I haven't been playing a lot recently, but I got on last night with a couple of friends to play. We rarely get on together, but when we do, we get into teamspeak and go bounty hunting.
Knowing about the changes to RES' I started looking for the lowest security extraction system I could find that didn't have low reserves. We dropped into a Major RES and set about getting ready to fight. After about quarter of an hour we got bored of the occasional Cobra that was turning up and the general emptiness of it so figured we'd go back to some old hunting grounds which were always churning out the big ships previously.
We figured we'd try some SSS along the way but was greeted largely by friendly ships doing nothing of note. We finally encountered three anacondas and went about engaging them; just as we destroyed the first one we were all booted out the game to desktop with no error (bug reported). We got back in and resetup the wing and carried on feeling dejected to our old stomping ground, which has been a reliable source of good bounty-hunting. Alas our experience was the same with the other Major RES, it was desolated.
After another fifteen minutes I found a post from Michael Brooks saying they're not working right. Brilliant. At this point we'd been playing for over an hour and so far hadn't had encountered anything fun. As I'd heard that bounty hunting was best of done with missions now, I thought I'd go and see if I could pick one up for the wing. I went for a lower-paying one first as an experiment and we headed off to the neighbouring system, docking at stations on the way to see if we could find an interdictor module. I was the only one with the mission details so it doesn't look like there is any sort of wing support for missions yet, still we thought we'd see what would happen.
We found our target pretty quickly in supercruise but still hadn't found an interdictor so we followed it until it dropped and then we followed the wake - which was just outside a station. There was no sign of the guy. Still, I managed to get an interdictor here and then went back into supercruise.
The target's chat was coming up on my system chat (but not visible to the wing) and we searched the system for him. Once he was within scanner range in supercruise there was no chance of catching up and he disappeared again. Then another twenty minutes or so of USS's and jumping in and out to try and get something to happen again failed.
I was about to give up for the night and abandon the mission when I got a message from another ship telling me to follow their wake so we could talk. Ah ha, so I went after them and targetted the wake, but for some reason my ship wasn't slowing properly and I just couldn't get the wake into a 'safe to disengage' state. And then I was interdicted and by the time I had dealt with that the wake was lost.
By this time my wing had abandoned me and gone looking for a combat zone, but of course that was proving as difficult as ever in knowing where to go. Places that had been noted before as being at war were now at peace.
Once again, I was told by a ship to follow them and at the same time, my target reappeared on comms, so I belted it towards the two points he'd been travelling between previously in a bid to catch him. I scanned every ship along the route trying to find him and kept an eagle-eye on my contact list looking for new contacts in supercruise. He then fell silent so I guess I missed up.
I finally docked up and abandoned the mission. I had spent two and a half hours trying to find something to do with my friends and got nowhere. It was quite a depressing end to the evening. I was getting a bit fed up with the amount of time I had to spend each time I wanted to play in getting into a position to actually play - I was hoping that PP would solve a lot of this. But it seems just as laborious post-PP.
I'll try again next week when I get some free time to play again.
Knowing about the changes to RES' I started looking for the lowest security extraction system I could find that didn't have low reserves. We dropped into a Major RES and set about getting ready to fight. After about quarter of an hour we got bored of the occasional Cobra that was turning up and the general emptiness of it so figured we'd go back to some old hunting grounds which were always churning out the big ships previously.
We figured we'd try some SSS along the way but was greeted largely by friendly ships doing nothing of note. We finally encountered three anacondas and went about engaging them; just as we destroyed the first one we were all booted out the game to desktop with no error (bug reported). We got back in and resetup the wing and carried on feeling dejected to our old stomping ground, which has been a reliable source of good bounty-hunting. Alas our experience was the same with the other Major RES, it was desolated.
After another fifteen minutes I found a post from Michael Brooks saying they're not working right. Brilliant. At this point we'd been playing for over an hour and so far hadn't had encountered anything fun. As I'd heard that bounty hunting was best of done with missions now, I thought I'd go and see if I could pick one up for the wing. I went for a lower-paying one first as an experiment and we headed off to the neighbouring system, docking at stations on the way to see if we could find an interdictor module. I was the only one with the mission details so it doesn't look like there is any sort of wing support for missions yet, still we thought we'd see what would happen.
We found our target pretty quickly in supercruise but still hadn't found an interdictor so we followed it until it dropped and then we followed the wake - which was just outside a station. There was no sign of the guy. Still, I managed to get an interdictor here and then went back into supercruise.
The target's chat was coming up on my system chat (but not visible to the wing) and we searched the system for him. Once he was within scanner range in supercruise there was no chance of catching up and he disappeared again. Then another twenty minutes or so of USS's and jumping in and out to try and get something to happen again failed.
I was about to give up for the night and abandon the mission when I got a message from another ship telling me to follow their wake so we could talk. Ah ha, so I went after them and targetted the wake, but for some reason my ship wasn't slowing properly and I just couldn't get the wake into a 'safe to disengage' state. And then I was interdicted and by the time I had dealt with that the wake was lost.
By this time my wing had abandoned me and gone looking for a combat zone, but of course that was proving as difficult as ever in knowing where to go. Places that had been noted before as being at war were now at peace.
Once again, I was told by a ship to follow them and at the same time, my target reappeared on comms, so I belted it towards the two points he'd been travelling between previously in a bid to catch him. I scanned every ship along the route trying to find him and kept an eagle-eye on my contact list looking for new contacts in supercruise. He then fell silent so I guess I missed up.
I finally docked up and abandoned the mission. I had spent two and a half hours trying to find something to do with my friends and got nowhere. It was quite a depressing end to the evening. I was getting a bit fed up with the amount of time I had to spend each time I wanted to play in getting into a position to actually play - I was hoping that PP would solve a lot of this. But it seems just as laborious post-PP.
I'll try again next week when I get some free time to play again.
