Share your most creative image showing a ship launched fighter in a strange situation!
The image must show a ship launched fighter (preferably not showing the ship that launched it) in strange situations in which you would not normally see an SLF. Most creative/unusual wins.

Show us your best christmas art (or any art) you made in the game!
Submissions must be images, showing art created in several ways. You could draw images using SRV tracks, make sketches using the ship exhaust fumes, or drop containers in a pattern of your choice. Anything that will create recognizable art will be allowed. Points for originality of method, originality of subject, and execution/style.

Describe your fondest memory with Elite Dangerous.
I'm sure the game has helped a lot of players through tough times, or make new friends, or go on adventures with old friends tightening their bond. Perhaps someone used it to let off steam while getting their PhD or they spent those long nights with their baby exploring the stars while rocking the kid to sleep. Perhaps the game even inspired some to choose a major like astronomy/astrophysics. Most touching and detailed descriptions win. Make us laugh or cry with your story.

For me the Alliance Crusader is the most underrated. It's the middle child of the three Alliance ships. The Chieftain, cheapest and most well rounded, gets all the attention and love it deserves. The Challenger, biggest and bulkiest of them, is the top choice for people who want more umphf in their Alliance ship. But the Crusader? Overlooked and unloved by many.

Why is it underrated instead of simply bad? Because it can launch a SLF! With a fighter deployed (and a capable pilot in there) you'll get more DPS and more time on target than with the other two! Of course, that's mostly under lab conditions, good luck getting that out in the field. And if you can, you're probably not running an NPC fighter but with a buddy, who could do a whole lot more damage if they just brought their own ship. But there is something really cool about having your ship deploy a guy to fight for you. Not to mention all the canyon races you can perform with these almost disposable ships! It's like bringing a fast and more fun Sidewinder anywhere you go!

Here's my Crusader (with the fighter deployed of course) juuuust outside the no fire zone of Scully Power Station in Ix:

S-Tier:

Mandalay: Overtaking the long-reigning champion, the Anaconda, in terms of jump range, this marvel of engineering has the longest jump range we have yet to see. It provides ample space for all your modules and seems almost perfectly designed for exploration. You will not bring any fighters on your trips though, the Anaconda keeps that one single edge. But at the price of half a Phantom (or just above 10% of the Anaconda), this ship will soon enough be the exploration ship charting new systems throughout the galaxy. And all that in an easy to land medium size!

Diamondback Explorer: The ship of choice for any explorer with a small wallet or a love for the rough design. No sleek panels or fancy designs, just a metal box with some yellow painted stripes that will jump you to Beagle Point before your nav computer is done calculating the route. Jump range just below the Anaconda and handling like you could spin it on a needle, the DBX is the ship that will make you fall in love with exploration.

Asp Explorer: Needs no introduction. For those commanders who loved their DBX but needed just a little more leg room and a little better view out the cockpit windows. Great jump range, lovely handling, enough room for all essentials, this ship is ideal for all long range trips undertaken without the funds to take a Mandalay out there. The top and only choice for many commanders who never came back out of the black because they fell in love with the solitude and their ship.

Krait Phantom: Before the Mandalay, this was the ideal exploration ship for people with a lot of stuff. Enough space, a great jump range, what else do you need? It may not jump as far as the Anaconda, but you'll have a much easier time circling the star to your next destination, so you'll make up that lost jump range by faster jumps through each system.

Anaconda: When you can boast such a jump range and even fit a fighter bay to do some racing on newly discovered planets, what other tier even is there for you? If only it didn't handle like a city block in supercruise.

A-Tier:

Orca: Great jump range with a hint of luxury for your trip. Or at least for your passangers, not like you are allowed into the luxury suites you bought.

Krait Mk II: A great allround ship for most tasks in the bubble and a direct rival to the Python in most areas. The Krait has the edge in jump range but lower optional internal space. But still enough for all your essentials, so who needs even more space?

Hauler: Not a great exploration ship, lacking enough internal space and the jump range needed for long trips. But at this price point, anything that will fling you out there and not tear itself apart in the first jet cone is a great deal! If you're just starting out, taking a hauler down the road of riches is a surefire way to afford a better exploration ship.

Dolphin: Slightly less great jump range than the Orca but still a good showing by Saud Kruger. Great price for what you get, though there are better deals out there.

B-Tier:

Asp Scout: Nobody wants to fly the Asp-S when the Asp-X has defined a whole generation of explorers. But it is far cheaper than its bigger broter and lets you feel like you almost have the real thing. Nobody knows if it would benefit or suffer from not constantly being compared to the Asp-X, but at least it does most things it has to fairly competently.

Python: Outclassing the Mk II by a long shot, the original Python boasts more internal space at the correct class sizes to bring all you need in a compact package. Better suited for other roles, the Python can still do well as a short-range explorer. Even more so when transporting passangers, all but the most needy ones in luxury cabins.

Alliance Chieftain: It's not a good exploration ship, but with an alright jump range and just enough slots to bring all the gear you need, it can be forced into the role. And with a beautiful ship like this, I can fully understand any commander doing exactly this.

Type-7 Transporter: Enough space for all your stuff and surprisingly manoeuvrable considering the elegant coffin-shaped design.

Type-6 Transporter: It doesn't give you the greatest leg room out of all in this tier, but at least it's pretty cheap to get running. Outclassed by others in the same price range, you still get a competent little explorer for at least our arm of the galaxy.

Type-8 Transporter: You get a decent jump range with a lot of space. Not super cheap but at least you won't contract space-madness trying to get this ship to the nearest nebula.

Python Mk II: You get a decent jump range but way too many hardpoints and utility mounts for the amount of optional internals you can bring. The class 6 internal slot is also too big for the Guardian FSD booster, forcing you to either waste space or reduce your jump range in favour of a faster fuel scoop. But then you can't bring shields. A split class 6 into two class 5s (or even a class 5 and a class 4) would have been far better.

C-Tier:

Adder: This little bumpercar of a ship brings an impressive jump range to the table for the price. But with such lackluster internals and nothing setting it apart that much, it just falls flat relative to the competition. Not a bad choice, but outside of a few die-hard fans nobody's first choice either.

Imperial Clipper: Okay-ish jump range with enough space for a huge fuel scoop.

Imperial Courier: Good handling and fairly okay jump range. At least you'll look stylish in your camera suite drone footage!

Imperial Cutter: Huge space for all your stuff, but you won't get far with that jump range. Still, mighty impressive to bring out of the bubble!

Keelback: Good maneouverability but fairly poor jump range. You'll have fun flying, even if you don't get anywhere. Much better suited to stay close to the bubble and land on planets.

Cobra Mk III: The Mk III is like a tiny Python. It's pretty good at a lot of things. But like a tiny Python, being good at exploration is not enough to make a huge impression. A Jack of most trades, everything but exploration.

Beluga Liner: Oh the luxury! Oh no the price for that jump range...

Alliance Challenger: There is nobody in the black to challenge. Go with the Chieftain, you'll be glad for the extra jump range over larger internals.

Diamondback Scout: How did this ship get it all so wrong? With a big brother like the DBX, you'd think the small ship will save on internal space, perhaps even some core internals to keep the FSD as big as possible. A scout needs to do one thing after all: Jump ahead. But for some reason, it sits right in the middle when it comes to jump range. Perhaps it is a scout because it runs so cool and is hard to detect, but even then the DBX is the far more competent scouting ship. It would benefit greatly from a different design and name, not calling upon the myth, the legend that is the DBX. A comparison like that is lost no matter what the DBS brings to the table.

Eagle: Couldn't afford a ship that lets you bring a fighter into the black? Why not just fly the fighter itself out there? The eagle will let you zip around mountains and through canyons that nobody else has ever seen! Shame that it will take you months in supercruise to get there...

Imperial Eagle: Like the eagle, but fancy. Which is nice for anyone you meet, which will likely not happen on your trip. And for that offchance, you get to pay a little extra. It's the imperial way after all.

Viper Mk. IV: In all aspects worse than the Cobra Mk. III if your aim is exploration.

Vulture: Why you would ever think the Vulture is good for exploration is beyond me. Hardpoints are the most useless slots for these types of adventures and that is what the Vulture has been geared towards. You can take it out there, by there are better, cheaper, and better and cheaper alternatives out there. Unless you need to be really prepared for a xenos attack at least, but even then the Chieftain has been designed for exactly that fight. I suppose piracy between the bubble and Colonia is unexpected for all your victims, perhaps there's some money in that idea...

Sidewinder: Second worst maximum jump range out there, but the only ship you can get to its peak range for less than a million credits. Between that and some fairly good handling, bringing this "little ship that could" out into the black is a great way for explorers to really consider what modules they need and which they can go without. Just don't leave your fuel scoop at home, the Sidewinder doesn't have a big enough tank for that.

D-Tier:

Mamba: It's expensive, it has the internal space of a shoe box, and it will let you jump about as far as a frog without legs. This is the quintessential non-exploration ship. Woefully unprepared for anything that is more than 10k ls from the nearest station, outpost, or Carrier. It only takes the top spot of D-Tier because it looks so good that I really want to see it in front of Sag A*, and I have spent many hours pouring over the outfitting options to see how to make this work. Probably enough hours to just fly the thing there, but where would be the fun in that?

Federal Assault Ship: How this one remains terrible while being much better than its brothers is a mystery. Somehow it has a better range, perhaps because it lacks the same space as the FDS and FGS. You may not fit all your required modules in there, but at least you'll make it out of your home system before giving up.

Alliance Crusader: Fighting ships just don't do well in this category. The Crusader is an awesome ship that has strengths in all the areas irellevant to exploration.

Viper Mk. III: In all aspects other than price worse than the Mk. IV. Please just don't...

Federal Corvette: With a jump range like that, I'll be surprised if you even make it out the bubble. At least you'll never need to make a return trip with all your possessions in the ship.

Federal Dropship and Gunship: Let's be honest: There is nearly no difference between the two for exploration. You will not get anywhere, your fuel tank will be empty with each jump and you are hauling around a hull tank thousands of lightyears from the nearest threat.

Type-10 Defender: Unwieldy in supercruise and small jump range. It looks and feels like a small city. Probably because it's the size of a small city. You could probably start a colony with one of these.

Type-9 Heavy: Similar to T10, even smaller jump range. Unless you need to bring home a lot of Jaques Quinentian Still, this one is probably not the right choice. And even if you need to bring that much home, I'm almost sure two trips in an Anaconda will be faster and more enjoyable.

Fer-de-Lance: I'm sorry, did I say the Mamba was the antithesis to exploration? Unless you want to shoot a planet apart, taking the FDL out of the bubble is like bringing a circular saw and impact drill to a child's arts and crafts project. Not just the wrong tool for the job, but also wildly dangerous. At least it is technically possible to explore in this, points for being technically correct.

Trading involves two simple steps: Buy cheap, sell expensive. But there's a lot more work in these four words than you'd expect.

What you'll need:

A ship to carry all your cargo, some cargo to buy/sell, a good idea of what stations offer what prices. Let's go over those one by one:

The ship:

First and foremost you'll want a lot of cargo space. If you can haul 11 tonnes instead of 10t, that will translate into 10% more profit per trip. This means you'll want a ship with as much optional internal space as possible, all filled to the brim with cargo racks. But beware: Some smaller stations may not have space for your large ships, so perhaps a medium one may be best! But starting out with little money or options, even the smallest ships can haul at least a few tonnes around. Each trip will afford you bigger ships which will in turn let you gain more profits per trip, it's a great loop!

But hauling a lot of stuff is not all that is required. You also want to spend as little time as possible en route. If you can make a trade route in 10min where it takes others 20min, you'll bring home twice as many credits. So a good jump range is factor number two you'll want to consider. A proper FSD (ideally one with the new overcharge capacities to reach the stations quicker) and as light other modules as you can manage.

And lastly, you'll want good supercruise handling. Remember that you're not alone in the black, and pricey cargo may attract unwanted attention. Having a nimble ship may make the difference between being interdicted and losing your cargo to a pirate or making it home safe and buying that next ship from your profits.
You may be tempted to fight fire with fire. If there's pirates you jsut need to have the bigger stick and fight them off perhaps. But this is a fools game. No trader that maximises their cargo capacity has room for shields. And with a maximised jump range you'll not be bringing any weapons. Even if you did, you may be no match to a dedicated pirate with enough cargo space to take two low temperature diamonds from you or blast you away in seconds. It's better to run and save up for your own proper combat ship than try your luck in what is essentially a big ol' cargo box. And anyway: Combat just takes time out of your trading activity, which reduces your profits. Time is money in the trading business.
So if you're interdicted, try and shake them off in supercruise. If you can't do that, throttle down to have your FSD recover faster once you're pulled into real space. As soon as you drop out, put all pips into engines and turn away from your assailant. Boost as much as you can and jump as soon as your FSD has recharged. Don't let them reach you!

Cargo & prices:

There are online sites that will let you check commodity prices across different stations. Check the commodity you want to trade and see how big the margins are across the bubble. There are also tools online to plot trading routes for you. Inara is a tool that can do both. Knowing where to buy and sell will greatly increase your margins. But beware: Don't always go for the highest price! If you have a lot of cargo to sell, accepting a lower price but with more demand may give you more credits in total. There's no sense in selling 400t of Superconductors when the station only wants to buy 20t and give you much fewer credits for the rest.

Many trade routes will let you sell for 4x-10x the buy price. At route distances of 40ly (one to two jumps) you'll be rich in no time!

Profits and safe trades commander! o7

In this image I tried to capture one important aspect of neutron stars: Their density. Because they are so dense (apart from black holes they are the densest matter known to us at this time) they can bend light around them visibly. This leads to our neutron star of choice (Col 69 Sector LC-V E2-7 A) which is halfway between the bubble and Barnard's Loop bending the light from the extragalactic nebula we placed behind it, leading to visible rings around the star.

I have also included several other objects to tell the story of stars: Birth, death, decay. Stellar formation in compacted hydrogen nebulae, stellar death in beautiful large rings of ejected atmospheric shells, and decay of an old stellar corpse, draining its energy.

I have taken the time to annotate all the objects of interest in this picture (this can be seen in the second image). My Asp Explorer shields the camera from much of the stellar radiation, otherwise the background would be far less visible due to the stellar brightness.

A few fun facts about neutron stars:

• Neutron stars were once regular stars but collapsed after the end of nuclear fusion in said star. The neutron star is in essence the corpse of a star.

• They no longer undergo nuclear fusion, the driving factor behind the radiation of regular stars. All the radiation they emit stems from the energy left in the star from its supernova phase. It's just radiating all the heat it has until it slowly cools down and becomes less and less bright.

• Due to the pirouette effect, the angular momentum of the original star is largely preserved in the neutron star. But because the neutron star is much much smaller, it has to spin a lot faster. This can lead to particles near the equator moving up to 40% the speed of light!

• While regular stars are kept from collapsing by radiation pressure, this pressure largely vanishes with the end of fusion. This leads to the collapse and supernova in the first place and then lets the star collapse into a neutron star. The neutron star is then stopped from collapsing into a black hole by the Pauli exclusion principle, which would take a lot force to overcome.

• Neutron stars may seem huge in game and irl, but they can be about 40km in diameter, roughly the same size as London (or 1/200,000 [one two-hundred thousandsth] the volume of Pluto)

And some fun facts about other objects visible here:

• Messier 76 (also called Little Dumbbell Nebula) is a planetary nebula that is comprised of different shells ejected by a star at the end of its lifetime. The star then became a white dwarf, a fate similar to that of neutron star but reserved for less massive stars.

• Messier put together his catalogue because he wanted to observe comets and found himself distracted by the same faint objects over and over. So he published the catalogue to sort out the junk he was not interested in. That junk can be anything from nebulae to galaxies and stellar clusters and is a rich and fascinating ressource to look through!

• Barnard's loop is also thought to be the remnant of a supernova, this one ejecting its shell much further by now. Visible here is only the glowing and illuminated part, the infrared visible part would likely fill the whole image.

• The Running Man Nebula (NGC 1977) is thought to be illuminated by one single young star. In that sense it fits very well with the Orion Nebula (M 42) behind it, which is a diffuse nebula hosting several young stars that have formed from its mass.

This means that the image is largely split in two by the neutron star jet: To the left we see the remnants of stars gone by, ejecting their shells and leaving behind beautiful spheres. In the middle we see such a stellar corpse still ejecting energy, slowly draining away. And to the right we see the birthplaces of new stars that will in time too stop their fusion and explode into beautiful arrangements.

My last tech failure was fairly minor and is reoccuring: The repeater in our flat (a FritzBox) keeps disconnecting from the router (also a FritzBox). So about once a month the LAN I get from this repeater grinds to a halt (still kinda connected but at 1-10% of the speed we normally have) and I get to crawl under my desk to unplug it, wait a few minutes, and plug it back in. Because of course the repeater sits in the most inconvenient place of our whole damn flat!
The repeater is around 10 or so years old now but has this fault for at least the past 2-4 years. And I refuse to buy a new one until the problem either can't be solved anymore or the repeater just gives up entirely.

My favourite tech failure was back about 8-10 years ago. I had a computer with fairly good specs for the time (I had the new GTX 970, very exciting!), easily enough to run all the games I wanted. Bought the new Assassin's Creed Unity game and installed it. This took I believe 6 CDs and several hours. When I started the game, I got maybe 2 FPS and crazy graphical glitches. I would be lucky to make it into the settings menu, let alone start the story. But nontheless I tried solving the issue in what was basically an unresponsive slide show. I tried for several weeks before emailing Ubisoft. They said it must be a problem with my graphics card drivers. So I emailed Nvidia, who said the GTX 970 should handle the game no problem, it sounds like a Windows issue to them. So one email to Microsoft later and I got the news that this is definitely not a Windows problem and that the game is probably broken, maybe I should try Ubisoft. At this point I gave up. Swore to never buy another AC game again and left it alone. I could play most other games just fine, so what was the problem?
Well, about 3-4 years later I got a new monitor. The monitor did not have the same plugs as the old one so I needed to buy an adapter for the DP cable, in the meantime using the VGA port instead. This was when I noticed that my computer had grapics ports going vertical and going horizontal. Two clusters. Up until now I had simply used whatever port fit the cable I wanted. Turns out I had my monitors plugged into the motherboard, which then rendered my games using the CPU. My at that point ~4 years old GPU sat unused, still waiting to get something to render.
Because I had to wait for the adapter, I figured out that you can set in the settings which games will be rendered using the CPU and which using the GPU. So I set all my games to use the GPU and suddenly it all felt smooth as butter. Even Skyrim, which had run "flawlessly" was suddenly so much nicer to play! In hindsight I had probably never gotten above 20-25 FPS but because I had no frame of reference, thought this was fine. I am surprised that I didn't end each day with a massive headache.
Suffice it to say that all my games felt much better and even Assassin's Creed ran perfectly. Though at that point I was a lot less interested in the game and never finished it.
Sometimes the issue sits in front of the monitor. And I now read up a lot more on the stuff I have so I don't make easy mistakes like that again!

I'd be a 4A Beam Laser with the Thermal Shock experimental engineering effect because I just really really love cooking 🔥

For the first time I explored the planet my home station orbits (Scully-Power Station orbiting Ix 3). Turns out it's extremely bumpy and has some crazy steep edged cliffs! For now I just took the SRV out and jumped around a bit near my ship (specifically bought and equipped for the exploration of this planet). A few loopings, some fairly smooth landings (after losing half my hull integrity exploring the mountain to the left) and I got these three tricks as my favourites.

I plan on doing more in depth excursions, perhaps even bring a few fighters and race around the steepest cliffs. I will also visit Diesel's Inheritance for the first time I suppose, not sure how they carved a flat enough bit of land for landing pads out of this terrain though!

The moment when the galaxy came to life and I felt the mystery of the world was when the first rumours and stories of hyperspace interdictions circulated. Being pulled out of what I always assumed to be a solitary and safe environment put the "dangerous" into "Elite Dangerous" for me.

Then being interdicted myself for the first time after thousands of jumps felt almost surreal. First contact after hearing the encounters other commanders had, I sat as still as a statue until I was alone in realspace again.

After the initial shock came curiosity. I searched for the systems where a lot of hyperdictions were reported and jumped back and forth until I was face to face with the thargoids once more. This time (in a cheaper ship I was willing to lose) I tried following them after my ship got working again. They of course jumped away, but I studied every move they made.

Then I started probing and prodding, bringing my own scanners, limpets, cargo to eject, etc. Everything but weapons. I took note of what readings I got and quickly became a scholar on thargoid behaviour. Though only that which remained peaceful. After hearing stories, I brought no guardian or thargoid objects with me on these expiditions. I also never fired up my weapons, often neglecting to bring any in the first place. I felt like an explorer making first contact with another civilisation and I did not want to start a war, even after reading up on the strained relationship between our two worlds. Perhaps this time, things could be better.

My studies slowly stopped giving me new data so I tried to find new sources of information, but those too dried up quickly. Though luckily, other commanders kept finding new sites that could be studied. Spending some months as basically a hermit researcher, I was shocked when news reached me of thargoid attacks. Feeling like I could have seen it coming if only I had put all the pieces together in time, I rushed back to the bubble, equipped a ship with heatsinks and cabins and did my best to save as many people from affected stations as I could. Not long after, humans started fighting thargoids again. I could not bring myself to take part in the war, staying on the sidelines and trying to help commanders in need or rescue stranded stationeers. But I must admit, around that time I started equipping anti-xeno weapons even on solitary expiditions. The threat became too real and I realised how little I understood the thargoids. I could not expect to predict their next moves, so I had to keep myself safe.

I'm writing this to from a long abandoned satellite facility in an undisclosed system far from the bubble. I got out when the titans came, sure that we would not win this time. From what I'm hearing, humanity is fairing much better than I'd anticipated. But I have grown used to my solitude. I will study their attacks, perhaps finding the pattern that will lead us to their home world. If the war continues, I may publish my findings, though I could not forgive myself if those beautiful creatures were wiped out due to my work. I would much rather lead an expidition, finding out what they want, how they live. Perhaps there is a peaceful solution yet to be found. I remain hopeful in spite of all available evidence.