The story so far pt7 - corvette
28 Jul 2020Orion Blacksun
My last unfulfilled goal was to get a corvette. Once I have it I intend to engineer the crap out of it and make it amazing. I needed two things, money and rank. The federation don't let just anyone buy their capital class ships. You need to proove yourself first. I decided to do this by running errands between Ceos and Sothis. It was ok but slow going. I could only really handle it as far as Ensign. After that I bought a gunship and blew up a load of pirates with help from my pilot. After that I decided to try transport missions between Canopus and Exphiay. I tried this in my anaconda since it had around 300t of cargo space. I managed two loops of that and got interdicted six times. One of them I couldn't evade but was able to escape thanks to my scb. I must have also gouged a furrow in all the stations too as I docked to the tune of tortured metal every time I flew through the slot. The anaconda really wasn't up for this.I bought a new ship to do a bit of exploration in (phantom, which is great by the way) and in the depths of space planned what to do.
What I needed was a dedicated cargo ship, but one that handled well in low wake to avoid interdictions and could make a quick get away if I got caught. As per my rule of jelous ships, I couldn't get a second ship of a type I had so a mk2 was out. I narrowed it down to a clipper or an orca. Both would be good I thourght, but I went with the clipper based on looks and it being half the price. I planned a build that had 200t of cargo space and set about doing courier missions for the empire in the Mainani/Ngalinn run. I did this in my cobra. The only small ship I had. It was the first time I'd used it since getting the aspx and it was a pleasure flying it again. I also upgraded it. Before I knew it I had sufficent empire rank to get the clipper. I also got elite trade rank doing these missions so went to Shin Dez to buy it. It's so cool! They have everything there.
I got a couple of federation ranks with the clipper and as I had hoped, it was ideal for the role. Very fast and was easily able to escape from danger.
I also needed some cash. I think I had around 500mil at that point and needed another 500mil. No problem, two LTD runs in the anaconda would get me that. Except... The price of LTDs had tanked. They were selling for 1.7mil+ and were now around 800k. I gave it a week, I actually mined some painite in the mean time. Not very profitable but safe and there was a double hotspot only two jumps from a good sell station. A week later and LTDs were selling at 700k.
I needed a reasonable income source and this wasn't it. I noticed that void opals were selling for 1.6mil so decided I'd try my hand at core mining. I repurposed my aspx as a core miner and went in. This is very different to laser mining, but I got the hang of it. After a couple of goes of that I had the cash I needed.
To celebrate I bought a new ship. I don't have a home station so my ships are scattered throughout the bubble. Summoning ships can get very expensive as the cost is based on the ship's value. I wanted a cheap ship that has a good jump range so that I could summon that and then fly to the ship I wanted. I suppose that a dbx would have been the best choice but I went for a dolphin because of the way it looks. I really like it, I was shocked when I fuel scooped with it as how cool it remained. It must like the heat, so I named it salamander. I flew back to Canopus and did more trade runs in the clipper until I reached rear admiral. Then a swift trip to Shin Dez and finally got my corvette. However, I couldn't actually fly it since the powerplant couldn't power everything. I quickly unlocked an engineer in my krait and flew my corvette on it's maiden voyage to Sirius and engineered it a bit. Next a trip to Farseer inc. to sort out the fsd. Got that to g4 and a reapectable 30ly jump range.
And that brings us up to date...
I've done all the things on my list. So what now?
Why, another list of course! Bigger and more ambitious than last time. There is the second ram tah mission. I still have lots of engineers to unlock. I want to explore properly in the phantom. At some point I might venture into open (I have a ship in mind for this). Perhaps join a squadron? Also an ambitious project combining space exploration with cosmic horror..
Oh yes, I have plans.
CMDR Orion Blacksun