Teething Troubles! (spoiler/beta pics included)
26 Jan 2018LongDistanceClara
(Back to my pseudo "in-character" shenanigans! I ended up having a bit of a potter around in the beta, so some of that made its way into this log. I haven't gone into massive details about the Chieftain, just very generalized stuff, nothing like specific fitting details or whatever - I just wanted to warn of "mini-spoilers" for the hardcore wait-till-it-goes-live folks, so if you're trying to avoid any pics or whatever of the chieftain, don't look!
)I'm melting!
Figuratively - I mean it's just rather hot in here! I'm writing this on the bridge, since my bunk is pretty much a sauna at the moment; which might sound great for a while but not so much when you're trying to sleep! It's a bit cooler up here but I'm still cooking and while whatever fabric this chair is made of is nice and comfy in a Remlok, it's horribly sticky when you're roasting alive!
Aaand I've gotten way ahead of myself. So last log, we were scooching along the Orion-Cygnus arm on our way up and past Colonia. With our little engineering "hiccup" out of the way, we were back on track and pottering along quite happily when I noticed a friendly face in the neighborhood; a few quick catch-up messages were swapped, some system coordinates and pretty soon I was joined over the orbital rings of a giant by Leomon!
We've never actually met, just exchanged messages while off bouncing around exploring, so it was fun to finally put a face to a name
We had a little fly around the rings briefly and while I love the Kara to bits, she couldn't keep up with his feisty python! Before long we were heading our separate ways; he'd be heading on to Colonia while I would be cutting off in towards the core and scuttling up to the Orio-Perseans again. All the best of luck, Leo!
So long and Fly Safe!
After a quiet night, we were off again. Smooth sailing, but not overly exciting stuff until just after we'd crossed the heavily-beaten track that is the highway between Colonia and the Core, something fun pinged up on the ADS - a couple of ringed bodies in fairly close orbit of one another. I decided to go take a peek (which had nothing to do with the fact it coincided with lunchtime!) and we got a nice little vista to goggle at while eating our sandwiches
I love how stuff that is relatively mundane and common-place can still look beautiful
You don't have to go to the ends of the galaxy or be some kind of legendary explorer - the simplest things can look just glorious! I think that's maybe what keeps some folks exploring long after the novelty wears off - it's a much quieter, happier kind of thing? More about contentment than being the first, the fastest, the most knowledgeable, the "best"? Although of course, each to their own and everyone does things their own way; I just kinda love how the simple things every now and then can turn me into a daft excitable kid againThat having been said, good god - I had no idea what was coming up. So we got up to "the patch" I wanted to explore, fiddled with the filters on the nav computer and started bouncing around like some kind of crazed alcoholic gerbil, lurching from "ooh, shiny!" to "wassatoverthere?". Real professional stuff, you know. After a day or two of this, our course had taken us slightly close to the galactic bar and I was just about to pull a 180' to put us back into the conflux when one last black hole caught my eye on the map. It was going in the wrong direction but was only one hop away so I thought "ah go on, one more and then we'll start heading back to the patch."
Dropped out of Witchspace, expecting to see another generic black hole....and got this instead:
I've been very fortunate to see some pretty cool stuff in my years of rambling around the galaxy but this had to be right up there. I've come across black holes with companion stars before, but generally they were tiny little things, dinky singularities that were just dwarfed by their stellar neighbor and as such, were pretty hard to see and had little local visual effect. This guy though was a whopper and in such tight orbit of one the B's in this binary it was one heck of an oddity.
Scientific curiosity aside, it was just breathtaking! Everyone just sat on the bridge gawping at the scene without saying a word. Honestly, I can't remember how long we all just sat there, but it was just so gorgeous! Eventually we managed to tear ourselves away from it and check out the rest of the system which was fairly nondescript - but given the beating heart of it was just so magical, it didn't matter in the slightest.
I'm normally not that fussed about being the "discoverer"; I'd had the fever when I had just started out exploring, wanting to plaster my name all over the galaxy; but since then, I'd found far more joy in just bumbling around and finding curious little stellar knick-knacks to explore. This one was a bit special to me though; it's funny, someone could drop into this system and go "sure, it's fun, but no real biggie" - and they'd be absolutely right! But to me, the fact that it had been that "last one" before turning around and that we'd just happened to drop in at the exact place and time where the bodies had aligned - this is horribly egotistical but I couldn't help feeling that the galaxy had decided to give our tiny insignificant little ship and crew a present by putting on this show
Sure, sure...
Well WE liked it, so there! It really didn't feel like we were going to be able to beat this one and going out on a high seemed to be the thing to do. So we took one last look, spun the Kara around and fired up the FSD for home - completely forgetting that we were at the exclusion zone of a black hole about one light-second from a close B-binary...Sorry Kara, I'll paint over the burnt bits when we get home >.<
The journey home was just the same old same old - but in a good way that I was becoming so used to in this big ol' Lakon beastie. It was all just very, very easy cruising and sure, it took us twice as many jumps as it would have in a 'conda but as someone once said "if we went any faster, we wouldn't have time to enjoy the journey!"
Within a couple of days, we'd crossed the conflux, skipped over "The Gap" and before long we were dropping out of supercruise to be greeted by hails from Jameson.Before locking up the Kara for the night though, I quickly transferred our data to UniCart; and that little angelic binary is now logged somewhere in that monstrous database with a little "Kara woz 'ere"
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Morning the next day; and I'm checking my backlogged mail when one of them catches my eye - it's from Lakon. Apparently my borderline-sycophantic raving about the T10 has got me a test-seat in their latest offering - the Chieftain. I grabbed a coffee, Hal & Coral (in that order of course, me without coffee first thing is not a pretty sight!) and stampeded down to the docks.
Well - she's a bit of a looker! The engines are mounted on pylons fore and aft and I've got to say it makes her look very swish! We boarded and had a bit of a poke around and the cockpit is fantastic - it's a two-seater, with the co-pilot's seat in-line but raised behind the pilot's, giving a great view ahead. That canopy is a bit of a pain for the pilot though - lot of framing and feels a bit boxy, but maybe I've just got used to that T10 and am being overly picky.
Well, where to? I wanted to give her a little run around, nothing too crazy as I couldn't be bothered tinkering with her for hours on end, getting her "just so" and all engineered up to the nines. So we switched a few bits and bobs out, upgraded a few things and headed on out. I was a bit blasé about firing her up and lifting off, since she had fairly generic controls, but damn near had a heart attack when the ship's onboard computer started talking to me - in a rather suave man's voice! Looks like Verity now has a friend - pleased to meet you, Victor!
As we lined up for the slot and I pushed the throttles, the Chieftain's engines powered up and oh my god they sound beautiful - almost alien! That's sadly matched only by the harsh bizarre sound from the boost - I mean it's not that bad but I'm kinda grateful I don't need to boost that much in my line of work, that crap would get old quickly and I'd have melted earballs within the first ten minutes!
Right - to Veil West! I'd already decided something this good looking deserved a similarly beautiful backdrop to bask in, so I chucked the plot in the nav computer and off we went. It was a pretty quick hop and before long, I was bringing her down towards a moon in one of the central systems in the nebula.
This is a very, very pretty lady to fly
I was having a lot of fun with her too - she's very responsive, especially on the roll and those four engines will push her along at one heck of a rate. I finally had to stop throwing her around as Hal was yelling at me to "calm down you crazy bitc-lunatic" - only then did I see poor Coral about to lose her lunch! Duly chastised, we looked for a landing spot, set down and closed up shop for the night.
So...the Chieftain runs hot. Well, pretty hot - again, I've been spoilt by the Kara. And it's only to be expected I guess, with those four big old engines churning out the heat. That however is not why I'm sat here squirming in my chair! Everything was shut down, we'd all headed to our bunks for the night - when I noticed it getting warmer...and warmer...and-
Brief confab in the corridor, some banging around engineering and we've discovered a teenie design flaw that just happens to turn the ship into a toaster. Nothing super serious but tonight isn't going to be fun! Hal took an srv out onto the surface to hack out a few hundred kilos of ice (thank god we're on an ice moon!), half of which he's currently dissolving with in the tub; Coral's retreated to the cargo hatch loading bay which is the least insulated part of the ship and is just about bearable; and I'm starting to push the bounds of decency with my outfit in an attempt to not burst into flame.
I think I'll go grab some of that ice and try not to drown in my sleep >.<
Aloha!
