Prepping For C3E
16 Oct 2016IsraelZulu
It's been a busy week, and there's still much to do before I can feel confident I'm prepared for the expedition and head back towards Colonia. Still, it feels like I'm well overdue to put a proper update in this logbook.My first run between the bubble and Colonia pulled in about twelve million credits' worth of exploration data. That was pretty nice, and helped inspire a new career path for me.
The trip back, though... whoah. It's amazing how much difference the right route and a little extra effort can bring.
To make sure I'd have some spending money, I'd brought back some specialized stills from Jaques to sell. These didn't even net me a half-mil in profit. Next time, I'm not going to bother - it's not worth the drop in jump range.
On the way in, I'd made sure to stick to the neutron fields as much as I could. Took a bit of a detour to scan a few dozen black holes I knew were out there but hadn't had the chance to hit on the way out. I scanned every high-value object of interest I came across (non-sequence stars, white dwarfs, Earth-like planets, water worlds) and then some, until I reached the Sagittarius Gap - a part of the trip from Colonia to the bubble, where the star field thins out to the point even main-sequence stars can be hard to find. After that, I just plotted the fastest route I could - for about the last kylie or two - and just scanned whatever stuff I found along the way.
When I checked in with Universal Cartographics for a quote at my first dock, I was blown away. My ship's computer had accumulated over 44 million CR of exploration data on this run. Add on the 3 million I'd started with, and my total was nearly four times the amount I'd gotten on that first trip!
Jaques can keep his stills. Now I know what's really gonna bring in the money when I have to get back here.
Not only were the stills not worth the drop in jump range, they really weren't worth the load of paranoia and trouble they'd caused me. Coming in with no shields, a half-busted hull, and valuable goods on board had made me extremely nervous. Instead of heading straight for the core of the bubble, where I had real business to attend to, I stopped at the nearest dock I could find on the way in so that I could off-load those stills and get repaired before some pirate took interest in me.
Don't get me wrong, there was a pretty nice view at Silves Hangar, in Nauracota, that night. But for me, it ultimately felt like an unnecessary detour.
It wasn't entirely fruitless, though. One of the things I'd planned to do in the bubble was to visit Felicity Farseer to see about getting my Asp's Frame Shift Drive upgraded. A memo I'd received from her earlier said I'd need some "meta-alloys" though, and I had no idea what those were or where to get them.
Fortunately, one of the local barflys at Silves knew exactly where to point me. Apparently the one place you can actually buy meta-alloys, without having to hunt a natural source down yourself, is Darnielle's Progress in Maia.
Maia also happens to be in the Pleiades Nebula. And wow, what a view.
Having gathered all I needed to win favor with Ms. Farseer, I set out for Deciat - where Farseer, Inc. was based.
She's picked quite a nice spot for herself. As places in the bubble go, hers has a lovely view of the galaxy at night.
Felicity was indeed quite impressed with the haul of exploration data I'd brought in. In fact, before I'd turned over even 10 million credits' worth she was so overwhelmed that she had to tell me to stop! I guess that's what happens at these small shops sometimes.
With this, I was able to immediately gain access to her top-tier "Grade 5" FSD upgrade options. Unfortunately, I also found out that these things are "bring your own parts" propositions - and I was a bit short on that point.
I did have some materials for a "Grade 1" upgrade though, so I decided to take this as an opportunity to get familiar with the process. A little while later, Felicity called me to report that my ship - loaded as it now was with shields and other fittings I'd picked up at another dock - now had a jump range of 36 light-years! If that was her bottom-of-the-line offering, I couldn't wait to see what she had on the top shelf.
The main thing I was missing for a Grade 5 upgrade, was some scan data from FSD high-wake discharges. Apparently, this gets used as a seed for some special random number generator that's a part of Farseer's secret recipe for these things. Or so I'm told.
My Asp didn't have the equipment to do the scans I needed though. Out in the deep void, you generally don't have a need to be checking out other peoples' FSD wakes - most of the time, you're not seeing any to begin with.
Fortunately, I did have one ship that was so equipped. I headed over to Nanomam and dusted off my old Cobra Mk III that was sitting in Gresley Dock. And I didn't have to go far to get the scans I needed either. Gresley is a pretty busy place. By the time I'd finish scanning one wake, two more ships would have jumped out and left me more to do.
Packing up the Cobra, I took my Asp back to Farseer for another visit. This time, I asked for her best. And boy, did she give it. The ship that could barely pull 33 light-years per jump before its first visit now had a fully-fueled-and-laden range of 45 Ly!
This should make the trip to Altum Sagittarii easy-breezy. And Prime should be well within reach now.
Unfortunately, nobody had been able to tell me exactly how much jump range I'd need to make it to the furthest point on the expedition - Quemeou YE-A E0, AKA "Altum Sagittarii Prime". It was known to be less than a thousand light-years from its cousin, Nyuena JS-B D342 ( AKA "Altum Sagittari" ). However, while the requirements to reach Altum Sagittari (33 Ly jump range) were clearly stated in the expedition notes, the recommendation for the trip to Prime was simply an ambiguous "bring FSD boost materials".
Without knowing exactly what the route from Altum Sagittarii to Prime would look like, I had no way of knowing how much of those materials I'd need to collect - or even if an FSD boost would be enough to get my ship up there in the first place.
After posting some inquiries and asking about on the nets, I was about to give up on having any certainty about this particular part of the mission. I did try to manually calculate the route myself using what galaxy mapping data I could find, and thought I had some useful points gathered, but I was having a hard time dealing with the star density for the parts of the route that were closer to the core.
Finally, I had a chance encounter with CMDR Alot. He had some custom-designed advanced plotting tools at his disposal. With those, he was able to determine the route that I'd need.
The really good news: The trip from Altum Sagittarii to Prime only had one jump that would be out of range for my Asp, without an FSD boost. And it wouldn't really take too much of a boost to get me there either.
The bad news: The far end of the route would require, for the round trip, 6 jumps through systems that wouldn't have a star I could refuel at. After its refit, my Asp Explorer only had a 32-ton fuel tank. That would be cutting it really close.
I'll either have to drop my shields and pick up a spare tank, and be really careful with my landings, or stock up on extra FSD boosts so I can bypass a jump or two.
I've since spent the better part of the past week hunting for FSD boost materials. Deciat seems to be a good enough system to do this in. I'm not sure if I'll be opting for the spare tank or FSD boosts yet. That largely depends on how much of the materials I can scrape together before I have to leave the bubble.
And that time's quickly running out...