So on my last day of exploring in Distant Worlds before I went back to the bubble I found this incredible planet. It is 4 times as massive as Jupiter, and has a 4 hour day.
JUENAE TV-T D4-5164
Body ABCD 2
Greetings fellow CMDRs!
So elite has been my most played game ever, and especially the last couple years it's been one of my biggest special interests. It's one of my favorite games, and I've been playing since launch, and exploration is my favorite activity. Scanning uncharted places and plants is a very zen activity for me, and I had done the beagle point/ ishum's reach trip once before.
I missed the first two Distant Worlds, unfortunately, and I promised myself if they ever did a Distant Worlds 3 I would go on it, so when they announced DW3 in July of last year I was over the moon. In the six months before the expedition I did a couple little practice runs to finish getting Elite V in exploration and exobiology.
For Hanukkah my wife got me a big batch of arx so I got the caspian, a holo kit for it, and the gold paint job, and named her the Antlerprise.The Distant Worlds supply community goal happened, and i managed to finish grinding out Elite V trader, and get just over the line to fund a squadron carrier for my wife to use for the four months i was out of the bubble.
January 18th we launched out and I stopped turning in data, even though I snuck off to the bubble no less than 5 times during the expedition.
First time i went to the bubble was early; the type-11 dropped for credits while we were still in Colonia, and i ran back to the bubble to kit one out for the mining event later, which ultimately i slept through and completely missed.
Second time i went to the bubble we were in the Veil's Embers; I'm a bit of a sucker for free paint jobs, so when the Kestrel CG happened I took a few days to run back to the bubble, do the minimum contribution for it, then run back.
Then when we got to Khazad-dûm, and that was kind of a turning point for me. The Rainbow's End community goal happened, but i was so disappointed in the rewards that I just did a single system turn in so I could say I contributed, and to help other commanders who wanted the scanner to get top 75%; although I did the rough math on the data I had at the time and I'm pretty sure I could have gotten top 10. At around this same time I did a few things to change how I did exploration. For the first couple months of DW I had mostly just kinda went around the very top or very bottom of the galaxy in realistic mode and ended up plotting a lot of neutron stars and white dwarves, and just kinda piddled about between waypoints. Later I changed my route settings, filtered everything not O-A-B-F non-sequence wolf-rayat or white dwarf. Also I downloaded a new exploration buddy (Elite Observatory) to help me find oddities in systems i passed through, and to be more discerning in picking planets to scan for exobiology; this was a huge game changer. Also also I decided to actually do a dss on anything terraformable I came across from this point forward.
The third time I ran back to the bubble was because I hate on foot engineering; I ran to the bubble for the Unica Easter egg hunt, then forgot to turn in my eggs, and missed the CG when it closed early. I was livid.
The fourth time I went back to the bubble was the same reason as the third time, but this time I made SURE I'd get the suit; there was the guardian artifact CG, and i used my caspian to get the funny sex number amount of artifacts turned in and ended up comfortably in the top 75%.
The fifth time i went back to the bubble was the same reason as the second time; the lynx burning station CG happened, and i had such a blast. I missed the evacuation missions from the thargoid war and we were relatively close to the bubble at this point (less than 60 jumps in the Antlerprise) so took the opportunity to spend a couple days grinding materials.
I landed at every waypoint, and visited most of the POIs, both major and minor. Flew into the final waypoint on the Pillar of Chista, bade farewell to my fellow commanders, and went back to the bubble for the final time to turn in four months of data. When I docked at the chosen station to turn in merits I emptied my wallet into my squadron so I could more easily track how many credits I made.
I included some of my favorite screen shots from distant worlds, including my favorite planet which I happened to find on my last day of dedicated exploration and have affectionately named the blue egg. It's a gas giant that's 1,300x the mass of earth with a rotational period of 4 hours. (If you find yourself near sag a* and/or are still out there for the final few events of Distant Worlds I suggest you give it a visit).
The numbers came out as such:
I visited 3,909 systems.
I made 2,534,166,863 credits from cartographics, (which is enough to go from directionless to elite v in one shot), and earned me 305,104 merits.
Before any bonuses I had scanned 3,348,948,000 cr worth of exobiology data; after first footfall and Pranav Antal power play bonuses it came out to 19,336,107,380 cr in exobiology data, (which is enough to go from directionless to elite II in one shot) and earned me 114,524 merits.
Totaling 21,870,274,243 credits and 419,628 merits, (which took the system i turned in at from exploited halfway to fortified), and one commander done with exploration for quite some time.
o7
–Cmdr bonk Stremch.
So they're not actually calling them pride flag paint jobs, but these are definitely trans and enby flag paint jobs, and I for one am hoping we get more pride flag paint for more ships.