Inspired by @fearlessfrog’s desire to become a big time smuggler, I decide to run off and join him. I figure Sothis has a much more exotic-sounding name than Eravate, so he must be far, but it’s just the galaxy. How far away can it be?
Turns out 492.66 lightyears away. Sothis is 496.66 lightyears away from my current location, which happens to be whole heck of a lot of furlongs.
Not daunted at all by the prospect, I hope into my well-outfitted Viper III and begin my journey.
They say the journey of a thousand miles begins with one step. My journey is of 96 hops, and I need to do hop after hop after hop.
If you’ve never played E:D, that’s a lot of hops. That’s 96 hyperspace jumps towards a star system, FSD cooldown, reorient and then enter hyperspace again. This will take a while.
Naturally, each hyperspace jump, and some amount of fuel, and it’s not like the galaxy is littered with 76 stations. Luckily, I’m equipped with a fuel scoop, so I can just fly near a star, scoop up the surrounding gases into my tanks, and relatively quickly top them off. But, just like America’s Got Talent, it takes the right kind of star - O, B, A, F, G, K, or M type stars have the right kind of “atmosphere” around them to be scooped up into fuel. There have been no Mr. Fusion items in the shipyards I’ve visited. Maybe the black market?
At a couple of points along the trek I ran into a string of non-scoopable stars that would have left me high and dry out in the middle of space had I not used the very powerful galaxy map to scout ahead. The Star Type filter very quickly showed me the vast desert ahead of me and gave me some near-by options to fill up.
Another consideration is sleeping quarters. I’m not sure if E:D will let me just park my ship out in space, so I have to find a station to hangar in for the night. This turned out to be a problem tonight - I couldn’t see ANY stations in my vicinity! I had to make another 11 jumps, just to get to a spot to stay for the night, and I also had to pick my route to go past some scoopable stars. It was like driving across Wyoming!
Anyways, I’ve ended the night a little closer to Sothis, but still feeling very unprepared for whatever lay ahead of me. I was hoping to run across more populated systems, and possibly find some shipyards to get weapons, upgrades, or ships I couldn’t find around Eravate. I’m beginning to feel more and more like the city mouse having just realized how far away I am from everything.
I’ve still got 199.59 lightyears to go, which is probably another full night of hopping, but imma coming, @fearlessfrog!