Somewhat obfuscatedly (and sadly, not taking anyone's fancy) I recently made a covert post about my intent to do this, and today I completed that task. Today I arrived in Colonia with 10t of assorted Thargoid Materials (everything except a Thargoid Heart), which I shipped there from the bubble with no CRCRs/AFMUs.
Why?
<RP Hat On>
Thargoids activity is ramping up in the Pleiades. AEGIS are throwing all their eggs in one basket by establishing all their outposts in the Pleiades. If we lose them, we lose everything, and if the Thargoids continue to grow in strength and aggression, we may even lose the ability to collect such samples without a major engagement.
Therefore, I've taken the liberty of shipping these materials to Colonia to develop a second location for research and study of the Thargoids, potential countermeasures and insights into their behaviour and motives. I didn't use CRCRs due to the fact such a fitting would draw attention to the nature of my cargo, and the specialised fit and expediency required for such a journey meant AFMUs were not an option.
Jacques and I didn't part company under the best circumstances, but my hope is to secure a contact who can convey these items to the relevant groups to study, Canonn scientists in their colony of Canonnia are a likely candidate.
</RP Hat Off>
I've been shipping around Thargoid items forever now, originally taking a total of 250-odd UAs to Jacques prior to his jump, which may or may not have had some small impact on his non-arrival at Beagle Point. At that time, I was shipping around 20+ at a time, before CRCRs were a thing. Since then I've expanded that out to shipping 50-60t at at time out to 300LY. I got really excited when these missions appeared in the game, and was pretty disappointed when they got removed as a "mistake". I also got very excited when I saw Thargoid Tissue Samples were required for the various AEGIS CGs, but that quickly turned to disappointment as well.
Now we have the Palin missions coming out of Maia which were great for some quick credits, but feel like they've trivialised the risk of shipping dangerous cargo large distances with their significant rewards. Not saying they should be nerfed or anything, just that it turned an activity I enjoyed and made a decent amount of credits off, into a simple one-jump trip with 2-4t of dangerous cargo for a reward which blows any of my previous activities out of the water.
So I needed to turn it up a notch.... and decided to ship 10t (non-lethal amount) of Thargoid goods the 22,000LY trek to Colonia. Using CRCRs definitely felt like cheating though, and AFMUs, well, I just don't like them for this sort of activity... if you're stopping to repair damage you've got bigger problems. This was essentially a practice run, so I may ramp it up a bit more with some different challenges. And maybe this could even become a kind of race for the Buckyball guys
How?
I've already written a guide about how I ship corrosive cargo, so I basically just followed those rules, with the exception of no CRCR/AFMUs. I plan to update that with some of the experiences I had during the trip with what worked and what didn't, but that'll come later. Read that if you want the general gist.
As far as the trip itself went, I made sure I didn't log off "In space" when I'd go to bed. This felt cheap as well, and so I decided to use the outposts on the Colonia Connection Highway for waypoints. Technically this wasn't a full 22,000LY run, I did repair twice en-route at these places, but again, this was a practice run. My run was basically:
Bubble -> Blu Thua AI-A c14-10, stopped but no repair
Blu Thua AI-A c14-10 -> Lagoon Sector NI-S b4-10, stopped and repaired (for some reason, wasn't necessary)
Skipped Eagle Sector
Lagoon Sector NI-S b4-10 -> Skaudai CH-B d14-34, stopped, no repair
I then tried to go all the way from Skaudai to Boewnst KS-S c20-959, but my FSD went down to 79% integrity and my canopy took one hit, knocking it down to 33% integrity; one more would knock it out. 79% integrity meant random FSD failures though, which are the most dangerous situation for long-range corrosive hauling. As such, I aborted the run to Boewnst and sidetracked to Gru Hypue KS-T d3-31 for repairs.
And from there, I went all the way from Gru Hypue KS-T d3-31 to Colonia.
So the longest leg of "No repairs" was Lagoon Sector through to Grue Hypue, roughly 11,000Ly or thereabouts.
What now?
Well, you saw my RP reasons for going up there. Realistically I might just flog the goods off to the black market and do some exploration and playing around in Colonia for now, but I did want some RP reason for heading there. I'm not doing this again anytime soon... the amount of attention you have to pay to jumps is insane for this sort of activity, but I'll head back to the bubble when Thargoids change up massively.
This was a non-lethal amount of cargo too (10t)... I might try again one day with a lethal amount (16t+) just to white-knuckle it a bit more
Anyways, that's all, carry on about your business
Why?
<RP Hat On>
Thargoids activity is ramping up in the Pleiades. AEGIS are throwing all their eggs in one basket by establishing all their outposts in the Pleiades. If we lose them, we lose everything, and if the Thargoids continue to grow in strength and aggression, we may even lose the ability to collect such samples without a major engagement.
Therefore, I've taken the liberty of shipping these materials to Colonia to develop a second location for research and study of the Thargoids, potential countermeasures and insights into their behaviour and motives. I didn't use CRCRs due to the fact such a fitting would draw attention to the nature of my cargo, and the specialised fit and expediency required for such a journey meant AFMUs were not an option.
Jacques and I didn't part company under the best circumstances, but my hope is to secure a contact who can convey these items to the relevant groups to study, Canonn scientists in their colony of Canonnia are a likely candidate.
</RP Hat Off>
I've been shipping around Thargoid items forever now, originally taking a total of 250-odd UAs to Jacques prior to his jump, which may or may not have had some small impact on his non-arrival at Beagle Point. At that time, I was shipping around 20+ at a time, before CRCRs were a thing. Since then I've expanded that out to shipping 50-60t at at time out to 300LY. I got really excited when these missions appeared in the game, and was pretty disappointed when they got removed as a "mistake". I also got very excited when I saw Thargoid Tissue Samples were required for the various AEGIS CGs, but that quickly turned to disappointment as well.
Now we have the Palin missions coming out of Maia which were great for some quick credits, but feel like they've trivialised the risk of shipping dangerous cargo large distances with their significant rewards. Not saying they should be nerfed or anything, just that it turned an activity I enjoyed and made a decent amount of credits off, into a simple one-jump trip with 2-4t of dangerous cargo for a reward which blows any of my previous activities out of the water.
So I needed to turn it up a notch.... and decided to ship 10t (non-lethal amount) of Thargoid goods the 22,000LY trek to Colonia. Using CRCRs definitely felt like cheating though, and AFMUs, well, I just don't like them for this sort of activity... if you're stopping to repair damage you've got bigger problems. This was essentially a practice run, so I may ramp it up a bit more with some different challenges. And maybe this could even become a kind of race for the Buckyball guys
How?
I've already written a guide about how I ship corrosive cargo, so I basically just followed those rules, with the exception of no CRCR/AFMUs. I plan to update that with some of the experiences I had during the trip with what worked and what didn't, but that'll come later. Read that if you want the general gist.
As far as the trip itself went, I made sure I didn't log off "In space" when I'd go to bed. This felt cheap as well, and so I decided to use the outposts on the Colonia Connection Highway for waypoints. Technically this wasn't a full 22,000LY run, I did repair twice en-route at these places, but again, this was a practice run. My run was basically:
Bubble -> Blu Thua AI-A c14-10, stopped but no repair
Blu Thua AI-A c14-10 -> Lagoon Sector NI-S b4-10, stopped and repaired (for some reason, wasn't necessary)
Skipped Eagle Sector
Lagoon Sector NI-S b4-10 -> Skaudai CH-B d14-34, stopped, no repair
I then tried to go all the way from Skaudai to Boewnst KS-S c20-959, but my FSD went down to 79% integrity and my canopy took one hit, knocking it down to 33% integrity; one more would knock it out. 79% integrity meant random FSD failures though, which are the most dangerous situation for long-range corrosive hauling. As such, I aborted the run to Boewnst and sidetracked to Gru Hypue KS-T d3-31 for repairs.
And from there, I went all the way from Gru Hypue KS-T d3-31 to Colonia.
So the longest leg of "No repairs" was Lagoon Sector through to Grue Hypue, roughly 11,000Ly or thereabouts.
What now?
Well, you saw my RP reasons for going up there. Realistically I might just flog the goods off to the black market and do some exploration and playing around in Colonia for now, but I did want some RP reason for heading there. I'm not doing this again anytime soon... the amount of attention you have to pay to jumps is insane for this sort of activity, but I'll head back to the bubble when Thargoids change up massively.
This was a non-lethal amount of cargo too (10t)... I might try again one day with a lethal amount (16t+) just to white-knuckle it a bit more
Anyways, that's all, carry on about your business
Last edited:
