Venturing Out

I've been out of the house ! Even further than the local supermarket place !

It was work though. Not sure if that really counts. It was good to see and talk to people I know in person again instead of just over the phone and Skype. Can't say what I was getting up to though cos ... work.

I'll be ending with more Internet Spaceship pics but before I get to that :

Being out and about more ? I'll wait a bit longer there I think. This current situation isn't over yet. I think I may actually have been lightly touched by the virus because I wasn't particularly well back in April. It wasn't serious enough to think about contacting for aid but I did have numerous symptoms that I put down to other things like : April allergies, dust, bad buns from a service station and otherwise adjusting to the new situation. I'm still incredibly lacking in energy though but that could also partly due to not doing much.

But yep. I need to be getting a few things sorted out, like new glasses in particular and a few other things as well. Plus I want to do one of those city centre wanders that tends to see me going past book caves, Lego shops and places that sell music.

I think I might have to look at alternatives for my next car ... I'm on my third Lexus IS300h at the moment. I'm not planning on changing it but they do keep trying to tempt me into changing. At the moment, it's to get one of the last ones to come into the UK. They're discontinuing it ... which feels mad because it was becoming an increasingly popular car in the car park. Looks like they're looking to move in to SUV type cars and are abandoning that particular part of the market. I'm not a fan of SUVs, I can see why people might like them but for me, all that extra metal isn't doing anything for me so it's just slowing things down.

What would I get if I had to change now ? It'd be between the bigger Lexus ES or quite possibly a Toyota Corolla ... they have a 2.0litre hybrid which looks fast and efficient. The Prius is efficient but slow and the CT I had was a wonderful little car but ... slow and less efficient.

We'll see ! But yeah, not planning to change any time soon.

Internet spaceships ? I've been continuing the tour. I'm hoping to catch up to one of the live streams, which is a definite possibility and might actually lead to some hanging around not doing very much. I think I've been burning out on the game again, or it might be a case of needing to do something different.

I've actually been in different games as well, courtesy of Steam sales.

That's Gear City, which I found while looking into a different game. This one sees you set up a car manufacturer and try to survive and thrive. I've been starting off in 1900, the era of vintage cars. We'll see where it goes.

I picked up the DLC for Battletech and have an early campaign game going there ... It started pretty well but then turned a bit rough. I've got a pretty firm handle on the tactics there now, basically speed is life and concentration of firepower is the way to go. Get guns off the field is a strong theory to run with.

I've also acquired Oxygen Not Included (CK loves that), Knights of Pen and Paper 2, Reassembly and Hardspace Shipbreaker. I still need to try those ones. I've managed to bin the Idle Champions addiction, that's a curious one. You barely interact with the game, outside of figuring out the strategy you're going to go with but you feel like you have to keep monitoring it.

Still doing the miles in Elite though. I left it last time at Tau Ceti. The next step in the tour was to visit Achenar, home of the Empire.

But first, that's the latest ship in the fleet. The name is Maverick, callsign GO-05E. Some of you may catch the reference. She's built for speed.

Speed and fly bys of towers. I built this one to go really, really fast (we'll get to that) and to zoom around the features both in space and on planets.

Back to the tour though. The first place to visit was the Homestead, close to the home star.

I couldn't resist a closer look at the farm.

Quick peek at one of the planets too.

The Imperials have their own capital ships. Far more stylish than the very functional Federation capital ship design.

Coming in to dock at Dawes Hub. One of the things I wanted to try out in the Achenar system was a gravity dive. This is where you start at altitude at a high gravity planet and see how fast you can go, preferably without needing to lithobrake (ground assisted braking, usually involves dents).

The dive started out at 1000km up and the gravity meter is already showing 5.94g. That's a lot of weight. The technique is to start off at the ship's top speed, point slightly downwards and thrust "up". Oh and you turn the flight assist off so that you go more like Newtonian physics instead of the ship trying to keep you to your maximum speed.

After dropping around 250km, the speed is up to 3,817m/s. The ship is already a fast one, as seen in that first screenshot. The normal maximum speed is about 700m/s.

I thought about doing a tower flyby but ... kinda missed it, shooting over the top at an altitude of 375km.

This is where I thought I'd just about hit the top speed I was going to get, with me pulling the brakes on at 7,500m/s. The altitude was a mere 34.7km up (I wanted to leave some room in case levelling out wasn't simple) and the gravity at this point is 6.7g.

Pretty good for a first attempt at doing a gravity dive. Speeds of above 10km/s are possible.

I didn't go for a landing this time (6.7g is heavy !) but it was a fun little thing to do.

Bit like getting out of the house and on the road again ! I'm still pretty tired from all that though, so gaming sessions have been short and I haven't opened a book since finishing Murderbot 2 either.

Hope you're all good out there as well.

Be well, stay safe, have fun !