Traded my Phantom for an Orca! And traded it back.
02 Mar 2020Dale Franks
A number of people told me that the Orca was a great exploration ship, handles really well in supercruise, and that I should use it as an exploration vessel instead of my Krait Phantom. So I looked at it, and, really, compared to the Phantom, which looks like a mutant, deformed pancake, the Orca does look nice. “Sure,” I thought, “You can’t land it at outposts, but a lot of people use the Anaconda for exploring, and the Orca handles way better in supercruise, so I’ll try it. Yes, I can only get 57LY jumps out of it with my current engineered modules, but I’ll trade off the 3 or 4 LYs per jump for more luxurious surroundings. ” I thought this a because I’m stupid, and easily influenced by the worthless opinions of other people. You know the people I’m talking about: the ones that tell you buy an Alliance Chieftain or Crusader, instead of the Fed Gunship. You know, those people.I transferred the engineered power plant, sensors, FSD, and DSS from the Phantom, sold it, and bought the Orca. After getting it outfitted, I then took off to gather grade 5 materials from the crystalline fragments of the lovely crystal forests of HIP 36601’s various planets. Which, for some reason, are biological, instead of geological sites. Technitium crystals are...biological? OK. Whatever.
Landing large ships is a bitch. At each planet, I had to spend several minutes trying to find suitable terrain to land a football field-sized cruise liner. Finally, at HIP 36601 C4a, a planet whose surface consists, as far as I can tell, entirely of mountains and valleys, I gave up. I couldn’t find a single flat piece of land anywhere to set down with that oversized marital aid. Oh, yeah, I said it. That’s what the Orca looks like: a dildo; ribbed, for her pleasure. Though, not as much as the Dolphin, I guess. Though, to be honest, they both do look vaguely cetacean, with their cute little pectoral fins.
Anyway, I made the 31 jumps back to Jameson Memorial, sold it, and repurchased the Phantom.
Large ships are just a pain in the ass. The Phantom looks like ass, but, all things considered, it seems like the best all-round, long-range exploration ship currently available to us. I traded in my first Phantom for a DBX in Colonia to come back to The Bubble via Sag A*. But, the Class 4 fuel scoop on the DBX made me want to strangle a kitten by the time I got halfway back from Sag A*. So, I got rid of it and went back to the Phantom. Now, I’ve had the Orca experience, and, once again, I’m back in the Phantom.
And, yes, I also have an ASPX, but it’s my bubble bus, because it has a bit shorter jump range than the Phantom, and 1 fewer slot than I want for exploration—a trait it shares with the DBX. It also looks like ass, though, admittedly, ass with great cockpit view. Except for the bright, white lights on each side that glare at you every time you turn your head slightly. They’re the worst. And that awful WWI biplane droning sound the thrusters make. Actually, they’re the worst, too.
The Krait Phantom. I can’t believe I’m back in a Phantom. I’ve begun to realize that I can never sell it now. Every time I head out into the black, I’m gonna have to ride this ugly flat-iron, with it’s stupid, pointless wing antennae, on every exploration trip I take.
Oh, and since I wasn’t able to complete my materials gathering, I’m going to have to jump back to HIP 36601, take the irksome 150,000ls jaunt to HIP 36601 C, and try to land on C4a again, to pick up where I left off. It’s not enough that you have to travel 1,600LY to farm polonium. No, you have to take an additional 20-minute supercruise trip to get to the planets you need to go to. Why would it be convenient? Why?
And don’t even get me started on the shitty low gravity of those planets, which makes the SRV hard to drive, and makes the material fragments float around like fucking balloons for ten minutes every time you shoot them off of the crystal spires, which is worse than being stabbed.
I guess I can never have nice things.