Wednesday 29 July 2015

Day 17: The seven sisters

After a bit of pondering upon how to determining where to explore first, I thought that I would start with some well known objects. One such set are the Messier Objects. As these are a mixture of nebulae, clusters and other galaxies, I can only visit those that are present within our galaxy. A list of objects, by type can be found at seds.

Some issues that immediately became clear were:
  1. Not all Messier objects (that are in our galaxy) are necessarily present in Elite. I can probably only find this out by visiting and seeing.
  2. You can search for any system in Elite by typing in its name. However, you have to be exact - spaces, dashes and such like can cause the search to fail. As most objects seem to have a multitute of names, each of these have to be typed in until the one that Elite uses is found.

    One solution to this is the list of objects in the elite dangerous explorers encyclopaedia. A useful list that I gives a number of Messier objects as well as other places of interest.

    One solution that has been given is to use the SIMBAD site as this will give alternative names for objects.
  3. The locations for astronomical objects is given in, what appears to be, spherical coordinates. For example, M45 (Pleiades or seven sisters) (SimBad Link) is given as "Right ascension", "Declination" and "Distance", whereas in Elite, objects are given coordinates in cartesian. I need to be able to convert between the two before I can successfully navigate to objects where the specific name is not present in Elite. It depends upon whether it will be quicker to figure it out myself or find a site that does it.
As a start, I selected the key stars in M45. I was rather surprised to find that there were 9 stars in the seven sisters, but that is because the parents (Atlas & Pleione) are also included. Getting there was fairly simple as each star was listed under their name, eg Electra, Atlas, etc. After visiting all of them, including the black hole in the Maia system, I went up to see if I could find any systems that hadn't been visited. Unfortunately, it was at that time I miss-timed a refuelling and overheated - destroying my nice new ship. Just as well I had the insurance.

After a quick rare goods run to ensure that I had replaced the insurance cost, I set off again, this time to a witch nebular. This led to some fantastic views, as can be seen here.

I have camped out in deep space, hoping to return home tomorrow.
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Day 16: Does my Asp look fat in this?

Sorry, I have been working on that title for some days now - this gives an idea of teh level of boredom when travelling to and fro across the space lanes to cellect rare goods and sell them at over-inflated prices.

Today I reached my first goal: to be able to afford and kit out my Asp-explorer.

The configuration for my Asp can be found here. key features are a top range engine, fuel scoop, decent fuel capacity and top sensors. General information about my new ship can be found here.

My two commercial trips at the start of the day meant that my bank balance went from 13.4M to 15.2M. This dropped somewhat after purchasing my shiny new ship, especially as I decided to keep my old Cobra in storage, as opposed to trading it in.

Now that I have my exploration vessel, the key question, to quote the immortal words of Buffy the vampire Slayer: "Where do we go from here?"

With the galaxy to explore, there are a lot of possibilities. I think I will start with some simple trips to nearby objects or regions, before embarking upon long trips to the galactic core, the rim or the full circle.
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'Elite', the Elite logo, the Elite: Dangerous logo, 'Frontier' and the Frontier logo are registered trademarks of Frontier Developments Plc.

Day 15: Nearly there

Started my day with 11.6M credits and finished with 13.4M credits. As usual this was achived in two legs/ runs, ie one leg starting a Kamcabe, visiting the nearby ststems and selling at V595 Lyrae. The second leg working my way acros th system, ending at Altair and then selling at Kamcabe.

Having noticed that systems with high production rates are more efficient (who would have thought), these runs were far quicker. However, a single leg still takes about 2 hours. I have started taking statistics on how long each jump, each docking and each selling takes so that I have the information required to set up a travelling salesman optimiser, should I need to do this again.

As my fully kitted out ASP-explorer required around 14.7M (including the 5% insurance), I should make this with tomorrow's trips.


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'Elite', the Elite logo, the Elite: Dangerous logo, 'Frontier' and the Frontier logo are registered trademarks of Frontier Developments Plc.

Day 14: Beyond 10M

A profitable day today, with 3 trips performed. This meant that the day started with a bank balance of 8.91M and ended with 11.06M credits.

One learning point from the new route is the importance of the size of the cargo from each port. On my last leg I collected 24 tons of cargo from Altair, more than 4 other systems combined.

If I was to continue for this for much longer, I need to identify an efficient route that takes into account the likely amount of product present at each system, as well as the proximity between systems. It feels like another genetic algorithm version of the travelling salesman problem is to come.


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'Elite', the Elite logo, the Elite: Dangerous logo, 'Frontier' and the Frontier logo are registered trademarks of Frontier Developments Plc.

Saturday 25 July 2015

Day 13: Second verse, same as the first

Only one trip leg today, started with 8.01M Cr and ended with 8.91M Credits.

While the new route adds more interest to the runs to collect rare goods and avoids having to go back to some places to fill the cargo hold, the interest is waning rapidly. However, at least I am rapidly getting closer to my goal of around 15M to purchase and kit out my Asp explorer.

 The title for today's minicule post is taken from the linking phase in the song: I'm Henery the Eighth I Am


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'Elite', the Elite logo, the Elite: Dangerous logo, 'Frontier' and the Frontier logo are registered trademarks of Frontier Developments Plc.





Friday 24 July 2015

Day 12: New route

The day started with 6.19M Cr and ended with 8.01M Cr.

The first route was similar to the previous one, ie:
  •  Kamcabe
    • Leesti : [George Lucas] { Leestian Evil Juice  14t & Azure Milk 7t}
    • Lave: [Lave Station] {Lavian Brandy 7t}
    • Diso: [Shifnalport] {Diso Ma Corn 15t}
    • Orrere: [Sharon Lee Free Market] {Orrerian Vicious Brew 16t}
    • CD-75 661: [Kirk Dock CD-75] {Kitten Brand Coffee 12t}
    • Baltah'Sine: [Baltha'sine Station] {Baltah'sine Vacuum Krill 18t}
  • Sell at V595 Lyrae
    • Esuseku : [ Savinykh Orbital] { Esuseku Caviar 10t }
    • Kongga : [ Laplace Ring] { Kongga Ale 16t }
    • Ethgreze : [ Bloch Station]  { Ethgreze Tea Buds 7t }
    • Bast : [ Hart Station ] { Bast Snake Gin 10t }
    • 39 Tauri : [ Porta] { Tauri Chimes 17t }
    • Fujin : [ Futen Spaceport] { Fujin Tea 10t 
    • Witchhaul : [ Hornby Terminal] { Witchhaul Kobe Beef 9t }
    • Momus Reach : [ Tartarus Point] { Momus Bog Spaniel 7t }
    • Epsilon Indi : [ Mansfield Orbiter] { Indi Bourbon 11t }
  • Sell at Kamcabe
While there are a lot more stations on the second leg, it avoids having to go back to the same station 2 or 3 times, where there may be no more goods available on the return.


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'Elite', the Elite logo, the Elite: Dangerous logo, 'Frontier' and the Frontier logo are registered trademarks of Frontier Developments Plc.

Thursday 23 July 2015

Day 11: Somebody else must have put it there officer

Started the day with 5.35M Credits. Ended with 6.19MCr.
It is taking several visits to each station at the purchasing end before the cargo hold is full. I have therefore started to look at alternative places to purchase rare goods.

A good 3D map of rare items can be found here: rares-systems-3d-map. This pointed me to the spreadsheet that contained the source for the information. A few moments with excel allowed me to get the information into a simple format that I copied and pasted into my favourite data visualisation tool: Data Warrior.

This allows me to examine the relative location of all the systems that sell rare items and then filter on key properties, eg distance of the station from the sun. I then used the data from eddb to obtain the coordinates of the systems where I sell my items. From looking at the results, it would seem that the group of systems around Lave are well situated. however, the other set of systems are suboptimal.

As I was around Altair at the time, I stopped at Kappa Fornacis to fill the last 3tons of cargo space, having identified it from the rare commodities list. Unfortunately, I didn't check the description. I therefore only realised that the final cargo of "Onion Head" was illegal in most systems when I got fined upon leaving my mid way refuelling station. However, the fine was only 6,300Cr, so didn't affect my profit. What was more upsetting was that I had to dump the cargo to avoid more fines in every place that I visited since I could sell it at my usual places.

A link to the rare goods 3d map in dataWarrior format can be found here.


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'Elite', the Elite logo, the Elite: Dangerous logo, 'Frontier' and the Frontier logo are registered trademarks of Frontier Developments Plc.

Tuesday 21 July 2015

Day 10: Getting Faster

As the next set of days look like they will be dedicated to earning more cash, I tried some ways to speed up the process of travelling between systems. These included:
  • When setting the destination, just selected the system from the global map (if it wasn't in the local list).
  • For multiple jumps, try setting the destination using the "fastest" route. If there is not enough fuel for the fasted route, but there is for the economic route, start the journey using the economic route, then change it to fastest part way though the journey.
  • When performing a series of jumps, don't wait for the engine to cool down before staring the next jump - as long as the temperature is not getting too high.
Two more runs were completed again today, netting around 900k each. This brings my total to 5.35M credits.



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'Elite', the Elite logo, the Elite: Dangerous logo, 'Frontier' and the Frontier logo are registered trademarks of Frontier Developments Plc.

Monday 20 July 2015

Day 9: This look familiar

The day started with 1.7M credits. After a trip that ended at Kamcabe, I had 2.66M Cr and the return journey brought me up to 3.51M Cr.

A good day's trading. Even the journey's of 10 or 20 jumps are getting easier - no close calls today - except when the computer decided to switch focus away from the game to something else - not fun when you have just come out of hyperspace and are approaching a sun.

It is currently taking between an hour and 90 minutes to fill the cargo hold with the 56 tons of rare items and around 30-40 minutes to take them to the market to sell.

During the long journeys, I have been toying with the ideal configuration for my Asp Explorer. My current favourite can be found here: Configured Asp Explorer

At a full cost of  15.4M Credits, at around 900k Credits per leg, it will take me around 14 more runs to pay for my Asp and insurance.

At 2 runs an evening, it will take me a week before I can start some serious exploring.


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'Elite', the Elite logo, the Elite: Dangerous logo, 'Frontier' and the Frontier logo are registered trademarks of Frontier Developments Plc.

Sunday 19 July 2015

Day 8: Connection error

The day started well. I re-traced the same route as yesterday. It took about 2 hours to re-trace one part of the run, but at the end I had increase my cash balance from 845,718 to 1,757,491.

I started the second part and had filled 50 of my 56 cargo hold when I had to re-trace part of the route to fill the remaining capacity. It was at this stage when I hit two problems. The first was when I docked at Altair. It wasn't possible to refuel. I therefore went to the next leg, George Pantazis. It was here that the real problem started - the server kept on going down, claiming either a connection error or an unrecoverable error. In either case, it dumped me back to the start menu for me to try again. After about 6 attempts, I gave up. I suspect that my ship is floating in deep space until I am able to connect again, sometime tomorrow.

However, a haul of about 900k in one leg isn't too bad.


I have been looking at what ship I should get next. If I am going to explore the galaxy, the Asp_Explorer would be my choice. However at 6.6M, plus extras, it will take a little time before I can afford it. I will be exploring different options using this excellent tool: ed ship yard


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'Elite', the Elite logo, the Elite: Dangerous logo, 'Frontier' and the Frontier logo are registered trademarks of Frontier Developments Plc.

Saturday 18 July 2015

Day 7: I'd like mine rare please

It would seem that there are items being sold that are considered "rare". These items only occur in a single space port and can be sold for vast profits when they are transported long distances.

A video showing such a trip, which netted > 1M credits for the owner can be found here.

I tried a route mentioned in the comments, ie:

The rare items present at different locations can be found here.


After the first leg, which netted around 300k, I upgraded the FSD (frame shift drive, aka hyperdrive) to the top of the range as well as upping my cargo capacity to the maximum of 20tons), so ending up with a total left of of 201k.

The second leg of the round trip was made a lot easier through the increased jump distance of my new hyperdrive. While the planets used to collect the rares for the second half of the trip were close neighbours, the journey to V595 Lyrae took 25 jumps, including a refuelling stop.

This route saw my cash leap to 521,590 credits. Using this new wealth, I sold my hauler and purchased a Cobra Mk. III.  I also upgraded my new ship with cargo space, fuel tanks and enhanced FSD. By the end of my spending spree I had 131,800 Cr in the bank and a very nice ship.The only item missing was a docking station - as I found out when I jumped to my first port of call. As this port didn't sell docking computers, I had to find and fly to one that did. After this scary aspect, I re-traced the first leg of the rare goods route.

With the enhanced cargo space, I could carry 49 rare items along the long, final journey of 37 jumps. Fortunatly, the enhanced fuel tanks meant that I could perform this journey without fuel stops.As a result, the final, long, leg took around 30 minutes for the 37 jumps and meant that my final bank balance was 845,718Credits.

A good days work.


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'Elite', the Elite logo, the Elite: Dangerous logo, 'Frontier' and the Frontier logo are registered trademarks of Frontier Developments Plc.

Day 6: Pass the sunscreen please

Suns are hot.

Who would have thought it. After losing my cargo yesterday and setting back my road to riches so that I dropped from 66k to 6k, today I aimed to get back on track.

I started by updating Slopey's BPC for the system of Yakbugai. After typing in all the values, into the app (the OCR wouldn't work on my screenshots - apparently they are too low quality and the default colour scheme seems designed to make life awkward for OCR), I noticed that teh values that were captured in the app were nothing like those shown in the screen. SO I re-typed the values in again. At least the BPC had current prices for this station for the rest of the evening.

I started my trading runs off in good spirits, until I got caught by a star again. This time, destroying my ship. Fortunately, I had a decent amount of cash behind (I had been keeping a float of at least 6k each trip), so I only dropped from 30k to 12k.

Today key learning is to avoid having a conversation when coming out of hyperspace.

The rest of evening was uneventful and I able to increase my cash to 48,778Cr. In the process I have swapped my basic discovery scanner for another cargo rack and purchased a heat sink launcher.


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'Elite', the Elite logo, the Elite: Dangerous logo, 'Frontier' and the Frontier logo are registered trademarks of Frontier Developments Plc.

Thursday 16 July 2015

Day 5: setback

As usual, I started the day with a search for good routes using slopey's BPC tool. A good pair of planets were around 90LY away. With the new drive, this only took a few jumps and so I was quickly down to making more cash.

Unfortunately, during one jump, I said too close to a star and took on heat damage. As a result, I lost my cargo. I will let you imagine my unhappiness when I finally docked, paid for the repairs and found that I had no cargo to sell. As a result my cash dropped from 66,642 to 6682. Just as well I had kept some in reserve - primarily for the insurance on my ship, but to act as cash reserve to start to build up my wealth again it is also invaluable.

After 1 more run, I started the day with 34,119 Cr and ended it with 9,421 Cr. Not a perfect result.


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'Elite', the Elite logo, the Elite: Dangerous logo, 'Frontier' and the Frontier logo are registered trademarks of Frontier Developments Plc.

Wednesday 15 July 2015

Day 4: The long haul

Today I started with 31,784 credits. After a long day's trading, I have ended up with 34,254 credits in the bank.

Admittedly, a long day's trading is only 5 1/2 round trips and along the way I sold my ship and purchased my first new ship: A hauler.

I have outfitted my shiney new hauler with:
  • Updated frame shift drive: C2
  • A docking computer. It has made life so much easier and I haven't suffered anything like a glitch with it so far so I am continuing to use it.
  • enhanced cargo pod. swapping the E2 (4 tons) with a E3 cargo rack of  8 ton capacity.
  • Selling the weapons and using the shields slot for the docking computer.

By selling the guns, I reduce my weight and so extend my range a bit. As I plan to run in the case of any problems, this is not an issue.

As a result, my cargo capacity is now 12tons and range is 16.55LY (laden) to 11.97 LY (laden).

A key new aspect is that I now need to keep an insurance fund of 3810 Credits to buy-back my ship if it gets destroyed.

With this new ship I have started well on my trading career.


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'Elite', the Elite logo, the Elite: Dangerous logo, 'Frontier' and the Frontier logo are registered trademarks of Frontier Developments Plc.

Tuesday 14 July 2015

Day 3. Trading in earnest

Having spent so much time getting to Isleta for the promised windfall, today was spent trading between Isleta and Nornari. At around 3.5k per round trip, I have kept on looking for alternative routes, but the lack of distance on my current hyperdrive engine greatly restricted my options.

After After about 5 round trips, my funds had increased from 23,562Cr to 47,163Cr. To get anywhere at this rate would take a very long time. I therefore opted to purchase an improved hyperdrive (FSD) for 17.8k. This opened up many more trading options and so my last run of the evening promised a far larger round trip profit of around 5.5k instead of 3.5k.

With my longer jump capaility, I'll seek out more profitable journeys next time.


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'Elite', the Elite logo, the Elite: Dangerous logo, 'Frontier' and the Frontier logo are registered trademarks of Frontier Developments Plc.

Monday 13 July 2015

Day two. Docking computer

Having learnt how to use Slopey's BPC (best profit calculator) I have had a good day's trading. I started the with around 3300 credits and ended the day with 14,000 credits. Best of all, I managed to purchase a docking computer for 4,500Cr.

I have found that the docking computer has made life so much easier. Beforehand, docking took a long time and was a big struggle. Now it is as simple as getting to within 7 km of the starbase and requesting permission to dock. As long as my speed is low enough, the docking computer takes over and lands me within a minute. No more painful struggles to align myself with the entrance to a space station or searching for my landing pad while spinning around like a demented dervish. Now I just pop out of frame shift drive, potter towards the starbase and request permission. As long as I don't get bored with the familiar music of the "Blue Danube Waltz" I should be fine.

After earning my first 10k, I wondered how far I could push Slopey's tool. I therefore did a search to see what was the best run for me between any two pairs of planets near to each other. I was amazed to see that there was a run that yielded a trip profit of 35k.

I therefore plotted a course to the profitable system of Isleta - a journey of 41 jumps. Today's learning experience was to check that you have sufficient fuel to continue. I soon learnt to examine the galactic map to see which systems contained a population and so a chance to refuel.

Eventually, after many refueling stops I reached Isleta and purchased my cargo. Next stop is the neighbouring system of Nornari to sell my valuable goods.As I approach the system, the key question is whether Slopey's BPC is correct and I am about to make a massive gain.

The answer is "No". I make a profit of a few hundred per item. Oh well, perhaps tomorrow will bring my fortune,

At least the journey hasn't been in vain. I have sold the data on the systems I have travelled through to get here. As a result, I end the day with 23,562 credits.


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'Elite', the Elite logo, the Elite: Dangerous logo, 'Frontier' and the Frontier logo are registered trademarks of Frontier Developments Plc.

Sunday 12 July 2015

The Travels of Nobbler the Wanderer.

 Day one. The beginning.

Today I have started playing Elite Dangerous for the first time. I used to play the original game of Elite many years ago on my Sinclair Spectrum and so wished to see how the game has improved since then.

As someone who is not very dexterous, I have been trying the tutorials so that I can learn to dock without crashing. Eventually I managed to succeed, though I still tend to get sea sick from the rapid changes in orientation that occur before finally docking.

Since the game covers 400,000,000,000 or so star systems, my plan is to see what I can do to explore this vast space. The aim of this blog is to report my progress in this endeavour.

The first part of my plan is to earn sufficient cash to enable me to purchase and equip a ship that will enable me to start my wanderings. Due to my failure to shoot down anything in the tutorials, the obvious route to economic success is to become a trader.

To help me in this first part, I have come across a tool called:  "Slope's Best Profit Calculator". This tool, as its name suggests, enables a trader to identify which items to purchase at a space station and where to sell them so that the maximum profit is obtained under he constraints of your ship and budget. If this tool works, I look forward to rapidly gaining the funds required.

 At the end of my first day, I have made 4 trading runs. t the end of it, my cash has increased from its initial value of 1000 credits to 3500 credits. Not a bad start for someone who can barely dock a ship.

Today's top tip. I found that a couple of times, I landed my ship in the correct bay, but the space station didn't register me as being docked. I found out that this was due to my ship not facing the correct direction. It would seem that the ship has to face the control tower before docking is complete. Now that I know that this is a requirement, I see to dock a lot easier now.

Despite this, a docking computer is still one of the luxuries that I look forward to purchasing.

I look forward to seeing how quickly my cash increases with the limited cargo space of my first ship.




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'Elite', the Elite logo, the Elite: Dangerous logo, 'Frontier' and the Frontier logo are registered trademarks of Frontier Developments Plc.