Fun mining diversion and ship refit
21 Feb 2016ED_Recluse
Hooked up with Wingmate Cmdr OverloadRJ45. He had found a nice mining location in the Bhotho system when he was looking at mining, but it was a little hot near the RES Extraction Site. He offered to watch my back (and do some Bounty Hunting) while I mined. Was about 60 light years away, but the Cobra has great jump range. Took 8 jumps but it was quick and fuel efficient.Found some nice asteroids. Painite, Platinum, Palladium and Osmium. I was only attacked twice and both times he came to my rescue. In both cases, the Cobra's Beam Laser fangs did a good job on the attacker til he got there, but I was dismayed that if I let them get the first pass in, my shields were gone.
Was attacked by relatively weak ships too, an Eagle and Diamondback Scout. Both times we took them and collected some small bounties. By the end of our run, I collected a good amount of precious metals, but his 1.4 million credit take in Bounties dwarfed my mining proceeds.
I did shop around various stations for Bulletin Board rewards rather then sell at the Commodities Market, and managed 213,000 credits for 2 tons of Painite and 135,000 credits for 2 tons of Osmium. Still holding 2 tons of Painite and 6 tons of Platinum waiting on some more Bulletin Board rewards.
Based on my shield performance, I upgraded the E4 shields to C4 and upgraded the B0 shield booster to an A0. Also swapped out one small mining laser for a Gimballed multicannon. Will switch back if the one laser isn't "cutting it" ;-)
Unless you are running a big freighter, I don't think mining will ever be as lucrative as Bounty Hunting, but it makes for a nice diversion, some good Co-operative missions with Wingmen, and deepens my already unhealthy addiction to the E-D universe.