o7 CMDRS.
past week I was rather busy bee. With a goal of turning my Cutter into more convenient vessel I was in dire need of 7A FSD. That beast costs slightly over 51M and sitting at 30M is slightly not enough to buy one. So, Friday evening I thought I'd do some trade runs, two days earlier I found nice route. As expected - it went dry by Friday and I had to pick something else. My home base's board wasn't giving me the stuff I wanted, so I tried an activity I haven't tried so far. Wing cargo missions.
Loaded up discord (2 monitor setup helps much) and found an opportunity. Game did awesome job in connecting me with the wing - apart it didn't - so it took a while before I actually joined. Luckily I figured things, with some help and was able to start hauling. Wing was mere 13- LYs away from my location; bit too far for a short jump Cutter but just 3 jumps for my Anaconda. Arrived and started to move mission goods while having some discord chat with wing (greetings wing CMDRs). Participated in 2 missions, got 17M total for about 3h time. And I heard you get hundred of millions for wing cargo hauls... Looks like that train departed long ago.
Anyway, with pocket bit less empty the day was done. Saturday I had little time to play and the urge for having 7A FSD was so great I took drastic measures - I sold my Chieftain. I'm not planning on combat runs in near future so assets spent on that ship are frozen ones I could actually use. Been bit hesitant but finally sold and got to over 60M. FSD is finally within reach + I have some rebuy secured. Cutter boarded, course plotted and off we go - to Diaguandri. 15% off is 15% off, at the price level and my available funds it's considerable. To get there quicker I borrowed my engineered 6A FSD from Anaconda - got whooping 22.92 LYs max range. Few jumps and 45M credits later my Cutter finally has 7A FSD. My max jump range increased to...
22.98 LYs.
Ba-dum-tss...
I had to wiggle mouse over 6A and 7A several times to notice the difference. 0.06 LY increase - such powerful is engineering. So, if engineered 6A can be equal to stock 7A, then how powerful will 7A become after engineering? Next stop - Deciat. Flying there I was wondering if I could do at least G3. Luckily I recently fed Inara my latest journal and I had exact info about what mats I have, what is required and how many tries I have. Arrived at Deciat I went to engineering and started to apply mods. G1 went in 1 attempt, G2 same, G3 took 3 clicks. G4 was missing one component and G5 was all empty - need to get those (no big deal, I know where the stuff is). With full G3 FSD range + mass manager my Cutter is now 32 LYs capable. +10 to range, neat.
And now yesterday. Before going for a material hunt I decided to try material trader feature, maybe it'd help with some stuff. Again, Inara came to help, 3 clicks and I knew who is nearest to Deciat. I didn't even tried in-game tools for that. Inara told me system, station, distance and trader type. All in easy to read, comprehensive table. First jump and I dumped lots of elements for an Arsenic. Next - data trader since it was closer. Exchanged bunch of weird data for the one I needed. Final piece - Chemical Distilleries and Manipulators. Here Inara had a hiccup - despite indicating trader being Manufactured, she was raw actually. Picked another and it was spot on. Sadly I had little stuff for exchange and Distilleries and Manipulators are inter-exchangeable. Need to gather myself.
Knowing the drill, location and stuff I equipped limpet control, bought bunch of limpets, made quick google confirmation and went straight to Naphta Class Tanker location. It was where it was said to be. Drop, contact check and... nothing. Tanker, few ships but no materials. Board hopped to verify and sadly verified positively. Tanker is not dropping anything. Another google search - one of recent change eliminated "dropping" of materials, now you need to force break to get something. Great news :/
After an hour flying between material traders, vain Tanker visit I decided to go to Deciat and try to reach G5 with that scare amounts I have. Arrived at Felicity I learned that I exchanged 40 of something I needed for G4 for few of something I needed for G5... Whole morning wasted as I spent time and as I couldn't do single G4 earlier I couldn't do it now. With such an awesome progress made I just quit the game.
After that I started to wonder about my overall progress, systems I had visited, general statistics. Again - game itself, it tools do awesome job in providing that data. So once again I had to refer 3rd party tools - EDSM this time. I fed it with almost all of my journal files (few I have on the other PC, currently beyond my reach). When the data finally loaded I had all I needed. Systems visited, distance made, worlds discovered.
Fun fact, from 3.1k systems visited I have discovered for the first time 1.4k. Statistically every 2nd system I go is a virgin one. Now I need to dig through that data to see more info. Kinda sad that, despite having all that data (it's all in journals) we are forced to use multiple 3rd party tools to play ED while ED alone hides that info from us. Hence the "hard work", counted in many man-hours, frustrations and mistakes that make you rage quit sometimes.
I made some progress, had some fun, made few mistakes. Weekend like any other in ED.
past week I was rather busy bee. With a goal of turning my Cutter into more convenient vessel I was in dire need of 7A FSD. That beast costs slightly over 51M and sitting at 30M is slightly not enough to buy one. So, Friday evening I thought I'd do some trade runs, two days earlier I found nice route. As expected - it went dry by Friday and I had to pick something else. My home base's board wasn't giving me the stuff I wanted, so I tried an activity I haven't tried so far. Wing cargo missions.
Loaded up discord (2 monitor setup helps much) and found an opportunity. Game did awesome job in connecting me with the wing - apart it didn't - so it took a while before I actually joined. Luckily I figured things, with some help and was able to start hauling. Wing was mere 13- LYs away from my location; bit too far for a short jump Cutter but just 3 jumps for my Anaconda. Arrived and started to move mission goods while having some discord chat with wing (greetings wing CMDRs). Participated in 2 missions, got 17M total for about 3h time. And I heard you get hundred of millions for wing cargo hauls... Looks like that train departed long ago.
Anyway, with pocket bit less empty the day was done. Saturday I had little time to play and the urge for having 7A FSD was so great I took drastic measures - I sold my Chieftain. I'm not planning on combat runs in near future so assets spent on that ship are frozen ones I could actually use. Been bit hesitant but finally sold and got to over 60M. FSD is finally within reach + I have some rebuy secured. Cutter boarded, course plotted and off we go - to Diaguandri. 15% off is 15% off, at the price level and my available funds it's considerable. To get there quicker I borrowed my engineered 6A FSD from Anaconda - got whooping 22.92 LYs max range. Few jumps and 45M credits later my Cutter finally has 7A FSD. My max jump range increased to...
22.98 LYs.
Ba-dum-tss...
I had to wiggle mouse over 6A and 7A several times to notice the difference. 0.06 LY increase - such powerful is engineering. So, if engineered 6A can be equal to stock 7A, then how powerful will 7A become after engineering? Next stop - Deciat. Flying there I was wondering if I could do at least G3. Luckily I recently fed Inara my latest journal and I had exact info about what mats I have, what is required and how many tries I have. Arrived at Deciat I went to engineering and started to apply mods. G1 went in 1 attempt, G2 same, G3 took 3 clicks. G4 was missing one component and G5 was all empty - need to get those (no big deal, I know where the stuff is). With full G3 FSD range + mass manager my Cutter is now 32 LYs capable. +10 to range, neat.
And now yesterday. Before going for a material hunt I decided to try material trader feature, maybe it'd help with some stuff. Again, Inara came to help, 3 clicks and I knew who is nearest to Deciat. I didn't even tried in-game tools for that. Inara told me system, station, distance and trader type. All in easy to read, comprehensive table. First jump and I dumped lots of elements for an Arsenic. Next - data trader since it was closer. Exchanged bunch of weird data for the one I needed. Final piece - Chemical Distilleries and Manipulators. Here Inara had a hiccup - despite indicating trader being Manufactured, she was raw actually. Picked another and it was spot on. Sadly I had little stuff for exchange and Distilleries and Manipulators are inter-exchangeable. Need to gather myself.
Knowing the drill, location and stuff I equipped limpet control, bought bunch of limpets, made quick google confirmation and went straight to Naphta Class Tanker location. It was where it was said to be. Drop, contact check and... nothing. Tanker, few ships but no materials. Board hopped to verify and sadly verified positively. Tanker is not dropping anything. Another google search - one of recent change eliminated "dropping" of materials, now you need to force break to get something. Great news :/
After an hour flying between material traders, vain Tanker visit I decided to go to Deciat and try to reach G5 with that scare amounts I have. Arrived at Felicity I learned that I exchanged 40 of something I needed for G4 for few of something I needed for G5... Whole morning wasted as I spent time and as I couldn't do single G4 earlier I couldn't do it now. With such an awesome progress made I just quit the game.
After that I started to wonder about my overall progress, systems I had visited, general statistics. Again - game itself, it tools do awesome job in providing that data. So once again I had to refer 3rd party tools - EDSM this time. I fed it with almost all of my journal files (few I have on the other PC, currently beyond my reach). When the data finally loaded I had all I needed. Systems visited, distance made, worlds discovered.
Fun fact, from 3.1k systems visited I have discovered for the first time 1.4k. Statistically every 2nd system I go is a virgin one. Now I need to dig through that data to see more info. Kinda sad that, despite having all that data (it's all in journals) we are forced to use multiple 3rd party tools to play ED while ED alone hides that info from us. Hence the "hard work", counted in many man-hours, frustrations and mistakes that make you rage quit sometimes.
I made some progress, had some fun, made few mistakes. Weekend like any other in ED.
I still haven't engineered the jump range for my Cutter ... getting 32ly sounds pretty good.