some days it pays to get out of bed, then you wipe it all out in a moment...
28 Dec 2022SlippyCheeze
The day started out OK. I'm out collecting exobiology samples, and mapping data. Mostly rechecking existing work, but science requires reproducibility, and Vista still pay well for a "second hand" sample, so that keeps the fleet flying. It isn't the most exciting work, but I filled in a fair few gaps in the Canonn Science database—lots of rings scanned—and found a few interesting places. I even found a terraformable water-world that nobody had mapped yet, which is a surprise this far inside the bubble. Some days you just get lucky, and run across one of those old systems that nobody came back to after Universal Cartographic upgraded their tech, I suppose.
Anyway, that all goes well, and this being the modern age I'm sitting on (a guesstimated) 320M worth of exobiology samples, as well as whatever the cartographic data is going for these days. Not much, compared to whatever Vista are paying out. Their backers, whichever powers they are, must see a big future in something we are giving them for pennies on the final profits! (...but then, some of those plants are robust enough they stop a scarab better than a rock will, so maybe there is something there.)
aaaaanyway. found a problem with the stock configuration of the DBX. turns out that their one-way throttle (a) has a reverse thrust mode, and (b) puts it on an uncommon control button as a toggle. So, if you happen to hit that on accident while taking off from a planet you suddenly find your thrusters driving you tail-first into the ground at full speed.
Which it turns out not even boosted shields are going to save you from. Thankfully the human safety features of the ship worked out, and aside from spending a long time in that occupied ejection capsule in the hold of who knows which ship, I ended up alive and well on a rescue station. Insurance forms later and I get to bump the registry number on the replacement ship, so ... that is OK, I guess.
It really hurt to lose all that data, though. Especially because I have no idea when I'll fly that route again, so humanity is down at least one terraformable world we have forgotten, and everything else that information could give us. Not to mention I wiped out the entire day of work, which really hurts.
Still, after sitting in a blue funk for a little, and I think everyone understands that, I got back into the cockpit and took back off. Different goal this time, though: I still needed those Datamined Wake Exceptions, and a pile of Tellurium, to get access to the pre-engineered FSD V1 Class 5 from the tech brokerage.
I'd tried a pile of ways to get that data, even sat near a famine distribution point for a while, scanning everything on the way out, but it just wasn't working. I ended up going the ugly route, and collecting those easy to find encryption and firmware bundles, then trading them across for Datamined Wake Exceptions from someone with more patience than I have.
The Tellurium was the same story. Hunted everywhere for a legitimate source; sadly, my current FSD was about three LY short of making it to the richer sources out there, and none of my efforts to find it closer worked. Even hunted down a couple dozen planets with guardian brain trees on them, and got plenty of other high tier raw materials, but no Tellurium.
So, ugly it was: I ended up sitting near The Bug Hunter, grinding out dropped cargo from it until I got just enough Tellurium to make the unlock. ...and I did, thank you. Now I'm sitting on 50+ LY jump capacity in this little DBX, which puts those rich sources nicely in range. Time to go to a more legitimate way to gather those materials, which is what I prefer.
Not the worst end to probably the biggest loss in a single day of my career. heh. career. like I'm going to be promoted from space-murder-hobo any time.