There’s definitely something odd happening with Personal Transport missions. I keep getting Rich Tourists who have Illegal status! No mention of being illegal in their details, only the warning that pops up when they’ve settled into a cabin.
Picked up and outfitted a Panther Clipper II; no engineering done as yet. That cargo capacity is pretty wild!
If you know the origin of the name, and my commander’s name, you know your Elite history.
I didn’t pick up the plipper, but have had a lot of fun in the Mandaly and now hauling my Caspian ( The Spinward Marcher) out on DW3 , it’s got the kitchen sink , and the laundry room and still 70ly jump range.
I’ll probably spend more time making data visualizations than exploring , but each to their own.
My alt “Cody Eyrmon” (a play on Commander Cody and his Lost Planet Airmen) has the Tina Louise, a Mandaly outfitted for exploration. I play too infrequently to join any expeditions, though.
I just pulled up EDDiscovery and those are not from the bubble but rather achieving Elite in xenobiology, nearly two years ago. And had already been sold back then.
Given that the plipper and my T10 occupy the same niche, with the T10 having one-third the cargo capacity and being worse at evading interdictions, I’ll be stripping the T10 of its engineered parts and selling it.
Feels strange, completing bulk cargo missions in one or two runs all by myself.
I built a crappy little colony with my plipper. Well, that and a T9 using the dual ship fleet carrier loading procedure 
I am thinking about getting in to Elite Dangerous but I am curious about a few things first…
Is it too late to start? It seems long-time players have plucked all the low hanging fruit. The nearby exploration and places to setup an outpost and so on.
Also, how likely is it to get ganked? As a new player I may be safe in my starting system but once out of that am I just easy pickings for anyone with a gun?
Also, also…is the DLC worth it (it is on sale now)?
If exploration is your thing, there are still plenty of opportunities. You have the entire galaxy to roam around! I’m guessing the game will be dead before everything is discovered.
Even if you don’t get bonus credits for being the first to discover anything, you’ll still get the finder’s fee credits.
There’s an entire area for newbies now. The catch is that, if you leave after achieving mostly harmless in any category, you cannot return anywhere in that group of systems.
Personally, I play in a private group that is PvE only. Gankers get booted right quick.
Odyssey is worth getting, if only for the additional mission variety.
ETA: I’m not getting into surface combat until I have some suit engineering done.
This is the way .
Honestly when out in the black exploring , chances of meeting people is very very remote
Other than the in game missions and stuff there are big community run expeditions run on a regular basis .
That often involves a new waypoint, and an in game meet up every week as you take a trip arround the galaxy.
There is a huge one called Distant Workds 3 on the go at the moment which has a whole story with new chapters being released each week and there is a companion app called meta eleite that has a way of implementing in game tasks and missions .
It was a struggling game a few years back, but with some recent live from FDEV and renewed player interest it seems to have a second wind
( I am a data gopher / data visualization nerd for the DW3 expedition so I am a bit biased about it )