Maybe I Should Have Tried Gardening Instead
10 Oct 2019Dante Cortez
Wow. This explorer business is, um, tricky. Having made it to the Witch Head Nebula, I found my way to a shipyard at Ezra Point, where I bought an Asp Scout. Tricked it out a bit, moved some stuff around, and figured I'd bring it back to Farseer and make some adjustments.No such luck.
No matter what I did, I couldn't get enough jump distance out of it to get through the Col 70 blockade, which - as I wish I'd known before - pretty much surrounds the entire nebula and a couple of surrounding regions. I must have spent hours trying to find my way through, but the Scout's 20 LY jump range was just not enough. Finally, I gave up, and got back in the Adder, whose 25 LY range was able to make it through Col 70. (I had to go back to Ezra Point because I forgot to transfer the SRV and its hangar. And then after I did that, I forgot to transfer the surface scanner, which I didn't find out until two or three systems later, and by then I just said screw it and left it behind.)
When I finally got back to Deciat, some ridiculous number of jumps later, I thought about having the Scout transferred, but then I saw that the shipyard here in Deciat had an Asp Explorer. Bigger, sure, but capable of longer jumps, even before Farseer got her hands on it. So I sold the Scout remotely, probably at a loss, but what the hell, they're only credits, right?
I managed to convince Farseer to bump up the FSD range on the Explorer - which I dubbed "A Bit of Gravitas," since I feel like I've moved up in the world - and make some other mods to the engines and the scanner. Her jump range is more than 30 LY, maybe as much as 35, but she has space to carry anything interesting I find.
So now I'm figuring my next move. I could head back out past Witch Head and see what's doing at the Orion Nebula, but I think maybe instead will head for the top this time. Up and over, make for the border between the Inner Orion Spur and the next sector over, whatever that is. Or maybe I'll put some defense on it and stick close to the bubble for a while, see if there are jobs I can do. Decisions, decisions....