Captains Blog

768-05-03 21:39

Dear Diary,

Busy, busy, busy.  I have more local traders, more sectors explored, more support ships, just more of everything.  Still, I do take the time to view sights like this… I think this was in Heaven’s Assertion…

After I delivered the 400 computer components Mahi Ma needed for the hub, he asked for 500 microchips.  That’s over 6 million credits worth of microchips, and if that many are even available, I’d have to collect them from dozens of factories and stations.

Plan B then.  Step 1: Buy an Orca.

You see that little speck to the right of the Orca?  That’s my Pleco pulled up alongside.  The Orca is huge, and surprisingly fast for its size (though it takes a while to get turned around), has a docking bay that holds ten fighters, and can carry space stations construction packages in its massive cargo bay.  It hasn’t got the power generator for sustained combat, but has enough turrets to defend itself, and is heavily shielded.

With the Orca, I can get stations set up much more easily.  I’ve set up several on behalf of the Split and Boron governments already… more customers for later, and money I can use now.  First, I set up an ore mine and a silicon mine on the high yield asteroids in the sector south of Meneleus’s Oasis.  I had to search nearly all of Paranid space to find one, but I managed to get my hands on one of their TL tractor beams, and used it to move my mines closer together and away from the main asteroid cluster for safer navigation.

Once those were in place, I ferried in some additional stations, and linked them together with a complex hub.  It is currently underproducing food, but otherwise is fully self-sufficient.  Once I get another BoFu lab and BioGas plant linked in, the complex will produce a surplus of crystals, energy cells, silicon, BoFu and ore; all the basic essentials for manufacturing Boron components like microchips.

With defending all those bases from pirates for Atreus and building stations for the Boron Kingdom in the sectors around Queen’s Harbor, the Boron Kingdom has granted me the title of Knight of the Kingdom, the highest honor they bestow.   They’ll even sell me their (very expensive) destroyers and carriers now, and factories for their most advanced (and most expensive) weaponry.

I’ve purchased a few additional Teladi Kestrels and have them moving through a number of systems I’ve already visited, scanning asteroids so I can find some good places for additional mines when I need them.  Most of the extra fighters Atreus and Strong Arms have given me are now safely on the Orca, as well as a couple fighters I’ve taken from pirates.

768-05-03 10:50

Dear Diary,

I can’t believe I’m docked on this thing!  It’s incredible… but I’m getting ahead of myself.  Since my last entry, I’ve filled out my trading fleet according to plan, and have been steadily improving my relations with Strong Arms and Atreus.  I’ve also got law enforcement licenses with every race except Teladi, so my race relations are getting quite good.  My station is making money,  and I’m nearly ready to purchase an Orca.  I might have one now, in fact, if not for this little interruption…

Between missions for Atreus and Strong Arms, I found a Boron space station that was being overwhelmed with refugees and desperately needed medical supplies.  They were so desperate, in fact, that they were willing to pay me three million credits just to bring some in from the Meneleus’s Harbor in under 10 minutes.  They were even already paid for; that’s simply a delivery fee.  I was able to get them loaded on my Caiman and back to the station with two minutes to spare, which not only got me a huge amount of money, but apparently greatly impressed the Boron government as well; I am now a Boron King’s Knight.

While I’m getting my ships organized for another Atreus mission, this Boron jumps in from the Meneleus gate and hails me, asking for my help.  Apparently, he’s sought me out specifically, based on my reputation, to help locate some friends of his that have gone missing.  In Xenon space.  Apparently, ‘crazy’ or ‘stupid’ must be part of my reputation as well.  He won’t tell me who they are, since treasure hunting in Xenon territory is apparently illegal for Boron citizens (I guess it’s similar to how attempting suicide is illegal on Terra?), but does tell me where they were headed… Xenon Core 23.  Ok, so not just any system, but the most heavily defended Xenon system we know of.

I agreed, obviously.  Nothing like a reputation for complete insanity to discourage someone from trying to cheat you.

I jumped my Pleco up to Grand Exchange and took my Kestrel into Xenon Sector 598.

Dodged and outran some Xenon patrols at the gates of Sector 598 and Sector 627, then jumped into Xenon Core 23…

Except this was not Xenon Core 23.  It was some kind of huge alien artifact, very close to an uncharted star.  It didn’t look like Terraformer/Xenon make to me, and had some strange jumpgates, but nothing affected my ship as far as I could tell, and the few Xenon here ignored me.

I found the remains of what was probably a Commonwealth ship and downloaded its logs…

Apparently, my two mystery friends are Bala Gi and Julian Brennan.  They had gone to survey Xenon Core 23, but on their way back found the jump gates redirected to this hub.  Bala Gi had hacked the docking mechanism to get them on board, and sent Julian off to collect Mahi Ma in order to help him investigate the thing.

I drop off a satellite near the bottom of the sphere and jump straight back to Queen’s Harbor.  After telling Mahi Ma what I found, he ditches his ship and asks me to take him there.  I claim his Enhanced Dolphin (wouldn’t want pirates to get it or anything), pick up some energy cells from my Caiman, hop up to Grand Exchange, resupply at my Pleco, and jump to the gate leading to the hub.  The hub itself is out of the jump range for my Kestrel… it can’t hold enough fuel to get me directly there, and I don’t want to bring my Pleco in while there are Xenon ships present.  A small Xenon fleet entered Grand Exchange as well, but my Pleco is probably safe enough at the trade station…

Anyway, Mahi Ma managed to repeat Bala Gi’s trick and get us on board, but did not find Bala Gi or Julian Brennan.  He needs some supplies to build an interface to control the ancient systems and further explore the hub.  It might take me a while to get everything together, but he should be pretty safe in there in the meantime.

Now, back to building my em- err, trade network.  Yes.  I’m going to opt for an Orca instead of a Mammoth, which has a larger cargo bay, because it has a larger hangar and can hold up to ten fighters.  It’s quite a bit faster too, and it still has one of the largest bays available, able to hold a few stations.

Dear Diary,

A PAC hit on my Kestrel knocked my chronometer out of alignment, and I haven’t had a chance to get it reset, so I’m not sure what time it is.  I’ve been working for Strong Arms, Atreus, and Terracorp for the past several hours.  They’ve given me some base defense missions, assassination missions (assassinating pirates, fortunately), convoy escort missions, a little espionage work, and some missile delivery missions.  I had to turn down a couple of the delivery missions… my superiors didn’t like it, but no one will sell me typhoon missiles, so how am I supposed to deliver 18 of them?  And as far as I can tell, no one even makes disruptor missiles, although I have seen a few of them left behind by pirates on occasion after a battle.  Otherwise, they’re not too bad.  Having three heavy fighters to fetch things helps a lot.

The combat missions have been fairly easy so far.  All my close calls have been from a local military destroyer trying to ‘help’ me with the pirates.  Following a pirate in a turn and seeing a wall of blue energy fired from a couple dozen anti-capship cannons coming at you is a little distracting.

Anyway, the pay is pretty garbage, but I’m hoping it will improve after I build up my reputation with them a little.  I have a Mistral Freighter and three Mistral Super Freighters with pilots training up in various parts of the galaxy now.

768-05-02 12:56

Dear Diary,

I made it back to Argon space as planned and stocked up on salvage insurance (now that I can afford it).  I’ve been trying to keep my Dolphin trading in the northwestern Boron territories, but there are so many freighters moving through there, it’s hard to make any money.  My Caiman is still making plenty though, trading in the systems near PTNI Headquarters, and my Mercury has brought in another valuable load of nvidium.

I docked with my Pleco and jumped it out a short distance to the east, near some pirate systems I had not yet charted.  After exploring several of those, I ran into an isolated section of Paranid space, cut off from everything else by pirate systems.  The pirate presence was fairly light, though, and there was actually quite a bit of traffic between there and the systems beyond the pirate sectors.  I also found some Teladi systems nearby, linked to some Boron systems that connected with the Paranid systems south of the Argon home systems… apparently, I had missed a jump gate in there.  Once I had all of those scouted, I explored up through some new Argon systems, where I found something surprising…

The once-secret OTAS headquarters in Legend’s Home!  OTAS is an Argon corporation, but they’ve developed their own line of ships, and they are very impressive.  There’s an ordinary Argon shipyard in this system, as well as an OTAS shipyard and the OTAS HQ, which even sells jumpdrives.  The only thing missing is an equipment dock.

Well, I was planning to buy a new freighter, and the freighters here are very nice.  The Mistral is fast with a large cargo hold, and the Mistral Super Freighter has good speed for a super freighter and a massive hold.  I’ll probably be buying some of both of these, eventually, but for now I just picked up a super freighter.  I’ll be hiring a pilot for it once I have it better equipped, so I’ll see how that works out.

My reputation with the Argon Federation is good enough that they allowed me to purchase a police licence.  Now I can (legally) scan traffic in Argon space, in order to find smugglers carrying illegal goods.  I’ll also get paid a small bounty for destroying hostile vessels, like Pirates or Terraformers, in Argon sectors.

I’m planning to head down to southeastern Split and Boron space shortly in order to start working for the Atreus and Strong Arms corporations.  There will almost certainly be some combat involved, and I might have to do some extra work to keep the Split and Borons happy with me, but I’ve picked up everything I need to fully arm one heavy fighter, and I doubt I’ll need more than that.  I’m hoping that I’ll make good money off of the corps, and maybe get access to some ships that are not publicly available.  If they don’t have enough work for me, I can come back up here and work for NMMC, Jonferco, Plutarch, OTAS, or Terracorp.  I definitely want to work for OTAS at some point.

I’ll probably keep buying freighters, super freighters, and hiring pilots for them, whenever my cash exceeds 10 million by a significant amount, until I have five or ten more.  At that point, I think it will be time to save up for a TL for station building, which run about 30 million.

768-05-02 8:46

Dear Diary,

Not much to note, really.  I passed very near Sol, scattering satellites around.  I didn’t head back into the Solar System though… I think I’ll stay clear of home for a while.  I’ve logged nearly as many hours in my Kestrel as in my Sabre, now.  My Dolphin is still trading around Argon and Boron systems, which isn’t making me a ton of money, but is helping my reputation with them.  I’ve had my Caiman trading in the systems near PNTI Headquarters for a little while now, mostly Nostrop Oil, and that is pulling some excellent profits.  I’m pretty close to the northwestern systems again, just a little further.  Once there, I’ll probably take a quick jaunt through the pirate systems nearby just to get them mapped, drop satellites in Argon Prime and Home of Light, pick up some additional salvage insurance, buy some new freighters, and start doing missions.

Oh, there was one thing I saw worth mentioning, in Nathan’s Voyage, I think.

Yep, a Kha’ak Carrier.  Even 30km out felt a little closer than I wanted to be to something like that.  At least the Terraformers have trouble hitting a little, high speed target like my Kestrel… any Kha’ak ship would annihilate me as soon as I got in weapon range.

768-05-02 06:14

Dear Diary,

I’ve passed through a region of Teladi space and I’m back up into Argon territory again, getting fairly close to where I first entered Commonwealth space.  I’ve been using my Caiman to trade around in the Teladi territory I passed through; there are a lot of good deals there, but also a lot of pirates flying around.  A couple of stations in Company Strength were actually on the verge of being overwhelmed by pirate attacks… I mostly kept my Caiman out of there.  I found a good number of advanced satellites in various places along the way up here, and a good supply of energy bolt chaingun ammunition in Merchant Haven, so I’m getting closer to having my Skate fully ready for combat.  I stumbled across JonferCo HQ in Belt of Aguilar, which not only had a bunch of advanced satellites, but some software I wanted on all of my new fighters as well.

My credit balance made a sudden upswing when my Mercury finished loading nvidium.  A load of that stuff (actually, only about 2/3 of the cargo bay, due to miscellaneous other things taking space) sold for nearly 4 million credits.  I did have to trick the Paranids into buying all of it at once, loading it onto a cheap freighter and selling that at a shipyard, but they were paying well below market average, so I’m sure it’ll all work out.  I sent the Mercury back to mine more; I’ll have to keep checking on it to ensure the supply doesn’t dry up.

My Dolphin is also still trading, making money, and slowly increasing my Argon reputation.  The Boron seem to be appreciating the amount of money I’ve spent lately at their shipyard and equipment docks as well.

I know there is more to explore out there, but I’m going to keep around this loop until I’ve filled in the Argon, Split, and Teladi systems I’ve visited before with satellites.  After that, I’m thinking I should buy a super freighter and maybe start working for one of the major corporations down here… using any extra money to buy additional super freighters and hire pilots for the extra ones.  I’ll probably try to focus some of my trading on Paranid and Teladi systems, as those are the two races with the least trust in me right now.