#COLIN4COLONIA PREPERATION - LOG 1.

Bored

Bored, Bored, Bored, Bored

I’ve been flying around the old worlds on and off for about a year. My Brother is quite successful in the Empire at the moment (See Cmdr PhoenixDfire), with his multi-million bank balance and fleet of ships and I can’t be bothered following his same path. Mum is always nagging, with the soul crushing ‘Look how well you’re brother’s doing!’ Probably followed up with the classic, ‘why aren’t you doing that well?’

Don’t get me wrong, it’s quite nice getting reacquainted with the Lave, Diso, Leesti and Zaonce. The Alliance seems to like me, the Federation not so much and the Empire doesn’t even know who I am. But there’s just something about being around here that’s making me restless. Colonia seems to be quite exciting, if you follow the news feeds, but there’s only one problem. I haven’t got the cash to go.

I mean, I could take the Blue Cobra if I build her up a bit (and people have told me that’s the thing I should do) but I want to do it in my first ship, ‘The Shiny Sidey’, a Chrome Painted Sidewinder. It’s the kind of ship you need to spend two hours a day just polishing it up so you can see your face in it.

So the Blue Cobra is my trader and mission runner, paying to upgrade the Shiny SIdey, one module at a time. So far;-

  1. 2A Frame Shift – Check.
  2. 2A Fuel Scoop – Check.
  3. Scarab – Check.
  4. MultiCannons – Check.
  5. D rated other Modules – Check.
  6. Detailed Planetary Scanner – Check.
  7. Advanced Discover Scanner – Erm Ah. There’s the problem.

The ADS costs over 1.5 million Crs, and I’m about 1.2 Mil short. The cobra could net me almost 800K but I won’t sell that until I can afford the ADS and a couple of insurance rebuys. No point in leaving the Cobra, the transfer costs to Colonia can only be described as mental.

Actually, there’s more than one problem. The fact that I want to take a Scarab made me choose between shields and a fuel scoop. There’s not an Engineer out there that could give you and extra module slot. If someone gets the jump on me, I’m going to have to be stealthy as I run away. I just hope I can get away, there are a lot more faster ships than mine.

Best to cross that bridge when I come to it. It’s a week or so of running missions and carrying Biowaste to Lave and then I’ll be hopefully be ready to go. Just because I want to get as far away from that smug git-brother of mine.
 
#Colin4Colonia Preperation - Log 2

Not so Bored

I got jumped by a pirate viper last night; Gary the Pirate. He was only a novice and I’d got his shields down and started to hammer his hull when a couple of police vipers turned up. Gary turned tail and ran, managing to FSD out of there with about 70% of his hull intact. Pity, I could have done with the 20,000 CR bounty.

Still, running missions for the Alliance Lot in Leesti is paying off. Another 150K towards the Advanced Discovery Scanner. Only 500K left now.
 
#COLIN4COLONIA PREPERATION - LOG 3.

Not Bored Now.

Hell, there I was planning the night’s runs through the old world when the news came through. Confirmed contact with unknown vessels near Maia. Well, that’s kicked in my, lets get out of here vibe. A rated Corvettes pulled from hyperspace, scanned and then let go. What chance would my little D Cobra have? It’s only a matter of time before someone stupid (SDC) or someone scared (me) opens fire and that will be that. Whatever these things are will be coming after all of us.

I’m up to 600K now, but I think I’m going to have to move the goal posts. You see, a friend of mine came back from Colonia not so long back and he says that they don’t have many ships available out there. If I want to have a Cobra out there, then I’ll have to have it transferred. So I’m going to have to change the plan.

Instead of selling the whole Cobra for 800K, I’ll strip it down and replace any decent upgrades with their ‘E’ rated equivalent. That should net me about another 500K, so that’s 1.1 million of the 1.8 million I reckon I’ll need to make the trip. E rated ships are really cheap to transfer so hopefully with the exploration data I recieve, I should be able to afford the transport costs.

My friend did tell me two more important pieces of information. Firstly, I can upgrade my jump range by flying through neutron stars and white dwarfs. Dunno if I’m going to do this because I’ve got no way of repairing any damage done to the ship. Secondly, they’ve set up refueling stations all the way out to Colonia, looks like I’ll have to be bookmarking the following systems;

  1. COL SECTOR PR-SB5-8
  2. COL SECTOR RZ-E C12-15
  3. COL SECTOR RU-F D11-92
  4. IC 4756 SECTOR XD-R C4-12
  5. BLEAE THUA OJ-Q B5-2
  6. PHYLUR TB-T B31-1
  7. BYEIA THAA GL-Y B80
  8. BYEIA THAA ZR-H B24-1
  9. BYEIA THAA YJ-A B42-0
  10. TRAIKOA EU-C B27-3


They must be the loneliest places in the galaxy to live, but I’m glad they’re there.

Right now, the escape plane needs more money and I feel we’re up against the clock now!
 
#Colin4Colonia Preparation - Log 4.

Almost Ready.

I got a lucky break. A 250,000 mission to take 20t of water to Riequat. Talk about desperate. I was on edge all the way, expecting to be jumped by some thirsty pirate but there was nothing. It’s the biggest payout I’ve had so far and pushed me over the 1 million mark.

Thanks to a recent update, I’ve decided to update the ‘Shiny Sidey’ with Rail Guns instead. My only chance to deal with any hostile targets will be to stealth snipe, another reason to stack up on heat sinks. As soon as a hostile gets in, you drop a heat sink and using the Sidewinder’s manoeuvrability to get behind your target and let the rail guns do their thing. Hopefully, the low heat immersions will make it impossible for both turrets and gimbled weapons to lock on.

However, as I’ve finally got enough to almost get my discovery scanner, I’ve hit a serious problem. I’ve worked out the insurance cost. Presently it will cost me 40,000 Cr to replace the silver sidey as it is. However as soon as I add that blasted ADS, I’m up to almost 200,000 Cr. There’s no way, I want to make my attempt without at least two or three insurance rebuys available to me.

Even stripping down the cobra to have it E rated, doesn’t give me enough to get the discovery scanner, so I guess I’ll have to carry on trading and running missions until I hit 2 million. Still, I’m a lot closer to making my run than before.

- - - Updated - - -

She’s ready.

The Shiny Sidey is ready to go. It took a while of running between Leesti and Ridequat but the ship is now fueled and itching to go. The only problem regret I have is there is no way to drop by and pick up cargo for the present CG.

I even had a try with the Rail Guns in a fight on Sunday. The heat kickback is astounding, but if you hit, wow, it took two rings of a viper Mk III’s shields with one hit from the pair of them. The ship was overheating after the third but I wonder if it would be any good as a stealth ship.

The main thing about stealth ships, especially when up against big ships with turrets, is make sure they can’t lock on, so I might change to frag cannons. I’d have to sneak up close and unleash the frags up close but it would probably be my only choice if some other commander decides to take an interest.

So Thursday night at 23:00 Galactic Standard Time, I’m going to make my move.

I wonder how I’ll get on.

- - - Updated - - -

And we’re off.

There were a couple of little tweaks before launch. I reverted back to multi cannons and downgraded to a D rated power plant. It’s given me a jump range of almost 16 ly and I left Zanonce at about 23:15 GST (Galactic Standard Time). I was then I found out how much of a challenge this is going to be.
I reset the galaxy map only to show the fuelible (is that even a word?) stars and plotted a route out to system about a third of the way to the first outpost. 67 Jumps!

67 fluxing jumps!!! So in order to get to the first outpost 2200 ly away is (grumbling to do quick maths) that’s 201 approximately jumps, just to reach the 1st fuel stop.

Oh well, I did promise myself to do this but you know how many Jumps I was able to get through last night?

‘No’, I hear you cry.

Ten!! Yes ten and I’m only just on the edge of the bubble. I mean, I though the heat would be so low that no-one would see me, but I forgot that doesn’t count in super cruise. Sure enough, a Cobra and a Diamondback decide to have a go, so after a little bit of a skirmish (and helping my rating a little), I had to dock to outposts just to get the hull knocked backed into shape. I mean the bonus is nice but I could have done without the time delay.

So using these ‘guesstamate’ maths ;-

120 ly in 10 jumps; therefore 22,000 ly to the Jaques Station = 1,834 Jumps.

Only 1824 to go then!

Bottom!
 
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150ly from the Bubble.

It’s now ten jumps since I last saw a human ship. It’s just me and the black out here. Getting to the first outpost is a lot more difficult than I thought, as I reckon I’ve got another 130 jumps to go. I mean, it might be 2200 ly ‘as the crow flies’* but it’s a lot further the smaller the jump driver you have.

In order to get to a system which is 17 ly ahead of you in the route, it means having to detour to a star 12 ly away and then another 6 or 7 ly jump that original system, you targeted. Traveling 18 ly to make an 17 ly jump. I’m beginning to wonder if I would have been better off running a few errands for Martuuck or Farseer, just to give the ship a little more distance.

In the old space movies, there was this ship called the Millennium Falcon, it used to be laughed at because they would say it did the ‘Kessel Run’ in 12 parsecs, when people would say it should have been 12 hours; a time measurement instead of a distance measurement. I can finally understand it now, the ‘Kessel Run’ was most direct distance, not the time taken.

I had a close call with a sun too and lost a little hull integrity, another 50 of those and it’s back to the start but it was not all bad news. I’ve got a couple of water worlds discovered (although already tagged by other commanders) and a gas giant which apparently was supporting life.
I always imagined what kind of life there was there. I mean the scanners probably meant microbes or single cell organisms floating in the air but the imagination conjures images of flying whales and fish like organisms swimming though the thick atmosphere.

I landed on a planet, in the middle of a mountain range. There is something exhilarating about flying through the canyons, even dropped and landed for a little while. Why land I hear you ask? Well, the answer is simple, gravity. There are too many spacers who spend too long in zero g and it causes your body so many problems that it can leave you too weak to fly the ship. That’s why I stop off on planets, you need the gravity to keep strong.

* ‘The crow flies’ has always meant the most direct route. However, we all know that a bird doesn’t have the ability to fly in space or the ability to fly in space. Could you imagine the Exploration Bonus if you saw one?
 
OUCH!

That was a rough landing, I’ve gone from 98% hull to 92%. 6% loss because I was a little too enthusiastic with the thrusters on a planet with 0.07 G. To be honest, I’m kicking myself, almost 150ly without a problem and one slip with the thrusters and bang. I’m really regretting not being able to carry shields.

I’m almost 500ly from Lave and there’s still almost 1700 ly to Hillary Depot in the Blu Thua AI-A c14-10 system. Lets Guestinate that’s is 170 jumps, I mean if I only loose 8% per 500kly, then I’m sure I’ll get there with 75% but it just underlines how careful I’m going to have to be. I’m hoping to heck you can repair your hull there.

The upside was that I was able to take the buggy out and started to collect some materials. I only collected 7 or 8 of them and because I’d never scanned them before, my explorer rating has jumped to Scout! This green icey world I’ve landed on is quite beautiful in a turquoise type of way and full of really rare materials (heck that’s why I brought the surface scanner scanner along). However, the Scarab is so hard to control in an icy, low grav environment. I’m scared of damaging that one beyond repair as well.

Mind you I just scooped some iron, so I can use the synthsis module to repair it, pity I can’t do the same with the ship hull.
 
#Colin4Colonia Log 8 - This is both interesting and boring at the same time.

Another 250 ly done and a couple of new materials identified. There was a close call with a super-massive – G class star. I was astonished by the size of the thing. I was fuel scooping at 0.75 C and it felt as if we were crawling next to it. While I was busy dodging the solar flares, I forgot to keep an eye on the temperature gauge.

A panic pull up and flying away from the star with the temperature running at 98%. I had my thumb hanging over the heat sink button just in case but thankfully I didn’t fire it. I think I lost a couple of points with some of the modules but they’re mostly all rated at 98% efficiency, so I’m not too worried.
I’m now 1300ly away from the first base and a commander has already let me know over long range that there’s an easier way to manage the navigation, otherwise he said I might go a little space crazy.

However, I can feel the space madness creep into my mind at this point.
 
#COLIN4COLONIA LOG 8 - The space Madness is setting in.

The slow crawl to Colonia continues, the good news is that I’m almost 1000 ly from Sol, the bad news is I’m over 1200 ly till the first outpost. There have been a couple of scary moments this time as well. I had to make a detour to an M Class star, as the route had three Brown dwarf stars in a row. The poor shiny Sidey can only do three 15ly jumps in a row before running out of fuel. I don’t want to embarrass myself by calling in the fuel rats, especially this close to Sol.

Fuel is life to me out here. I have to make sure that I hit a star of type A, B, F, G, K, M and O every three jumps, otherwise I will be flying a lonely coffin, looking for an earth like to land on. I might even see if there’s a neutron or white dwarf just to try the 3xjump boost once. It might be worth it for a 45 ly jump. I hear it does damage to the FSD but I should be able to get away with one.

The Galnet feed picks up a lot of stuff about what’s happening back home; genuine Alien sightings, Alien Ruins about some race called the Guardians and an investigation into a 30 year old expedition. Even rumours about the Federation and the Alliance buddying up to deal with these. Sounds a bit scary to be honest, glad I’m making a run for it.

Still 100 jumps to go.
 
#Colin4Colonia - Planet Unexplored

I’m now about 1300ly from Sol and I’ve discovered my first planet which no other commander has tagged. It was nothing special, a small beige ball hanging around a ‘K’ class star that I couldn’t even land on but if I can get to that first waypoint station, then there will always be a small part of the galaxy that I’ll have my name against.

So even if I end up flying into a star or blasted by pirates, as long as the galactic cartographics system stays up, there will still a label somewhere say that Cmdr PhoenixDfire was here and I got this far. Maybe another explorer will wonder who I am and why I was out there. It’s quite reassuring really, in a small quiet way.

There have been a couple occasions in the last 100ly where I discovered water worlds. One of them, it might even be possible to terraform. Two of these worlds were orbiting each other, which was an amazing to sight to see. It would have been impossible for any land based life to evolve on those planets. The tides caused by each planet’s twin would have meant there were massive tsunamis every couple of hours.

Still there might be plenty of edible fish there. For some reason, human spacefarers have a real appetite for fish. I’ve always put that down to a weird co-incidence because if there is a reason for it, it would probably drive you crazy if you found out.

989 Lys to go
 
#Colin4colonia - Crash Landing....

Pants Pants Pants Pants!

87%

87 Sodding Percent.

After a week of being in my sickbed, I finally manage to get moving again and make a series of 15 or so jumps towards the first outpost. Even managed to tag a couple of water worlds.

Then it happened, I decided to stop off for my next break and dropped own to the planet’s surface and do the rookie mistake of not watching the G counter. A little too much downward ventral thrust and bang. 87 % remaining.

I'm going to take the Scarab out for a bit and see if there are some materials I can use but hell, I'm kicking myself now!
 
#Colin4Colonia - Heated Exhange.

Less than 60 jumps to go until I get to Hilllary Depot. It’s been a bit of a haul but I’m at least I’m not hearing the ‘space voices’ yet. More water worlds and untagged systems have been discovered on my trip out but the worst was when I uncovered an equipment malfunction.

The orbit lines appeared to fail. I couldn’t see the borderline for an M class star and before I knew it, I was taking heat damage and dropped out of super cruise. Overwhelmed with blind panic as the temperature gauge hit 130%, I had to drop a heat sink in order get the ship cool enough to jump away. After another toasting, the damage report wasn’t too bad. Most of the modules were down to between 80 and 90% so I don’t think there’s a need for a reboot/repair run just yet.

On the up side, I recovered some Tungsten and Antimony for the first time on a planet’s surface and that’s boosted my exploration rating by 20%. I’m hoping for even more of an Exploration Rank boost when I get to Hilllary Depot in Blu Thua AI-A c14-10.

But I landed for a rest on a 0.1G moon of a water world planet, it’s nice to see a small blue dot in the distance even though it’s not He Bo. Never thought I’d miss that place, guess it takes a while to appreciate what you had.
 
#COLIN4COLONIA 13 - Can't take the heat!

Oh My Goodness,

What the flying fudge is wrong with me!! I managed to jump to within 35 jumps of the first Colonia Way Service station but I’ve been toasted by Type M starts Twice! Twice!

I mean, once can be chalked up to being unlucky, but twice? That’s horrendous piloting. The hull is now down to 82% and the modules are beginning to suffer, most of them are running between 70 and 80%.

I did manage to establish long range communications with a Cmdr Galactic Midden, who was flying round the galaxy for the last year. He’s used to the jump, honk, scoop and repeat routine, but he says that I’m too interested in any planetary systems that I find. He gave up on that just in an effort to get home. I did find a couple of new minerals which means my exploration rating has jumped to 31%. I just hope that I can fix up the paintwork and have the new ship kit fitted to the Shiny Sidey at Hillary’s Rest. I mean, nothing protects you from the vacuum of space better than good paint work and a sick spoiler (!).

The last couple of days though, I’ve been hearing news about blockades, Meta Alloy Thefts and Shortages and Big fleet destruction back in the bubble. Both the Alliance and the Federation have lost massive convoys to unknown assailants and the Empire lost one of their cruisers stationed in the Imperial Naval’s Headquarter’s system a few months ago.

All of a sudden, being stuck out here on a planet 1500ly away with only 82% hull left doesn’t seem so bad.
 
#Colin4Colonia #15 - Hillary Depot, I am soooo glad to see you!!

Well, it’s taken ten weeks to get 2,300 ly in the Shiny Sidey and when I saw other ships on the scanner, I almost cried. Seeing system patrol vipers had me punching the canopy in joy. I almost forgot how to land on a planetary base. Thankfully, the gravity was only 0.11g, so there was no problem putting the gear down.

I managed to put in 28 jumps in the last session to get in and when the Shiny Sidey ended the hanger, I just wanted to get into the ship bunk and sleep it off. However, there was things to do first. The ship needed overhauling, got extra fuel for the ship and the SRV and got the hull and the ship modules patched up. It cost me about 20,000 Cr, which wasn’t a problem.

Then I checked in my exploration data. OMG! Approximately 2.3 million Cr. with three planets I tagged as first explored! Total Credits over 3,000,000 and the Exploration Rank is up from Scout to Trailblazer, completely going past Surveyor. My Jaw hit the Floor, I could buy an Asp Scout or one of the Diamond Back Explorers for that. Only two problems with that;-

1. I was determined to only to this in a Sidewinder, although after the last two months, I’m seriously doubting myself.

2. There’s no shipyard or outfitting out here.

The lack of outfitting is a little disappointing. In a moment of madness (which when you’re doing this trip; you’re going to have many), I bought a sidewinder ship kit. However, the only time I’ll be able to mod the ship, will be when I get to Colonia. That’s a little redundant because as soon as I get to Colonia, the Shiny Sidey goes into storage. Kicking myself over the waste of money.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need some sleep.

*NB You'll have to blame 2.3 Beta for the late arrival of the Shiny Sidey*
 
Good Bye Hillary Depot

Good Bye Hillary Depot (Blu Thua AI-A c14-10, planet A 4 A).

You were a welcome relief but the course is set for Amundsen Terminal in the Lagoon Sector NI-S b4-10 system and its 4000ly away.

4000 fluxing light years?!??!?

The Shiny Sidey’s Nav com says it’s approximately 83 jumps per 1000 light years so we’re looking at 40 jumps per week and that means 8 weeks until the next station?!?

OMG, What have I let myself in for! I’m going to have to pick up the pace a little. On top of that, I’ve got to pass the space between two galactic arms.

After that we have ;-

Eagle's Landing – Eagle Sector IR-W d1-117, planet 2 A
Sacaqawea Space Port – Skaudai CH-B d14-34, planet 1 A
Gagarin Gate – Gru Hypue KS-T d3-31, planet 4
Polo Harbour – Boewnst KS-S c20-959, planet A 2 A

At least the long range comms kicked in last night and I was able to communicate with a few commanders who were interested about the effects of space madness. Trust me, when you start to crave fish for no apparent reason, you know it won’t be long before you’re licking the canopy, thinking you can ‘taste the space’.

I was hoping that I’d start hitting some undiscovered systems now but it doesn’t look like it. I suppose these routes have been well traveled that even all the systems have been discovered. Oh well, I got a couple on the way in to Hillary Depot.

Funny, I could really murder some battered haddock and chips.

Uh Oh!
 
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#Colin4Colonia #17 - It's amazing how uplifting a little globe of blue can be.

It has been so difficult to get going again. This is the worst part, I’m over a third of the way to outpost 2 of the Colonia run and the Shiny Sidewinder is beginning to creak and shudder in ways that are frankly scary.

I did have a couple of exciting moments as I discovered a water world, about 300 ls away from its star, and an angry volcanic world, charred black by its close proximity to its star. The gravity ripping the crust apart showing angry scars of red lava underneath. Pity they were both tagged by someone else but it was just a relief to see a different planet instead of usual muddy brown.

Finding the water world was motivation I needed to keep going. I was tempted to turn back, even though I’m almost 4000ly away from the bubble. I’m getting about jumps between 12 and 14 ly at the moment, which means I’m covering more space but I think it’s almost 1500 ly to the next outpost. I managed to find a world with reasonable gravity on it and picked up a few rare commodities for the synthesis. I’m going to see if I can overload the jump drive for a couple of Jumps at least next time just to see if that speeds some things up. If that doesn’t work, I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m going to have to attempt a Neutron Star jump to try and get 45 ly in a single jump.

I’ll check the emergency drinks cabinet, I’ll need some dutch courage before I try that one.
 
Lord God, my head hurts.

I have literally been asleep for almost two months. The last landing was a little rough, so much so it almost triggered the escape pod sequence. Thrown back into the pod and then kept in hypersleep, I woke up last night when the emergency systems realized that the ship hadn’t been destroyed and it could safely release me.

The escape pod is knackered, so if I can’t get to Amundsen Terminal and repair the ship, I’ll have no escape if an accident or an attack goes wrong. Oh well, no point worrying about that. The last ‘landing’ cause the hull to drop to four-fifths integrity, which although is not great, it isn’t much to worry about.

After giving the ship an external inspection in the SRV, I took off and was so relived to get off that moon. It was only a 0.75g world, so that goes to show how careless my approach was. Another 100 ly or so before putting down for the day on an ice moon, this time without any problems what so ever.

I must admit I was there wonder what the flux I was doing and if I should head back when I saw the star rise from one side of the horizon, lighting up the ice while the Blue gas Giant rose from the other, covering the ice moon in a reflected blue light. I just sat there, almost applauding at the beauty of the moment.

It’s then it struck me. I’m not doing this for the rank. I’m not doing it for the money. I’m probably the only human to have seen or ever see this view and that’s why I’m doing this.
 
I've finally made it to Amundsen's. To be honest I made it four months ago but the space madness of flying the Shiny Sidey has taken it's toll. The thought of flying almost another 3000 ly in 15 ly jumps without a break was making my head spin.

Thankfully a passing Commander has given me a list of newly established bases all the way to Colonia. It's a lot more manageable than it was so, I'm going to risk getting into the Shiny Sidewinder and see how I do. Take off is 11/01/2204 at 23:00 standard time.

New Route Planned


#1 Omega Sector VE-Q b5-15 (Omega Mining Operation) -1444.3125 / -85.8125 / 5319.9375 1,284.45 Ly
#2 Eagle Sector IR-W d1-105 (Eagle Sector Secure Facility) -2046.21875 / 104.40625 / 6699.90625 1,517.49 Ly
#3 Rohini (Eudaemon Anchorage) -3374.8125 / -47.8125 / 6912.25 1,354.04 Ly
#4 Skaudai CH-B d14-34 (Sacaqawea Space Port) -5481.84375 / -579.15625 / 10429.9375 4,134.73 Ly
#5 Gru Hypue KS-T d3-31 (Gagarin Gate / Vostok-1 Nebula) -4990.84375 / -935.71875 / 13387.15625 3,018.83 Ly
#6 Gandharvi (Gandharvi - Caravanserai) -6703.5 / -157.84375 / 14108.03125 2,014.43 Ly
#7 Boewnst KS-S c20-959 (Polo Harbour / The Venetian Nebula) -6195.46875 / -140.28125 / 16462.0625 2,408.29 Ly
#8 Kashyapa (Kashyapa - Vihara Gate) -8392.03125 / -701.03125 / 17555.125 2,516.77 Ly
#9 Colonia (Jaques Station / Animula Spires / The Mosta-Murdoch Raceway) -9530.5 / -910.28125 / 19808.125 2,532.96 Ly
 
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