Stealth ship, moneymoneymoney, & fancy flying
16 Jul 2017Vizz Curio
::CMDR Vizz Curio on the Stealthship Manticore, on docking pad 05 at outpost Ozanne Terminal, Tiveronisa::::personal log::
In less than a week, [ R E D A C T E D ] had my new Python ship retrofitted with their special stealth tech.
I love the radar-absorbing, matte black paint job. The extra radar-reflecting fins and bits look good. The whole ship looks sleek, so slick it could pass by an event horizon and the gravity itself wouldn't notice it.
They also made modifications to the power plant and related systems: she runs cool. Real cool. This lowers my ship's targeting signature, making it difficult to lock on to unless very close.
We christened the ship the Stealthship Manticore. A manticore was a being of ancient legend; a flying monster that left nothing of its victims behind.
After flying around a bit and attracted to the possibilities of a cool-running ship, I bought 3 Large-size blue beam lasers.
Then I flew to Black Hide and punched The Dweller square across his sad little face for his screw up with the Jupiter Jazz' power system a few weeks ago. After his profuse apologies while his neck was in the steely grip of my cybernetic right hand, I had him tweak those 3 beam lasers to lower their heat output and be more efficient. And he didn't screw anything up.
Added 2 Medium-size pulse lasers, tweaked those too; then headed out to put this ship through my tests: bounty hunting. And as lady luck is smiling on me once again, the NULL organization out of Conway City in the LTT 4961 system had an open call for bounty claims against Wanted ships in the system. Asteroid ring bounty hunting in a HiRez site? Oh, yeah.
I am impressed!
For a big boat she can handle like a very heavy fighter, take plenty of hits, and dish out devastating damage.
It's a wicked thrill to blast a ship with my 3 large beam lasers and burn off their shields in seconds. When the weapon capacitor drains to 0, my heat level is only at 61%, and I can keep one of the beams still on continuously while the capacitor recharges (at 4 pips to WEAP, of course), or switch to the dual pulse lasers to let the capacitor charge faster.
Disengaging the flight assist for pitching hard makes a world of difference in maneuverability to keep the target in front of me while dogfighting, as well as doing fancy maneuvers around asteroids.
I am very happy with this ship.
I racked up a few million credits in bounty claims and then on top of that NULL paid me almost 12 Million for my efforts!
While getting my final payout, the clerk told me that NULL is also asking for certain supplies to be delivered to Conway City in preparation for an asteroid base they're going to build out. I didn't think much of it in that moment; I've never been a hauler. While I had Eden do a systems check before leaving Conway City, I idly pulled up the details. Superconductors were on their demand list and I knew just where to get them: an outpost just one jump away.
Well now, with 208 cargo space and making about 3,700cr profit per ton, I was making a profit of 776,000cr every 8-10 minutes!
Here I sit, now 7 Million big ones richer already, wondering how long this too-good-to-be-true shipping deal can last...
View on the pad from my new proximity alert drone:
I always get pad 05 at Ozanne Terminal. And it's always on the opposite side of the outpost from my approach vector, and so I've invented a new maneuver to get right into alignment that's a wild one:
Request docking at 7.5 and boost while pointing the nose under the station. As the ship gets close, throttle to 50% and turn off the flight assist. Pitch up hard, and roll & pan as needed. When the ship has pitched enough to point back toward the station & the pad, re-engage the flight assist and lay on the port lateral thrusters as the main thrusters compensate for that afterburner slide. Drop landing gear and slide onto the pad.
I call this maneuver "The Rocinante Maneuver" because a workhorse like a Python shouldn't be expected to do superfluous hotdoggin' moves like my previous, combat-specific ships did, but does it still.
It's a lot more fun than slowly flying in to an assigned docking spot with a perfectly aligned approach!
::end transmission::
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I also named it after the Rocinante ship in The Expanse and how Alex sometimes flies, flips, and maneuvers the ship gracefully. Especially vis a vis S02E11 when he has her flying without main thrusters between the moons of Jupiter using gravity-assisted slingshots -- and elegant solution and a gracefully smooth "flight assist off" voyage.
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