Another Day in the Black
27 Sep 2018WilliamReace
Woke up today, got out of bed, took the shower as normal, brushed my teeth; and thought to myself "Yet another day of the same old thing..." Then I remembered that I had an order of osmium ore to go mine for one of my contacts. So I set about looking through my backlogs of places I've been trying to find a good prospect for the needed ore. At which point I remembered that my refinery equipment had been left on another station.
Then I pulled up the station CMDR services and had them transfer the parts for me, so I could keep looking for a good location.
After a good hour of looking this way and that, navigating the map is quite fun with 2 joystick controls, I managed to find a place about 40 LY from my drop off point. Which is good because that means it would only take 2 jumps to get to the asteroids, and 3 to get back once I'd retrieved the required minerals.
So I pulled up the CMDR interface once more, my stuff had arrived while I was searching, so I had the station crew swap out my SRV for the Refinery since I was not going planetside for mining. Once they finished that I requested un-dock permission and left the facility in my Clipper.
It's not my best ship for mining, but since I'm about a quarter of the way to the Cutter I've been desperately saving for, I really wasn't interested in getting another new hull to spend all my credits on.
Every time I un/dock, I think, "is there going to be some little guy getting in the way again today?" I've had 3 people bounce off shields in as many days, and all from smaller ships that apparently don't hear the station personnel telling them to give way to larger vessels. And then I get yelled at by the Port Comms, as if it were my fault, seriously get tired of hearing that bologna, I know they have a security feed and should be able to tell without doubt who's fault that was. But this day I was lucky, and nobody else was using the entry locks at the same time as me.
Took about ten minutes to get to the system and scan down the celestial bodies for the one(s) I needed to extract the ore from. I always have a fuel scoop fitted to my vessels, it's just easier than having to dock at stations or keeping a close eye on my reserves.
Not much company out here, no orbital platforms or stations in the system. Saw a couple guys doing some mining too, but they did not stick around for long. Barely even noticed they were there. Spent a good 3 hours dicing up rocks with a single m-laser and scooping up the pieces with the old forward/reverse and sliding over each one, it's funny to think how well that works.
Sure it would be a lot easier using a limpet, but those things take all the skill and fun out of it. I'm not trying to make a living off this, I don't need to speed up the process. My contact has given me a full week to find enough of the Ore and I'm sure it won't take but two days with what I'd already gotten in my first few hours. Blast it is boring out here all alone, I need to find my music player.