Spent a couple of days scouting around Lave, Leesti, Zaonce, Diso, Orrere and Uszaa in pursuit of rare items before setting off to Witchhaul via Shinrarta Dezhra.
Selling off the 77 tonnes of rare commodities earned a tidy 1,258,669 credits, cartographic sales earned another 23,025 and with repair costs of 17,369 credits, I’m left with a profit of 1,264,325 credits.
After that I set off to explore around the outer edge of populated space from Betelgeuse heading back around towards Sol. So far, this has racked up another 279,575 in cartographic credits, and that’s just from the systems worth more than 1,000cr.
A lengthy update this time. The last few days have been a bit of a mixed bag of downtime interspersed with bounties and long hauls and collection of rare items.
Starting out from Slough Orbital in Vesper-M4 I went in search of bounties in the local area. Soon dug up a wanted Anaconda piloted by the notorious Dougie. Everything was going nicely until my turret returned fire at an authority vessel when they strafed me while engaging the Anaconda. Fortunately I had time to finish Dougie off and bag the 58,860 credit bounty before bugging out from the law.
Now running with a wanted status and a bounty of my own I had to find somewhere to hide and take care of those. Cerktondhs turned out to be indifferent to my legal situation and allowed me to dock and take care of 1,585 credits-worth of re-arming and to pay my 2,790 credit bounty.
The lesson learned from this encounter was to prepare an additional weapons configuration that left the turreted beam laser stowed for situations where authority vessels were in the vicinity of a bounty takedown.
Returning to Slough Orbital I found some more bounties waiting to be collected in the form of one wanted Sidewinder containing a certain Alfred ‘Duke’ Salter, and another occupied by some tyrant calling themselves Baconneggs. Both were dispatched quickly for another 4,280 credits.
Another wanted ship also turned up on my radar. This time a Cobra flown by a Txitxu Banitxu which it turned out was worth 5,299 when reduced to a fields of debris.
Given how easily I had picked up my wanted status and bounty before, I was in two minds whether to engage these three, but given that they opened negotiations with the traditional “What are you carrying” pirate greeting and scans of my cargo hold, I didn’t ponder for very long, and they won’t be taunting any more either.
I eventually returned to the Orbital and re-armed again at a cost of 2,028 credits.
Then it was a case of plotting a long haul course leading towards LHS 3447 via Gaula, a trip which earned 40,455 credits from sales of exploration data.
Before moving on from Gaula I grabbed two more bounties, a wanted Cobra occupied by Lars Hellstrom and valued by the authorities at 9,900 credits, and an Eagle belonging to Richard Withers worth 1,734 credits.
The next stop was Tuori where an Unidentified Signal Source turned out to be five ships, all proclaiming their bent for piracy but strangely all in clean ships of various shapes and sizes from Sidewinders, through a Cobra and a Type 6 transporter. I left them to their business as they clearly didn’t want to initiate any combat contact, and I wasn’t going to engage innocent ships, regardless of the noises they were making.
So onwards to Willapa where I pulled in for a short break at Vasquez de Coronado Ring, and on the way out had to wait for Gort to manoeuvre his/her Type 7 through the station entrance. Which took them ages.
An interdiction attempt was made to pull me from hyperspace as I passed through Ngaliba, but I couldn’t be bothered to find out who it was so evaded and pressed on to LHS 3447.
Arrival at Dalton Gateway was somewhat surprising. The station was either under attack from many ships or was just putting on a light show for the hell of it. I held back while assessing the situation and as I didn’t receive any unwelcome contacts, decided to press on and make the landing. Inside, a Cobra was under attack from the station and I had to weave through the laser fire on my way to my landing pad.
Whoever was in the Cobra wasn’t around long enough to see me complete the landing.
I spent the following day wandering between the stations in the LHS 3447 system, looking for bargains from the outfitters at each one, due to the discounted prices on offer. That may have explained the vast numbers of other ships that were in the area, generally clogging up the stations or waiting patiently for a landing pad allocation to come through.
As it turned out none of the stations had anything of interest to me so I called off the search and parked up at Cleve Hub in Eravate instead. At least it was quiet there, so landing wasn’t a problem.
The next leg involved travelling from Eravate to LTT 7421.
Leaving Cleve Hub was a different story to the arrival. Some over-zealous pilot came blasting in through the dock entrance as I was heading out and I had to take evasive action to avoid a collision. Fortunately there were no casualties this time, but some commanders attitudes towards docking and leaving stations definitely need adjustment.
Arrival at LTT 7421 saw yet another near-miss, this time at Lukyanenko Vision station and an Orca that approached the dock from a crazily steep angle. They wouldn’t have appreciated my Python opening up a new sunroof for him/her which, but for the immediate application of full reverse thrust, would have undoubtedly happened.
The final section of this journey followed a route from LTT 7421 to Zeessze via Tiolce.
I picked up 13 tonnes of Waste2Paste units from Tiolce before pressing on to Zeessze where I collected 18 tonnes of Zeessze ant grub glue. I have no idea what that’s good at sticking together, but it’ll fetch a handsome profit further along I think. And on top of the hefty payout for cartographic data things are lining up nicely.
From Nicollier Hanger (pretty sure that should be spelled Hangar, but there you go), the journey over to Jaradharre was simple enough, and I gathered up some of the local puzzle boxes from there before heading on to Leesti.
As of tonight I’m moored up in George Lucas station awaiting the arrival of Commanders Hildrew and Odhrán for some co-operative exploration and who knows what other shenanigans tomorrow.
Also, I’ll have to make more of an effort effort to keep this log updated from now on.
I eventually decided to sink the half a million Rookie Trader Challenge credits on a detailed surface scanner, and set off back to LTT 4150 in search of additional cartographic data from the 48 unexplored entities scanned last time I passed through, back on the 13th.
That second pass over each unexplored body brought in a quite respectable 39,814 credits, even though quite a few turned out to be no more than barren, icy wastes
It’ll be a while before this scanner pays for itself but knowing that it will, eventually, suggests it was a good purchase.
I had to drop out the smallest cargo rack in order to fit the surface scanner in, but I think that’s a reasonable trade-off for the time being, so back down to 198 tonnes capacity for now
Once LTT 4150 was in the bag I set course for Vesper-M4 and the familiar surrounds of Slough Orbital, over a route that produced yet another 22,325 cartographic credits as it turned out.
I heard that a bunch of folks are planning to collectively hunt down and destroy a big ship bounty or two around here in the near future, so I may tag along to watch that develop, or help out if needs be.
After the Rookie Trader Challenge, an actual day off. Mostly spent pondering how to invest the half million credits earned.
#EDRTC
Since the last log entry I had planned to take a few days off to enjoy the sights and sounds of Leesti, but took up the Rookie Trader Challenge instead.
I bought a stock Sidewinder from the George Lucas shipyard and set about finding out how much I could earn from a single round trip to one other station.
| Opening balance | 1,000 |
| Outfitting | |
| Downgrade cargo rack from 4t to 2t | +2,250 |
| Sell 1 x pulse laser | +2,200 |
| Replace shield generator with E1 fuel scoop | +1,669 |
| Upgrade FSD to D2 (10.23 LY range, fully laden) | -3,956 |
| Commodities Market | |
| Buy 2t Leestian Evil Juice | -914 |
| Running total | 2,249 |
Go to Schweickart Station, Aegaeon (146.63 LY)
| Opening balance | 2,249 |
| Commodities Market | |
| Sell 2t Leestian Evil Juice | +29,800 |
| Outfitting | |
| Upgrade 2t cargo rack to 4t | -2,250 |
| Commodities Market | |
| Buy 4t Chateau de Aegaeon | -5,068 |
| Running total | 24,731 |
| Cartographic Sales | |
| Bruthanvan | +467 |
| Panopi | +200 |
| Crucis Sector AL-X B1-5 | +201 |
| Sokoji | +401 |
| LTT 4461 | +3,689 |
| LP 793-33 | +201 |
| LFT 824 | +1,661 |
| LTT 4170 | +951 |
| Penglai | +451 |
| Puppis Sector DL-Y D106 | +452 |
| Wong Ten | +1,322 |
| Fasti | +201 |
| LP 546-48 | +750 |
| Running total | 35,678 |
| Repairs | |
| Integrity | -30 |
| Paintwork | -10 |
| Running total | 35,638 |
Return to George Lucas station, Leesti
| Opening balance | 35,638 |
| Commodities | |
| Sell 4t Chateau de Aegaeon | +63,372 |
| Running total | 99,010 |
| Cartographic Sales | |
| LP 790-29 | +2,640 |
| LP 790-20 | +201 |
| Dhathaarib | +951 |
| Crucis Sector GM-V B2-2 | +402 |
| Chuelchs | +2,466 |
| Crucis Sector HM-V B2-0 | +201 |
| Honoko | +201 |
| Crucis Sector YE-A D96 | +204 |
| Crucis Sector IH-V B2-5 | +1,151 |
| Running total | 107,427 |
| Repairs | |
| Integrity | -30 |
| Paintwork | -10 |
| Closing balance | 107,387 |
Not content to leave it there (although that is my final entry for the challenge) I decided to up the stakes a little and use the profits to buy a Hauler, refit it and repeat the same run.
I part-exchanged the Sidewinder for a Hauler and spent an additional 53,602 credits upgrading the cargo racks and FSD, topped up with 14t of Evil Juice and 2t of Azure Milk and set off back to Aegaeon.
By the time I’d completed the circuit this time, my balance had increased to an impressive 489,715 credits, and with the Hauler valued at 74,232 credits, that’s a net worth of 563,947. More than enough to upgrade to a Cobra.
From the starting point of 1,000 credits and a basic Sidewinder, that’s a nice result.
Today I completed the 146.83 light year return journey from Morixa back up to Leesti.
Apart from a single interdiction attempt (evaded) in the Fan Yin system, there was nothing much to report. The ship is running well, and with the exception of a close call with one of the primary stars on the route while refuelling, it’s bearing up reasonably well to these long-haul flights.
Systems of note on this journey were Chibiabos (unexplored, 2 platforms, 40 bodies), Puppis Sector DL-Y D122 (unexplored, 29 bodies), LTT 4150 (unexplored, 3 platforms, 48 bodies) and Poulva (unexplored, 1 station, 50 bodies). These helped increase cartographics revenue to 66,334cr for this route.
Arrival at Leesti was generally uncomplicated, although the dock was crowded with three ships landing at once. It’s about time the authorities introduced a shipping lane tutorial or there will be expensive accidents happening before long. As it was my cargo of Chateau de Aegaeon was worth just under a quarter of a million credits at Leesti, and I would not have been pleased to have lost that, and have to pay out the insurance fees because some other commander was impatient to dock.
Overall profits for the trip from Leesti and neighbours to Morixa and back were in the region of 1.04Mcr.
I’ll be taking some R&R time down on Leesti for a day or two.
Today was about selling off the scarce items I’d been collecting from Lave, Leesti, Diso, Orrere and Zaonce. I plotted a course out of local space that happened to run past Shinrarta Dezhra, so I dropped in there to procure a quantity of the Waters of Shinrarta wonder treatment. What gullible people will pay for water is astounding.
The first stop after Shinrarta was Aegaeon where I picked up a nice case of Chateau de Aegaeon which will be coming back to Leesti with me tomorrow.
After Aegaeon I made the few short hops out to Morixa where the items I brought from Lave et al were much sought after and collected a very tidy profit.
Even after the repairs from yesterday’s encounters with pirates the ship’s accounts are looking very healthy. And fuel costs are but a distant memory now.
I’ve also added a turret-mounted beam laser, and swapped out the pulse lasers for a third auto-cannon and the missile rack which was previously on the large hardpoint where the beam laser is now.
I’m about 142 light years away from Leesti tonight and I’ll be staying aboard ship here at Tokarev City, relaxing with a drop of Lavian brandy and finding out what eventually became of Commander Angel Rose. That poor girl’s well and truly been through the wringer and I can only hope she’s recovering nicely somewhere.
Spent today in Lave and its surrounding systems on the trail of contracts and rare items. Dipping in and out of anarchic systems with a collection of rare items, gold and other haulage cargo generated a bit of interest from low-life pirates and a few interdiction attempts. Two were successful but turning on Uncle Bob and Sontar with guns and lasers blazing put paid to their attempts at thievery. Uncle Bob yielded a 6,117cr bounty when his Viper came off second best against the Python, but unfortunately Sontar got away in his/her Imperial Clipper with just 6% integrity remaining when their FSD kicked in.
Those encounters were responsible for quite hefty repair bills which took a considerable chunk out of the profits from the contracts. I’m hoping the gains from the rare items collected from Lave, Orrere, Diso, Leesti and Zaonce will reverse that when I set off on a long haul to somewhere tomorrow. I may swap out the pulse lasers with a pair of turreted beams before leaving though.
A long-distance day today. Set off from the Reynes system following the remainder of the course plotted out to ICZ BQ-X B1-0 but elected to stop off at Maunggu to investigate the mysterious “Limpet” that appeared on the list of exports for that system, in the hope that it might be a rare item. Whatever it was, however, did not show up on any internal systems at Morgan Terminal when I got there.
But while docked at Morgan, I picked up a contract to deliver 4 containers of wine, and another to hand over 13 tonnes of cobalt to Crossfield Terminal over in the Gubian system. Since that was my next stop along the route anyway I figured I’d take them, given that Morgan had nothing more to offer for export than Biowaste anyway, it was better to earn at least the 4,733cr on offer.
After wrapping up business at Gubian, including selling off the gold I purchased from Al-Khujandi Port for a reasonable 672cr profit per tonne, it was a quick matter of re-plotting the course of 13 jumps to take us the rest of the way to Luluwala.
Arrival at Luluwala revealed a very busy system, presumably everyone was attracted by the arrival of the capital ship now hanging in orbit. The somewhat under-sized industrial outpost that offered the only visible station services in the immediate vicinity was predictably overrun with customers, and gaining permission to dock was a bit of a request button mashing marathon.
I did eventually get in and had some essential repairs done to the damage caused by straying a little too close to one of the stars on the route while re-fuelling. These weighed in at an unpleasant 44,463cr, split across structural and modular repairs, but this was offset a little by the 23,393cr from the sale of cartographics data I still held on to, and the new data collected on the way up from Gubian.
Despite the number of ships in the system, there didn’t appear to be a lot actually happening, so I decided to lay in a course for Lave and aim to be there for tonight.
I followed this course with no deviations or diversions, at least until I arrived in the Leesti system. Then I dropped in to the George Lucas station and snagged a few Azure Milk and Leestian Evil Juice containers before departing again bound for Lave.
Upon arrival at Lave I purchased a few containers of Lavian Brandy, and now that the effects of the new year celebrations at Caelinus have long worn off, maybe I’ll just sample a drop or two of the fire water. In the interests of product quality control.
The total distance travelled today is 236.62 light years. Total spent on fuel replenishment: 0cr.
The plan for tomorrow is to run a few lazy circuits collecting some rare items from Lave and its neighbouring systems before setting off in a new direction that I haven’t explored yet.
A course plot for Luluwala (or to the limit of the plotter at ICZ BQ-X B1-0) took in a few interesting-looking systems along the way, and the journey up as far as Reynes, with the exception of a single evaded interdiction, has so far been routine.
Al-Khujandi Port in HIP 13685 provided an opportunity to pick up some gold and take a minor detour for a delivery contract for a dozen tonnes of mineral extractors bound for Baudhea and the Maury Colony platform there. Al-Khujandi was also a convenient spot to pick up 15,594cr of exploration data sales.
Arrival at Baudhea was uncomplicated and handing over the contract cargo went smoothly. Maury Colony was offering Bauxite at quite a way below the average price so I took a punt on 202 tonnes of that to take on to Chira’s Hereford Prospect station.
Back on route and stopping at Chira was another simple run and the Bauxite sold for a reasonable 75cr per tonne profit adding a total of 15,900cr to the ship’s accounts. The cartographics folks at Hereford Prospect were interested in the data that neither Al-Khujandi or Maury wanted, netting an additional 21,092cr.
This is roughly the halfway point for the plot out to ICZ BQ-X B1-0, and I’d estimate about one third the distance to Luluwala, where I’m hoping to spot the federal warship that moved in to the system earlier today. There could be some fireworks in that region soon, and if all goes well, I’ll be there to see what’s happening.
Fuel costs remained at zero for this leg.
Back in Xuesen Dock tonight having made a run out to Perrine Colony over in HIP 12368.
Carried out some food cartridges as per yesterday’s plan and, although I made 27,560cr profit on them, it was due mainly to carrying sufficient quantity as the per-unit profit was 130cr.
Discovered that Perrine Colony is a small outpost and as such does not carry significant quantities of many high-value commodities. For the return journey I brought back all their palladium and gold and some of their silver for good measure.
All told, today’s excursion has earned me 208,673cr which isn’t bad but also isn’t sustainable for long due to low volumes out at HIP 12368. Not having to buy fuel again has boosted profits though, and I picked up some decent-looking cartographics on the way too.
I think tomorrow I may plot a course for Lave or the surrounds and see how things are going over there. That should also give me a chance to sell of today’s cartographics.
Until then, it looks like another night aboard ship on the rather quiet Xuesen station.
Had a bit of a nose around Gliese 105.2 and found that, in spite of the promise of good times aboard Fokker Dock, there wasn’t very much happening there, or on the Donati station. So I dragged a load of coffee from Fokker to Xuesen here in Rangur. This is potentially the first stop of a trade route between Rangur, HIP 12368 and maybe back to Gliese.
That first drop netted 90cr profit per tonne of coffee which, while better than a punch in the face, isn’t great so I’m hoping for better things between Rangur and HIP 12368.
Jan 6 3301: Gliese 105.2 System
Arrived at Fokker Dock as planned tonight. CD-77 45 is now almost 117 light years and 35 jumps behind me and this trip has earned another 43.5Kcr from cartographics sales. I also discovered that the cartographics data from my travels around CD-77 45 are worth an additional 10Kcr up here, and I still haven’t had to pay for any fuel as the scoop has been working very nicely. Fortunately 32 of the 35 stars along this particular route proved to be scoop-compatible.
There’s been no time for excursions around here today but tomorrow I’ll strike out in search of interesting things.
In the meantime, Fokker Dock awaits.
Decided to investigate Evans Orbital in the T’u Tu system today and carried a load of pesticides with me on the grounds that it’s an agricultural economy over there, and they’d probably need some pesticides. However, they must be an organic operation or something as they didn’t want any whatsoever.
Not to be short changed, I re-routed the cargo to the CD-77 45 system, another agricultural economy, and dropped in to the Irrelon Orbital where I offloaded it for a reasonable 115cr profit per tonne.
There are a lot of trades going on out here, but they’re all very similar as far as I can see so I’m going to push out further tomorrow. Polaris looked interesting but is closed without an appropriate permit, and is a long journey at around 570LY. Maybe I’ll close in on that area later but for now I’ve settled on Gliese 105.2 and the promises of Fokker Dock, a much more reasonable 170LY or so away.
Spent the day running Advanced Catalysers and Palladium between Tietjen Ring and Bharadwat Hub in the Murato and Kebeledu systems respectively.
I decided to stretch the Python’s legs and find out how much this simple route can earn in one standard hour. Turns out it’ll pull about a million credits after maintenance costs. Fuel is negligible due to the proximity of a scoop-compatible star near the Kebeledu beacon.
Finally moored up at Encke Ring for the night. It doesn’t look like there’s much to do here, so it’ll be a night aboard ship watching the local entertainment feeds and planning tomorrow’s excursions. This is quite a densely populated sector so there should be a reasonable selection of trades to choose from.
Last night’s arrival of Commander Angel Rose was a sight to behold. Slough Orbital was overrun in minutes by Cmdr Rose and her fleet of merry-making followers as they proceeded to transform the normally austere station, owned by none other than Cmdr Rose’s father, into a playground of internal and external spaces. One can only imagine how she got away with such shenanigans without falling foul of the local security services. I suspect her father pulled a few strings in order to ensure that his wayward offspring returned to the station at all. At least she didn’t cause too much damage this time around. Her docking ability has improved since her last visit.
This morning was spent rounding out some trades in and around the Vesper-M4 system and generally clearing the decks in preparation for this afternoon’s journey down to Murato, deep in Empire space.
The new Python is performing admirably. I have reconfigured the interior spaces to accommodate some additional cargo racks and can now haul up to 212 tonnes at a time, while the upgraded FSD allows single jumps of just over 14 LY fully laden.
The journey to Murato was quiet and uneventful, which is the way I prefer to travel, and the 38 jumps spanning 142.86 light years provided many opportunities for exploratory scans along the way. Systems worthy of further investigation were LHS 480, a cluster of 59 bodies with just 3 platforms between them, Chacocha with 32 bodies, 1 station and 1 platform and Bodb Dearg with 26 bodies, 1 station and 1 platform. Cartographics alone from this run brought in 74Kcr.
Tomorrow will bring opportunities to research the local markets and maybe dig up a rare item or two.
New Year’s Day wasn’t quite the jubilant rounding off of celebrations that I’d expected. While scouting around the systems neighbouring Caelinus, Ho Hsi and Vesper-M4 I picked up a contract to eliminate one Leonardo Carol Jemison. I wanted to test the Anaconda with some higher level combat manoeuvres in order to understand it a little better. However, it turned out that Mr. Jemison also prefers an Anaconda and has gained his Elite insignia.
The battle was not as clean cut as it could have been and we both tore chunks out of each other during the exchange. Unfortunately the chunks he tore from my ship happened to be all the drives and the canopy. Turreted weapons continued to knock him around until he fled with collapsed shields and 30% hull integrity remaining.
Without the ability to move and with a rapidly depleting air supply all I could do was wait for the inevitable. If I’d protected my ship more effectively I think the ending to this encounter could have been very different.
I awoke back at Shuttleworth Hub, over in the Gamma Coronae Austrinae system. My Anaconda is gone but I’m feeling strangely liberated by that. It was a nice ship but something of a millstone that needed constant and significant injections of credits to keep flying.
With that knowledge gained I’m planning to invest my remaining credits wisely and I think that means buying a smaller ship and running low-profile operations for a while to rebuild my funds.
However, if I hear of anyone else picking up the contract on Mr. Jemison, I may be tempted to offer support in order to bring about his overdue demise.
As dawn broke over Moorcock Co-Operative, the festivities of the night before sought vengeance inside my head, wielding clubs bedecked with nails, needles and spines into my as yet not fully functioning mind. I’m getting too old for this… nonsense.
I had intended to offload all my Lavian brandy back on HR 2283, and at 10Kcr per unit it’d have added nicely to my profits. However, I’d decided to keep one back for personal consumption, and now I’m regretting that decision. Big time.
I arrived yesterday afternoon. My Anaconda’s hold was practically empty save for 20 units of pesticide which I hadn’t been able to shift at my intended drop-off point, which reminds me that I must have a chat with the techs about the reliability of the trade data on the network. Fortunately though this station was offering enough for that commodity to compensate a little, so the decision to keep turned out to be the right one.
I’d expected to run at a loss on this trip. 98.52 light years sucks a lot of fuel and the wear and tear on a hull the size of the Anaconda’s can be expensive to repair, however the fuel I scooped on the trail of 44 stars that the economical route plotter picked (I had to make a minor detour via LTT 7669) saved me a lot of cash. The cartographics data I picked up along the way also added up nicely, with so many unexplored systems between the start and end points of the journey. In fact, after selling off the pesticides and paying for fuel and maintenance, I had enough profit to buy a cheap old Sidewinder for 33Kcr and still have just over 9Kcr surplus.
My modus operandi of late has been to arrive at a system that I intend to explore, moor up the Anaconda and buy a small cheap ship to run around in. The advantage is that the smaller outposts that are inaccessible to larger ships suddenly become viable calling points. When I’m ready to leave, I’ll sell the smaller ship back to the station and set off in the Anaconda again. It works reasonably well, as long as I don’t run in to trouble makers, and don’t need to reach out too far out with cargo.
Why did I choose Caelinus as a destination, all the way from HR 2283? Because I’m intending to welcome Cmdr Angel Rose back to Slough Orbital over in Vesper-M4 later today.
All being well, I’ll be there to see Cmdr Rose arrive with the fleet that has been building around her over the past two weeks. There will probably be a party in Slough tonight. I gather it’s a partying kind of place, but after last night I don’t think I’ll be sinking any more of Lave’s finest liqueur.