The Crash before the Boom
01 Jun 2016Skiingiggy
The last few days have been nerve wracking and quite difficult for this pilot. After upgrading Living Time to 8A Thrusters, I decided that she was in perfect shape to outrun any and all threats she could face - so I decided that it would be alright if I were to try and run her shieldless. In many ways, I was right - pirates can't touch her - she's too fast for any threat we've faced yet, often able to escape any interdiction we encounter, or the ones we can't escape, I'm able to jump back to super cruise before the enemy ships were able to fire even a sing shot. What I hadn't counted on, though, was my own clumsiness at the helm. There were some... rather costly accidents while I was learning how VoLT handled, and there were two pretty severe accidents that may have involved her and a wall - they cost me something near 40 million credits in repairs and maintenance. After those accidents, I was left with a mere 2 million credits left in my account - not enough to cover the insurance of most of my ships - especially the ones I'd use to get back on my feet. The days following the accidents were a little rough - I spent more time than I care to admit at the bottom of a bottle of whiskey at the bar.
Fortunately though, a few pilots at Greeboski's Outpost decided that I shouldn't be allowed to mope over my clumsiness, and before long they had me out flying again, initially doing some data delivery with Infinite Starlight to get enough credits to cover the rebuy of Sundered Star, and from there we went out doing what we do best together: Working as Mercs and Vigilantes to help clean up the bubble. We spent a lot of time out bounty hunting in and around Phiagre, and we also spent quite a while out in ngolibardu bounty hunting as well - and we were paid quite well for all of our work out there.
Thanks to my friends and our time spend bounty hunting, I was able to earn enough credits to cover insurance and maintenance costs for all of my ships and enough to afford some decent cargo as well - and while we were out fighting we also cleaned up quite a lot of criminal elements. So while this week started with some devastating losses, I managed to recover rather nicely. After receiving my payment for the work in ngolibardu, I hopped back into VoLT and began working as a trader to reaquire the money I'd lost earlier in the week - and did so quite successfully. Whereas I started the week with only around 30 million credits, I've now earned more than double that, and it looks like I've gotten over my bad piloting streak - there have been zero incidents in VoLT since the initial ones, and at the current rate it looks like I'll be good to go for whatever projects I attempt in the future.
I'm also trying to get certified to pilot SRVs around the surface, and I've begun prepping the fleet for dealing with landings on planets and moons, so in another 3 days or so I should be able to begin landing planetside and doing work there as well, which is definitely exciting. I've also heard rumors that there are people out in the bubble who'll be able to upgrade and improve the frameshift drive on my ship, and once I can go planetside I intend to seek them out and see if I can't get VoLT a higher jump range.
So that's how this past week has been - it started low and has ended in a bit of a boom comparatively for this commander. Now the plan is to earn more credits before the week is out, upgrade the fleet a little, and then take to some planetary activities once that is all sorted. After that, I'm not really sure what I'm going to do. I'm considering either trying to find work with the federation so I could attain the rank of Rear Admiral, or heading out into the black on another adventure to find things unknown. What I'll do exactly I honestly don't know just yet, but whatever I decide the next few days will certainly be interesting.