Never So Glad to Live in Colonia
01 Feb 2019Scubadog
The wild west ain't so wild. I've been following all the political buffoonery going on back in the Core Systems--the fraud, the espionage, the executions--as well as the news of the growing Thargoid incursion, and I couldn't be happier to have migrated to Colonia. While I surely do enjoy winging up with my faction mates when I have business in the Core, I can't wait to get back to my space. Seriously, everything is Independent here. No Empire, no Alliance, no Federation. Oh, sure, you'll see commanders who have pledged their lives and fortunes to one or the other, but it seems more like they hooked up for the benefits but come out here to Colonia to escape the drama. I can count on one finger the number of times I've sat at a bar with one of 'em and they actually pontificated the virtues of the Empire or the depravity of the Federation.
I saw that the Distant Worlds caravan has begun gathering at Waypoint 3. And they seem to be making better headway than I think they anticipated. So, while I do a few more local missions to help folks out here, I've also started prepping The Ceti Azeria for the trip to Sag-A to meet up with some of the DW2 commanders from The Silverbacks. I'm much closer to Sag-A, so if I head out soon I'll have plenty of time to explore systems along the way. Even so, I'll probably arrive ahead of the group. With 10,000 ships in the fleet, across a healthy cross-section of sub-mission and disciplines, nobody's likely to need any help from me, but I'm usually outfitted to kick some fuel or do some patchin' up for the odd commander with the misfortune to run afoul out in the black.
You know, when I'm making the 22k lightyear trip to the Core and back, I want nothing more than to do it as fast as possible, with the fewest jump necessary. Totally different story when I'm out on long-distance exploration. I don't care how long or short the jump. I just want to find great things. And make a decent bit of coin in the process, naturally. So, I do have a pretty decent jump range now on Azeria, but I won't need it unless I get into a hurry.
Speaking of which, I've gotta finish soldering an updated frequency modulation attenuator chip on Azeria's FSD control backplane board. I have the entire sub-component spread out on the deck, so that's a fine mess. When you spend enough time in a ship, your whole body becomes sensitive to even tiny changes in a hum here or rattle there. The art to the science is being able to ferret out what caused that subtle change. Figuring this one out was easy...but I've been through five different attenuators to bring the modulation back to a familiar hum. You'd think that this would show up on a scope of some type, right? Well, the scopes just tell you if something's out of acceptable range, not how it will feel.