And I turned around for a better look at the ship and her markings.

A good learning trip, it'll be a bit of time before I do this again though because 6 hours at the stick with minimal breaks is a bit of a silly thing to do.

Time for a chilled out day demolishing yesterday's Easter egg.

Have a great day everyone, stay safe, be well.

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