Preparing for the Christmas Carriers Convoy
15 Nov 2016Kayahr
17 days left until the Christmas Carriers Convoy departs for Colonia. Even though I was in Colonia before I decided to take part in this event (as a carrier) and go there a second time.Again I will use my trusty Imperial Clipper, the Sally Sparrow, for this long trip. Why? Because I love this ship. Sure, an Anaconda would be more appropriate for this adventure because of its superior jump range but I hate this crate. It's slow, it's ugly and it steers like a brick. The Imperial Clipper on the other hand is extremely fast, maneuvers like a small fighter and is simply a beauty. And did I mention the swimming pool on deck 3? Just kidding. Well, the Clipper is fun to fly and for this I gladly sacrifice jump range. The Sally Sparrow has already seen Sagittarius A* and Jaques Station so I'm sure she will make it again.
But for this trip there will be changes... And a new paint job of course. Heck, it's the Christmas Carriers Convoy!
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The Crew
Flying a distance of 22.000 light years is hard. Especially if you are alone on board. You start talking with the ship computer and compose music with the discovery scanner. This must not happen again. So this time I bring a crew (Just for RP. In game unfortunately the crew is useless without fighter bays).
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Kayle Reynolds - Commander Well, that's just me. Nothing to see here. Move along. |
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Katy Daniels - Copilot Before I hired her she was an underpaid transport pilot for the Federal Intelligence Agency. She can handle the Sally Sparrow very well and she still has some FIA connections which are useful from time to time. |
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Raylene Best - Mechanic Found her in a little backwater system you'll never have heard of. The most horrible pilot I've ever seen but turned out she has impressive mechanical skills. With her the Sally Sparrow is in good hands and the wrecked SRVs I bring back to her are fixed in no time. |
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Harold Richmond - Medic A talented doctor who worked at a filthy little outpost in the Anayol system. Was pretty easy to convince him to work for me. Just had to show him the shiny white sick bay on the Sally Sparrow. |
(Well, for RL I have some Harry Potter audio books to hear)
Outfitting
For my last two long range trips the ship was primarily configured for exploration so I had lot of space for an additional fuel tank, a powerful fuel scoop and an AFM. This time there will be freight on board. Valuable freight. I plan to carry 200 tons of cargo so there will be sacrifices:
- No extra fuel tank. The Clipper's internal fuel tank is pretty small. I need to refuel every four jumps and must be extra careful when planning the route so I don't get stranded in the inter-arm void.
- No AFM. Have to fly carefully. And there are outposts on the way now so I hope I won't miss it.
- Only a 4A Fuel Scoop. Takes longer to refuel but it's still acceptable.
- No weapons. With all the cargo my jump range is already bad enough. So I have to drop unnecessary weight and rely on the escort.
- Weak shielding. I won't go completely unprotected so I installed a small 4A Prismatic Shield Generator with two E-rated shield boosters. In case of an attack I hope this (and the superior speed and maneuverability of the Clipper) gives the escort enough time to take care of the aggressors.
(If Frontier implements special passenger missions for this event then I gladly replace some cargo space with passenger cabins. First class, of course.)
Tuning
I spent a lot of time getting acquainted to lots of good engineers around the verse and doing various favors for them to get some very decent tunings for the Sally Sparrow:
- Dirty Drive Tuning. With a 32.5% optimal mass improvement the ship now boosts up to 584 m/s and steers like an Eagle.
- Increased FSD Range. With a 55.6% bonus the ship now has a maximum jump range of 33 Ly (24 Ly with cargo). That's not much when compared to an Asp or Anaconda but for an Imperial Clipper this is quite good.
- Heavy Duty Armor. 69% better armor without any additional mass is impressive. Also increased the hull resistance by approx. 5%. I hope I don't need this kind of extra protection but I feel a lot safer with it. Especially because this tuning has not a single drawback.
- Reinforced Shields. The installed 4A Prismatic Shield Generator is pretty weak for such a large ship so it needed a little bit of tuning. The 30% optimal multiplier improvement increased the shield strength from 222 Mj to 284 Mj. Not much but better than nothing.
- Heavy Duty Shield Booster. Unfortunately I don't have the materials for a grade 5 update so grade 4 must be enough for now. The two shield boosters are now improved by 610% so the shield strength is now at 445 Mj. I could have more by using engineered A grade boosters but they are way to heavy for my taste.
- Lightweight modules. The Chaff and the Point Defence are stripped down to the bare minimum of hardware so they lost 80% of their weight. They are also very fragile now but their duty is to keep the shield up as long as possible and I really need the improved jump range. The Life Support is also stripped down and lost 54% of its weight and some integrity. I hope that was a good idea...
Stress test
To check if the stripped down Life Support wasn't a big mistake I decided to do a stress test. I crashed the ship right into a class A star and then loaded up the FSD without jumping. I watched the heat rising and watched the modules melting away. As expected the Chaff and the Point Defence were the first modules getting destroyed. But the Life Support was doing a good job. When the temperature raised above 300% I released the hand brake to jump out but that didn't work well. The FSD failed. Not good. At least the temperature dropped now. I quickly disabled as many modules as possible to get the ship cooler and finally it dropped below 80% with 2% hull left. That was a close one...
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So the lightweight Life Support survives longer than the ship itself. That's what I wanted to know so the test was a full success. Well, there is a lot of damage to repair (And Raylene will kill me for what I have done to the ship) but, hey, at least the paintwork is still OK!
Route planning
I'm not going to plan an exact route but it helps to always have quick access to the way points. Bookmarks in the galactic map are very useful for this:
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By numbering the way points in steps of ten I can easily create intermediate way points later without loosing the sort order. The largest distance is between Eagle's Landing to Sacaqawea Space Port (5000 Ly) so I guess I will have four intermediate way points for this part of the journey. The rest may need 1-3 additional way points. It's easier to choose them on demand, so I don't care about them yet. Most likely they will be black holes or neutron stars along the route.
Life in Colonia
The last time I was in Colonia there wasn't much to do except exploring. Only one station, meager outfitting, only small ships to buy. I pretty much had only the equipment I brought with me. This has changed. There are more outposts now so I hope cargo and passenger missions are available. And you can now order a transfer of equipment and ships from the bubble. So I stocked up on high-grade mining equipment, weapons, passenger cabins and more ready to be shipped to Colonia as soon as I arrive.
I'm looking forward to an interesting new life in Colonia.
See you guys and gals in Miami!
Signing off,
CMDR Kayle Reynolds (Kayahr)