Pigs will fly!

Well having cashed in 14,000,000CR worth of henched up ASP as a part exchange for a Lakon Type 7 I can confirm that pigs do fly - JUST!.

It is a real pig to manoeuvre and I must say I have little fun flying it. Weirdly I have just jumped a  rank to Lieutenant (Fed) after getting it for doing a quick Intel delivery job.

Again the weird Federal permit mission (Vega this time) popped up.



Still after a few runs at risk of bankruptcy between Ra & Gliese 868 with Gold (I couldn't afford Palladium) I had enough to max out the cargo buy buying more cargo racks. As with my Lakon 6 I have ditched my shields in favour of cargo giving me the max 232 T.


This was especially scary when I didn't have enough for my Insurance excess. Now I'm trading gold still so that I do have enough for my re-buy. Just too risky especially when interdicted by pirate scum with a hold full of 2 Mega-Credits worth of Palladium. I was got by another CMDR in a python but luckily not carrying the gold or Palladium - just some cheapo Mineral extractors.



I teamed up with a couple of German speaking Commanders: - one protecting his brother in a Lakon Type 7 by flying a Cobra as wing man. I shared around 9k with them and when I returned after some R&R found 19K of Trade voucher's awaiting me - Thank you CMDR Just_Me!


If you want to play around with cargo vs shield try www.edshipyard.com . That will give you an idea of what the true cost of a ship is since unlike me you should keep the insurance excess in hand!!!

Max Cargo!

Here are some ships by their Max Cargo capacity. I usually don't ditch the shields in favour of cargo as it is too easy to get totalled in a collision.


 10T Sidewinder
 14T Eagle Mk II
 22T Hauler
 22T Viper Mk III
 26T Adder
 56T Vulture
 60T Cobra Mk III
 70T Fer-De-Lance
128T Asp Explorer
112T Lakon Type 6
164T Federal Dropship
232T Lakon Type 7
248 T Imperial Clipper
292T Python
468T Anaconda
532T Lakon Type 9

External Cam - My first View of my ship from the outside !

I may have to buy my Cobra with the Chrome Paint job just to see it in action - Thank you FD for giving us the Debug Cam (ctl-alt-space)

Wanderlust - Take 3

So I finally amassed around 7 mill CR which was enough to kit out my ASP for get just over 30 LY jump range. I set off from near Amahu and ended up going towards the PIPE Nebula - not that much to look at when I was there as its quite dark.

My main purpose was to discover somewhere new! And I'm please to say I did ( see results at bottom).

I kept the weight down by not having any hull re-inforcements or heavy stuff. Giving me an internals list like this:

• Fuel Scoop Rating [A2] (quite slow to scoop as a small class but was cheap (around 280k) allowing me to but other kit). Note that I probably damaged my ASP during my journey having to spend too much time fuel scooping (70% left).
• Intermediate Discovery Scanner [D1] around 500k
• Detailed Surface Scanner [C1] (so I could be the first to discover places)
• Power Plant Rating [C5] - pretty good giving me around 17MW available
• Usual low spec Life support [E4] - there are no space stations to fly to and the low spec saves weight
• Thrusters [A4] Bought some slightly better thrusters - not sure why
• Power Distributor [A4] I had a good one anyway
• Shield Generator [A3]
• Sensors [E5] Good enough
• Fuel Tank 32 size [C5]
• Kept my Cargo racks just to keep weight down and on the off chance there might be some ancient stuff lying around.

Unfortunately this cleaned me out and meant that I didn't have enough for my Excess on the insurance so I had to be VERY careful.

Arrived back at IMEN a day or so later.

Sold my findings (hopefully if you visit those systems below you should see CMDR Hyford's name - assuming those beaurocrats at Universal Cartographics are doing their job!):

Total   Exploration Sales:	261000
Plus an additional first discovery bonus:
LUPUS DARK REGION B SECTOR GR-W C1-18A	1210
LUPUS DARK REGION B SECTOR PD-T C3-4	1214
LUPUS DARK REGION B SECTOR PD-T C3-4 1	2242
LUPUS DARK REGION B SECTOR PD-T C3-4 2	2218
LUPUS DARK REGION B SECTOR PD-T C3-4 3	2218
LUPUS DARK REGION B SECTOR PD-T C3-4 4	2297
PIPE (BOWL) SECTOR AB-W B2-1	1204
PIPE (BOWL) SECTOR AB-W B2-1 1	385
PIPE (BOWL) SECTOR AB-W B2-1 2	381
PIPE (BOWL) SECTOR AB-W B2-1 3	390
PIPE (BOWL) SECTOR AB-W B2-1 4	367
SCORPIUS DARK REGION RZ-0 B6-6	1207
SCORPIUS DARK REGION SZ-0 B6-1	1205
SCORPIUS DARK REGION SZ-0 B6-1 1	499
SCORPIUS DARK REGION SZ-0 B6-1 2	482
SCORPIUS DARK REGION SZ-0 B6-1 3	513
SCORPIUS DARK REGION SZ-0 B6-1 3	398
COL 359 SECTOR EF-0 C7-8	1209
COL 359 SECTOR EF-0 C7-8	2681
COL 359 SECTOR EF-0 C7-8 2	2609
COL 359 SECTOR EF-0 C7-8 3	2749
COL 359 SECTOR EF-0 C7-8  A 3	356
COL 359 SECTOR EF-0 C7-8  4	425
COL 359 SECTOR EF-0 C7-8  5	468
PIPE (STEM) SECTOR EH-U B3-0 2	448

Trading Routes

I have found quite a nice trade route (4 quick jumps) between Tepper City in Cantjarisni system and Burbank Hub in the Amahu system.

the trades are the popular Palladium and also Performance enancers.

Profits are between CR700 - CR900 one way and CR1698 for the Palladium the other way.

Here is a lovely view of a planet with magma cracks in the crust with Cochrane port in a golden hue. And later on an eclipse of the sun by that same planet.

 

 

Warzone!

Completed a Warzone mission for 7 ships for an Anti-federation independent group but ended up signing on in the Warzone as their opposition (Right Panel last section Select Faction option) .


When I got back to cash in my objective they paid up no problem even after I'd wasted 7 of their ships...bizarre logic there.


I nearly had another disaster  though because I went for one more ship (already achieved the 7) and like an idiot had a canopy breach but managed (just ) to get back to a coriolis station within the 4 minutes called England weirdly).


This is seeming to happen quite a bit recently so I'm toying with the idea of upgrading my life support to give me 15 mins of Oxygen. It is a lot of extra mass to be hauling around just to support my hubris.

Asp or not to Asp

I love(d) my Cobra MKIII. Still I took the leap the other day and traded the tooled up fighting machine for an Asp. Initially I did this because I couldn't find a Lakon type 6 in any of the local stations as previously I was keeping my Cobra around while I used the Lakon. There were two problems with this approach:

• Wasted Credits just sitting around in the form the kitted out Cobra
• If I travelled too far looking for new trades I had to do so by selling the Lakon and going in the Cobra otherwise like my sidewinder Eagle one ship would have been left behind.

The Asp has enough Cargo & fire power to do both roles!



I was loath to say goodbye to my Chrome Plated Cobra however once I got the Asp kitted it out I was really happy as I can carry 120 tonnes and still take on most pirates. The only downsides are:


It doesn't respond quite as quickly because it is fairly heavy now
Its rebut cost and repairs are quite pricey(I've spent 100k plus quite frequently after visits to conflict zones)

It also now sports:
2 gimballed beams.... currently only E rated
2 gimballed E multi-cannons
2 fixed D rated multi-cannons