Behind Enemy Lines
06 Jul 2015Synthawk
Took the first venture in to enemy territory today for Hudson. I picked the system of Vaka, which looked vulnerable for me to begin undermining. This was a new experience for me on multiple fronts. Frame shift drive interdiction, being in a hostile system, shooting at ships that didn't have bounties on them. It felt alien, but at the same time intense, and a fun change of pace from the usual day-to-day activities of hunting down bounties, turning them in, repairing the ship and beginning again.I quickly found that the low heat generation of the Diamondback Scout saved me on numerous occasions when I needed repairs in Vaka. Being able to dock while in silent running mode made repairs, reloading and refueling much simpler than leaving system to do so, and allowed me to safely hunt from within a minute of the Zenbei Orbital station. That was a fun exercise to learn how to quickly dock without being scanned, noticed and shot down, especially as there are no shields while in silent running.
I did however quickly find some limitations on the Diamondback Scout when interdicting. Due to it being a smaller ship, I found it hard, if not impossible to interdict larger targets such as Pythons and Anacondas. I may need to look in to an upgrade, perhaps the Diamondback Explorer. However, I also turned in about 400 merits at Gliese 868 and the pay was.... Underwhelming. I know if I work for about ~3700/week I can maintain the 5th tier, which pays out 50 million a month. However, looking at today by itself, I made 405 merits.
405 merit points translates to 40,500 credits on turn in. I earn more than that for individual kills bounty hunting, and 405 merits took me a decent amount of time. Let's say two hours of dedicated interdiction time, especially with how much I was getting interdicted by the locals as well (500k bounty racked up and counting). At 4 hours I could get myself around 100k turn in credits and tier 3, which pays out 500k a week. 500k. I can earn the weekly bonus for bounties from way less than an hour of bounty hunting, or going to a conflict zone.
The pay doesn't seem worth it. From colleagues mentions of the weapon for 4 weeks of loyalty, the weapon isn't worth it. The only thing worth it is hitting tier 5 for a 100% bonus to bounty payouts. So basically, I would have to spend ~15-20 hours a week to achieve 3700 merits to maintain tier 5 (according to some calculations I read from fellow pilots on a message board), to get 50 mil a week, to double my bounty payouts making it easily 2-5 mil/hr. On paper, it's worth the time spent once you get to that point. The issue I see is the risk. It's already getting dangerous for me in Vaka, and the loss of ships will cut in to my earnings. Right now it's not a huge deal, I'm in a Diamondback Scout. However, if I upgrade to something else, losses could start getting very costly, especially if other CMDR's start hunting me down.
I'm going to have to give this some thought. The income could be nice, but I'm not sure it's worth the risk. I also spend a lot of time in conflict zones lately, which won't see the benefit from the bounty payout bonus whatsoever. Then there is the matter of the terrible weapon given out to people loyal to Hudson's cause. Empire has an amazing shield, a great railgun, and Felicia Winters has a laser that disables functionality of modules. All of those are better choices. On one hand I want to stay loyal to Hudson. I want to fight for the Federation. On the other hand though, I want something that benefits me in the long term. Perhaps I should sign up with Winters temporarily, just for 4 weeks to get the laser, and focus on interrupting Empire actions before returning to Hudson.