Newcomer / Intro What are you up to?

Seeing as how it's been a lovely sunny warm bank holiday friday, I figured the best thing to do was not go out lest I have to share space with the shirtless masses. Instead I turned my attention to the important task of getting more engineers unlocked.

Selene Jean has been my project for the last 3 days, and it finally came to fruition this morning with my 500th refinement. Over the duration, I've made somewhere around a quarter of a billion credits from everyone's favourite double painite spot. Throughout this, I have gone from a Clipper through an Orca to a Python, and all of them are still in my hangar. Python is the best bulk miner, but the Orca was faster and jumped 50% further.

Bill Turner was quick thanks to all my new mining experience. Happily, there were some void opals amongst the mundane ore Bill wanted.

Lei Cheung was an excuse for some tourism. Needing only 10 more markets to unlock him, I filled up on beer and toured the Sol system, dropping some off everywhere I passed.

Ram Tah; little bit of materials trading soon had his joining fee. Wish they were all this fast!

Hera Tani... I can only assume Hera is addicted to cigars that come individually wrapped in a metric ton of gold. Because I can't work out how anyone could consume 50 tons of cigars between visitors if it isn't down to ostentatious packaging.

Of all of them, this felt like the worst grind, actually. Even with my Krait doing the run in 3 jumps each way, it just felt much worse than the many hours of mining for Selene. The pure artificiality of the limited supply rankles, and now I'm sitting in tobacco central with my last load, not entirely wanting to make those last 3 jumps for the unlock.

TLDR, Selene worked me hard, but made me rich. Palin ran me around the galaxy for 5 days, but he caused me to get my name on some nice planets and showed me that exploration could be profitable and fun. Ram taught me to always target everything for scanning purposes. Hera taught me that when you're too cheap to hire the Hutton Truckers, there's always some dumb freelancer who'll do their job for free.

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Also I've subconsciously eaten half a bag of Haribo during the delivery run. Bleh.
 
After so many engineers yesterday, I was left with an uncomfortable truth; I don't really have enough materials to do the many upgrades I've now got access to. Yes, I've taken a few tons off my explorer Phantom and it's pushing 66ly now, but there are still some bolts that haven't been removed and which we - apparently - need scrap materials to help with getting rid of.

Must be time for a combat ship! Flipping through the list and remembering the Fer De Lance from... somewhere deep in my childhood... I grabbed one, A-rated it, checked the jump range and... and... Dang.

Turns out the FDL does not have a lot of jump range, and I did not have any FSD blueprint pinned. Sad times. Cutting a long story short, back to the Krait for a quick hop to Elvira, pin the blueprint, back 'home' (Sak Manka for unclear reasons)... and now the FDL jumps 20ly. Well... it's better.

Now I just have to get experimentals on all the things... or maybe I'll just go start shooting stuff and see how it goes.
 
Did a little exploring locally, nothing of any consequence but did get a message to check the codex. I have no idea what I did and looking through the codex provided exactly zero clues: definitely no first discoveries or mapping. Ah well.

And it's a bit of a grr moment when the planet you wanted to scan has its adaptive zoom fail because an inconvenient star is in the way...

Anyway, I ❤ volcanism.
 
After so many engineers yesterday, I was left with an uncomfortable truth; I don't really have enough materials to do the many upgrades I've now got access to. Yes, I've taken a few tons off my explorer Phantom and it's pushing 66ly now, but there are still some bolts that haven't been removed and which we - apparently - need scrap materials to help with getting rid of.

Must be time for a combat ship! Flipping through the list and remembering the Fer De Lance from... somewhere deep in my childhood... I grabbed one, A-rated it, checked the jump range and... and... Dang.

Turns out the FDL does not have a lot of jump range, and I did not have any FSD blueprint pinned. Sad times. Cutting a long story short, back to the Krait for a quick hop to Elvira, pin the blueprint, back 'home' (Sak Manka for unclear reasons)... and now the FDL jumps 20ly. Well... it's better.

Now I just have to get experimentals on all the things... or maybe I'll just go start shooting stuff and see how it goes.

All the fighters have issues with jump range, so in their case ship transfer is your slightly annoying friend who is always cadging money off you.
 
All the fighters have issues with jump range, so in their case ship transfer is your slightly annoying friend who is always cadging money off you.

It's an option, but I've found that the time required for ship transfer is always suspiciously close to the time required if I just get in it and go there myself x)

I guess if I had other things to be doing in that system anyway. Maybe land, order my ship transfer, then go out and scan some signal sources for free materials...
 
It's an option, but I've found that the time required for ship transfer is always suspiciously close to the time required if I just get in it and go there myself x)

I guess if I had other things to be doing in that system anyway. Maybe land, order my ship transfer, then go out and scan some signal sources for free materials...

That and arrange things so your travelling ship arrives at the scene at the end of your planned session and you call for your ship to transfer while you go offline are the most efficient way to handle transfers.

Flying the ship there yourself is generally quicker assuming it has the jump range to get there, I have flown some combat builds with barely 7Ly jump range which can cause problems if you think back to your starter Sidewinder.
 
That and arrange things so your travelling ship arrives at the scene at the end of your planned session

Not wrong, but basically I'm counting days until we get that extra size 1 slot and I go back out into the black x) Meantime it's get as much done within the bubble as I can, and the only thing left on my list is more engineering materials.

...I might just keep visiting signal sources. My home system has gone to war with my 2nd favourite system, and it's conveniently full of salvage. Thinking about it, I can probably drop in on conflict zones and literally just pick up the pieces, since both sides consider me an ally. Doubt it'll be as efficient as farming haz res though.

And I have no idea how I managed with that starter Sidewinder. 8ly is infuriating, and the FSD was my first upgrade. It irks me that my mining Python is 'only' 30 when fully loaded!
 
As to what I am up to...

No updates lately, not that anyone is hanging on my next episode :)

Normally I upgrade and engineer my ships "as it comes". The idea is to avoid grind. Maybe I see PI's as a mission reward or find them in a USS I stumble across. Ooh, now I can add another twist or two to a few Dirty Drives. A ship or two gets a little faster and more agile. And so it goes. I avoid feeling compelled to finish engineering mods. As it comes. A few folks espouse this method around here (and they are right you know) whenever someone comes in and complains about the 'grind'. Looking at you Chris (y)

But for the past week I have thrown caution to the wind and went all-in on a build. Fast Battle Courier.

It's not quite done. Will it ever be? But it is amazing. Ultra-fast, good protection for a Courier. Decent DPS. I focused on this ship for a week and it's come a long way. It took several engineer unlocks (like Zac Nemo for the frags) and lots of visits to materials traders, one to Dav's and flying hither and yon to far-flung engineers. But I present for you, Velocity


Velocity

Not done as I said. Resistances are still a bit low. Unused C3 optional and utility. I had set arbitrary speed thresholds of 600/800 for the project, and it's right there. So to add mass I need to shed the same to maintain speed. It's amazing to fly in combat. Insane speed and acceleration, excellent agility, little drift. It has it's weaknesses. But I wanted a blazingly fast combat ship and I have built one. Usually I don't show off my ships, but it is what I've been up to.

All that for 10 million and a lot of work :) Zoom Zoom.
 
A tip: Both Mainani and Ngalinn are in boom states, so if you need that Imperial Rank, now is a good time. To newcomers: You don't need a fancy ship. Any ship will do. Just go to one of the two systems and pick up data missions to the other system. After some back and forth and the occasional interdiction, you'll be Duke faster than you can say "Cutter" (almost).
 
My thoughts have turned to the Mamba for some RES action. I currently use, albeit rarely a Vulture that is fairly well engineered.

What is putting me off is that, in beta, it seemed one stab of the trigger caused the ship to overheat. Not sure if that's been addressed.

Does anyone use these in RES's? I'm wondering how the Vulture and Mamba compare. I'm thinking the Mamba hits harder but is less manoeuvreble...

Oh, and I just found five unmapped worlds near Diaguandri that now have me as the cartographer :D Five! I'm so cool. Ouch! Just bit my tongue as hit my cheek.
 
Yep! I do. It's not as efficient as my tanked Conda, but the Mamba is much more fun. I use all beams (efficient). I haven't got problems with the heat. Beams are not optimal. A combo of beam and frag is better, but again, beams are more fun. You can almost write your name on the opponents hull ;)
 
My thoughts have turned to the Mamba for some RES action. I currently use, albeit rarely a Vulture that is fairly well engineered.

What is putting me off is that, in beta, it seemed one stab of the trigger caused the ship to overheat. Not sure if that's been addressed.

Does anyone use these in RES's? I'm wondering how the Vulture and Mamba compare. I'm thinking the Mamba hits harder but is less manoeuvreble...

Oh, and I just found five unmapped worlds near Diaguandri that now have me as the cartographer :D Five! I'm so cool. Ouch! Just bit my tongue as hit my cheek.

They have fixed the heat issue from beta, to be fair most things are less manoeuvrable than the Vulture but the Mamba is good enough and seriously quick plus with all the weapons on the same side you can deliver a serious punch.

What I am doing is sitting in Jameson Memorial deciding what next after spending a couple of weeks or more falling back down cliffs in my SRV while materials gathering at geo sites.
 
They have fixed the heat issue from beta, to be fair most things are less manoeuvrable than the Vulture but the Mamba is good enough and seriously quick plus with all the weapons on the same side you can deliver a serious punch.

What I am doing is sitting in Jameson Memorial deciding what next after spending a couple of weeks or more falling back down cliffs in my SRV while materials gathering at geo sites.

It's amazing that, at geo sites, there are so many cobbles, needles etc. up slopes too steep to reach.
 
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