Stepping out of Character: Elite Doofus.
14 Jun 2016NickTheGrey
Late last week I added my name to the list of Commanders foolish enough to gamble away their successes and leave themselves unable to pay the rebuy cost of their insurance claims. Last week I went from a partially upgraded Python with just over 200T of Imperial Slaves to an on-loan Sidewinder and just over 7,000 Cr to my name.I was furious with myself. Not just for putting myself in that position but for knowing it was a bad idea and still doing it. I had come further in the game than I ever had before. I finally had the rank and permit to enter the Sol system and I had been all too eager to just throw it away.
I had filled my Python with Imperial Slaves and was making a run to an adjacent system to sell them for a total of around 600KCr which is pretty much the highest profit I’ve had trading to date. I entered the target system and was jumped on almost immediately: a Vulture closing in for the kill. I quickly plotted a course out of the system and spun up the Frame Shift Drive. Just one bar away from engaging and the tell-tale pull of an Interdiction took hold. I tried to evade it but it wasn’t to be. As soon as I fell back in to normal space I attempted the jump again but this time the FSD took an age to spin up properly. I was running, full power to engines and boosting every few seconds and still the Vulture caught up with me, killed the shields and started stripping away the hull.
I was down to 53% hull when the FSD finally kicked in but this time it wasn’t inter-system. My course had been reset for the station I was headed for. As quickly as I could I plotted another course out of the system and engaged. Seconds later the same Vulture once again had me in its claws and I’d been pulled back into normal space. This time though the ship kept spinning and it took effort to level out. By that time however, it was all over. My Python had been destroyed and I was looking at my only option at this point – a Sidewinder with on-loan fittings.
The urge to rage-quit was really strong so I left the game for a couple of days and thought about how I would proceed. There was a certain appeal to wiping my save and starting again but I’d already done that in preparation for Horizons and I wasn’t keen on doing it again.
So I decided to take the Sidewinder, apply the lessons I’d learned to my gameplay choices and start out to rebuild my fortune. I picked up a few data delivery missions at around 15KCr a piece as well as a couple of missions that had a reward of components – though these missions were bugged as they could not be claimed at the target worlds – and even scored a couple of bonus rewards for completing missions quickly. At time of writing this I’m back up to 357KCr and although I am still driving the on-loan Sidewinder I’m taking the time to learn the ship this time around. Docking at planetary bases is a very different process to docking at a space facility!
One of those lessons is trading up to larger / newer ships by part-exchanging your current ship. While it can help, I would much rather have been busted down to my old Asp Explorer when I lost the Python than the Sidewinder.