CMDR's Log, Stardate 3307.6-30 [010 - Building the Far-Guardian FSD]
01 Jul 2021Zeton
It has been a wild past few weeks. Life changes at warp speed. Following a brief run at passenger transport I was ready to return to my engineering goals. This time I was better prepared with a list of the materials I would need to fully engineer my FSD, and general strategies of where to find them. After a quick run to Darnielle's Progress to get the alloy for Felicity I was ready to start wake scan chasing. Time for an Upgrade. Picked up the Krait Phantom, a beautiful example of style and design. Larger internal compartments, much faster to help catch those wake scans, and a reasonably good jump range. I think I have found my new Vingilot!
I had a lot of fun breaking in the new Phantoms drives zooming around station space catching wakes. I then moved on to hunting for High Grade Emissions to find necessary manufactured components. This proved to be fairly easy enough and fun.
The final hurdle was the raw materials. I could try to mine rings/asteroids or look for bio or geo signals on planet surfaces. My history of planetary landing has not been great, my last attempt nearly killed me as noted in previous log. I must move on and overcome. I found one of the planets in Deciat System had the bare necessities I needed, it was flat enough and well lit; the whole experience went much better than the crash site at Orrere 2B.
Back at Farsser Inc. got my 5A FSD engineered for the Far Shift Drive with max range tuning and additional mass managing modification. The gulf of space just got a little smaller. But I can go farther. After hearing rumors of Guardian Technology to boost my Jump range, I could not resist.
A inquiry here and there lead me to a heading, a planet at a distant system some 900 LY away. Time to get serious. Hangered my new Phantom Vingolot and brought out the good old grey wanderer Diamondback-EX Mithrandir. The slightly longer jump range and significantly lower insurance cost, in case the worst should happen.
After an epic jump path and decent bit of system/planetary scans along the way I arrived at my destination. Lucky to find some services this side of the bubble, I docked at The Conduit MegaShip to refresh. I was able to stock a point defense turret, which later turned out to be a life saver when the guardians arrived.
The next day I dropped onto the planet and found the ruins of the alien guardian structure. Its ancient crumbling visage hid the very active Guardian sentinels that did not wait long to assault me. The SRV turret and shields were adequate to dispatch them as they arrived. I was Indeed lucky that there were so many functional guardian components at this site left. Once I had scavenged the site I started interacting with some kind of tower, and I provided it power with my weapon fire. This is were things got more complicated, as the towers emitted some kind of energy pulse when fully powered and this called more sentinels, groups... I was ill prepared.
I shot and dodged missiles, and my ship shot down stray missiles aimed at it, and I made little ground. I synthesized repairs, recharges, refuels, and restoked my weapons twice... but their combined powers kept me at bay... I ran and escaped with my life.
Utterly defeated I returned to orbit and my small comfort of the MegaShip nearby. I was able to restock and refuel but I was out of synthesis materials to do this restock in the field. This was a hard choice; Leave with the materials I have gathered, not nothing... but not everything I needed... or try one more time... with less materials for backup? I took the risk and went back to the surface.
The site seemed relatively undisturbed. All of the sentinels were dormant once again. The trap was again set for the next adventurer. I was smarter this time... I knew generally were they were going to be and I made sure to not let them group up. It was slower going... but one by one I took them down. I was able to take down the final Guardian with only 13 shells left in the SRV turret.
The final Guardian Orb was a fantastic sight and I indeed found the data I needed to complete the Drive booster. Elated with my skin-of-my-teeth victory I plotted the direct root home.
A crazy fun whirlwind of an excursion like that needs a cherry on top. Finally, upon return to the bubble I was approached by a representative of the The Stellar Cartographer's Guild. Sounds like an excellent organization right up my ally. I petitioned to join and have been accepted.
More adventure to come...
The black calls me back,
- CMDR ZETON