So what am i to do now? p4
30 Jul 2020Pbrstreetgang
_It's been a few weeks of straight mining and I'm really starting to get the hang of this. I'm still getting my limpets in the wrong position and they get smacked by the rock like a left handed batter swatting a hanging curve ball in Yankee stadium. Hitting that right spot with the sub surface displacement launcher still seems to be an issue. As my grandfather use to say Son, you couldn't hit the side of a barn with a handful of rice. Well, he's not wrong but at least I'm not running straight into the rocks anymore and only took me a few hundred times to finesse the Pig into the right position for the SSD. I load the cargo hold with limpets and head straight to "my spot" on the ring. I've only seen one or two ships in passing and I've very vigilant after the scare with the fed ships. The routine goes something like this; have my scanners at max range and wait for anyone following- when satisfied, scan all around me - pop prospector limpets- sub surface mine any good deposits of LTD's- then finally, hit it with the surface lasers while I scan for the next rock. Rinse and repeat. The days are starting to blur together. I find myself nodding off at the stick for a few minutes while I wait for the last of the collector limpets to deposit the goods in the hatch.
The tricky part is getting the War Pig out of there fully loaded to a port to sell. We've had this thing loaded before, but having 720 tons of low temperature diamonds makes you feel as you have a giant neon sign saying Hey! Look at me! Come and get them. Everything seems to take twice the amount of time. The FSD and supercruise seem to take forever to spool up.
Using the deep space comms, I'm still able to get some good intel on the markets from my contacts at certain stations, for a fee of course, but its well worth it seeing these things are paying up to 1.7 mil credits per ton. Yep. I said PER TON! No wonder why there is so many ships out here mining. It's pure profit, granted as long as you don't run into any pirates that will leave you floating in space when they rip your hatch open and take everything. I've been there and done that and don't want to do it again, so no thanks.
There's stations much closer for half the price, but taking the easy way was never my thing. Go big or go home, as the saying goes. I'm not sure where home would be, but after a few more runs I'll be able to go anywhere I want. This really is too easy. When I got to the last station, my contact came to meet me at the dock. His eyes were wide and jaw hanging just looking at the volume of LTD's being unloaded from the hold. I quickly pulled him aside and paid him three times what his normal rate was. I said, You keep giving me good intel on prices and there will be plenty more for you, just keep your mouth shut. There's too many ships out there as it is. I was lying to him yes, but I needed him here at the station and not renting some crappy Hauler, heading out there to make it rich and end up as cannon fodder for the pirates. Those were the chumps that look for the quick buck but end up at the wrong end of a Gauss Cannon. The pirates feed on guys like him. Come to think about it, haven't both of your latest run-ins been with you at the helm?
Frak, he's got a point. Whatever, ok, do as I say, not as I do. You're no good to me dead. I'll reach out to you in a few days for the next station.
I know this is not going to last forever. The market is chaotic right now and there is a reason for it being this way somewhere out there. As quick as it started, it will end that way too. I just hope I get to see it to the end and not as space debris.
After a short rest, I start heading back to the rings. The hold filled with limpets again as I let the auto pilot take the Pig out of the station. This has been the third trip to this station and navigation is starting to get routine. We will see in a few days if I'm heading this way or off to the next hot sell station. I'm thinking there may be a pattern in why these stations randomly inflate their buy price then cut it back down after a few days. It really doesn't make sense to me, not yet at least. I wonder if other miners are getting this type of information from contacts or do they think the bubble has popped and the rush is over? Can't be, there's too many ships out at the ring for it to be a select few stations. Someone trying to crash the market with these overpriced diamonds? What's the benefit in that? Seems crazy to spend those kind of credits to crash the market for what purpose? It's got to be trillions of credits, that rules out the rich, private companies that are trying to set prices. This is much bigger than them. It's something Edmund Mahon or Zack Hudson would be doing to control systems and that's way over my head. I don't even like thinking about the amount of influence they all must have.
I just need to get a few more runs into port. Well, if I can get more than a few before this all ends and I'll be a happy man. Oh right, and not getting blown up at the same time.