Plucking Palladium for Profit
03 Mar 2016TheDarkLord
Neville Horizons, Kaushpoos. Imperial Clipper.November 3301.
I arrived in the Kaushpoos system after a journey that I would rather forget. My mind, it seems, must not be given free rein to wander. There were two community goals active: one to mine palladium, and one to protect miners by killing pirates.
A nearby pristine metallic ring released a lot of palladium to myself and others. Although my Clipper was still not well-outfitted, the Class 2 Mining Lasers ripped fragments from the rocks with a violent fervour. Ship manoeuvrability with the D-grade thrusters wasn’t great, but was still better than the old Type-6 Transporter I’d left in Gaohikel. The Imperial Clipper, it seemed, was an ideal tool for mining. If only I could get some more cash to build its internals up a little.
Nevertheless, the goal was going superbly. Cargo hold at maximum capacity once again, I headed back to Neville Horizons. As I was heading away from the star in supercruise, a Cobra-mounted pirate decided to interdict me. My Clipper had two lasers for mining and two for aggressive defence, so interdicting me turned out to be a poor life choice for that pirate.
I deployed the Large beams and targeted him. My thrusters made heavy work of turning, especially given the 160 tonnes in the cargo hold. Once I got those beams on target though, the Cobra suddenly found himself shieldless. He dropped chaff, which upset my gimbal targeting, but the canister soon ran out, and my beams were aiming again, tearing a hole in his alloy skin. The Cobra, like the one that had for so long been my valiant steed, perished.
I pocketed the 30k Cr bounty, which would also net me an additional 600k Cr from the community goal. The apparent ease with which my under-specced Clipper despatched the Cobra imbued me with a feeling that I would – assuming I earned enough to outfit it – become all but invincible in the Clipper.
Over the week for which the goal was active, I was able to collect an abundance of all of the valuable metal types and defend myself on my many runs to the station. I earned almost 75 million credits. It was time to return home.