Tonight I decided to fly to Maia to get some MetaAlloys to give to the nice lady i'm hoping can improve my thrusters.
OKay. So I fly there. Jump into the system and cannot find the station. Since I don't carry a scanner I decided to try the nav beacon. Ooooops.
Big mistake, as I forgot I had some nice Cargo on board. Which was careless in a neighboorhood like that. I was planning to drop into the NB, scan and get out. But instead I couldn't get the scan to work, whilst I was distracted trying to make it work, I got my kicked, lost a bunch of cargo and ended up jumping out with a badly banged up ship that I parked in a nearby system to repair. Noting to fit an AMFU as soon as practicable. So I rebooted to get disabled modules back online. Since the hull was goosed I decided to not risk going in again and leaped away to get it fixed up - i'll try again tomorrow. On the way back I get interdicted by an ADDER and my weapons fail to fire... More damage ensues.
Okay. So what went wrong?
I decided to get the ship fixed and do some experiments in a local NB to see. I found out the following.
1/ I cocked up the scan. The ship's navigation takes me TO the nav beacon, but I have to seperately target it to actually get a scan, and I need to be quite close. My nav computer was locked into it's coordinates, not it's signature - which is why the scan didn't work. I'll know better next time and lock onto the beacon with a targeting computer.
2/ I misunderstood how turrets work. "Target Only" seems to require me to acquire the target by getting them in front of me, before they'll fire. Once I've done that they can fly off anywhere and the turrets will track them, but simply selecting them on the scanner and pressing fire doesn't do anything. I would have been better off using "Fire At Will" which automatically shoots at any hostile target. But which - interestingly enough - will refuse to fire (no matter how often you pull the trigger) if the target is not hostile.
SO - I did some experimentation and learned something tonight and tomorrow night i'll go back to Maia with an empty cargo hold (pirates will typically leave me alone), scan the nav beacon properly and try again. If I do get attacked, hopefully I'll be better able to defend myself.
I noticed a lot of module damage under the new system. For now I've fitted a AFMU, but i'm thinking of instead B-Grading the ship (which may require some changes to weapon loadout... Not sure) as those modules are likely to be tougher.
And THIS is what I love about 2.1 - stuff like this actually works. Prior to last week i'd have taken a discovery scanner with me and spent a tedious 20 minutes looking for the station. I wouldnt' have worried about the NPCs, and A-grade was automatically the best option. Trucking valuble cargo around was just fine - hardly anyone noticed and when they did it didn't matter. Whereas now I know I have to make sure that I only carry what I absolutely NEED to, and divest myself of anything valuable before going into a dodgy area. If I need to go somewhere nasty, I sell everything valuable that I don't need to have with me. I now need to carefully and quickly think about other ships and learn to repair and maintain mine, rather than just treating Hull as a health meter and ignoring everything else.
I didn't make any money tonight (I probably more-or-less broke even on bountys and repair) - but I had a heap of fun trying to repair the knackered ship well enough to get home on a wing-and-a-prayer and I loved the fact that I then needed to go out and experiment to find out what I did wrong and what I need to do differently next time.
THIS is the game I wanted. It's Dangerous when you make mistakes and take risks, as it's a "frontier" environment. Tonight I made mistakes and took risks I shouldn't have. And didn't I have fun doing it!
But - please - add some way of storing stuff so I don't have to take it everywhere with me!
OKay. So I fly there. Jump into the system and cannot find the station. Since I don't carry a scanner I decided to try the nav beacon. Ooooops.
Big mistake, as I forgot I had some nice Cargo on board. Which was careless in a neighboorhood like that. I was planning to drop into the NB, scan and get out. But instead I couldn't get the scan to work, whilst I was distracted trying to make it work, I got my kicked, lost a bunch of cargo and ended up jumping out with a badly banged up ship that I parked in a nearby system to repair. Noting to fit an AMFU as soon as practicable. So I rebooted to get disabled modules back online. Since the hull was goosed I decided to not risk going in again and leaped away to get it fixed up - i'll try again tomorrow. On the way back I get interdicted by an ADDER and my weapons fail to fire... More damage ensues.
Okay. So what went wrong?
I decided to get the ship fixed and do some experiments in a local NB to see. I found out the following.
1/ I cocked up the scan. The ship's navigation takes me TO the nav beacon, but I have to seperately target it to actually get a scan, and I need to be quite close. My nav computer was locked into it's coordinates, not it's signature - which is why the scan didn't work. I'll know better next time and lock onto the beacon with a targeting computer.
2/ I misunderstood how turrets work. "Target Only" seems to require me to acquire the target by getting them in front of me, before they'll fire. Once I've done that they can fly off anywhere and the turrets will track them, but simply selecting them on the scanner and pressing fire doesn't do anything. I would have been better off using "Fire At Will" which automatically shoots at any hostile target. But which - interestingly enough - will refuse to fire (no matter how often you pull the trigger) if the target is not hostile.
SO - I did some experimentation and learned something tonight and tomorrow night i'll go back to Maia with an empty cargo hold (pirates will typically leave me alone), scan the nav beacon properly and try again. If I do get attacked, hopefully I'll be better able to defend myself.
I noticed a lot of module damage under the new system. For now I've fitted a AFMU, but i'm thinking of instead B-Grading the ship (which may require some changes to weapon loadout... Not sure) as those modules are likely to be tougher.
And THIS is what I love about 2.1 - stuff like this actually works. Prior to last week i'd have taken a discovery scanner with me and spent a tedious 20 minutes looking for the station. I wouldnt' have worried about the NPCs, and A-grade was automatically the best option. Trucking valuble cargo around was just fine - hardly anyone noticed and when they did it didn't matter. Whereas now I know I have to make sure that I only carry what I absolutely NEED to, and divest myself of anything valuable before going into a dodgy area. If I need to go somewhere nasty, I sell everything valuable that I don't need to have with me. I now need to carefully and quickly think about other ships and learn to repair and maintain mine, rather than just treating Hull as a health meter and ignoring everything else.
I didn't make any money tonight (I probably more-or-less broke even on bountys and repair) - but I had a heap of fun trying to repair the knackered ship well enough to get home on a wing-and-a-prayer and I loved the fact that I then needed to go out and experiment to find out what I did wrong and what I need to do differently next time.
THIS is the game I wanted. It's Dangerous when you make mistakes and take risks, as it's a "frontier" environment. Tonight I made mistakes and took risks I shouldn't have. And didn't I have fun doing it!
But - please - add some way of storing stuff so I don't have to take it everywhere with me!
