Lovely Jubbly!

The gas giant just hangs in space, looking for all the world like a giant, chocolate cream marble, surround by a dazzling, wide series of rings of milky white. Slowing supercruise down to a crawl, the Delanderby fires a single, lone probe toward the wafer thin icy hoops. I just sit there and wait. Everything is silent. Everything is still. The scan completes, and a complex pattern of orangey-yellow discs interrupt the brightness, shining like beacons of potential. I casually scroll through the signals now over-populating the navigation panel. Void Opals, Low Temperature Diamonds, Alexandrite – I’m not interersted in such riches. It’s not long before my target shows and there appears to be plenty of it.

Tritium!

And many overlaps too, there even appears to be a triple hotspot! I point the nose of my beautiful Imperial Cutter at the glowing triforce of disks and gently cruise down to the grindstone.

So, I have an apology to make. There will be no more Buckyball blogs this season at least. And the reason for this is threefold. Firstly my love affair with Elite had been rekindled in such a profound way with Double Trouble that the exploration itch needed scratching. I coudn’t ignore it. And it just kept getting itchier and itchier, to the point where it was becoming painful. Secondly, the following Buckyball race, a re-run of Back to Pareco, was a source of great frustration. I could only submit a below par unlimited run. And my regualtion run, after dozens of failed attempts, was even worse. Thirdly, the dreaded RL was rearing its ugly head and making gaming time difficult causing me to have to miss the next Buckball (Braking Badly) altogether. Which was a great shame. As soon as I could I climbed back into the El-ahrairah’s Request (my ASP explorer with a sellar screenshot winner’s paintjob) to continue my journey to Colonia. The frustration of Buckball had gone, and was replaced by wonder, serenity, and a complete escape from reality.

My main goal…no…not goal as such. My main dream in Elite Dangerous has always been to explore the fullness of the Galaxy.

Inspired by the likes of Cmdr Commander Picard and Cmdr William Diffin, I’d always dreamt of, one day, leaving it all behind and travelling to the very furthest reaches of the Milky Way. To lazily saunter around the core. To see the spectacular sights other commanders had seen before me but also to discover my own space jellyfish, my own black holes, my own ringed Earthlike worlds. To find rare and beautiful phenomena and report them back to the community so that everyone else can see them too. My trip to Colonia had so far been full of wonder, ringed water worlds, bark mounds, rare biologicals. Yet I knew there were even greater treasures waiting for me around the galaxy. My plan had been to fly to Colonia via V1357 Cygni and scan as many biologicals as I could. This would hopefully give me a massive payment on arrival – enough to buy my very own Fleet Carrier! And some of the sights and disvoveries I was stumbling across on my way only whetted my appetite further!

The black has been calling to me for years. And this past month the pull has been far too strong to resist. My trip to Colonia had begun many months ago, and by the time the penultimte Buckyball race (Prison Brake II – Brake Harder run by Ashnak) came around I only had about fifty jumps to go.

I took a look at the rules for the race. It looked fun. It looked simple. It looked quick. Right up my alley! But...but…

The El-ahrairah’s request is such a joy to fly. And it’s engine noise sounds like a Rolls Royce Merlin. And it gives such a beautiful view from its cockpit. And such beautiful views were obligingly revealing themselves to me system, after system, after system.

Sorry, Ashnak. The Asp won out.

It was now a race to get to Colonia as fast as I could. I needed to hand in that data! I still investigated any worlds I thought interesting but it was mainly just jump, honk and scan from then on.

Suprisingly it wasn’t until I was only two jumps away from Colonia that the undiscovered systems stopped. I thought it would be much further out. Don’t Colonians explore? Also, it was strange finding another group of human colonies this far from the Bubble. And the whole place feels different. Wilder, rougher, more free.

Travelling here in my Asp Ex had been marvellous, but I wanted my exploring to be more…more intrepid, and I remembered fondly exploring as Leeya Geddy in the Rushfleet’s Working Man. Which meant I would need to get myself a Hauler. And this time it would be yellow! Just like dodgy dealer Del Trotter’s three wheeled Reliant Robin van in the London based sitcom “Only Fools And Horses”. Thanks to a suggestion from Lave Radio, I would be calling it the Lovely Jubbly! How could I call it anything else? I would need to engineer it too, which, even though I had plenty of blueprints pinned from the Bubble, would mean getting an invite from Mel Brandon. I needed those 2a enhanced thrusters! Anyway, as soon as I arrived here I made my first mistake. I handed in all my data at Jaques Station when I should have handed it in at one of the Colonia Coucil stations and received the invite straight away. Still, I managed to earn around 4.5 billion which, added to the 3.5 billion I already had gave me a decent amount to purchase my carrier.

And here she is! Cmdrs I present to you the Esmerelda Weatherwax!

I’ve only outfitted her with the exploring basics for now. Refuel/Repair, Rearm/Restock, Universal Cartographics and a Vista Genomics. I may go on a little shake down excursion in the Hauler to be able to put in a bar as well. “But why explore with a fleet carrier?” I hear you cry. Well, I want total freedom, for some that definately doesn’t mean dragging a fuel hungry beast around with them. But I want to be able to change ships whenever I feel like, no matter where I am out in the Black. I want to able to constantly check in and drop off my data, I want to be able to land on high g worlds without worrying about lost data if I foul up. I want to have a reason to survey rings in stunning systems and then mine those rings for fuel as a break from exploring. I aim to travel light. If all that means I have to mine a couple of thousand tons of tritium every 5000 light years or so, it’s a great trade off as far as I’m concerned.

Now it was just a question of which ships I should import from the Bubble to take with me on my travels.

And, finally, let me present my now fully engineered Hauler, in whom I’ll be doing the bulk of the exploring. The Lovely Jubbly…

In fact, I also decided to visit the engineers I’m using in character.

Which was interesting.

Sorry, couldn’t resist it.

I feel the only thing left now is to keep mining that Tritium (that and roaming various bodies searching for occupied escape pods for Etienne’s Meat Emporium). Now, I used to stuggle a little bit with mining. It was nice for the first few hundred tons or so but then it tended to drag. This time, however, I’m up to 1500 tons and I can’t wait to get back out there. For some reason, once I start firing off those prospectors all my troubles and worries start to melt away. It’s just me and the ice, with the gas giant silently watching over me way off in the distance. And, believe you me, it’s therapy I’m sorely in need of at the moment. Strangely enough it’s very simillar to a real life occupation of mine, mucking out horse stables, only a lot less brown.

The Delanderby drops out of supercruise and glides gently down towards the quiet, hanging field of emormous ice lumps that stretch as far as the eye can see. Beyond, the gas giant hangs there, still, silent, immovable. A pair of signals appear on the scanner, interrupting the tranquility. I gracefully turn the cutter’s huge bulk around to face them. Two Imperial clippers, very much the worse for wear wearily scan my cargo racks. They are not interested in limpets. They sluggishly turn away, and dissappear back into the icy fog. Satisfied they are gone, I spy a juicy pair of jagged ice balls spinning gently mere yards away from each other. I fire off a couple of prospectors, the sound of their chugging engines fading away as they propell themselves purposefully towards their goals. They hit, one after the other and, to my delight, both asteroids have a high percentage of Tritium.

My hardpoints deployed

My nine limpets out, waiting

Lahv-ely Jubbly!