Interesting system report 001

Today I bring to you an interesting system I came across while wandering around.


RBS 742

This is a nice little Anarchy system controlled by the local pirate gang "Raiders of RBS 742". Very original name if I say so myself.... The interesting part of this system besides it being an anarchy system is that it has an outpost fairly close to the star with outfitting. While the supplies are limited it does help if you wish to reconfigure your ship for different missions.

The other very interesting thing about this outpost is it is also home to a Black Market where you can sell all your questionably obtained goods!

I will continue to report on systems I find interesting in hopes the information is put to good use.


Fly Aimlessly!

Questions....a new Rank .....and a tip for the day.

Well it seems I have obtained 3 system permits and I don't know how. I know I got a mission for the Sol permit but the other two I am clueless about. If any of you reading this have any ideas please drop a comment and let me know. Thanks!

I also have made Surveyor Rank in exploring, it was a nice surprise as I logged in today and saw it had updated from Scout. Here is my Exploration data for those who like to check out what's required for each rank.

Also my tip for the day follows: "If your doing smuggling missions and the USS does not have enough of the items for you to complete the mission, skip it and go to the next USS. I can't count the number of times the very next USS I check has System Forces ships that love to scan me to see if I'm Wanted or carrying stolen goods. I haven't gotten fined yet as I have been skipping the cargo until I get a USS that has at least enough to complete the mission". I'm super paranoid of getting fines as I hear they can be very expensive.


Until next time.....


Fly Aimlessly!

Conflict zone fun......Exploration trip

Tried a conflict zone due to having accepted a mission to kill 5 combatants.

It was fun but it is a bit hectic even in the low intensity zones in a Sidewinder.

I had to flee the zone several times with my ship in pretty much this shape. I did eventually finish the mission and had great fun. I will definitely be trying out conflict zones again at a later date.


I also just made a 260LY exploration trip and came out with 300k credits and a D fit Adder. I used only a Basic Discovery Scanner and a Surface scanner to make sure I made more cash for scanning all the planets.  As well as making Scout Rank...

One trick to use while scanning for objects that your discovery scanner cannot pick up is to fly around looking for objects moving against the background stars. It easiest to pick up other stars in the system this way but you will catch planets as well if your watch closely.

The purple light top center of my screen is actually a star I'm looking for the way I described.

I also use the orbit lines to help find planets, you check the planet numbers you can find the missing ones by flying along the orbit line and hitting your scanner every so often.

Obviously an Advanced Discovery Scanner takes away the need for these tricks, but until you can afford one they help a lot.


Until next time .....

Fly Aimlessly!

Clearing up the clutter.....

Going back to exploring for a little bit so I bought an Intermediate Discovery Scanner last night and basic kit a Sidewinder.

I'll use this to clear up a lot of the local systems around Altair. I spent a couple hours last night flying around. I wasn't really focused and stopped quite often to rest in each system ( Took a  ton of breaks, we have an active 3 year old in the house and she demands constant attention).


At the end of the evening of casual exploring this is my credit balance before I start to sell the data I collected.

And my balance after selling the data I could at the system I ended the evening at.

I made roughly 33k credits with another 15k still needing to be sold. With an Advanced Discovery Scanner and a Detailed Surface Scanner this amount would have doubled for certain and quite possibly tripled, due to all the objects my Intermediate Scanner could not locate. There were a few systems I had to fly out and find the objects manually by watching for movement against the background stars. This isn't an efficient method of discovery by any means but it can be done to find stars and even planets you feel are there but your scanner won't pick up.

I'll spend the next few days clearing all the systems around Altair of Unexplored status. There is a reason for this other than the meager (for now) exploration earnings. I will touch on this again in another post.

Until next time......

Fly Aimlessly!

By the skin of my teeth.

So I survived my first player interdiction yesterday. I was tooling around Altair heading to Solo Orbiter in my Eagle when I noticed a Wanted Asp in system with hardpoints deployed. I didn't get the CMDR name or any screenshots sadly. The Asp had a 31k bounty and was headed my way. I turned away from Solo toward the Asp as they have to be behind you to start an interdiction.

Thus begins the 3 minute dance for position which the Aap ultimately won. I saw I was losing the interdiction so I throttled down to submit as this reduces the time for my FSD to cool down. As soon as we drop out of Super Cruise the Asp attacks. I turn toward him and hit boost trying to get out of in front of his guns. The first pass almost strips my shields and I quickly use a Shield Cell charge to recharge them. I start my FSD charging as soon as the cool down ends to try and escape.

I did not ever even get lined up to even try to make a shot as the pilot was literally flying circles around me. Another pass strips my shields again and I go into massive evasive mode trying to shake him loose. Time seems to stop as it is taking forever for my FSD to charge up. I shift all power to shields and engines and am literally flying for my life.

My shields come back up and I am thinking I might just make it when the Asp gets another volley off and almost strips my shields again. I use another Shield Cell and boost toward the Asp again almost scraping paint as I pass by his starboard thruster.

The Asp now has plenty of room to turn and make another pass and I think "well this is it".....when I hear that magic voice over the coms.... " Ready to engage".... I hit the throttle and 4....3....2....1...


I enter Super Cruise and quickly lock on to Tereshkova Dock. I'm just getting ramped up and moving at speed when the Asp rejoins me in Super Cruise. Luckily a Local Police ship swarms him and attempts an interdiction ( which the Asp avoids) buying me much needed time to pull away and make it to Tereshkova.


I limp in to the outpost with 42% hull and a 620 credit repair bill. I'm not sure if my flying got me out of this or if the Asp pilot was toying with me. ( I suspect he was toying with me and could have finished me at any time).

In hind sight I probably should have jumped system when I seen the Asp heading toward me instead of buzzing him repeatedly until he interdicted me. ( *chuckles* yea I left that part out that I followed him in system for 3 or 4 passes before he really got serious about trying to interdict me).


I'll take a survival any day in this scenario as my Eagle was very much outmatched by the Asp. All in all it was a great bit of experience even if only in survival.


Until next time ......


Fly Aimlessly!

Making Money Part 2 and 3

The second method I use for making money is very similar to the first. I just use the process in reverse.


I go out and fly around in the system looking for USS with salvage in them and load up.

I then haul it back to the station and check for any missions requiring those items.

If there are no missions asking for the items I found I sell them on the black market.

Using these two methods I quickly earn the credits to upgrade my ship in order to add in the third method to the mix.
                                                                Bounty Hunting.

Buying Teeth......

I prefer gimbaled weapons over fixed due to my skills or lack of to be more precise as they let me stay on target more often than not.

Now with my new weapons fitted I can add a third method to the mix of hunting bounties to my aimless travels. I find these in the same USS I'm already searching for my smuggling goods so it falls right in line with everything.

My first bounty.....

While its a meager bounty they add up quickly along with everything else your doing. You also run in to bigger bounties like this...


Emily is a bad girl ......

You can make fights a lot easier by targeting specific subsystems to decrease the effective power of the enemy ship ....

In this case I'm targeting the power distributer, you can also target thrusters, drives or even the power plant to make fights easier. I cannot emphasize enough how much targeting subsystems can improve your combat performance.

Emily is hot!

Notice this bounty was worth almost 9k credits! A few of these each trip added on top of your smuggling will make your rounds extremely profitable. Removing wanted targets from the system also increases your reputation with the controlling faction of the system your hunting in.

One thing to note if you decide to add bounties to the mix while smuggling is to turn off the option to report crimes against you. This will keep the Security Forces from showing up while you have questionable goods in your cargo hold.

Another thing to note is that if hunting for bounties in an Anarchy system you will need a Kill Warrant Scanner in order to make the "hidden" bounties show up. Bounties usually won't show up on a target while in an Anarchy system. You can however tell the pirates as they will scan you and make a comment along the lines of  "What treats do you carry" or "Another dream of riches dashed".


These three methods can be used to make credits, raise your faction standing and more importantly you can have a lot of fun!


Until next time.......

Fly Aimlessly!

Making Money Part 1

I've been thinking about how to go about describing how I go about earning money. I know what I do is not the most efficient way to make money in the game. There are Rare trade runs etc for that, what I try to do is cram as much fun and diversity in to each game session in order to keep the game fresh and not make it into a money grind. I've done the grind before in other games, it becomes a job and you ultimately end up despising the very thing you chose to do for entertainment.

So how do I go about making money and keep it fun? I'll explain, it will take some time and I will most likely break this up in to several posts.


Tereshkova Dock Altair System

Having newly arrived at my new base of operations for the immediate future I go about checking out the scene for lucritive opportunities. I chose this Outpost for two very important reasons. (Important to me at least). Firstly; Tereshkova Dock has a Black Market and secondly its an Outpost which means no ship scans when you haul in your fresh load of "found" items.

There are multiple ways to go about getting illicit goods to sell to the Black Market. I typically utilize two methods and sometimes a third when it shows up. Both methods utilize the same tactics to achieve so work well in tandem together.

The first method involves running missions for a local faction by checking the Bulletin Board. Not just any mission though specific ones that ask you to go out and recover stolen.......um lost items. Actually they don't care how you get the items with the exception you cannot go out and buy them from the market to complete the mission.

These missions can be identified by the little cargo can icons next to the mission title. They ask for you to pick up say 1 Black Box from Altair system. So you go out and search USS (Unidentified Signal Sources) to find a Black Box.

Now while out searching USS for your Black Box you may have to drop in to several to find what you are looking for. The spawn in a USS is random although it is weighted towards the items your looking for "if" your searching in the system the mission asks you to look in.

You can find all sorts of random things in USS


Pirates ....

Traders.......

Other types of cargo.....

This guy again...

More random items......

Or even a guy who offers you a counter mission to deliver the goods to a different Station/System

Now I know your asking yourself how in the heck am I going to find one little Black Box out there among all this randomness. Well keep in mind that the spawn is weighted in your favor ( I have at most had to hit 5 different USS sites in order to find what I was looking for). And there is a fast and easy way to find USS sites.

Once you get to the system you are supposed to search in align toward anything other than the star (remember what happened to me .....) and set your speed as low as it will go while still in Super Cruise. Switch over to your Navigation panel and watch for USS to appear, when they do Lock them, switch back to main view, align toward the USS and drop out of SC. They alway appear under 1000km when you are going this slow so you can literally accomplish those three as quickly as you read it here. With practice switching between the panels to watch for "Hostiles" Locking and dropping out of SC becomes second nature.

Once you find what your looking for...

Its as simple as deploying your cargo Scoop, flying towards the item while keeping it in the center of the Cargo Targetting box and scooping it up. Keep your speed in check or you have a high likelyhood of destrying the container when it comes in contact with the scoop. If your scoop target box look like this:

With the red boxes around the outer edge you are travelling to fast.

With the exception of black boxes, (which I have only seen spawn one item) most sites usually spawn between 4 and 8 items. Now if you only need for instance 2 Rare Artwork don't just leave the other 2-6 items sitting there in space. Your smuggling anyway pick them up and haul them back! Now you have items to either turn in for a new mission asking for the same item (if one is available) or you can sell them directly to the Black Market for pure profit.

By picking up the extra items when doing missions you can double your money making most of the time for little extra effort. I have litterally accepted a mission, jumped to the system, located a USS, Scooped the cargo, Jumped back to my home system, docked, turned in the mission and sold my extras in under 10 minutes for 28k profit.

On the other side of that I have had some interesting adventures while looking for the item I needed and flying around with a half full cargo hold of stolen goods.  Between Pirates and local Police it can get very interesting. Watch out for Police interdictions while flying back to turn in the items as getting caught means getting fined. Fines can be pretty expensive as they are based off the value of the goods you are carrying.

( The more you increase your faction standing with the local controlling faction the less likely you are to be interdicted by the local police for a "courtesy" check).

I will cover another tip for making money in my next post.

Hopefully someone out there finds a use for this information and passes it on.

Fly Aimlessly!

Mostly Aimless

Just a quick post this morning. I noticed last night while going through my pile of screenshots that I had gained a rank. I am now Mostly Aimless, too bad you cant lock your Rank in game and display it.

I would lock mine in at Novice, Peddler, Mostly Aimless.

That would make me a beginner purveyor of nothing in particular, or everything that matters  depending on your view.

Fly Aimlessly!

Road trip......

Here I go starting off on the journey to my new base. There are a few things to consider before starting, number one on that list is how the heck am I going to get there. I'm still using my trusty Sidewinder with all the starting gear. To say its travel capabilities are limited is an understatement.

Notice the Jumprange at the bottom right hand of the screen, this is the biggest factor in keeping me from my goal. With a range of 7.56 LY I won't be getting very far at all, the route planner in the Galaxy Map refuses to plot a route of any useful distance as it dead ends when it reaches a jump I'm not able to make.

So I look in the equipment list to see what I can find to increase this range with my limited funds and find the following:

This increases my range to 9.21 LY which is more respectable but I know I can do better even though I only have 2,111 credits left. Surely there is something here which will help me out and I can afford.

Bingo!
Now I can hear most of you whispering in the background about how crazy I am buying a Life Support System instead of maybe bigger Thrusters or something, but wait...... there is a method to my madness. Notice how the new Life Support System decreases the mass of my ship by .5 tons. It also increases my jumprange by .17 LY to 9.38LY. All this for a paltry sum of 1,293 credits.

This will have to suffice for now and with my new equipment firmly bolted in place I can now plot a route to my destination. (Before I equipped these two items the route planner refused to even attempt it as I couldn't reach the destination).

My destination is the Altair system, this is some 62 odd LY away and will take me quite a few jumps. (This is a bad picture as I should have moved the "orange" marker to the destination system for clarity sake, I have noted this down for future reference). One interesting thing to note is that at system "Core SYS Sector SO-R B4-4" the solid orange line changes to a dotted orange line. At the time I wasn't really sure what this meant but figured it couldn't be good. ( I'm assuming that this is the limit of my fuel tanks unless I refuel).

With my route plotted and a fresh flight suit I jump into my ship and set off, I plan to explore each system that I can on the way to make money to help fund my trip.

Starting out....

Exploring a system.....

Sunbathing.......

Seems to be a lot of people out there "Seeking luxuries" must be a party in this system.

Everything is running along smoothly I'm clicking along scanning in each system with the Basic Discovery Scanner stopping for fuel once. I know this is going to be a close trip if I hit a series of systems with no stations to refuel and .........

I do

Here I sit in LP 634-1 almost out of fuel with very few options. I can't make it to Pyredi due to insuffiecient fuel and am left with two options. Furbaide or LHS 3511; do I flip a coin or go with the named system as they usually contain a station or outpost.........what the.....!

While I was sitting here debating on what to do it appears I have flown right in to the pull of this White Dwarf. Stupidity at its finest, I didn't get but two screenshots as I was fighting desperately to pull away from the star and cool my systems back down after being dropped out of Supercruise. I quickly lock Furbaide and engage the FSD. I cross my fingers and wait to see what appears when I drop out of this jump.

Luck is with me and when I drop in to Furbaide I spot a station! I turn my battered ship toward the station and increase the throttle nervously watching my fuel gauge the whole time. (Notice my fuel gauge is below a 1/2 a pip while still 2060ls out of Effinger Port.

I make it though barely, I had only 28% showing in my Reservoir tank. My ship is also at 52% hull from the heat damage of flying into a star when I finally docked at Effinger.

I patch up my battered ship, sell what scan data I have, and refuel wondering how I made it out of this alive and what the heck was I thinking keeping my ship aligned toward the star while I was off poking around in the Galaxy Map.

With an Outfitting shop in this station I decide to sell off some of my hard earned scanning data and buy some more upgrades for my ship.

With a new Power Plant, Thrusters and Power Distributer I have increased my jump range to 10.25 LY. The D grade equipment is lighter than the E grade I had equipped reducing the mass of my ship from 44.6 to 40.8 tons.

(Here is a sensible option for those of you with more common sense than me. Use this while travelling to top your tanks off in each system with an scoopable star. I will write up a separate post dedicated to fuel scooping at a later time. I've been close enough to stars for the time being).

I debated on buying one before I undocked but I'm down to 1,029 credits and wouldn't have enough to cover insurance if I run myself into another star. I decide against the scoop and continue on my journey.

With a fresh flight suit, clean drawers and a full tank of fuel I continue on my way scanning systems always watching out for stations in each one in order to keep my tanks full. At one such stop I came across a sight that reminded me what might have been if luck had not pulled me from the clutches of flaming doom.

A couple more jumps and I make it to Altair, this is where I will be making my base for the immediate future as I stock up on credits and upgrade my ship. ( Several posts in the works on how I go about making credits, I will cover the process in some detail soon).

A quick trip through  the system brings me to Altair 2 and Tereshkova Dock, a small Industrial Outpost owned by the Altair Purple Mob. It is currently not under the control of the mob but they still lay claim to the outpost. Altair 2 is a highly volcanic world and another interesting sight in it's own right.

Having made the monumental journey ( not really but it sounds good when retelling the story) in one piece (mostly) I relax and start checking out what there is to do around here ........

Fly Aimlessly!