Bounty hunting with my son & Encoded Materials for Winters
05 May 2021Captainfink
Since my last update, I've been focusing primarily on further engineering unlocks and upgrades. I've now upgraded FSD, Thrusters, PD, PP, Armour, Shields multi-cannons, lasers and heatsinks. I'm making good progress but I find the constant material hunting and trading somewhat tedious. I refuse to grind single sites for hours, or reload for hours. This is not fun to me. So my advice for your bubble hopper or material gatherer... 1) Fit a vehicle hanger if you can. Take two SRV's if you can though so far I've managed to get away with using just one. 2) Fit a collector limpet controller 3) Fit a frameshift wake scanner.Now when I'm jumping between systems and stations, I'll scan every wake I see in my immediate area. This will get you regular encoded data. Next, ensure you DSS each system you get to and scan for emissions. High grade are where you'll find manufactured materials. There are a number of known sites you can farm from also. In terms of raw materials, these can be found primarily on planet surfaces via DSS/FSS. You can pick some up when mining certain res areas also.
Having now exhausted much of my materials upgrading numerous ships these last few days, next on my agenda is a little exploration run to gather materials. I want to find raw myself and I also want first discovery on a new planet, so I'm prepping the Munchkin for another trip into the expanse oustide the bubble and see if I can make some new discoveries.
But first, I had decided I want to see Earth, so off I went to Ceos in The Phantom Queen and started running some more data/cargo delivery missions. I wasn't long in getting my rank up to Petty Officer and no grind needed. I ran missions for an hour or two, these proved lucrative for reputation and cash. Constant interdictions became such an annoyance that I decided to give "The Queen" some teeth! Interdictions are much more fun now, though the Anaconda's handling is sluggish. I've started practicing flight assist off for this reason. I'm hoping to make my turns a little tighter and actually the Anaconda's sluggishness is kind of helpful with FA off. I gave it a go after being interdicted last night en route to Exphiay with a hold full of Gold, Silver and Palladium. I submitted to the interdiction, all power to engineers and boost, hardpoints deploy, flight assist off, flip The Queen 180 so I'm now flying backwards with a target on my attacker. It was glorious as I unloaded the full force of The Queens numerous MC's and lasers into the foolish interloper. I still found it tricky keeping a bead on the pirate with FA off, but I believe with more practice I'll be a more efficient combatant. At the moment I find myself too often jousting and while still fun, I want to ensure I'm maximising my skill and enjoyment, so I'll keep practicing FA off.
Next, my son wanted to try and multi-crew in The Fangs of Justice. I had originally fitted The Fangs with a fighter bay and hired an AI crew member, but the AI was taking a lump of my earnings so I decided I'd forego the fighter bay until I'm comfortable enough cash wise and rep wise. Now that my son was looking to join me I refitted the fighter bay and picked up the Taipan fighter with beam lasers. We had tried to crew up before with no success, and again we found it tricky to get going, but finally we managed to connect and my boy was able to join me.
This is easily some of the best fun we've had. We were running low on time so we flew out from Kokoller to the nav beacon. We 0 throttled around 9km out and my son deployed in the fighter. We then proceeded to patrol together with the local authority. One of us would identify a wanted target, and then we'd both move into position. My son would open up with the beam lasers to start working the shields down. The nimbleness of his fighter and his impressive skills for one so young, had pirates chasing him around in loops as he seared and burned through their shields. I would then follow in with The Fangs and open up with my own beams. The satisfaction in our coordinated attacks was thoroughly enjoyable. My shields were unconcerned for the most part and we only lost the fighter once, which is good going for our first foray into multi-crew. The setup and connecting together are quite a hassle, but if you can manage to get into another ship, there's fun to be had hunting together.
Next, I don't know how I missed it or under estimated it, but turns out the community goal for Winters and the other one, are paying out significant cash for encoded materials. But I was too late for me, or was it? The community had already hit 98% on the goal so I didn't have much time. Many commanders were heading over to Jameson's crash site and reloading and reloading, but as you may know by now that's not really my style. Thanks to my habit of scanning wakes, I had plenty of encoded materials of the right type. So off I go to Ito Orbital in Rhea. Once there, I signed up for the CG for Winters and handed in what encoded materials I had on me, and then traded around to get a little more. Well, this put me straight into the top 75%. I took a look at the projected rewards and couldn't believe my eyes! So off to Jameson's I go! Once there, I did a few runs, reloading maybe 5 times, but as I said I don't like to play like this, so I called it a night there. Between the next few systems I was able to scan some more wakes at different stations, and then on returning to Rhea I submitted what I'd gathered, did another round of trading and found myself in the top 50% of contributors. Too easy!
The CG ended next day. My reward - 288,000,000!
So, the lesson from that one, is community goals are definitely worth doing. I'm relatively new here, but the rewards always appear to be worthwhile.
Right now I'm out in Bhava. Having purchased an Alliance Chieftain I'm now fitting it out to spec for conflict zone and massacre missions. I was in Canopus with The Queen and I found there are quite a few well paying bounty/assasination/massacre missions, so along with my data/cargo deliveries, I'll pick up the occasional take down a pirate mission also, but as I mentioned, The Queen is a little sluggish fighting, so I'm outfitting and engineering The Chieftain and I'll run her out of Canopus also. Rewards on these missions often included decent G5 materials so right now it's a good spot for me.
Next steps - exploration run in Munchkin. Looking for Elite exploration and will need new materials for engineering.
Log ends....