After a short maintenance stop at my home base I continued the Grand Adventure the PitTrip is. First destination for this week was a star system named Charick drift. The central star of this system is a White Dwarf, a star at the end of its life that had not enough mass to turn into a Neutron Star or a Black Hole.
In orbit around this White Dwarf a generation ship can be found. This ship named "Atlas" can be scanned to learn some details about the people that once lived on it. The ship has been abandoned some time ago already and is now just an empty hull floating in space.
Generation Ship "Atlas" - hardly visible against the bright white dwarf, I have to admit.
On the way to the next waypoint I found a very trustworthy station to land on
The next stop was close to the Fine Ring Nebula. This is just a strange shape planetary nebula - as there was not much else to do with it, I took this as an educational stop and read up about what a planetary nebula actually is on Wikipedia.
What a fine ring?
And on I went to the Beta Hydrae system to find a black hole and a neutron star orbiting each other. It is a lesser known fact that photography works best, when there is light coming from whatever you try to catch in your picture. Something black holes are massively bad at, is letting light get out. Thats why pictures of black holes tend to suck.
You see a neutron star - you don't see a black hole. Fascinating, eh?
Our final destination for the week then was the GD 140 system. I first visited the station "Newton Hub" there to fuel up and maybe get a drink. Approaching the station I noticed it looked different then I am used to for this type of station: Yellow areas sprinkled across the surface were new to me.
Turns out: The yellow stuff is not just a strange design project
The station has been attacked by the Thargoids some time ago ... and now there is contruction going on everywhere. The station also has all kinds of technical problems.
I was wondering why automated landing did not work for the first time... The displays at the airlock of the station might have been a hint to the attentive reader.
A vessel transporting a thirsty Commander is by definition an "emergency vehicle", is it not?
As most services, including the bar, were not available at this station I left quickly again. To meet the rest of the Buurboons at planet A1A. That little planet looks like it has a hard time - scars all over the surface. Maybe orbiting a bigger planet with just about enough distance to put a sheet of paper in between, is not an easy life.
When the Galaxy is called for dinner after finishing two thirds of a planetary snowman.
So there is a planet with deep canyons, there is about a dozen spaceship pilots in small maneuverable ships, what could be done? We played a round of "Chasing Sanderling". Some of the braver commanders got out into their planetary vehicles on a high plateau only to become the ball in a game of unclear rules that somehow evolved around the idea of using fast spaceships ramming the buggy to push it off the plateau.
Also I made a very scientific discovery: When the "Indesctructible 4" is being hit head on by Lord Tyvins heavily shielded Sidewinder this has about the same effect like being hit by a high speed bullet. So all say hello to the "Indestructible 5".
As if there was not enough room for parking
I am eagerly awaiting the video footage some fellow commanders have taken at the high speed hoonery - this should look just fantastic.
This is CMDR Universallaie, currently docked in Wilson Port, signing off.
Some background first: In Elite:Dangerous ships travelling in normal space have a top speed - which, according to physics as we know it, makes no sense.
Max speed relative to what one would have to ask? And, as long as my thrusters thrust, the ship should continue to accelarate. Thats how space travel works in the real world. From the viewpoint of game mechanics a maximum speed makes sense - relative to some defined reference: Without that any kind of space combat simulation would be extremely unsatisfying I guess. Ships just passing each other at extremely high speeds once and then most likely unable to catch up to each other ever again would not be the most rewarding gameplay.
So, we have a max-speed on our ship. That speed depends on the weight of the ship and the installed thrusters as far as I know. The maximum speed people seem to get out of an highly optimized ship is somewhere around 950m/s. Sure enough people start to challenge that limitation - and CMDR PrimetimeCasual found a way around it. With the help of a planet with high gravity and the right flight technique higher speeds can be reached.
And if something is capable of going really fast (as in hypersonic) it is only a small step to a racing event worked around that ability: Speedbowling was born. First I heard of that title I was hoping to see 10 other ships in a triangle and one pilot crashing into that group as hard as possible, but that's not what it is. Let me try to sum up the rules for the upcoming Speedbowl 3 event:
Starting point is place of your choice that has to be 200km above the surface of the planet "61 Virgilis 2"
Goal is to pass the groundstation "Margulis Depot" on that planet within 2000m distance
It is not allowed to go above starting altitude while the race is on
you must survive the flight not only to the finish line, but also until you have slowed down your ship to speed zero again.
Whoever is the fastest when passing the groundstation wins
The rules are in the announcement of the event, which can be found here.
A normal flight path for most participants looks somewhat like this (graphic by CMDR Alec Turner):
From other commanders, sending reports from their training runs, speeds up to something like 4100m/s seem to be doable in this setting. I have never tried this sport - so my goal should be to get as close to that as possible.
So first I checked out if I could rely on real world physics for optimizing my journey. Mgmt Summary: No.
Information about the planet from edsm.net
Free fall at 4.16g from 200km without any friction from an athmosphere - its easy to calculate the speed in which suddenly a lot of friction occurs due do hitting the ground.
So just free falling from that height we should reach 4040.3m/s ... remarkably close to what people reach in Speedbowling. Coincidence?
Turns out: The free fall model is also way off in regards to laws of physics applicable outside the game: I took my ship to 200km above the ground and turned all engines off. Ship accelerated quickly downwards, as one would expect on a >4g world... and at 500m/s just stopped accelerating. I just kept falling with constant speed. As there is no atmosphere on the planet, nothing should be stopping a continous acceleration, though.
When actually trying the "speedbowl technique" I also found out, that acceleration followed unusual patterns - it instantly goes from strongly accelerating to not at all when minimally changing the angle of the ship relative to the ground. Changing back also gives instant strong acceleration.
Also the direction of thrust and the direction of acceleration do not seem to fit - it should be the sum of the vectors of the thrust and the gravity, one would expect, but it does not seem to be that at all. I have no good means of measurement sadly, to prove this "feeling".
In summary it seems: Applying physics as we know it to the problem will not help much. This is sad, as I always liked the laws of physics somewhat. The simulation uses a different set of laws for calculating stuff. And these are not well researched yet.
So Speedbowling has to be done by feeling, not by thinking. I was hoping for a bit of advantage by understanding the mechanics behind the effect - to no success. I will have to train just like anybody else. Damn.
(after a few training flights I have actually managed to (a) survive (b) reach about 3200m/s and (c) miss the target by about 20km)
Moving on on my trip, I would like to explain a bit about the actual means of travel. I will start with long distance travel. I would like to explain the problem in that with a quote from Douglas Adams:
“Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space.”
Travelling to other stars is a bit problematic because of this detail in the real world. Luckily Elite: Dangerous engineers have solved this problem with the "Frame Shift Drive" that we can install in our spaceship. "Frame shift drive", by the way, is the written form - Everyone is pretty sure it is pronounced "Friendship drive". So, just make sure that there are no big objects nearby, charge the engine and jump on to a nearby star system. How much distance you can cover by one jump depends on the type of engine your ship has and its weight.
If you want to get somewhere fast, strip everyhting but the engine down to the absolute minimum and off you go. Problem is that you now basically fly a burning paperplane soaked in rocket fuel. If you want to get to your target alive some compromises regarding weight should be made.
The ships computer will calculate a save jump to the target system for you and drop you out of hyperspace at a safe distance from the main star. Some stars are binary systems and this edge case has not been taken much into account by the people developing the navigation software. So sometimes, while dropping out of hyperspace, you are still half in extradimensional travel but already see the real world - and fly at extreme speed directly through the secondary star in a binary system. It is the moment I actually am happy not to play in VR. I almost ruin my pants everytime this happens on a normal monitor already.
Also the definition of "safe spot to drop out" is a bit stretched in these systems.
This totally secure mode of travel brought me to the San Tu system first. This system has a huge installation orbiting planet 4C. Like last weeks visit at the Squirrels Nest Bar this installation wanted to be inspected in every detail and at high speeds. It has tunnels everywhere, even curved ones. So this is a great training site for the reckless pilot.
A city levitating in space. After my visit might have some scratches, though.
But I had to continue my travels. After a few jumps I was out of the human inhabitated bubble in space again - exploring dots of light in the vast darkness. Parking on strangely coloured planet surfaces - with pumpkins. Again.
my space camper for this trip
This picture of the "Indesctuctible 4" actually reminds me, that I have to anwer a question I have received after last weeks article. What happened to numbers one and two?
The "Indesctructible" (it did not have a number then) got a little too close to a huge military Mega-Ship - and I have accidentaly touched the wrong button on my controller. This caused a short laser beam to be directed at the local military forces - suddenly my radar screen was full of fighters with deployed weapons heading in my direction. My ship lasted for around two more seconds.
The "Indestructible 2" was on an exploration trip. I had just read, that filling your fuel tank from a white dwarf or a neutron star will supercharge your drive and give you extra range for one jump. So I flew very close to a white dwarf (just like I do for refueling at other stars coronae). Turns out that this supercharging has some details about it that I should have read up on beforehand.
But back to the Trip: The meeting point for this week was in the system "California Sector BA-A e6". The sector is named after the California Nebular in this area.
The "California Nebular" got its name because its shape resembles the outlines of the state of California. Well. Ehmm. Yeah, right.
The sunday meetup this time was at the "Mic Turner Base" where we founded a new religion. Because all gods were already taken we have decided to dedicate our prayers to the local tourist beacon in that system.
All hail the mighty strange looking thingie
After that the quality of my landing gear was checked by stacking as many other spaceships as possible onto my landed vessel. The landing gear held, so everyone took off with a boost. Note the lightup of shields during this maneuver - also multiple fines for "Reckless Flying close to a starport" needed to be paid afterwards.
This is CMDR Universallaie, currently docked at Wilson Port signing off.
This weeks excursion led us into Thargoid territory. The Thargoids are the only other lifeform capable of space flight so far discovered in the Elite: Dangerous Galaxy. I would not go so far as to call them intelligent lifeforms - but for that part I am not sure with humans either.
The well prepared route to them has sent us through some interesting systems again. First leg of the journey directed us to the Taygeta system which hosts a very special space station. The station named "Titans Daughter" is very close to the ring of a ringed planet.
A dangerous place to live
I do not hold a university degree in astro-architecture but I am relatively sure that is not a good place for a space station right there. Also insurance rates might be fairly high in this neighbourhood.
For those specializing in galactic history the route also passed the Merope system - where humans for the first time discovered thargoid ground installations. The system has some tourist beacons that, when scanned, explain some of the history of interaction between thargoids and humans. Also they try to explain the permit locked systems mentioned in last weeks article (older readers might remember).
A kind of inofficial meetup happened at the "Squirrels Nest Bar", a space installation in the Merope system that has an alarming combination of advertisements for (a) Lavian brandy (don't drink and fly) and (b) participation in spaceship racing events. It even has a racetrack on around the Bar. What could possibly go wrong? So we decided on a good meeting point for us law-abiding citizens.
A lot of ships from the local authorities were scanning us for unknown reasons.
After that I took the "Indesctructible 3" on to the track. The australian members of our community actually taught us the correct word for what we were doing there: Hooning. Very educational, this trip. Public service announcement: Boosting your ship into a tunnel while someone else does the same thing from the other end of said tunnel can lead to explosions.
After minor issues with integral parts of my spaceship I boarded the "Indesctructible 4" and continued the trip to the next destination. The very compassionate other members of the trip were so nice to warn other commanders going into the tunnel afterwards - mostly with sentences like "Be careful, there are parts of CMDR Universallaie scattered all over the place".
The final destination for today includes a special event: We will do a thargoid activation - I have no idea what this is and I avoided researching it beforehand to not spoil the surprise for myself. We got some very detailled instructions beforehand. An important part, printed in bold letters, was: "do not shoot any of the Thargoid surface drones (the floating, fishy looking things) and try not to ram them with your SRV". If you have read last weeks article about our SRV driving madness as well as the general chaos this group tends to create, I imagine this to be a very difficult part. So I'll be making a proper tea now (for the lack of Lavian Brandy I will have to use rum) and am looking forward to the exciting event that is ahead of me... the writing will continue once it is done.
Fly responsibly - not like we do.
Okay, back I am: We went to a Thargoid installation - it looked very spooky from the outside, much like a strange kind of daisy in the middle of a rolled up dinosaur skeleton.
Thargoid site
There we collected some special devices that activated the central machine - making a spectacular lightshow after being braught online.
Nice lightshow, dear aliens. I guess showbiz is a thing with every species.
Just to make the experience complete we also fed the machine with leftovers of another extinct alien race. The machine was not too happy about this - the room got really hot and other thingies of the local alien race somehow did not like us anymore. So instead of taking pictures we got out as fast as we could while shooting little things that approached us in an inappropriate manner.
Many thanks to our tourguide CMDR Jon "Hicks" Tomasson, who did the research and collected necessary stuff in advance to give us all the rare opportunity to see a alien machine being powered up. Thanks also go to the guides of the three other groups for their work.
This is CMDR Universallaie, currently docked in the "Stargazer" Asteroid base signing off.
The Pit Trip started with a mass start on day one. For some excellent video material from CMDR Eagle131 see this link - and maybe give him a like. For the second leg of that trip the modus operandi is a little different. Everyone made the way to the next waypoint at his own pace and we met up there.
This part of the trip first led everyone to a star system named Pomeche: On planet 2C there are huge mountains and apart from other nice sights a long mountain ridge, known for the Pomeche Ridge Racing Challenge. There is a video of fellow CMDR PrimeTimeCasual elegantly hopping in his SRV along this mountain ridge. If you have not seen it, take your time to watch it now:
So while I was there I decided to also take a go at the beginners track - If you don't mind your eyes bleeding there is also some video footage of that try. As my driving skills do not attract camera teams I can only offer the cockpit view. Also my video editing skills are no match for what the Buurs do. But for those brave enough to watch it, here is the link anyway.
My next stop was the system CD-26 1339 - located inside the Robins Egg Nebular. This system contains 10 Stars and a black hole. Additionally the Nebular adds a nice background color to the sky. It is also called "Robins Nest Nebular" by those more into 80s TV shows than into astronomy as I have learned during this trip.
Parking spots among space pumpkins are a thing for me on this trip.
The Black Hole itself is not visible - you can only see it's graviational lensing effect on the light, especially when moving. If you are interested in the view here is a short clip I made on my way through that system, totally ignoring all advice from NASA regarding this kind of travel.
From there it was a little hard to find the way to the final destination, the Oort System. The reason is that there is a ton of "Permit Locked Systems" in between. These are systems that can not be reached, which is totally illogical from a game immersion standpoint... We can only guess why this is the case. My assumption would be that these systems play some role in the future storyline of the game and players are not supposed to get there in advance.
With a bit of an erratic course I found a way around those systems. As I was well ahead of time I did some space exploration in the nearer area. There were quite a few interesting planets not yet mapped by players, so I collected system information to hand in at the next space station - this will make the collected information available to all commanders ship computers in the future.
Finally reaching the Oort system I visited some stellar phenomenae my scanner had detected. Within Lagrange Clouds (clouds of space dust between two celestial bodies, that exist exactly in the area where the gravity (and other forces) from both are nullified; for Details see the Wikipedia article about Langrangian Points) all kinds of strange things are growing.
In one of the clouds I even met an alien life form just happily wobbling around. My request to be brought to its leader was completely ignored.
First contact did not go well - could not establish communication Cmdr Eagle131 sent a recipe for those - as an alternative approach to do something useful with it, but my ship has no kitchen either.
After all the exploration I looked for a place to rest. I had just found myself a nice little planet for the night when another participant of the trip arrived in the Oort System. CMDR Bob48 steered his Diamondback Explorer to the same landing spot, where we met.
Meeting at the campsite
We got out our surface vehicles to make sure our camp is safe and there are no wild animals around or something. Well actually we just had a bit of driving fun. Showing off my cool driving skills I tried to overtake Bob with a jump, so raced up to his back, used a small bump to take off and pushed the Turbo Boost button.
That plan was not perfectly well developed. As Bob still had his wheels on the ground he could casually steer around my ship parked in the way - me, being up in the air, not so much. So I crashed directly into the rear of my spaceship, ending up in the main thruster.
Stuck, head first, in the negative end of my ships digestive system, I could not get out, no matter how I wiggled the controls of my vehicle. The level of coolness of that maneuver is slightly reduced, when you have to ask the other driver to bump you out of that mess afterwards.
Also I noticed something unexpected while driving on this icy little planet: The game designers actually accounted for the different traction you get on ice. After a lot of drifting I went down a slope to gain some additional speed for those drifting stunts. Was great fun, but after you went down a slope you also have to go up again. So with engines screaming and wheels spinning like crazy I went back up at the speed of a crawling toddler.
After all the driving mayhem we called it a day and signed off - the next day would be the big meetup of all participants in this system before the trek moves on.
With some participants arriving on this final day, we had a bit of time for scientific experiments - like parking as many cars as possible on a spaceship and then launching the same. I was able to gather some important scientific data; as well on the parking abilities of SRV drivers as on a strange weather phenomenon where it is raining space buggys.
At the actual meeting we used our ships to get some scenic footage for all our talented video makers in the group. We performed mass starts and landings that sure will show up in future films which I will link in the coming articles. Also we tried something, that (to our knowledge) has never been done before - a scenic mass arrival. Turns out this does not work with the current game instancing, which may or may not be the reason why it has not been done before.
Line-up of all ships for a sequenced mass start ... I look so forward to the video of that.
Additionally we did a demonstration in our vehicles for pebble-free planet surfaces to make better racing tracks on them. Whether this has been noticed by the Elite:Dangerous development team is unknown at the moment.
"Autocorso" -- I always thought this is a thing in german culture only.
This is about it for this weeks Pit Trip report. This is CMDR Universallaie, currently docked at Wilson Port in the Tewanta system, signing off.
