The story so far pt3 - wealth and fame
18 Jul 2020Orion Blacksun
The time had come to do something awesome. I would decend into the blackness of space and get my name on some new worlds, making a fortune as I did. My aspx was ready. I had a surface scanner, I had a grade A fsd and powerplant, a decent fuel scoop and not much else. Off I went! I learned to use the FSS on this trip, ackward at first but soon got the hang of it. I also learned the surface scanner. That thing is a pain to use with a gamepad though so I plugged my mouse back in to my increacingly complicated interface (and also plugged my laptop into a tv and have a seperate keyboard which sits on my lap).I travelled aimlessly for a few hours mapping planets. I found my first blue giant and white dwarf stars. Both were moments of amazement. Exactly what I wanted. But nothing that hadn't already been discovered. This area was well explored. I looked on the map to see where I was. Only 400 ly from the edge of the bubble. If I wanted to find something new I would have to go to somewhere where few people had been. I didn't want to go too far on my first trip so I needed to be clever. Time to think in 3d! I stopped travelling parrellel to the galatic plane and instead went straight down for 5 jumps. I was not much fufther from the bubble but was now starting to find some worlds that hadn't been mapped. I mapped one of these, bookmarked it and headed back to cash in my fortune of data. All in all 2 days of exploring. I sold my data and it was around 3 million. That's a bit disappointing. Hardly a fortune. The next day I went back out to 'my' planet and yes! First mapped by Orion Blacksun. Huzzah! But I wanted first discovery too. I spent some time in this zone and did find a couple of systems that had undiscovered planets. So I discovered them. Oh yeah. Thats exploring. Those icy bodies have my name all over them. So this must be worth loads of cash now. I zoomed back to the bubble to bask in my winnings and glory and it was only 2 million.
Doing some research I discovered that the valuable things to scan are earthlikes and terraform candidates (took me a while to find where that info is displayed):
http://remlok-industries.fr/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/ED-Deep-Space-Network-3.3-Value-planets-stars-cartography.jpg
I also read about the road to riches trail. But if you are doing this, is it exploring? Or is it just blitzing through systems looking for the high value targets and ignoring the rest? If I'm going to do that, then I might as well try mining if it's just for cash.
So I'll try mining. There are many ways to mine and many things to mine. Doing research again I decided to try something simple first. Low temperature diamond, laser (surface) mining. There is a triple hotspot in col 285 which I decided to check out. I had a great ship for it already, my aspx. I had already travelled out that distance so it didn't seem too intimidating and I had the surface scanner and everything! I put mining lasers on two of my small hard points, got a refinery, collector and prospector controllers and 90T of cargo space which I filled with limpets.
The journey was fine. I know how to scoop fuel and had just been doing trips like this. Found the system. Found the planet. Scanned the rings and there it was, the triple hotspot. In I went. This was my first encounter with rings up close and that in itself was really cool.
And then... Blips on my radar, "let's see what you're carring" oh no! Pirates after my precious limpets. Could I fight them off? 3 vipers. No I could not. Could I outrun them? in my asp? I refer you to my previous anwser. Jump away. Masslocked. Time to die.
But no! unimpressed by my limpets they asked me how I make a living, in a disdainful tone. Given the circumstances I would have thought the answer obvious but I didn't stop to chat. I boosted away until they disappeared from my scanner and didn't come back. I then got to scanning rocks and lasering any that had LTDs in them. I actually enjoyed it. I can see how it's not going to be everyone's cup of tea but I like finding the rocks with diamonds in and watching the little limpets collect stuff for me. I kept going until all my limpets were gone, which took a couple of hours, and I had 70 or so LTDs in my hold. By using this outstanding tool, http://edtools.ddns.net/miner I was able to find the best price for them. I did a quick sum in my head and realised that I had 100mil credits worth of stuff. That can't be right. Well, we'll see. I plotted course for the highest price buyer and was off. This journey was very nerve-wracking. A pirate came while I was refuelling but I managed to jump away before he interdicted me and then finally when I got to the system I was headed for I got interdicted whem I was like 5Mm from the station. I was able to avoid it though but I was shaking by the end! Then got in the station and managed to nearly stack it coming down onto the pad. I made it though. And ended up selling my diamonds for just over 100mil. Holy crap. This income source now opens up all sorts of possibilities. Every ship is within reach. I can do anything. Time to plot and plan what I want to try next. Combat is looking tempting...
but more on than next time.
CMDR Orion Blacksun