Space feels so empty. My little Sidewinder feels cramped and uncomfortable.Leaving the Pilots Federation system of planets feels akin to leaving primary school and going direct into university – yeah, daunting, alone in a busy galaxy.Friends come and go but some stick with you. Those you look after. Got my leg up from one, a Commander who winged up with the newbie – the rookie that was me.My first ship up from the Sidewinder was a Cobra and then on to an Alliance Challenger. Damn those 7 hard points made a world of difference.Bounty Hunting and Assassinations was the order of the day. But I grew tired. Wary of it all. Killing a pirate here, destroying a few ships there. It started weighing on me. Then I found a lucrative trade route – purely by chance…Money was short though, hard to come by and so I slowly built up to a Heavy Type 10 – more room, slow a Marsian Slugworm and just as easy to hit from a few thousand kilos away.This ship, 600 tons of cargo and stumbling on a single jump silver trade route built up the funds fast. 10m+ profit a run and only a few hours of work. I was feeling good. Feeling my soul was healing even. Sure I had to take out one or two pirates that jumped me, but for the most part, I was safe. The Trade Route was between two medium-high security systems so very little trouble.Didnt take long until I had enough. 180 mil or so. I bought the Anaconda…
[Did you know there is an Elite:Dangerous table top rpg?]The Anaconda – First FlightOh the Anaconda. This is such a versatile and fun ship to fly. But boy oh boy does it cost you.Forget about the 140m+ for the base model.I am yet to fully load it out and flying about with 300-400 tons of cargo and only a few turrets make you a target.First encounter with an Expert Ranked pirate went well enough but damage brought us down to 68%. My fighter crewman took them out soon enough with little to no damage to themselves.Objectives now: 120m for the class 8, Rating A Power Plant. Probably a bit more to account for the increased insuranceBest way to do this? I am thinking of returning my little Gold Rush… well Silver Rush. Single, sometimes double, jump trade route. Should net me about 5-7m profit on 400 tons if I gut out the internal modules for cargo space.I fcked UpMan. Called it fatigue or just failure to calculate things.The mission looked good. 50m. 1100 odd tons of Thalium or something like that.Found a nearby system that sold it. Great. only 1 jump to get there and 1 jump back. 3 trips I’d be 50m richer. Sweet Power Plant here I come…I do the first run simple. No drama. Hand in 400 tons of it.I then look at my cred balance. 76m…. hmmm. Wait. That 400 tons cost me 22m. 3 trips will cost me 66m. I’d be down 16m.No way, check the mission, no fine. Throw it in.Double fkc upI just lost 22m and some rep. If I kept going I’d have only lost 16m net and gained some valuable Engineering parts.You live you learn I guess. RecoveryTook a bit of work and several silver runs later to recover back to 100m+Long way to go to the 1b[You can check out the PartyLoot – Elite Dangerous & Other Games YouTube Channel here]About 300LS out from Smith Hub we got jumped – the Expert Pilot took out our fighter but we were able to escape only to be interdicted again a short time later by the same Pirate.His name I forget … for now… but we will surely cross paths again3 Trips down, and some idiot novice tried to yank us – we gave in to the Interdict thinking it may be the same pirate as before but it wasn’t, he didn’t even have the courtesy of announcing his presence before hand. I mean seriously, don’t you have some manners?As they say though all’s well that ends wellSome other good news too!We found a return shipment of Power Generators that gets us about 500k in profit. All up, a full return trip is netting about 6.7m in total (not quote the 10m in the Type 10 Heavy mind you, but the Anaconda is so much a better ship I wouldnt even consider swapping out. Maybe at some point I’ll but a second ship just for these cargo runs)
Date: 16 June More silver runs and the odd job to find food cartridges. That one netted my 600k (usually Id get about half that from the food alone, so all good)No pirate jumps but was tempted to take on a Bounty right at the port I landed at. That would have led to myself getting a bounty if I destroyed him so I let him be. No doubt will run into him and his Viper MK V… or MK IV some time in the near future.A couple of hours and I scraped together enough credit to install the Class 8 (A) Power Plant. Man does the ‘Conda hum. So much power under the hood now and … well all dressed up and no where to go.Next big thing: Class 8(A) Thrusters. That should push the ship past the 20LY jump distance not to mention increase speed and manoeuvrability to boot. After that, turrets. I have 5 slots open. Time to fill them.I am itching to hit a few bounties now too. The thrill of the dog fight. Dodging missiles as you try and get a lock. Maybe Ill put in some dumbfires or a fixed point plasma cannon. Hmmm… the possibilities. Date: 17 JuneMining. Should I try this again? Honestly I didn’t know half of what I was doing the first time round but now with the hardpoints and some spare change to spare I think I could setup a half decent mining rig on the Conda.Platinum would be the obvious target material or low temperature diamonds. Both rare and hard to come by, and both worth 100’s of 1000’s of credits. Finding a juicy aka pristine metal ring could easily fetch me 40m on a full load of platinum. Thats taking a conservative 100k per ton and 400 ton cargo hold. Likely with limpets, the refinery, cargo space will be sacrificed but I should still end up with 350tons or so…Worth a trial and error at this rate as im down to 2m plus insurance on this monster ship and still no where near complete optimisation or fit out.The Thruster upgrade is a wopping 160m. More than the base model itself!My weapon outfit will likely hit 200m considering the plan to rack it up with turretsThen upgrades to A rating on everything we can get our hands on.Lastly the bulkheads and hull plating. The most expensive one I have seen so far was over 300m on its own. So all up this ship will exceed the 1 BN credit marker in value.Might be time to join a squad? Not sure how that all works but if it means shared wealth then that could work out for the best.I grow really tired of these trade runs at the moment but they still hitting close to 7m a pop for less than an hour work. Maybe I need to freshen up the trigger finger and go hunting too.
Silver….MiningMining is slow and painful. Still getting the hang of the refinery and got some Gold and Palladiun in the hold, but took several hours and 40k light seconds to the asteroid cluster in Zorynhili systemThe president or whatever his titled asked me to salvage some stuffSpent an hour looking for it. Nadda.Got a few days so will settle in for some more mining. When back at a star port I’ll upgrade the refinery. 4 bins ain’t enough.o7Date 18 JuneMore attempts at mining. After upgrading the refinery and outfitting some prospector limits I found myself in another asteroid field.Mining is slow. Boring. Tedious. And brain numbing.Profit margins may be higher than cargo or trade routes but the time factor at this stage means you generally make more per hour than you would with mining.Still I’m not giving up yet. Planning to find and exploit a platinum ab asteroid ring or something close. Or can make the 49kls trip back to that metallic rich field in Zorynhili. Worth a try. Got gold and palladium out of that.o7Date 19 JuneThrew in those salvage missions – waste of time and patience. Scratched my ship up real bad trying to get close to a crash site on a moon. Damn limpets were of little use.Mining again for a few hours. Some useful finds and new metals I haven’t found before – Osmium. Together with Gold and Silver they are valuable at Zorynhili. Other stuff was just as good as junk.Started to study some of the Synthesizing the ship can do. Quite useful but haven’t found all that is needed to make anything yet.Got jumped by a pirate and took him out, over 500k damage to the ship mind you but we still won.Took on a kill mission to. Oh my I have missed the fight so much. The conda isn’t specced enough to take on too many of these, both were Novice ranked and did a load of damage.After the second fight, I pulled off one of the mining lasers to install a beam turret. Also moved the Shield Gen to a Rating 5 slot – future planning to get possible a class 6 or 7 rating A. I have the power for it. Just not the credits.I am back in Zorynhili doing the silver trade route run and taking on the odd source and return jobs. Pretty much no 80% of what Zorynhili sells and what they want, and vice versa with HIP 76543.[This site has loads of info for trade routes]
The quest for 1BN Credits is never ending and will take time. Loads and loads of time. The current trade route is netting about 6m a run. So thats like… what… 150 runs? I can do about 3 per hour. So 50 hours… thats likley 5-10 days of work. Not much come to think of it right?Figure I should gut the ship again for cargo space. 400 tons means I make 7m a run. Could save up and get a type 10 again as a second ship but dont really see the point or value in that right now.Wondering If I should explore further afield and try find a few more trade routes. Maybe milk the current one until its done and then look elsewhere.Guess I have a plan. Time to put it in action :)Oh also I got promoted in the feds. Cadet Rank. Sweet. No real benefit yet but means building up towards getting a Cutter or other imperial class ships.I forgot to mention my fighter pilot. His a crack shot and seriously talented fighter. He has pulled us out of a lot of jams.June 20Took on a few source and return missions. Pretty easy deals considering I know mostly what Smith Hub exports.Ends up generally doubling the profits on whatever it is they wanted.That said there was this gorgeous looking job for 13m or so. Delivering a few thousand units of gold if I recall.The penalty fine was over 300 Milluon. Yip. 300 MILLION. I swear sometimes I think these types of jobs are done setup that way to scam new pilots. Big carrot but an even bigger stick.One mission was 860 units of mineral extractors. Was warned of two pilots coming after us.The first gave is a good run but we spaced him. And earned a bonus to boot. Pirate Cain. I forget his first name.The second caught up to us as we entered the no fire zone at a space port. He chickened out and jumped out of the system.That dog fight got me itching for more. So I added another missile pod and a burst laser bank.Took on two pirate hunt jobs. Both super easy and just one jump away from my normal route.Broke the 30m mark too. So now can fill the hold with silver when I have nothing else to get. That earns about 5m in profit.Current plan is to do this over the next few days. Maybe a week or two. And take on pirate hunts in between. Especially close ones.o7June 21So I kitted the Conda out with some more turrets, a burst laser/phaser bank and a missile turret. The trigger finger itches and itches badly.Took on a few Massacre missions. 20 pirates. 12m plus their bounties. Sounded great to me.All up that mission netted me over 16m. 2 hours of work mind you so slightly less profitable than the silver run – but if I took off the travel time to the mission objectives (180k LS away from the drop in zone) I figure maybe it would be about the same.I still have another one to complete, only pays 9m, but against the same group of pirates.Upgraded some of the hardpoints and added a second missile bank. My fighter pilot does most of the work though 🙂June 22Boredom setting in. This massacre run puts the target at 380k LS away. I killed 6 or 7 of them and turned down the job. I was ready to push Ty (my fighter pilot) out the airlock. I was THAT BORED.Well no, I wouldnt really like do that right. But You get the idea.I gutted my ship again for cargo space and did a run without shields. Fun. Not. I dont like it. Had to put the essentials back. Shields and Fighter bay.Made a good 10-20 m today Silver runs one way and source and deliver the other.Trade routes are good. Building slowly towards the 165m for the thrustersand need a better bi-weave shield gen tooJune 23More silver and other cargo runsFunny though I was saving for an 8a Thruster module and after heading to kuru for my bi weave shiled I discovered the conda doesn’t take an 8a ThrusterHad enough for a 5c bi weave shield gen and a 7a Thruster packageJust as well. One mission had me jumped by a pirated named Mushmouth. Deadly ranked.We took out his wing and he got the drop on me. Ty lost shields I took 6 missiles nearly point blank. Fire and smoke everywhere. I was ready to eject when the system rebooted and Ty engaged the pirate while I put distance between us and fired up the frame shift drive6% hull left. No missiles. Most of the modules fried. I abandoned the remote fighter to head to Smith Hub. He tried jumping us again but I escaped the Interdict by chanceWe made it to Smith and he still jumped in. Apparently I had a contract on my head. I’m flattered.Over 1m in repair costs. Barely making a profit on the mission but the silver run puts us in the positives.Never sweated so much before.June 24Winged up with another Commander to hit a high ranked pirate. Sparks and fire everywhere! Damn that was a dog fight and a half but we made it through.Had to high tail it out of there when a wing jumped to “assist the target” I presume.Good day all in all, travelled to a few systems I hadnt been to before and found an old (and likely my original) silver producer. So now I have 2. and within 1 jump of ZroynhiliJune 27Havnt been doing a whole lot. Took a few days rnr.Bought an Eagle just for fun and to claim a bounty mission. Fast, manoeuvrable but built like a tin can.Painted the ship and put in a planet vehicle hangar for some surface exploration and upgraded to a new bi weave shield genGoing to do some more jobs for the Federation to climb the ranks. One day might earn a Corvette.Oh yeah. I’m writing this again with 151kLS TO GO.SIGHJune 28Found a fed station. Plan to start climbing the ranks. Two systems. Silver and food run againPlus doing additional odd jobs for fed contacts.Testing my skills on surface with the rover … on a hunt and kill missionShould be fun.Other missions primarily for the Razorbacks and Alliance factions but trying to focus on fed.Got a nice long trip again. 80kls.Oh and found a trader that can provide guardian tech blue prints. Need to source some guardian tech to do so first.o7June 29Did a bunch of hits today taking out several pirates for both the Razorbacks and the FederationDog fights felt good.June 30Hunting down a black box for the feds. Think I’ve spent more time in FSS mode today than ever in my life.But it was well worth it… that is until I saw the distance.1.3MLs yes 1.3 million light seconds away. Gawd this is going to take forever.Good old pres over at razorback hooked me up with another job. Data collection. But odd thing is I need to deliver it to a pirate group? Hmmm what political maneuvours is this little pawn been swept into I wonder.Upgrades. Thinking about upgrades again. Need an interdicted and perhaps a warrant scanner. I love the chase and dog fights going after some crims.Means I’ll sacrifice 90 tons of cargo space likely.Might upgrade the hangar bay for 2 fighters and higher a second crew member. Ty Key is amazingly talented but another couldn’t hurt.1million to go.Wonder how I can pull more juice out of the frame shift drive as this is tedious.July 4 – I thinkLast few days have been a blur. Some action fighting and hunting down pirates.Planning a long trip to what I have been led to believe is a contested zone for the Feds – A system called Ceos. I read that as lots of opportunities to climb the ranks and get my corvette.In the mean time I am just doing the occasional hits and courier jobs. Testing out different weapon configs and spending cash where I dont really need too.Oh thats it too, I bought a detailed surface scanner. Interesting data on some worlds. The rover sucked so I got rid of it. Might try again some other time when I feel bored.Maybe its time to buy a second ship for courier / cargo and mining jobs. HmmPainted my Conda too!
July 8Can’t breath. The pirates hit the screen cracks everywhere. Jumped out of the system to watch my air vanish even faster.Sos beacon fire off and I waited to thr last few seconds, ejected and from the cold black of space I watched my conda blow upJuly 9Teamed up with another Commander and we hunted down the 11 pirates remaining.We took a beating but made it through and cashed in the 10m job plus extra bounties.July 10Time to venture out.Took a long road to Ceos . A heavy fed system with a multitude of jobs available and even more cruisers too. I have never seen so many of them in one place before. Likely 30 or soCurrently pulling courier jobs and data transfers between two systems and climbing the ranks slowly towards the vette.That ship looks gorgeous. More manoeuvrability than the conda, more fire-power, higher shields and better hull.Only thing lower is the cargo space and that I don’t do a whole lot of anywayThis will take some time. Figure a few weeks or a month, maybe two. Prove my worth again to the local factions and run up that ladderJuly 15Ceos is so far away took me 43 jumps to get here.Well here I am doing fed runs of reports and cargo and occasional hits between this system and SeothisI’m likely going to buy a smaller ship for some of these gigs are not good for the condaJuly 16Gdamn politicians. Had me do a 23 point jump and back again. Abd guess what I find that the combat stabilisers they were after were actually illegal in the system!!!Luckily I didn’t get scanned, turned in the cargo at two different stations and dumped the remainder on the black market for a lossThat got me to Warrant Officer rank.I think 4 or 5 more to go to get my corvette. Hope it’s as good as it sounds.I’m back in ceos and doing report and cargo runs between seothis and here.Boring work bit the occasional pirate jumps us for a tad bit of excitement.July 18Busy skies tonight. Seems everyone is here wanting a piece of action in thr growing conflict zone in SothisFeds are moving a bunch of stuff around even stuff going to apparent rivals. Poison or peace offering I wonder!Made it through a couple of tight scraps and then got my self lost in new dawn station. Needed to get some cargo loaded by no one seemed to know a thing about it. Still it sits in my contract list.I’ll deliver some sensitive stuff to Babbage and come backMaybe by then they will have … fck nearly smashed into a planet…Damn super cruise assist dropped out after losing sight of the stationBusy skies in deed at least half a dozen commanders out too.July 19Took a road trip as the used to say. 43 jumps to Morotrimpe near my old stomping grounds.The fed ranking can take the back seat for a while while I go exploring and claiming some old wing missions. Nice boost to the cred balance.July 24Been doing odd jobs for some time now and made contact with an engineer for a boost to the shields and engines.For now I’m content with just drifting but thinking I should do some exploring. Find an unvisited star and stick my name on a planet. That would be grand.July 24Took a load of fed supplies to a “suffering” system only to discover the re was not port with a large pad.Long story short. Jettisoned 300 tons of federal aid which cost me around 3m Bought a Krait and upgraded. 100m .Morale of the story. do You research.July 26Seen the one task was a dead one I took up some other fortification tasks and did my research!July 27Pirate hunting and courier runs…. and 70 000 LS
SighOk so the load of Palladiun I took back netted just over 2m in profit. And then I go take a courier job for 2 measly units of something or other and heading back.I’d like to explore the system more ad there are seven other stations not so far from jump in point.Worst case I carry out another load of palladium which will fund the needed goods for the super power candidate.July 30Got a few cred from the super power for a job well done last week.Now I’m flying about for fun doing some exploring and like. Ended up buying a type 9. Frankly I think it’s the same one I sold nearly half a year ago. Got that notch in the stick where my thumb sits perfectly.Maxed out the cargo space with a half decent shiled and an engineered fsd and went looking for trade routesFound a cobalt route and I know of the palladium one but 80kls to the station is too risky.I escaped an Interdict. So much fun.1 AugustOdd trade runs and courier jobs for the feds as I build up the load of Sirius Franchise Packages.Had a drive glitch that limited the ship to 200kps which I found very odd. Jumped to a neighbouring system to check the ship out.Nothing I could find so jumped back to Arietis 47 and headed to Crown station.Speed is dropping back to the kps again. What gives? I’ve been here half a dozen times or more and this hasn’t happened. Keep getting stuck around 2.5 LS from the station and speed has now stopped at 158kpsHmmm
Left the system to do another job. Jump drive doing fine.
Now I have a 40kls cruise to Bartoe Hub in Trianguli . Hoping no issues with the Supercruise again…
Note to self. ALWAYS CHECK DISTANCE TO TARGET BEFORE ACCEPTING MISSION.
4 August
I did it again. Oops. 40kls to a courier drop off
Doing odd jobs here and there in the t10 for a while now.
6 August
So I decided to get a nostalgic feeling and bought a Sidewinder. Souped it up and engineered the fsd.
Returned to Lembava and paid for the t10 to be flown or shipped here. And now doing some fed ranking jobs
The super power is in crisis mode. Looks like they will lose a system or two in the coming week. Hope they survive long enough for me to get the pack hounds.
Loyalty. Not sure there’s time for that here. Especially with a super power. You are just a pawn.
Now with a wing or squad of course there’s loyalty there. Different thing I guess.
7 Auguat
After losing 3 Sidewinders I returned to Goldstein and retrieved my Conda. Took out two of my pursuers, narrowly surving against another conda pilot. 250k repair bill.
Now finishing off some of the courier runs I can do in the big ship
Shit shit shit. Assassin pirate just blew my cockpit… air… runs… running out.
Kicked in the fsd and headed to the nearest station…. 10 mins… 9…. 8… docked…..
I breath in the deeply. The smell and taste of hydraulic oil and scrubbed air never felt so good before.
10 August
Spent the last few days freighting industrial equipment from Lembava to a system in turmoil.
Another day doing some random exploring and pirate hunting
Got jumped by a corrupt federal agent. Couldn’t believe the balls on this guy
Interdiction a heavily armed Anaconda in his tiny Cobra mk 3. Then procedes in asking for a donation.
I have him one. 6 missiles to the face followed by a storm of laser fire and thunder of low calibre rounds from the multi cannons.
32 seconds. I think I can do better.
Went on to enter a conflict zone. Low intensity. Took out a high ranked Anaconds pilot as I chose sides with the MMU. All went well. We won.
The sore lasers blasted the shit out of my ship as they fled the system.
Damage was more than the combat bond rewards
11 August
Planning to do some cargo runs for the super power to boost my rankings for next week.
26 August
I’ve spent half a month doing merit runs and random jobs for Li Yong-Rui, an independent loosely connected to the feds
Finally got the reward. Pack hounds missiles
These things light up the sky with some awesome craziness. Pack less of a punch than typical Sekkers but fire off 12 at a time from a single rack.
Basically the words Dodge This come to mind.
Now. Loyalties in the black are fickle. I figure a few more days here and I’ll jump to another super power. The rail guns sound nice but so do the shields
12 September
Been doing odd jobs and back to ranking grinds for the feds. Got my eyes on the Vette.
Sold the t10 and running small cargo and report missions between ceos and sothis systems.
Slow and boring work
Nearly got dusted by a merc. 13% hull as I hobbled I to port.