Best advice I ever got
28 Feb 2019Marlfan1
So what is it that makes a VO Hotspot a Hotspot anyway? Its not like you hop in and boom there are asteroid after asteroid after asteroid just spitting out Void Opals. The first time I went looking for them I followed my bud's advice and did the whole mapping the ice ring thing, and sure enough, Void Opal Hotspot pops up as a navigational target. WHoo Hoo! I'm in the money, I'm in the money!! I pop in right on top of it, fire off the pulse wave scanner and ...nothing. Eddelos had shown me a few scan results he had printed up, asteroids with various degrees of yellow and red and black showing up in the scans. "Forget all of these", he said. "This is what your looking for", as he handed me yet another scan result. There, smack dab in the middle of the report was an asteroid that was so bright a yellow you almost had to squint at it. What made you able to look directly at it were the black "pipes" tracing over it depicting the fissures.
"That is what you want. That asteroid will make you enough money by itself to buy you your choice of any small sized, and a few of the mid sized ships you could possibly want.", said Edd. "That one 'roid will net you anywhere from 12 to 16 tons of Void Opals. Find the right place to sell them, and you'll get 1.6 Million credits per ton."
Edd kept talking, telling me all about his last mining trip when he sold over 130 tons of VOs. I have to admit, I did hear him talking, and I am sure if I had paid any attention I would have saved myself hours of heartbreak and anxiety. I was too busy hiding my hard on and dreaming about buying and outfitting a Federal Corvette.
Weeks later, I was wracking my brain trying to recall all the advice he had given me. I had heard it, I just hadn't paid attention to it, now I had to rely on my subconscious to bring it back to me. I began to remember things, disjointedly, piece by piece.
"Don't go straight in for the center", (Duh). "Start at about 1,000 km with the center of the hotspot between you and the planet to keep yourself oriented properly so you don't keep scanning the same 'roids over and over".
"My best finds are usually 600 to 300 kms out." "if you learn only one thing, learn this; Lots of people want the money VOs bring, but most don't want to put in the work to get them. YOU ARE GOING TO BE INTERDICTED!", he nearly yelled at me, "RUN! Don't bargain, don't beg, and above all, DON'T FIGHT!" These folks coming after you are going to be engineered out the wazoo. Just RUN!."