Curiosity killed the Asp.
After many weeks of slow methodical flight to Sag A*, half way home via the Great Annihilator, I've just ploughed my Asp into an icy canyon wall and bought myself a one-way trip back to Shinrarta Dezhra.
I'd only gone down to this anonymous moon because it was the only landable body in a system that I'd already scanned for its ELW, and it had an interesting icy impact crater among the rocky ravines courtesy of the stellar forge. I flew low over the crater, spotted a crashed nav beacon near a canyon at its edge, landed, scanned the beacon with the SRV, got back in the ship, took off, decided for some twisted reason to fly along the canyon for a bit instead of heading straight for orbit, and while pointing right at a ridge wall I hit the boost button.
No reason. I didn't mistake it for a different control. Didn't misjudge any manoeuvres. Just suicidally thumbed that HOTAS button for a purpose only my subconscious will ever know. Maybe a deep part of my soul was just hacked off with exploration.
I tried to nose up, vertical thrust and boost but every decision I'd made in outfitting that ship suddenly conspired against me. A stronger shield and I might have scraped over the ridge. If I'd fitted more powerful thrusters* I could have easily cleared the ridge. If I'd fitted a slightly better power distributor that didn't need full pips to do a second boost, I could have cleared the ridge.
I didn't clear the ridge.
I wouldn't mind but it wasn't even a high-gravity world. A mere 0.11g. No excuse but my own idiocy. Perhaps the 40% damage I'd already suffered in an earlier hard landing was the deciding factor. All irrelevant now.
(I was tempted to apportion at least part of the blame on FD for spawning a nav beacon so ridiculously far from human space and thus drawing me in, but that would just be desperate finger-pointing. I was already down there eyeballing the crater. Chances are I'd have still flown down that canyon with or without the beacon being there. It just called to me.)
Oh well, lesson learned. Don't land anywhere unless you have very good reason. Don't fly down canyons tens of thousands of light years from home no matter how picturesque they are. And don't rest your thumb on the boost button unless you're in combat.
I'm not going to ticket this and try for the infamous Frontier do-over, partly because I always swore I wouldn't ever do that (admittedly I was talking more about combat losses than explorer stupidity) but mainly because I know Support can't recover exploration data and that's really all that was important on this trip. Otherwise I must admit I might have been tempted.
Right, I'm off to buy myself a chocolate bar to cheer myself up. I've no idea what brand, but I guarantee it won't be a bloody Boost.
[INDENT][B]*[/B]Checking the loadout in light of [URL="https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=244321&p=3798630&viewfull=1#post3798630"][U]Malic's post[/U][/URL] below I note that I [B]did[/B] in fact have A5 thrusters. So although the accidental boost was totally down to me, the inability to subsequently clear the ridge using vertical thrust may have been due to the [URL="https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=239266"][U]bug Malic reported[/U][/URL].[/INDENT]
After many weeks of slow methodical flight to Sag A*, half way home via the Great Annihilator, I've just ploughed my Asp into an icy canyon wall and bought myself a one-way trip back to Shinrarta Dezhra.
I'd only gone down to this anonymous moon because it was the only landable body in a system that I'd already scanned for its ELW, and it had an interesting icy impact crater among the rocky ravines courtesy of the stellar forge. I flew low over the crater, spotted a crashed nav beacon near a canyon at its edge, landed, scanned the beacon with the SRV, got back in the ship, took off, decided for some twisted reason to fly along the canyon for a bit instead of heading straight for orbit, and while pointing right at a ridge wall I hit the boost button.
No reason. I didn't mistake it for a different control. Didn't misjudge any manoeuvres. Just suicidally thumbed that HOTAS button for a purpose only my subconscious will ever know. Maybe a deep part of my soul was just hacked off with exploration.
I tried to nose up, vertical thrust and boost but every decision I'd made in outfitting that ship suddenly conspired against me. A stronger shield and I might have scraped over the ridge. If I'd fitted more powerful thrusters* I could have easily cleared the ridge. If I'd fitted a slightly better power distributor that didn't need full pips to do a second boost, I could have cleared the ridge.
I didn't clear the ridge.
I wouldn't mind but it wasn't even a high-gravity world. A mere 0.11g. No excuse but my own idiocy. Perhaps the 40% damage I'd already suffered in an earlier hard landing was the deciding factor. All irrelevant now.
(I was tempted to apportion at least part of the blame on FD for spawning a nav beacon so ridiculously far from human space and thus drawing me in, but that would just be desperate finger-pointing. I was already down there eyeballing the crater. Chances are I'd have still flown down that canyon with or without the beacon being there. It just called to me.)
Oh well, lesson learned. Don't land anywhere unless you have very good reason. Don't fly down canyons tens of thousands of light years from home no matter how picturesque they are. And don't rest your thumb on the boost button unless you're in combat.
I'm not going to ticket this and try for the infamous Frontier do-over, partly because I always swore I wouldn't ever do that (admittedly I was talking more about combat losses than explorer stupidity) but mainly because I know Support can't recover exploration data and that's really all that was important on this trip. Otherwise I must admit I might have been tempted.
Right, I'm off to buy myself a chocolate bar to cheer myself up. I've no idea what brand, but I guarantee it won't be a bloody Boost.
[INDENT][B]*[/B]Checking the loadout in light of [URL="https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=244321&p=3798630&viewfull=1#post3798630"][U]Malic's post[/U][/URL] below I note that I [B]did[/B] in fact have A5 thrusters. So although the accidental boost was totally down to me, the inability to subsequently clear the ridge using vertical thrust may have been due to the [URL="https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=239266"][U]bug Malic reported[/U][/URL].[/INDENT]
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