With hindsight was your loss a result of complacency? What do you think you could have done to avoid losing that hull?
Absolutely 100% pure, unadulterated complacency.
I was on the final stretch. I could actually see the Colonia nebula, really not that far away (probably another day's travel) where the data was to be sold. I had done an extended tour of the sparse stars in the widdershins direction from Beagle Point. Finishing for the night, I always like to land. I think there's something not right about leaving the ship just floating in space, so I usually find an interesting planet and land.
The planet in question wasn't really that interesting, either. The planet of shame was a small dark planet, far from its parent star. It had a dark blue hue.
As I made my final approach, I noted my sink rate was a bit high. "Oh never mind", I thought, "I have shields".
I could have put 4 pips to shields. I could have boosted while giving it full bottom thrust. Before even approaching the planet I could have turned on the shield boosters again, of which I had four, and fully engineered. But I did none of those things. "I have shields. A bit of a hard landing won't hurt".
What an idiot I felt as my once proud Imperial Cutter "Alan Mathison Turing" exploded around me. The Cutter that had survived "The View" and countless other high-G landings. The very ship that did the entire Minerva Centaurus Expedition with barely a scratch. The very ship that had held its head high when faced with the multitude of gankers swarming around the mining operation early in the expedition, whose shields ably deflected anything those scumbags could throw at it. In the end, ganked by an unassuming planet abetted by complacency.
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