Obsession
26 Apr 2020Kris Afron
Sometimes it gets to be that way - a drive to just keep on doing the same activity.Once I'd got my pilots licence I made a natural progression through the ships that I bought, not bought, traded in really. During the early stages of my piloting career I took the decision to keep my ship multi-purpose so that I could try many different career paths to see which suited me best.
My first ship the Sidewinder, although it was a good start, was not really any good at anything. I soon progressed to a Cobra MkIII, which I traded in 3 days later for an Asp Explorer. The Asp was the first ship that was really useful, it had the cargo space that allowed me to start running well paying delivery missions. I then upgraded to a Python and this was truly a great ship, in fact I still own it, it's kind of like keeping a good friend.
But again I found that, as good as it was, the Python was average at everything but not really good at anything. I decided to start specialising my ships. This also meant that I had to start using engineers to upgrade modules to get the best out of every ship that I bought. Which meant that collection of engineering materials had to be a regular activity.
Now, nearly all of my new ships are bought for a specific purpose and outfitted and engineered to do just the one job. So, for example, I have a Python for Mining and also a combat capable Python for running paying missions.
But there is that ever present need for the materials. A while back I put together a Keelback specifically for the purpose of material collection, 64 tonnes of cargo space, collector limpet controller, combat capable for defence against the inevitable pirates and it was very good at doing the job.
Last week I decided to upgrade it and I chose to upgrade to an Asp Explorer. It had to be kind of multi-purpose, but specifically biased towards material collection of all kinds, so Raw, Manufactured and Data needed to be taken care of. You'll find the build here "multi material collection build for Asp Explorer". I engineered it as much as I could, named it "Hunter Gatherer" and took it out on it's first collection missions.
First stop was Dav's Hope (Hyades Sector DR-V C2-23 planet A5) where i spent a few hours gathering Manufactured materials and some limited Data. This site was known to me before.
Some research on Galnet identified the Jameson Crash Site (HIP 12099 planet 1B) as a likely good spot for finding grade 4 and 5 Data. Hunter Gatherer took me there repeatedly over a day with intervening visits to a local material trader to trade down the materials. I nearly filled up my data store here.
Further research led me to believe that I could get grade 5 Raw materials at two systems,
HIP 36601 - planet C1A for Polonium, planet C1D for Ruthenium, planet C3B for Tellurium and C5A for Technetium. At more than 1700 ly from the bubble It took 31 jumps to get there, but it was well worth the visit as I maxed out my store for all these elements at Biological sites with Crystal Shards.
and Outotz LS-K D8-3 - planet B5A for Yttrium and planet B5C for Antimony. This was about 800ly from HIP 36601. But a warning, both these systems needed a long supercruise to get to the C component from the entry point.
The trip out to these two system took the best part of two days and with the Jameson Crash Site a very fruitful few days had been spent filling up Data and Raw commodities for me. So being obsessive has payed off this time and it will do so again whenever I start to run short of materials again.
CMDR Kris Afron signing off. Fly safely commanders.