Time to explore Plaa Aescs YZ-Y d62 with its 41 Bodies 4 of which are Landable Ringed High Metal Content Worlds, one of which Plaa Aescs YZ-Y d62 6 is the largest HMC Planet I have encountered at 16,527 km radius. System scan shows some interesting looking mountain formations as well so plenty to check out.
The first visit is to Plaa Aescs YZ-Y d62 1 a small HMC planet with some signs of volcanism which turn out to be Silicate Gas Vents. Around which I find my first Polonium which can be injected into the Frame Shift Drive to increase Range.
Next is the first of the Ringed HMC Planets Plaa Aescs YZ-Y d62 4 at 1.88G it’s the first Planet of greater than 1G I have landed on but everything goes smoothly more Polonium plus Germanium and Manganese for FSD boosting. A bit of a struggle taking off against the 1.88G’s but we eventually make orbit and move onto the next Ringed HMC
Three Ringed HMC Planets 
Ringed HMC 
Text 
Heading Straight Up 
Next is Plaa Aescs YZ-Y d62 3 Which at 2.29G is the first time I have tried a landing on anything over 2G…Easy does it and steady as she goes, will let Verity do most of the work…
Preliminary scan shows active volcanism and Monazite and Painite Hotspots in the rings, pity I don’t have room for mining equipment.
Everything is going great until about 200m above the surface when I take over from Verity and apply just a little too much upward pitch, Tannhauser lurches down hard and before I can recover slams into the planet tail first, taking out the shields and damaging just about every internal system not to mention reducing the hull to 23% strength… Ouch. But she settles to the ground the right way up, battered but still intact. I consider just calling up a Hull Seal but figure I may as well get out the SRV and check out the damage, maybe it’s not to bad and I can make Orbit and limp back to Eagles Landing for repairs. A quick circuit around the ship and there are some serious scapes and dents but no obvious damage to the thrusters. Think she will make Orbit ok so may as well explore the area for a bit. Get a few hundred meters from the ship and there is an ominous cracking sound and the SRV hull integrity alarm goes off… Seems the SRV has suffered damage and there are only 3 minutes of Oxygen left in the tanks… time to head back to Tannhauser pronto. I make it with a minute to spare, fire up the thrusters and Verity makes a flawless liftoff sending us quickly into orbit.
Materials Collected from 3 Sites.
Cadmium x 9
Germanium x 6
Iron x 9
Manganese x 30
Mercury x 12
Nickle x 6
Niobium x 3
Polonium x 27
With the new Polonium to boost the FSD its only 4 jumps back to Eagle Landing. Tannhauser makes her first 100lY jump on the way back, and we come across a brilliant red planet with some serious volcanic activity going on.
We arrived safely at Eagles Landing and cashed in accumulated Exploration data for a 13MCr and 29 more First to Discover, Best system payout was just over 4MCr so not bad.
Distant Worlds 2 