Entry 64 - 08.07.3303
07 Aug 2017MBaldelli
Current System: HIP 26921, C 3I tried Asteroid Mining over the weekend. And this is the stories I have to tell about it...
First off, equipping was easy enough; a majority of the equipment could be obtained from Sol. While there had been a little confusion where the Cargo Rack, Mining Laser and Refinery were, at least it was all located orbiting around Earth. The fun part was how quickly in and out of Supercruise I had to go given the proximities between Gorbachev, Abraham Lincoln and Li Qing Jao Stations are to each other. About the only piece of equipment that I couldn't get without landing on one of the planets in Sol was the Prospector Limpet controls; so off to EZ Aquarii I went to pick that up.
Following the tip of a commander I have been in contact with, headed to the Lovaroju System to check out how to do the mining and to takee advantage of the pristine system.
About halfway there, I had to do a quick re-plotting because I didn't check my route and whether a refuelling station was necessary. This was the first time in almost a year that I had run without a fuel scoop. Couple this with the fact that I've almost never run without a shield system in place and I was more nervous than a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs. There was an Imperial Base along the way and a quick stop at that orbital platform and I was back on course to Lovaroju.
I stopped by Vinge Hub for a refuel, a stock up and a touch up on the coat of paint (as I suffered minor hull damage getting to close to an Orca on the way out of Magnus Gateway, jeez... you don't know how much pilots rely on shields against that sort of dinging), then it was off to one of the RES to get used to the methods of Asteroid Miners.
The mining part is easy enough: point at a rock and shoot. Working the Collection Limpets on the other hand takes a bit of work, and I think I was burning through them faster than I should have. The refinery also took more than a little bit to get used to, but I figured -- when a hopper was full, it would dump the completed material into the cargo hold and sure enough it would be something to hand in when I burned through all of my limpets or got tired of playing pick-up-sticks with the floating materials.
It was going rather well, until this idiot pilot, running from the local authorities decided to cut in front of me and scraped his paint on mine. He was successful in evading the local patrols; he then made it his objective to be compensated for the "damage". Hits me with both missiles and beams, launches hatch-breakers and then proceeds to bring my hull health down to 21%. While he didn't destroy my canopy -- it was sort of unnerving to be looking at cracks all over the field of view as I sped through supercruise from the B Star back to the A Star where Vinge Hub was located.
About halfway back to the Hub, I decided to check the cargo hold to see what was stolen and rolled my eyes so hard I could see my brains. Not only was the entire cargo of common materials taken (Oxygen, Hydrogen Peroxise and I think Beryllium, but in its place were 2 tons of stolen weapons. Thinking about it now, I believe the pirate not only wanted a quick credit, but also wanted to shunt the stolen goods that made him the wanted man.
I jettisoned the cargo as I continued on my way back to Vinge.
I decided after a walk around the station that if I'm going to be doing any resource extracting, I'll do with with a bigger ship, with Prospector Limpets (and controls), and something with a lot more defensive capabilities than the Zheng He. Later in that day, I did a few cargo runs to make up for some lost credits, and then called it a night.
Right now, I'm heading back out to the Deep Black. I'm performing a bit of a shakedown on the modified systems (FSD and Scanners) and to continue with my survey runs toward Vela Dark Sector. My impressions so far is that I'm liking the range on the Detailed Scanners as it allows me to scan and move on quicker.
The FSD on the other hand is going to be taking a lot more to get used to with these modifications. It seems to run hotter than the Leif Eriksson's by default; there also seems to be a quirk to them in that they seems to hold heat longer when doing long-distance jumping through a route. They will cool down though when doing a survey, but until I start a system survey, I suspect it's going to continue accumulating heat from jump-to-jump.
I'm currently at HIP 26921C 3 taking advantage of one of the experiments I wanted to do during the last survey run: surface mining on a planet with a near 1 g. .9 to be exact. Rather nice not to be bouncing all over the place and even better when the materials mined from the various surface rocks aren't flying through the air like a slow-moving ballet.
After a successful surface mining operation, I'm going to call it for the day. I'll enjoy the gravity before I pass out...