Well I’m addicted now. Owned the game for over a year before I got into playing it this weekend. Lots of fun just exploring places. Very addictive…
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Well, good luck to everyone who left on DW2 (me included). See you at Omega Mining asteroid base 
Incidentally, I thought it was hilarious that the ED servers couldn’t cope with that number of people jumping at once. For those who missed it, check out the live stream below - about 25 minutes in the fun starts 
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Is that why the server went down today?
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Yup.
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U.S. Servers were apparently back up in time for our departure.
Leaving the station in the bubble for the last time in a long time…
Enjoy the clean paint while it lasts- I doubt she’ll look so good after 60,000 light years.
Other commanders waiting for the official start and the first jump.
And we’re off!
Not too long after, I answered my first dispatch as a Hull Seal. A streamer had a rough landing at The View in his Anaconda- not surprising, as the planet has a local gravitational value of 3G.
Myself and the backup seal (we’re always dispatched in pairs) with our client, first for both of us. I only had the one call, as most of the damage seemed to be in and around The View (HR 6164). I’m sure that’ll change once more ships get further out, and I’ll be curious to see how many make it to the first waypoint, the Omega Mining Group asteroid base.
The Wolf-Rayet star Shipley 1.
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Well I managed to set down by some space pumpkins at The View without incident, though for the last 40m or so I wasn’t entirely in control. The landscape is overwhelmingly PINK. I don’t think I could stay there very long without getting eyestrain but I did do a bit of harvesting in the SRV before logging off. Pictures to come later (after I buy a new memory stick to transfer them off the PS4). 2 scenic locations and 1400 LYs down, many more to come. 
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I noticed that through the entire system when I was on that repair call. Like everything had passed through a mist of Pepto-Bismol.
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That’s a missed product placement opportunity
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OK, apologies in advance for the long post. Here’s a brief AAR-slash-slideshow of my experiences on the first leg of the Distant Worlds expedition. I’ll post more as I get time. Hope you like it 
OK. It’s here. The build-up has been long and the excitement is reaching fever pitch. In the last week a flood of volunteers has swelled the expeditions ranks to over 11,000, and now it’s almost time to go.
The good ship Forty Niner is as engineered as she’s going to be. 2 weeks of grind have stretched her legs to give a jump range of almost 45LY, despite a full load of mining equipment.
First things first, head over to the starting location in Pallaeni.
And she’s down.
The terrain here is a bit rugged.
I’m a couple of days early so I take the chance to stock up on materials with a bit of surface mining.
The big day arrives and Real Life™ butts in to ensure I miss the live start (and all the server issues - silver lining ) but eventually I get underway. I figure there’s no need to rush so I take a leisurely route, scanning each system I pass through to get a feel for the new exploration tools.
I scan my first planet 
After a relatively short leg of around 20 jumps comes the first stop on the route: The Fine Ring Nebula (aka Shapley 1), also the first stop on the original Distant Worlds expedition. The polar crater is rather striking.
I decide to make camp at the site of the aforementioned expeditions base camp, paying homage to those original explorers.
That hill was just too tempting to leave alone 
Next stop, The View.
After a slightly lengthier leg I drop out of hyperspace into a system that seems to be bathed in purple light, no doubt due to the influence of the bright O class main star. The system also boasts a neutron star and two black holes, making for a rather psychedelic sightseeing destination.
I head over to the first planet to have look around (I figure if I’m going to be a tourist I may as well do it properly). It makes for a spectacular sight on approach.
I even brave the 3.3g gravity and make a landing - wait, what’s that on the ground? Is this some kind of planetary acne?
No, Space Pumpkins!.
After 10 minutes tooling around on the ground the overwhelmingly pink landscape starts to give me a headache, so I make a swift exit and head on to the next stop on this whistle stop tour of the galaxy.
That’s all for now folks. Tune in next time to hear what happens. Same bat-time, same bat-channel … er … sorry, wrong franchise 
.
o7
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Nice! How’d that landing on The View go? Most of the Hull Seal service calls this week have been commanders in heavy ships with insufficient thrusters who got their hulls banged up from hard landings there.
When will you get to the Omega Mining Station?
Also, um, I don’t know how to say this, but, ah, there’s outfitting there now with all the mining tools. And a rudimentary shipyard. I’ve only had about an hour to hop in and start mining in an adjacent system, but by all looks, the Community Goal is flying towards completion- Frontier has added a 10th and 11th tier, and there’s already talk of a 12th, so those of us who have day jobs and social lives can contribute a bit before it’s done.
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The View turned out not to be much of a problem. I may just have got lucky, or it could be that the thrusters on the Krait are better than on the Anaconda (seems most of those who had difficulty were Anacondas - in fact the next chapter in my story has a bearing on this).
I made it to Omega late on Thursday morning, just before the server update, and I was SUPER BUMMED™ when I realised I had compromised on jump range unnecessarily. Still, it wasn’t that bad (8 extra LYs for the Krait Phantom, which is what I would have picked), and the situation may be different for WP7.
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Ok, this made me giggle a bit this morning.
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Yeah, the guy is REALLY good!
Oh that was excellent! Hilarious
…and subscribed.
Question: does anybody know if the Fleetcomm PG and Discord are back up and running? I know they were taken down a few days ago, I’m guessing because they were purging trolls.
Don’t know about the PG, but the Discord server seems to be ok
Well, I’ve decided to dust off my Keelback and resurrect my space trucking career after a rather long hiatus. Anyone know of any good locations for cargo missions, or a good resource for finding good cargo missions?
My first rather poor attempt at a screen shot in ED while relearning my controls outside a station.
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Had a fun night “back in the saddle”. Cranked some tunes and went around and took various contracts hauling cargo. It was pretty uneventful, until, while I was making the short jump from my last delivery back to Carver Station, I was interdicted by a player. I must say, this person had to be the worst pirate ever. They never scanned me once, which if they had they would have seen my empty hold. So on the first interdiction, we had something of an awkward stand off until I jumped. They then interdicted me again, but this time I just sat there laughing while they used hatch breakers on my empty hold, while getting pounded by local security. Upon realizing my hold was empty, they said something snarky in chat and then booked it. It was honestly the highlight of my night.
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Unfortunately you might find that there will be a higher ratio of pirate / combat (bully?) type players verses others (victims?) in the bubble for the next couple of months. Quite a large section of the playerbase has gone off on the DW2 expedition, and I suspect that a lot of the former type of players will stay behind.
I could be wrong 
Previously on DW2 …
I made it as far as The View and got a headache. Now the journey continues:
(Warning, screenshot heavy post)
Taking off from The View is a nervous affair, but ultimately uneventful. Having never made a high g departure before I consulted the Distant Worlds Discord server for advice. The difficulty comes from the relatively large surface gravity of 3.3g. This is apparently enough to overwhelm the thrusters under normal operation. Luckily, the planetary approach suite on the ship makes provision for the aft and bottom thrusters to be overdriven in high g environments. This process is automatic but takes a while to ‘spool up’, causing problems for the Flight Assist system controlling the ship.
So, following advice from others with more experience I deviate from my usual procedure of just pointing at the sky and hitting full throttle. I lift off into a hover and ascend strait up being careful to keep level. When I reach around 1km altitude I also start to accelerate forward until I’m travelling at maximum velocity. So far so good, now for the tricky bit. I pull the nose quickly up so the ship is pointing straight up, translating horizontal speed for vertical, and activate supercruise.
I wait for the FSD to charge … and wait … and wait … but it never engages. Looking down I can see the reason - I’m slowing down! I watch as I drop below 200m/s, then 150m/s. I prepare to abandon the takeoff and level out, but another glance at the speed before I do. It bottoms out at about 125m/s, then slowly starts to rise. It takes around a further 75 seconds before the ship picks up enough speed for the FSD to fire and we enter supercruise.
Phew! Panic over, and no harm done.
As I head out from The View I see another CMDR heading pretty much for the point I just left. In a friendly mood, I say ‘Hi’ before opening the Galaxy Map to plot the next leg. I have a look at the route and decide that a slight diversion to Hillary Depot would be a good idea. It only adds about 100 LY’s to the total distance and will give me a chance to land and offload the limpets I brought with me (in case there was no Outfitting in the Omega Sector).
Route plotted, I come out of the Galaxy Map to find that the other CMDR has sent me a message. It reads ‘That didn’t go well’. Oh dear. Some conversation ensues and I find out that his attempt to land his Anaconda on The View has left him without shields and down to 32% hull. We briefly discuss calling the Hull Seals, but in the end he elects to join me to Hillary Depot.
So I have one last look at the view before we wing up and head off.
On the very first jump I lose concentration and turn too late, dropping out of supercruise and overheating next to the star. 
Thirty-something jumps (and 2 more star crashes) later we arrive.
On approach.
And we’re down.
I visit Universal Cartographics and receive a nice fat payment of 5 million credits for the scanned data I’ve acquired on the way. Nice
OK, the next stop on the way is the planet of Labirinto. I pass a number of interesting stars / planets on the way.
I also uncover my first Notable Stellar Objects. They don’t seem to interact in an way, despite my attempts to get a reaction. Collisions, lasers, chaff, and heatsinks, and scans do not appear to affect them in any way. I find myself wishing I had brought a xeno scanner to try. Still, it was fun exploring the Lagrange cloud.
Moving on.
I finally arrive and the approach to Labirinto is lovely.
The canyons are great fun to explore, and I spend some time searching for phantom geological signals which keep jumping between the bottom and top of the canyon walls. The mist makes for fun flying, particularly with night vision switched off.
All too soon it is time to leave. This time I plot a course directly to Omega Mining. There is not much time left before the CG starts and I want to be there when it does. 1500 LY’s fly by without incident. The bright stars of the PW2010 supercluster are visible from a long way out, and just keep expanding with each jump.
And then I arrive and cruise in to the Omega Mining Operation asteroid base. The gas giant, supercluster and local nebulae provide a stunning backdrop.
And we’re here. Home for the next couple of weeks. Time to stretch my legs, and maybe hit the local bar before mining operations begin.
That’s all for now. Tune in next time for more thrilling adventures on Distant Worlds 2
o7
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