Star Date 20330325 CMDR's log - The first smuggling run
25 Mar 2016Jose C. Silva
Finished my first trial smuggling mission today - it started yesterday...After retrofitting my g'd old reliable Solaria, a combat Cobra, to a more useful fitting, I set about to a long 420 Ly journey towards Robigo.
Little did I know that it would take me nearly 3 hours just to get there...
The night started by removing one of the Hull Reinforcements and one Shield Power Cell to allow for a Cargo Rack and an extra Fuel Tank on-board. From then on, it seemed pretty straightforward - set course to ROBIGO and jump... 32 times.
It was when fuel reached about 25% that I realised that even though I knew where I was, I was pretty much lost. The plan was to refuel somewhere midway but that was when the absence of a discovery scanner became evident: apart from the star, everything else was always pitch black. I stopped and started evaluating options. I was lucky enough to find a star with an outpost right on the middle of nowhere (a penal colony, no less) with a refuel facility. From there, I plotted course to the nearest facility with an available discovery scanner for sale, as well as another extra fuel tank and a fuel scoop - a 3 hop 62 Ly detour...
Solaria was then refitted, repaired and refuelled, and after a nice meal and a cuppa, off I went. Robigo seemed now reachable but this was, after all, a trial run so, after 4 or 5 jumps, I started to practice on fuel scooping. Practice makes perfection, they say, so after a few boxes of extra crisp boiled eggs on the dashboard, I felt confident using the scoop thing. In the meantime, the Advanced Discovery Scanner was being used after each jump, which would later pay off.
I finally managed to reach Robigo, roughly 3 and a half hours after I started the journey from ANDHRIMI, the nearest High Tech system from home at LFT 37, where I had first retrofitted the Cobra for the first time. Tired and with my body hurting in places I didn't even knew I had, I docked the Cobra and went to bed.
This morning I set myself to plot a plan for the return trial run. Was lucky enough to find two missions to the same system, quite conveniently 8 Ly away from home, LFT 37, both paying roughly 600.000 Cr/Ton - quite low but enough for a practice run. I then set practice to what Master Yoda... I mean, Mitch Gant wisdom had whispered me: "You don't have to take the cargo from Robigo. You sell it right there and set sail to the nearest place from your destination that sells the same cargo." That's an advice that not only makes sense, it even pays for himself: the jump range with an empty cargo rack is bigger AND if interdicted, the ship is faster and more manoeuvrable. After 33 jumps, I got interdicted four times: wasted an Hauler (really? an Hauler as a pirate ship?), an Eagle and a Vulture, while out speeding a FAS.
Final destination was BAO YAN LUO system, so I went to LHS 1507, just 8 Ly apart, to buy the 7 ton cargo I needed to deliver. Final jump, destination an outpost so no danger of being scanned, but another FAS was waiting for me at the end of the line. However, it was no match for the A thrusted Cobra and I managed to nose dock it (A shields FTW) even before the FAS managed a single shot against me.
Well, long story short, quite a few loose ends were fine tuned so I won't be doing the same mistakes again and the final score was:
186.000 Cr's from collected space data and 5.319.581 Cr's from the smuggled slaves.
Not bad for a first try, filled with hiccups, near misses and mishaps - looking forward for the next run latter this evening
