Galactic Politics and Mining
18 Sep 2019Daylonne
Now into my second week flying around the galaxy, I've started to experience the first bit of galactic politics with my player faction. It appears a neighboring player factions influence has been spreading into our home system and efforts are being made to bribe and work with the other resident factions to increase their influence. I did my part and flew missions with several of those factions working to increase influence. After 100's of lightyears of travel and mission running I finally get a break from this task and decide I should experiment a bit more with mining.I notify my ship engineer to outfit my Type-7 for some deep space travel and mining. I had a lot of success with deep core mining void opals and low pressure diamonds but based on my limited range right now a lot of these spots are mined out significantly. I've heard rumors in my travels that Painite can yield good returns for time spent and that vast amounts of hot spots still exist in the bubble. As the ship engineer and his crew work to ready my ship I pull up my galaxy maps to chart the course. A direct route to my target system will leave me without enough fuel to reach the location or even return from the trip itself. So I begin scouting out neighboring star systems looking for a populated system. After reviewing various systems I finally find one and plot my course into the nav computer.
The ship engineer gives me the thumbs up and I speak with the stations ordinance and drones merchant and fill up my cargo with limpets. After doing a final systems check with the board green I launch and head out.
The voyage itself was fairly uneventful and I reach my port to refuel. While they are refueling my ship I take a quick look around the station and see some of the same type of merchants and wares that exist pretty much in every station I've come across. The people seem a bit more cold out on the fringe of the people but I assume life is harder out here with supplies not as frequent in the populated galactic hubs of the inner bubble.
After refueling I make the short trip to my destination and my excitement builds as what I was hoping to find was found! A pristine metallic ring with 3 separate Painite hotspots. I roll the dice and pick one to fly into. My excitement perhaps a little too much I enter the belt a little too hard and do some minor hull damage. Nothing significant but my paint was definitely scratched! Another item to add to the expense list for this trip I thought to myself.
I load my limpets and online my refinery. As the refinery comes online I rub my hands together in anticipation of the rumored riches that await in these rocks. I fire off my first limpet at a promising asteroid and wait watching the limpet fly towards the asteroid. It finally connects and.... no Painite. I shrug to myself and think that's ok, this valuable of a mineral can't be in every asteroid. I continue my progress in firing off limpets and with each limpet returning the same results of no Painite my anticipation begins to expire. I start counting the limpets fired to pass the time. 25... 50... 76... 102... at this point my frustration growing to fill the size of my emptying cargo hold I change course and try a different angle in the ring. I continue counting 143.. 176.. until finally my ship beeps at me that I'm out of limpets. I let out a deep sigh and set course back to my refueling system.
As I make my jumps back to the station I wonder to myself were the rumors false or was I doing something wrong? Well, there is always the next trip and other hot spots in that ring to try and my anticipation begins to build over the possibilities of striking it big again.