Elite Dangerous How Do You Know How Many Jumps Your Ship Can Make

Elite'south Distant Worlds ii expedition: Packing for a trip to the edge of the Milky Way

The largest player-led event in the spacefaring MMO'southward history marks a new beginning for its community

By Jan 7, 2019, 2:08pm EST

Commander Dr. Kaii via Twitter/Frontier Developments

An ambitious, 200,000-light year expedition within the world of Elite: Dangerous is virtually to accept flying. After it kicks off Jan. 13, Distant Worlds two will take players roughly eight full months to complete. In reality, the expedition is best compared to a communal roguelike adventure: I false step could mean the loss of weeks or even months of in-game progress, with literally nothing to show for the effort. It's why thousands of players are banding together to assistance mitigate the risk.

I began preparing for the journey a few weeks ago, upgrading and outfitting my send at the cost of millions of in-game credits and hours of my personal time. The endeavor has proven to be an chance in and of itself, one that's shown me the limits of the four-yr-old, massively multiplayer spacefaring game.

It has also showed me how the game's most dedicated players will help to push its narrative forward.

Only how Unsafe?

In the fiction of Elite, it is the year 3305. Humanity has colonized the stars with the help of a remarkable engineering science called a "frame shift drive," or FSD. Co-ordinate to the fan-made wiki, an FSD "moves space around a ship to allow it to travel faster than light without using extreme amounts of energy or experiencing time distortion." The technical details aren't really important for our word, even so. Simply know that an FSD is a bit of hand-wavy, scientific discipline-fiction-y kit that allows the game to avert the inconveniences of Albert Einstein's theory of relativity.

An Asp Explorer scooping fuel around an Chiliad-class, ruby dwarf star.

User Kaardio via the Elite Unsafe wiki/Frontier Developments

What is important to take away is that, cheers to FSD engineering, long-altitude travel in Elite is performed in a series of hops. Unlike the technology in Star Wars, where they just pop in the coordinates and make a single jump to their destination, explorers in Elite must make dozens and dozens of jumps to get where they're going. Since Elite models all 400 billion star systems in the Milky Manner galaxy, that means traveling to and through many uncharted systems.

In gameplay terms, players target the largest point of mass in a neighboring star system, spool up their FSD bulldoze, and jump into the unknown. Waiting in that other star system is, more frequently than not, an indescribably hot ball of gas called a star with a potentially deadly gravity well. Motility likewise close to that star and its gravity will pull you in. Once you're trapped in orbit, it'south a hair-raising effort to pull yourself out of a terminal swoop before your send blows up.

Of class, at that place is often more ane star in a star system, and you never actually know where the smaller stars are going to exist relative to your management of travel. Here'southward what it looks like when you practically fly through the 2d star of a binary system, captured from third person by the exceptionally skilled YouTuber SushiCW.

Making things fifty-fifty more exciting, every one time in a while players will stumble upon something much more deadly than a star: a blackness hole. Sometimes they fifty-fifty observe more than one.

When that happens, it's the work of a few moments to indicate your transport in the wrong direction, wander too shut to the result horizon, and cook yourself alive.

Raising the stakes for the Distant Worlds 2 fleet is the fact that when you die in Elite, your body respawns at the last star base of operations yous docked at, effectively bringing your long distance journey back to its beginning.

Making things fifty-fifty more treacherous is the fact that FSD drives must be refueled by skimming particulate from the corona of a star. That means after every v or six jumps, players need to fly closer to the star they just jumped in on, heating their send dramatically, in order fuel up and be on their fashion again.

The wear and tear on ships, even those piloted by the most skilled players, can be extreme. Unfortunately, not every repair tin can be performed on your own. If yous impairment the hull, yous'll need another player equipped with the right modules to patch you upwards.

Packing light

The best manner to go along your transport in expert working condition is to employ it as infrequently equally possible. That ways making fewer jumps betwixt stars.

In order to make fewer jumps, I needed an FSD drive that would fling me further with each divergence. Not only will I spend less fourth dimension commuting over the eight or nine months that the Afar Worlds 2 expedition volition take, just a meliorate FSD will as well give me my selection of cooler, less dangerous stars to refuel at along the style.

In club to get the best FSD in the game, I had to work closely with a not-thespian character named Felicity Farseer. In the fiction of Elite, she'southward an old hand at exploration and one of the leading designers of cutting border FSD tech. In game terms, however, she's the finish-bespeak of a handful of annoying fetch quests. It took me a few days, but once I satisfied her requirements, I was able to more than double my FSD jump range, from 22 light years per leap all the manner upwards to near 48.

Felicity Farseer, at Farseer Inc. in the Deciat arrangement.

Frontier Developments

But the outfitting didn't stop at that place.

As information technology turns out, the stars in the northern part of the Galaxy galaxy in Elite are especially far apart. Without a jump range in the neighborhood of 50+ light years you merely can't brand it all the way to the edge. Some players rely on "jumponium" to boost them along. The FSD condiment tin greatly extend your jump range for a short period of time. All-time of all, information technology can exist synthesized from resource found on planets along the way. Only scavenging for those resources brings its own kind of risks.

Instead, I opted to minimize my ship's weight, bringing only the barest essentials along for the trip. The biggest loss was my send's armored plates, which amongst other things help go along y'all from getting cooked if yous become too close to a star.

Helpfully, Felicity is also adept at tinkering with shield boosters. With her help I was able to strip off dozens of tons in weight and supervene upon it instead with a nearly weightless pair of shield boosters. Those modules will help keep my shield fully charged for a longer period of time in an emergency situation, helping to protect me from bumps and bruises forth the way.

Subsequently another few days of grinding resources, I now have a maximum jump range of 59.75 light years — more than enough to brand it to the edge.

Function of registration for Distant Worlds ii is adding your ship type and leap range into a massive dataset maintained by expedition organizers. The well-nigh common spring range correct now is 50 light years, with nigh 500 of the vii,496 commanders participating meeting that mark.

Commander Qohen Leth

A nifty migration

My single greatest resource throughout this entire process hasn't been Elite'southward in-game tutorials. It's not the official, three-book gear up of outfitting guides produced past the leaders of the Distant Worlds ii expedition either. Rather, it'southward been the other players inside the trek's official Discord conversation.

Fifty-fifty as the roster has swelled from 4,600 players to nearly vii,500 in the last few days, there accept ever been a few helpful voices to answer my stupid questions about ship building, no thing the 60 minutes of the day.

At that place is an energy and a feeling of goodwill powering this adventure unlike anything I've seen in a video game community in a long time. Other players are beingness generous with their time and their cognition, then much and then that I feel like I've learned more about Elite in the final ii weeks than in my entire iii years of play.

Whatever I've needed, equally far as resources go, someone has been able to tell me exactly where to observe it in the least corporeality of time. Of form, that'southward because they've been there themselves and they've done this all before.

Bully open an asteroid in Aristocracy: Dangerous. A major role of the construction of a star base at Sagittarius A will be the efforts of a contingent of specially-outfitted mining ships. Thousands of shiploads of resources will be needed to build the structure in the remote center of the Galaxy galaxy.

Image: Borderland Developments

Shortly, veteran and rookie players alike volition exist on relatively even footing, hurtling through infinite far from the creature comforts — and friendly NPC repair depots — of habitation. Distance is the bully equalizer. That's what makes this expedition then exciting to be a office of.

Forth the fashion to the far side of the galaxy, the Distant Worlds 2 fleet will be constructing a remote star base. Thanks to some help from the developers at Frontier, that star base will be situated smack dab in the middle of the Milky Way galaxy in a system called Sagittarius A, in orbit effectually a supermassive black hole.

Making it to the star base at Sag-A in ane piece will brand an inspiring goal for players coming to the game for the first fourth dimension in the years to come. But it volition also provide a loftier-level playground for the game's most experienced players.

In the fiction of Elite, the reason for the new star base is to let for scientific exploration of Sag-A's blackness hole, as well equally its neighboring star systems. It will exist the jumping-off point for the adjacent keen era of human exploration, charting the way forward into 3306 and beyond. But, that star base will also mean a new beginning for the Elite: Dangerous customs itself.

Rather than the well-worn paths to success that have been discovered around our dominicus, Sol, since the game start launched, players will have to grapple with an entirely new gear up of challenges effectually dozens of unexplored worlds. They'll take to exercise information technology in an impossibly remote and mortiferous part of the Milky way galaxy.

And they'll accept to do it lone. Together.

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Source: https://www.polygon.com/2019/1/7/18172096/elite-dangerous-distant-worlds-2-ship-build-fsd-drive

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