I Nearly Lost It All Last Night!
16 Oct 2018Scubadog
I have been in rough spots before but it all very nearly ended last night. I've been in the core systems for the past few weeks mostly on a mission to acquire A-rated modules and engineer them. As it turns out, I picked up a Federation Corvette and have been focused on upgrading and engineering it. Just as I arrived in the core my faction, The Silverbacks, had acquired a home in Arexe. I combined the need to acquire additional funds and materials with the understandable desire to help our faction with missions. To that end, I acquired a Cobra MkIII, upgraded and modestly engineered it for the job.Fast-forward to now, where was running lucrative passenger missions to afford A-rated thrusters. I was half way back to Arexe and dropped into another system with a white dwart star. Now, anyone commander who has experience in super-charging their Frame Shift Drive during fuel-scooping operations knows that doing this with a Neutron star is relatively easy. Doing this with a white dwarf is quite a bit more challenging. The exclusion threshold is typically at a radius that leaves you very little room to scoop.
So, there I was, gingerly teetering on the edge of hell, trying to supercharge my FSD. Suddenly, my ship began to buck even more violently than it had been during scooping. I was being interdicted! Before I even had time to react, half of my critical systems were failing and my HUD had now become nothing but a barrage of alarm messages informing me how quickly my ship was disintegrating. One by one, each system crashed. By the time I dropped into normal space my status panel was full of "0%" modules and this fool was on poised just outside the exclusion zone and me in it. The white dwarf was cooking my ship and I had nothing to maneuver with. I took the biggest chance of my life and rebooted my ship's systems. As I touched the Confirm button, I prayed that my ship wasn't going to immediately explode. Smoke completely filled the cabin and then I saw the faintest hazy glow of HUD projectors starting to come back to life. A quick review of the sensors revealed my assailant was still out there, but had backed off quite a bit--probably afraid to get caught like me. As my ship groaned to life I found I had 1% of my thrusters back and 2% of my FSD. Still being tossed about and boiling, I slammed thrusters to full (which didn't amount to much) and did my best to wrestle the nose away from the star. I screamed at Eden to engage FSD. The engines spun up. My enemy realized I was trying to escape and he began to fire on me. Miraculously, my chaff was still operational, so I shot off a volley. That was enough to break his lock and jump to hyperspace.
Thankfully, the next system had a full station and I was able limp through the mail slot and repair the ship--at great expense. Now, for many of you reading my log, this may not have seemed like a big deal. The problem is that I was breaking a cardinal rule for being a commander: Never fly a ship you can't afford to replace. I only had half the funds to cover a rebuy. So, when I say that I nearly lost it all, I wasn't kidding.