Colonia Detour

As we move into the second month of the expedition, the weekly distances involved in seeing all the off route points of interest, as well as the relative proximity of Colonia, make time our greatest enemy. Somehow still playing catch-up from the survey of the abandoned Conflux settlements, there is little choice other than to use direct maximum unboosted jump range route plotting to arrive at the various points of interest noted in this week’s navigation advisory. For a second week in a row I can conveniently put to one side the exploration speech about the journey and not necessarily the destination; but the crew is eager to return to the job of discovery without passing through the ripples of the explorers that have been here a relatively short time ago.

Frustratingly for all the crew aboard the ‘Inquisitive Surveyor’, week 5 of Distant Worlds 2 has felt very much like exploration by the numbers. This is not a criticism of the route planning committee for this expedition, but rather purely a function of the distances involved in this weeks itinerary when including all the points of interest off the main route as well as a voluntary excursion to Colonia. At roughly 4,800 LYs each way, the long overdue return visit to Colonia involved an additional 100 jumps to an already lengthy navigational plan.

While a few of the systems along the way offered their fair share of undiscovered or unmapped ammonia, water or Earth-Like worlds; most of the jumps this week offered little but icy rock filled systems with the occasional gas giant. On the whole, the noteworthy systems were the documented points of interest, which robs the experienced explorer of the surprise that stems from the great unknown. Depending on the next few waypoints, we made find ourselves taking a necessary diversion in order to fulfill the need for fresh discoveries.

Throughout this week’s points of interest there are numerous Neutron and White Dwarf star formations, as well as many impressive nebulae in both the main and minor excursion routes. Being in the galactic neighbourhood makes passing by any of these points of interest which lay off the main expedition route seem almost criminal. As such, we plot a course through all the main and off route points of interest that this week’s navigational data packet has to offer, which provides the opportunity to diverge paths with the main expedition route in order to make some sweeping loops along the designated points.

Notably absent this week has been any Stellar Phenomena, which really does nothing more than balance out the abundance of NSPs encountered the previous week in and around the ‘Collection of Wonders’. There were undoubtedly opportunities to validate existing discoveries, however I appear to have gotten out of the habit of frequently checking the Codex for nearby biological and xenological reported sightings, and expect this oversight has led to some missed opportunities in the past seven days.

We have also been remiss in the time spent planet side this week, with the briefest of visits to the Polonium Fields and other geological features within the Clockwork Rings planets of the Byaa Ain QA-J c11-144 system. The short duration of feeling even a faint gravitational field was offset by the highly successful surface extraction of various rare raw materials, which will be very beneficial for injection synthesis should the need arise to make some extreme length FSD jumps later in the expedition.

The fleet rumour mill is abuzz with chat that the next leg of the expedition will turn towards the galactic core and its incredibly densely packed star field, offering the potential opportunity for interesting discoveries. We shall see once the next fleet navigation data packet is received, but for now it’s time to hear the tales from other members of the expedition as we fraternize the bars and clubs at the Polo Harbour Planetary Port.

The full archive of images from this week can be found at https://imgur.com/a/UZhkc7r