Guardian Pieces and Parts
11 Oct 2018Scubadog
I'm tired. I sit here, 0900 UTC (0300 ship's time...my time), exhausted. The Guardian sites are all a fair number of jumps away from civilized space (over 30, if you're in a moderately-engineered Cobra), so there's that. It's been challenge enough popping between different systems to find all the right materials, scans for the right blueprints, all to be able to upgrade certain modules. Driving/bouncing over miles of Guardian ruins and structures, scanning obelisk after obelisk, downloading data segments...and then, battling those Sentinels.
I think those machines are getting smarter. I found myself smack in the middle of six of these buggers, feeling like an octopus, wrestling with managing power between shields, weapons and engines, trying to keep the SRV upright. I kept having to jump between the turret and the seat to squash these things. Then I noticed something. My ship's AI, Eden, was screaming at me that the ship was taking damage! That's when I realized not all the missiles the Sentinels were firing off were directed at me. So, in the midst of the chaos, I barked out "Dismiss the ship!" and Eden escaped to the relative safety of orbit, leaving me all alone on the surface. Thank God I had plenty of materials to refuel, rearm and repair the SRV...she was taking a pounding. I completely lost count of how many Sentinels I took down over the course of the past several days. My ship is completely full of Guardian Power Cells and other materials.
But, in the end, I finally got my weapon and module blueprints and started my trek back to Arexe. Two-thirds of the way there I got interdicted right in the middle of my FSD spinning up for the next jump and was immediately attacked. That's when I remembered I still had some Guardian artifacts in my hold, and that this fool had probably scanned my ship. This Neanderthal was in a similarly configured Cobra, so now it was a slugfest. We circled each other, trading blows for nearly ten minutes. Because he had the jump on me, he was able to take down my shields and hammer my hull down to 69% before I was able to lay a glove on him. Once I got my systems reconfigured for battle and re-activated all my weapons, it got serious. At first I didn't seem to be making headway, because he was boosting his shields as quickly as I was boiling them away with engineered beam weapons. I guess I made him exhaust his SCBs, because his shields finally stayed down and my incendiary multi-cannons finally pounded his hull into swiss cheese. A quick scooping up of the spoils of war, and I was on my way.
I stopped at an outpost a couple of systems later so I could repair and rearm my ship. I wasn't taking chances on another battle this close to Arexe and only have half a ship to fight with. Thankfully, I cruised into Janes Horizons, sold off my cargo, and set to work on my Corvette. Now I have a Lance hybrid fighter and Guardian shield reinforcement to go along with my Guardian FSD booster. I still have enough blueprints and materials to unlock a couple more items, but I'll wait for that. Right now, I need to just REST. Then I have to get serious about earning enough credits to get higher rated on a couple of modules before I go engineer them.