I must say, I am rather liking the new FSS and DSS on my ship, as per my previous log entries, I am on a journey along the Perseus arm northwest and north then across the far side of the core to make the trip to Beagle Point. My policy has been to scan every world in every system as I am exploring, I like to collect data on the journey, its not just for me on getting there as quickly as possible then moving on to the next thing. The FSS has meant that my system scanning speed has increased to a startling pace, before it installed itself, I was averaging a maximum of maybe 15 jumps a day, now I am up around 70 jumps a day and my rate of credit accumulation has increased as well, I am currently at 75,837,870 so far for this journey not including first discovery bonuses, mapping bonuses, and codex bonuses as well. I am going to modify my journey a bit, I am probably going to get to the end of the perseus arm, double back slightly and go to colonia, I went there about 18 months ago or so on my way back from Sag A* and I am interested in seeing how much the area has changed, hopefully, now I have a spare slot, I can hopefully find a guardian tech broker in colonia to get a FSD booster, then I can head to beagle point from there going across the top of the core. At some point I may even buy myself an anaconda and kit it out for mining, the new mining tools look rather fun. I do miss combat and running missions as well, but there is a definate thrill to this exploring that I cannot shake.

Its less than a week until chapter 4 drops, I am looking forward to the changes in exploration that the update will bring. unfortunately because of work, I won't be home when the update becomes available, so I have to wait until I return on Thursday to play. Oh well, its the nature of the beasty sometimes I guess! I am currently working my way along the Perseus Arm, currently in the Via Maris region, had first discovery on a couple of water worlds and an earth like as well. I have also discovered...I say discovered, its been here all the while! but I have "discovered" how to submit distances on the EDSM website so I can work towards some more badges, I am submitting distances every 4 or 5 systems that I scan, I don't really know why I chose that ratio but its what I ended up with. I still plan to go to beagle point and I have been collecting materials to boost my FSD as I am only capable of jumps of about 25ly, I can apparently also make it there via the Eurus area, but we will see how things go.

Yesterday I stopped off at the base in Soul Sector EL-Y d7, its an asteroid base in the rings of a gas giant sitting just inside the soul nebula, its an incredibly pretty location, my efforts of scanning everything and anything on the way netted me about 60,000,000 credits which has brought me up to just under my previous credit balance before I bought various ships after my trip to the core. I also stopped off on the second moon of the gas giant to vist the "doom geysers" they are some water geysers which at night are lit by the light of the nebula and they look blood red, very disturbing! note to self - do not drive over one of the big geysers as they do launch you over a km into the air! My next planned stop is a location on the map called the sapphire veil, apparently it is a moon which intersects the rings of a gas giant, and it has some interesting effects if you are on the surface at the time. its about 640 ly from my current location and I will be continuing with the scan everything philosophy, it has slowed my progress down to a crawl, but it is proving very profitable.

I have been spending some exploration time heading towards the Wayfairers graveyard after spending a few days pootling around aimlessly scanning everything just outside the bubble, every system I have been scanning everything available, I then decided to head towards NGC 7822 as it had a research station where I could offload some survey caches and the exploration data. so 45,000,000 credits later I am sitting in the Gorgon Research Facility trying to plan where to go next, I am still rather tempted to go to the Wayfairers graveyard, then west along the perseus arm, dip into the formidine rift, just for the badge then, continue around the galaxy to the far side of the core, then try for beagle point from there just so I can say I have been, then either come back straight through the core, or continue around the galaxy clockwise until I come back to the bubble that way. the whole plan of scanning everything means that overall progress is slow, but isn't that part of what exploring is about? recording what you see, it's about the journey, not how fast you can get to the destination and back again.

Its going to take a long time, but each journey starts with the first hyperspace jump....but first...another cuppa!

Well, its been a while since my last post, been playing occasionally, but work demands and acquring one of these girlfriend things have curtailed some of my gaming time! Since my last update I have been working on my combat and trading ranks and they are slowly creeping up, I also got to leutenant in the federation by doing a few missions, I am currently about 51% on that rank so I should rank up when I do some more missions in the bubble. I did buy myself a Krait mk2 when they came out with the update and I will be honest, it has become quite a favourite ship to fly, combat it is pretty solid and packs a good punch, its got a resonable size for cargo, not huge but it does shift most of the stuff in the missions I have taken and it looks really pretty in the external views as well. I also picked up some of those iridescent paint jobs and kitted out the Krait and my Asp Explorer with new colour schemes and they look pretty good. I did switch to my asp and joined the Gnosis for its planned visit to the COL 70 sector, and was in a meeting in London the day she jumped so was not able to play until I returned, that was fun times with the Thargoids attacking as soon as anyone went near the ship, but I did manage to get to the Barnacle site and collect a hold full of meta alloys, I then returned to the bubble, jumped in the Krait and after a week or so of doing missions and collecting materials and data for future engineering, I have decided to take the Krait out for a spin in the black properly. I am heading vaguely towards the formadine rift with a view to getting the badge and I may just work my way around the galaxy scanning everything, its going to take a long time to do this trip, hopefully there will be a bubble for me to return to, I am guessing it will take between 9 months and a year for the trip depending on other commitments outside of the galaxy!

Haven't been playing a huge amount recently, been only getting a couple of sessions in each week, to be honest, I have needed a bit of a break so have been playing skyrim and recently got Kerbal Space Programme which is quite good fun, but has a very steep learning curve, especially in career mode. I also had a bit of an issue with the VR headset, it was not detecting when i put it on. I tried resetting the graphics card drivers, and the Occulus rift software and was becomming convinced there was a problem with it. but it turned out to be the USB 3 card in the computer had poor contacts, I managed to reseat the board but if I screw it in to secure it, it pulls the contacts away from the slot so I have left it unsecured, it seems to be quite happy now though.

I recently decided to get myself a vulture, I fancied a small quick craft which I can use in combat zones to get some combat bonds and for a bit of bounty hunting. its quite a tough little ship and I have had some fun with pythons and covettes, it does need to have its thrusters engineered and sheilds upgraded as well, but its good fun so far, I do have the craving to go exploring again so I may have to break out Binky again soon, but I want to get another rank on both my combat and trader ranks before I do. Where to go though, I would like to go to beagal point via colonia and the north west sector of the galaxy, it will be a journey of several months for me, but I think I will wait until the next update drops at the end of the month, see whats happening then do my happy wanderer bit again :)

Got to Dangerous rank today :) I had the easter weekend just going to a high res site and killing pythons, Federal gunships and fer de lances in my chieftain, also had a couple of fights with anaconda's some of which I won, others I had to run away from! but I did it! :) I also became allied with the sirius corperation so I can now work on my permit for Siruis.

Weather has been a bit crappy over the past few days...polar vortex/snowmageddon/beast from the east kind of thing, us brits cannot handle the snow....or the sun or to be fair, anything other than a mild spring day with a mix of sun and cloud. been playing after work, I kitted Binky the Python out with a refinery and a limpet controller and went for a spot of mining.....I did start doing it in VR but found the headset was irritating my head so I reverted to just using the screen, its rather relaxing, find an asteroid, blast it with a mining laser, send the collection limpets out to grab the goods and sit back and watch the credits roll in, and if pirates attack, once they have been dispatched, my friendly little limpets scoop up all the materials from the pirates ships....lovely :)

I also managed to get onto CQC tonight for the first time since the update, the first time tonight I tried, everyone was stuck in the lobby for the deathmatch with the spinner going saying waiting for players. I went back to mining for a bit then came back to it and got in straight away. Had a few good matches then finally.....I won!!! only the second match I have won in deathmatch....then I realised that I was the highest ranked player there in that match...oh well....I am counting that one as a win! :)

So downloaded the update almost as soon as it became available from Frontier, then found I needed to also download a similarly sized update from occulus! but, got it done, there were a few wobbles logging in and the launcher is showing a server error, but I got online, I had a pootle around the solar system and headed out to Actaea as a marker appeared mentioning ice fumaroles so I popped over to take a look. I arrived and found a field of ice fumaroles, I didn't realise that these things have commodities attached to them which you can shoot off and collect. the gravity on Actaea is very low so the commodities flew up into the sky and didnt want to come down, so I had to use the boosters on the SRV to jump in the air to catch them. I then popped over to Juri Ishmaak to upgrade my discovery scanner to a longer range upgrade, I also gave my sensors an upgrade as well to a wider angle. I then popped back to cleve hub, and swapped back to Binky my Python, tomorrow I will modify her to a mining craft and go for a spot of relaxing mining.

I did try to get into CQC deathmatch tonight but no matches came up, probably due to everyone downloading and playing the main game.

Not playing anything at the moment...first and foremost its patch day so everything is down, second, I am working from home today and just shovelling some food into me. I have found the perfect music for CQC, its the various tunes of early 90s dance act 2 unlimited.....I found them a good pacey sound track to getting my bum handed to me on a plate repeatedly last night and I may well plop into CQC again once I have updated as it may be a bit of a safe haven from everyone logging into the main game to try out the new features....I will see how I feel as its also discovery channel night tonight.