avatar_Binnatics

Navigating the galaxy

Started by Binnatics, September 09, 2016, 01:33:58 AM

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Binnatics

Whenever I got my loadout fully built and ready and when I finished the Atlas path, I decided to go for the centre. I remember being disappointed with the amount of space that a black hole would bring me towards the centre so was already hoping for even more powerful ways of travelling when Art told me that he could, with his maxed out hyperdrive, easily make jumps with a distance of 1000 light years, so I figured that should be the best way of travelling known to us so far.
I started aiming for the giant distant star, that looks as if it's the centre of a star-system in the distance. There's only one of these huge lights in the galaxy so I thought that this must be the core. When I later checked the distance I had won towards the core it wasn't much more than 200 light years, while I had made a jump with a linear distance of close to 1400 light years. apparently it is not the centre :-D
So I tried different direction, using the bright light ball as a 'compass' of some kind. Think of it as the North pole; I tried travelling to the North-West, and the North-East. Both didn't make a difference when checking the result toward galaxy centre. Hmmm. Let's try going up a bit; North-Up and North-Down even got me a worse progress of something like 30 lightyears, whilst still traveling with steps of 1400 light years each. Strange! I couldn't find any logic behind this but I did find out that somehow the galaxy wants you not to look up or down. Whenever I navigate away from the basic 'disc' in which the giant light ball is North, the game tends to bend me back towards the original 'disc' as soon as I select a star. Some sort of auto-equilibrium making sure you don't forget what's up and what's down. Since navigating towards up and down gives you even smaller progress towards the core, I imagine the galaxy being a giant disc, instead of what I had expected, I giant ball.
Anyway; I started following the yellow 'path towards the centre' to see if this would get me any closer in a somewhat more reasonable way. Despite being far from a linear line in a single direction, it does take me towards the centre. One 'step' more than the other and sometimes even almost nothing, but it does give me little progress. It won't get any better than following a straight line to the North-West or North-East though, sometimes even worse. So; what's the logic behind all this? :-\\
I have no clue. The only logic I could extract from this info, is that for now the best way to travel large distances is taking the black-hole-bus :-()
However, doing so even scrambled more logic I thought to have found in this universe; when completing a black hole jump, the game tells you how far your warp has brought you; that usually lays somewhere between 200000 light years and 1200000 light years. wtf :knockout
That means I overshot the galaxy core like 20 times. Imagine; the galaxy core is currently at a distance of 170000 lightyears, you take a black hole, and you travel 10 times that distance. And then you find yourself at 168500 light years from the galaxy core!!
I must've been driving circles instead of taking the shortcut, lol :o

So after trying to find logic behind the galaxy, the only logic I found is that there is no logic. The only thing I know is that black holes will give you the bigest progress towards the centre of the universe. Something like 1500 light years average. Nothing can beat that. I took around 70 now, and am currently at a distance of slightly less than 80000 light years from the core ;)
"Responsibility is not a matter of giving or taking, responsibility is something you share" -Binnatics

Binnatics

After writing this down I went for some exercise and thought the whole concept over once again. I couldn't believe it was so unlogic so I decided to do some more measurements.
Now I made sure I carefully moved in the following directions:
North (being the giant glowing star in the far distance, "core" from now on)
West (absolute left when looking towards the core)
East (absolute right when looking towards the core)
South (backwards while looking at the core)
Up (tilting the view as far up as you can; the game won't allow you to fully tilt 180 degrees, so you know you tilted 90 degrees when it stops)
Down (fully tilting downwards until you can't any farther, hence 90 degrees)

In all directions I tried to move more or less 1350 light years in a straight line from my starting point. Only moving up and down I overshot a bit, the points I went to were something like 1700 light years away.









DirectionDistance to starting pointdistance to coreprogress to core
North1,348.1 ly69246.8 ly337 ly
West1,378.6 ly69562.6 ly21 ly
East1,333.6 ly69582.7 ly1 ly
South1,410.7 ly69936.3 ly-353 ly
Up1,770.0 ly69582.7 ly1 ly
Down1,635.3 ly69584.6 ly-1 ly

These results show that the only real progress towards the core can be made by moving directly towards the light ball in the distance, what I call the core. Moving directly away from it (South) shows congress (oops :angel:) decline.
The fact that you do win or loose small distances when moving either West, East, Up or Down is likely caused by the fact that I always have to pick a star to have the game show me the distances from that point, and a star often is slightly away from the exact straight line. So I entitle these little value changes as negligible.

This doesn't explain why we only make 25% progress to the core compared to the real distance we travel using hyperdrive. But that value seems consistent.
It also doesn't explain why we have to travel somewhere between 200k ly and 1200 ly using black hole warp to come only 1,5k closer to the core, which is even less the 1% effectiveness towards the core. But at least we know now that the big light ball is the core and we have to go in that direction 8)
"Responsibility is not a matter of giving or taking, responsibility is something you share" -Binnatics

fragger

Nice bit of research Binn +1 :-X

I started on that course too, but I'm rapidly running out of steam. I've been following the path to the galactic core as far as I can before the path becomes too faint to see, then going into free-roam mode and trying to move in closer, staying on as true a path as I can to the bright core. I can get about a max of 1,600 light-years linear distance from my start point in one jump, but as you already discovered that equates to only about 300 light-years closer to the centre.

I've shaved off about 10,000 light-years, down to around 160,000 now, but it's a very tedious and time-consuming process, and I have a terrible feeling that it's not going to be worth very much for all the time put in, just a cutscene or a congratulatory message or something. I'd like to think I'm wrong, but the Atlas path turned out to be such a non-event that I don't hold out much hope.

I can't see anything strikingly new turning up either. Once you've got all the techs and done all the upgrades, gotten all the races' stories and done the Atlas path, I think that might be about it. You may be better off just playing with your ship, going for different ones and just exploring than spending hours jumping to the core. That's my gut feeling, anyway.

In fact, I may abandon the quest for the core altogether and just start from scratch - after a bit of a break. The most fun I have with this game is getting everything together. Once that's done, there's not a lot else to do as far as built-in game objectives go.

Dweller_Benthos

I saw a post on Reddit that mentions getting to the core and what happens after. Spoilers, obviously.

Spoiler: ShowHide
You start back at the beginning with a wrecked ship crashed on a planet.


I could try to find the post if anyone is interested. From what I could tell, it was legit.
"You've read it, you can't un-read it."
D_B

Art Blade

I decided to read the spoiler. And I don't regret it. Thanks, D_B :) I'll take fragger's path, then :-D

And +1 :-X from me too, Binnatics, interesting read and nicely done :)
[titlebar]Vision without action is a daydream. Action without vision is a nightmare.[/titlebar]What doesn't kill us, makes us weirder.

Binnatics

I will wait with that spoiler D_B, I'm homing in already :-D Currently 50 light years from the core. If it is such a disappointment, let it be. I can handle it I guess :-()

I forgot to give you guys some important info regarding black holes:

[smg id=9214 type=preview align=center caption="Black hole discovered"]

This is what they look like. You can easily find them using free roam in the galaxy map. They are everywhere.

And this should be the core then (in the centre):

[smg id=9215 type=preview align=center caption="Galaxy Core"]
"Responsibility is not a matter of giving or taking, responsibility is something you share" -Binnatics

Art Blade

[titlebar]Vision without action is a daydream. Action without vision is a nightmare.[/titlebar]What doesn't kill us, makes us weirder.

Binnatics

Now I did read the spoiler. Well, it is true. But, there's a little more to it.

Spoiler: ShowHide


Here's a short journal about my experience.

After warping close to a hundred times I finally made it to the Galaxy core. You actually can't approach it more than 720 or so light years. It is located in the middle of a sort of vacuum and the closest stars are 720 / 730 light years away from there. You can actually see groups of stars like tongues or hands reaching for the core. Most systems close to that vacuum are already discovered. I managed to find one at the border that I named "Proxima estacion: Esperanza". Unfortunately I wasn't able to jump from there; apparently there's only a few stars that are actually close enough to reach the core from there. Again; talking about distances and explanations, forget it. It's just as is, find the closest star and jump.

I did make screenies that I wanted to show to you guys, but somehow something messed up the last 20 or so pics I took, so no luck on that one :-\\

Anyway; you make the jump and this is what happens: The giant star starts to glow and you are being pushed away. First softly, then quicker, always quicker, back to the farside of the galaxy. Eventually there are no stars left, just emptiness. All you see is the glowing core in the distance, with some sort of aura around it. And then it fades away.
At takes a few seconds before something else happens; a new core is being pushed into the screen. You go back towards it and then you get the message; New galaxy discovered: (name).
And then indeed you find yourself crashed, on a planet somewhere in space. Only this time, it's not a random starter ship with poor upgrades; it's your own ship with everything there was still present; only everything is broken. So you have to repair your stuff. Same with the exosuit and the multitool.
It's some kind of rebirth. Quite cool actually :) Now you can start over without starting over ;)



:)
"Responsibility is not a matter of giving or taking, responsibility is something you share" -Binnatics

Art Blade

[titlebar]Vision without action is a daydream. Action without vision is a nightmare.[/titlebar]What doesn't kill us, makes us weirder.

Art Blade

Now I can say, "indeed, I know."  :-D

one pic: ShowHide

Binnatics (and everyone else who got to the core), are we in the same galaxy?"
[smg id=9239 type=preview align=center caption="New Start"]
[titlebar]Vision without action is a daydream. Action without vision is a nightmare.[/titlebar]What doesn't kill us, makes us weirder.

Binnatics

Yes we are :)

And; Nice ship!!!
"Responsibility is not a matter of giving or taking, responsibility is something you share" -Binnatics

Art Blade

[titlebar]Vision without action is a daydream. Action without vision is a nightmare.[/titlebar]What doesn't kill us, makes us weirder.

Art Blade

I moved on. I'm the new guy at Calypso's place. I hope that this Oedipussy guy has left the building, already :-D

QuoteCalypso is remembered most for her role in Homer's Odyssey, in which she keeps the fabled Greek hero Odysseus on her island to make him her immortal husband.

Spoiler: ShowHide
[smg id=9256 type=preview align=center caption="I am new here"]
[titlebar]Vision without action is a daydream. Action without vision is a nightmare.[/titlebar]What doesn't kill us, makes us weirder.

Dweller_Benthos

Nice info guys. I can say right now, I'll probably never get that far in the game.
"You've read it, you can't un-read it."
D_B

Art Blade

[titlebar]Vision without action is a daydream. Action without vision is a nightmare.[/titlebar]What doesn't kill us, makes us weirder.

Art Blade

Spoiler: ShowHide
Not this time, not last time. Once was enough. :-D
[smg id=9257 type=preview align=center caption="no atlas"]
[titlebar]Vision without action is a daydream. Action without vision is a nightmare.[/titlebar]What doesn't kill us, makes us weirder.

fragger

Quote from: Art Blade on September 11, 2016, 01:46:23 PM
it's just a few jumps..

:-D That's like saying it's just a few miles from New York to Boston

Art Blade

isn't it? (ambiguity intended)  :-D
[titlebar]Vision without action is a daydream. Action without vision is a nightmare.[/titlebar]What doesn't kill us, makes us weirder.

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