New Years Colonia Trek
02 Jan 2022Streya Jormagdnir
As the log title may suggest, I impulsively took a trip to Colonia and am welcoming in 3308 in the Colonia region! I began my second trip to the far-flung frontier on Christmas Eve (December 24th) and closely followed the megaships along the Colonia Bridge. I will log my thoughts on the highway itself and do some speculation on the future of the highway and Colonia itself, coming from both an explorer and mercenary background.I began the trek in Alcor and set destination to CB-1, going in my beloved Cobra Mk III, as it has a confident five-jump fuel tank and even when fit for shield reinforcements jumps 34.5 LY. My choice to be ready for a hybrid of long distance exploration and combat panned out to be a wise decision. Within the first few megaship rest stop systems, I noticed there were pirates at the local nav beacons featured in each rest stop system. I expected some pirates to be present on the highway, given the bulk of traffic and goods shipped, but so early on? I pressed onward and ran into CB-6, which intersects Hillary Depot of the original Colonia Connection Highway. I docked at Hillary Depot, being more familiar with it, but finally got sleepy and spent the night in my first of many Brewer Logistics megaships along my journey.
On my second day of journeying, I noticed more and more brown dwarf or T Tauri type celestial bodies, which slowed my journey as I had to pull over to main sequence stars to refuel. Eventually I became frustrated at the default Fastest route settings and filtered for KGBFOAM stars. This made the journey a lot smoother, making the long distance flying more stress-free. I checked each system as I flew along the highway for new discoveries at first, though everything seemed scanned for the first 20 or so stops. CB-16 is in the beautiful Omega Nebula, but unfortunately the system was rife with pirates and the nav beacon was compromised (Yarr!). I fought some of these pirates, taking out enough to finally tip over and rank up to Master in Combat.
CB-20 is in the Eagle Nebula, which was already settled along the original Connection Highway project. I called it a night at CB-21, Ragnar's Rest, memorable only because I was particularly hungry and the Any Na coffee with tofu katsu really hit the spot! That bartender was a true professional!
I ran into my first truly unmapped system between Ragnar's Rest and CB-22, though it contained nothing special save for a gas giant with water-based simple radioplankton. CB-23 is in the Rohini system, which was originally discovered by CMDR Edgar Starwalker during the Chapterhouse of Inquisition's Long-Range Aid Convoy mission to Jaques Station. A lot of the Colonia Bridge systems intersect with the previously-established highway systems, linking economies and shipping lanes together.
After Rohini I continued to find more unexplored systems. I reckoned most people on the highway were just wanting to get to Colonia, but being a seasoned explorer I wanted to be the torch in the darkness and be sure the way forward on the highway would be illuminated for future travelers. I discovered many terraformable worlds and even three Earth-like worlds, taking my career total up to seven.
As I got further and further into my journey and ran into more and more unmapped system, I became bogged down and tired in my next few days of flight. It was a welcome relief when I made it to CB-33's system and landed at Sacaqawea Space Port, my second time visiting the original highway surface port.
Eventually around CB-47, on December 28th, I decided to only scan those systems with Water, Earth-like, or Ammonia worlds and leave the rest for future explorers. I wanted to make my self-imposed goal of making it to Colonia between Christmas and New Year's, and time was ticking! Up to this point I had also been docking with every megaship but as I had docked with every single one and they were all fairly uniform (save for differing guns in their Pioneer stores and one being in Lockdown and having services suspended), I began plotting course directly for Colonia after CB-54. At 9:43 PM local time on December 31st, I arrived at Colonia Hub just in time to secure a source of alcohol to celebrate the turning of the New Year!
Overall the new Colonia Bridge makes the flight to Colonia much more digestible for smaller ships or people with less endurance in the cockpit. If you're jumping in the 34 LY or so range like my Cobra was, a rest stop and safety is available every 14-15 jumps or so. This means you can pull over when your eyelids grow heavy rather than risk an accident like you would in the black. On my first trip out to Colonia I'd often find a landable planet to set down on for the night to enjoy packet food, but on the highway you can be guaranteed at least fast food or finer dining and a hab ring hotel. I do wonder what sort of "micro-communities" Brewer thinks they're creating on the highway however, as many of the criminals I saw were Brewer pilots themselves (though there were plenty of ordinary jet-gangs and typical pirates, I didn't expect as many criminals within Brewer itself. Improve your vetting process!). While my Cobra was safe as a combat-explorer without a cargo hold, I wonder how the trip would have gone with a fully laden trade ship full of valuable goods.
As for the Colonia Region itself, it doesn't have the large-scale wars like the Bubble does, so finding smaller-scale territorial disputes is more important for the dedicated mercenary. But while there isn't much outright war out in Colonia, there's plenty of work for bounty hunters and enforcing frontier justice. If I had to guess, the future of the region will be both in developing the infrastructure and in keeping it secure enough to attract long-term settlement. The highway invites not only trade, but also crime, and with it drifters to set things right like myself. Happy New Year from Colonia!
