(#meanwhileincolonia Part 3)(at this point I gave up streaming at all)

Ships log. AspX, "Dirty Deeds" So our previous adventure starting from Arverda ended after locating escape pods way in the black on the way to wredguia AB-T C18-0. After that I passed through Bleia EOHN TV-C A12-O then swung around through M25 Sector KL-W A18-2 (Or the "Bob" system as I call it) to hunt for materials. There I found some Alliance Intelligence crashed on a moon. Sigh. Well it might make for some interesting reading. I traveled back to the bubble and hit Hauck Platform for supplies, "borrowed" a decoder tool then went out again. As it turned out it wasn't interesting at all.

Considering I technically work for Archon Delaine (even if my ship is registered under New Horizons in Arverda as the NHPX squadron) I mostly run the "Dirty Deeds" AspX for Kumo activities now- so to avoid the Archon thinking I had gone soft, I made sure to /eventually/ pass by an alliance station to drop the survivors and the Alliance intelligence off after making them pay a small fortune for both. (Pretty useless intelligence really; something about federal signals in the middle of nowhere.. stupid alliance - sticking their nose in some random miners business no doubt. Not that they know I decoded it... or they might not have paid as much!)

I made a note to plot the signal location on my nav system and swing by if I head that way.

Still not sure the money was worth it.. the Alliance survivors in the escape pod saved me the need to do the dishes in mess. Should have kept them as slaves! But my head pilot Madelynn Haas, who I recruited from the Alliance had been giving me dirty looks for days. Damn it woman, i've paid you over 46 million credits - let me have a damn dish washer. sigh Really tho they were dead weight. It was just lowering our jump range; let her do the dishes HA

Right so out I go again.. there's treasure in them there stars. Ye-Argh!

So getting my pirate back on, I followed some crazy old koots napkin scrawlings to Wredguia TB-K B39-0 and explored around DT-H B40-0 and VA-F B41-0 until i picked up some random chatter about something located on Bakulcan 1A at lat -76.04 Lon -153.13. Why someone would go this far out for a little chat I don't know.

It would have to be entirely the opposite side of the galaxy from where I currently was, and when I checked in with Kumo, Delaine himself insisted I go check it out. Once again sighing as I plotted a course back to the bubble. You know once upon a time space pirates actually used to do pirating. This feels more like the coffee boy for Delaine but whatev's fetching "coffee" has earnt me several hundred million credits and my own small fleet of ships. I can get coffee. Better than having the Archon take a hit out on me.

As it turned out it was nothing. Just some old crashed ship with a few bits of junk. Not that Delaine believed me. To "prove my loyalty" he insisted I travel to Colonia. Apparently, they don't have anyone from Kumo over there to pay wages and bribes, and his contacts out there are rioting and refusing to shake down miners. Never get between the Archon and money. He wants his cut of Colonia action.

Oh great, so now I am expected to run some damn payroll clerk into the ass end of nowhere? Thanks a lot Delaine. Maybe I'll stay there just to piss you off! Which of course I didn't say to his face... a pirate has to have some secrets right.. yeah maybe I just don't want him shooting at me.

So now I have to fly with more dead weight. My poor jump range. To get to Colonia in my own lifetime I have to run a stripped down ship with no fighter bays, and shields slightly better than a wet newspaper. facepalm well at least it will be interesting. In a you could explode in flaming death at any moment sort of way.

Lindsay Hinton, the Kumo "accountant" in my crew now passing himself off as a rookie pilot - who going by his 2% pilots rating is a gross exaggeration tells me there is a station over in the Omega Nebula with a bunch of lonely wenches looking for male company. He found out about the place during that time he "once did convoy protection on a long range exploration mission." Finally! now there's the sort of pirate bootaay I can get behind.. er.. figuratively. cough I think i've been cooped up in this ship too long.

So out we all set, packing our finest dive nightclub outfits to find the place. Talk about the most boring trip in history. They make those nebulas look all nice and scenic like on the tourist brochures but the closer you get the less you see, because you are inside the damn thing. Ugh.

Still found some interesting things on the way. In BLEAE THUA MY-H C23-2 I found some crazy looking blue canyons, and some other slightly interesting sulphor dioxide and iron magma features.

Wooh.. paydirt. BLEAE THUA GE-G C24-21 has a bunch of high metal moons, a water world, asteroid belts and a crapload of Bromelite and Void Opals. As I go to grab my mining equipment.. I realize, we didn't pack any. It was too heavy and limited our jump range. Goddamnit Delaine.... you and your damn payroll. I managed to grab some materials tho. So not a total loss.

Moving on past DROJU GX-Q A4-1 a barren ice moon system, wooh some jump injection materials things are looking up. Ok we are finally coming up to the Omega Nebula. Well my nav says I am, I cant see crap, since I am .. well IN the nebula. Right then where is this station of lonely women Lindsay..

The blithering idiot. He doesn't know exactly where the station is. Goddamnit. I spent a few hours circling around the nebula looking for the place but it was nowhere to be found. Madelynn just sat there laughing, then reminded me her pay was due. Damn woman you cost me a fortune and we just wasted a day not earning any money. My mood definitely sour at this point I swear I was tempted to throw the fool Lindsay out an airlock when he too reminded me that technically as a crew member I owe him wages too.

I resumed the trip to Colonia in silence, after threatening to pull a gun on them both if they didn't shut up. I found a few systems that returned promising spectrum data about the composition of their moons, geology and rings, and noted them for further investigation later.

GRIA DRYE WJ-X D2-67, GRIA DRYE ZX-U B22-15, GRIA DRYE XX-H B43-1, GRIA DRYE LW-A B47-13, GRIA DRYE B48-7.

NYEAJEAY ER-C D76 was particularly interesting, it had many many planets and rings, but had been previously discovered by someone called Brickam. A few jumps later I found myself low on fuel. My nav had screwed up and skipped jumping us to scoopable stars. Either that or Lindsay had been screwing with the computer again. Annoyed, I took the unusual step of looking out the window for the nearest promising looking star i could see with my own eyes, and manually plotted to it.

Nyeajeau BS-E b17-9. Entering the system I immediately found a scoopable star. Crisis averted. But there was something off about this system. The spectra was returning all sorts of crazy composition readings, but this system was only recorded in the astrogation computer by pilots "Mudd" and "Bustdatposey" as having two orbitting yellow stars, and a Class L dwarf. I took some deeper scans and found an entire hidden planetary system 176,000 light Seconds out. Packed with injection materials on them. Sweet.

A few injections later and I note with interest I am getting near to the system I intercepted from the intelligence earlier. Still a few systems to go, but I redirected my plot to pass by the system in a few jumps. At FLYIEDGIAE TA-I c12-10 I scored a few more injection materials, the place was packed with moons. That let me skip a few systems.

Finally I arrived at the system the Alliance had apparently been so interested in under their intelligence report. FLYIEDGIAE TZ-Z B32-6. On arrival it appeared to be nothing more than a solitary Class M star, discovered by some pilot called "Dognosh" but the spectra and mass of the system was totally out of wack from what Dognosh had reported. Suspicious. I started do deep scans of the system and dicovered it was actually three systems. BINGO! Eureka, or whatever all the cool pirates yell these days.

There was actually three stars, Class M, Class L dwarf, and way out in the dark a class T dwarf. Each with their own retinue of planets and asteroid belts. All (except for the Class T) a convenient travel distance from the main frame shift jump in point. On top of that it had a bunch of craziness going on.

First my computer pinged me that there was some Notable Stellar Phenomenon.. explorer paydirt. Also there was a couple of crazy planets orbiting one another, with overlapping gravity wells. What the hell? Probably make a great tourist beacon spot. On top of all that, i discovered likely the real reason the Alliance had been so interested in this system. Maybe they plan to colonize it - or secretly strip mine it - which would make sense, the place was packed with Void Opals, Bromelite, Alexite, Diamonds, and the cherry on top of it all. Tritium. A pile of it. this place is ripe for someone to move in and take over.

I shall call the system.. er.. the "Solomon System" after king Solomons lost mines. Hensforth I dub thee FLYIEDGIAE TZ-Z B32-6 as "The Solomon system" suck on that Alliance, you snooze you lose.

Too bad I can't exploit this system myself. Even with all my millions I can't afford a fleet carrier or jump in my own mining station. Ah well. I can pretend. Lets pretend the system was exploited/colonised by New Horizons Privateers X (NHPX). Lindsay and Madelynn just laughed, and bowed at me in mock reverence as the supreme leader of the Solomon System. They do realize that if they ever told anyone about the system I would probably have to kill them..?

Well the system is useless unless I record it somewhere. Reluctantly I returned to our trip to Colonia. As it turns out, it would be a good place for a mining outpost. The nearby systems are packed with metals, diamonds and opals too. Ah to be a superpower.

Next stop was FLYIEDGIAE VF-Y B33-9 more diamonds and opals, had a nice water gyser too which I cleaned the outside of the ship hull with. FLYIEDGIAE SM-V c18-34 was next, lots of valuable rings to mine, FLYIEDGIAE VR-L B40-4 AB had even more. Why O why didnt I bring mining equipment. I glared at Linday at that thought who just stared back and asked what did he do wrong this time. Rolling my eyes I plotted the next jump.

FLYIEDGIAE JR-M c23-39 lots of metal and stars. Meh. FLYIEDGIAE QO-O B52-7 ahh more metal and some injection materials.. FLYIEDGIAE FN-H b56-1 5e, more of the same. Getting boring now. FLYIEDGIAE YA-L B54-6 full of stars.. woo.. Dozens more uninteresting systems pass by.

FLYIEDGIAE FN-H B56-1 wow, I could spend a lifetime here scanning geolocial features, and mining the rings.. but that wont get me to Colonia any quicker. SKAUDE TY-P d6-410. High metal world and a couple of water worlds. Hmm have to remember to stop by on the return trip to surface scan a few of those. I spend the rest of the shift jumping towards Colonia.

Finally, when I feel like this trip will never end, and start daydreaming of ways to murder my crew in their sleep, I come across a small neutron highway around BLUA EAEC GA-Y D1-172 which also has a few sundry resoures to mine. Things are looking up. In a few short jumps I finally arrive at the Colonia system. Ugh.. Finally!

I explore around and discover Delaine was right. At this stage of the story - there is nobody here who I can draw my payments from Delaine through. Well that sucks.. considering the funds that built up on the trip out of here.. considering Delaine takes back any money you dont collect I would probably riot too. Lindsay made a few calls, and got shot at a few times. Idiot. He insists he doesn't like the quality of the residential units here. So he decides to stay onboard my ship. Oh hell no. Apparently he needs more money to pay some fools and bribe some officials too.. really? He expects me to pay for it all. Screw this.. fighting the urge once again to throw him out an airlock I look around Colonia for ways to make money.

Well there are lots of shooty shooty things happening, the place seems to go from Boom, to famine and war at the drop of a hat. But since my ship has the staying power of a plastic bag in a hurricane owing to having to strip it down, and perhaps motivated by the constant complaining of Lindsay without any way to avoid him I look for other ways to make some extra money for his stupid payroll and bribes task.

Aha.

Inspiration hits. Jaque, who was very interested in my navigation data now considers me his best mate.. I share my explore story, and nav logs with him over diner at the best food joint on Jaques Station. Which is about as good as the worst fast food place on Earth. Laughing as I relate my tale of woe he informs me the station I was looking for in the Omega Nebula is located in Omega Sector VE-Q B5-15. Apparently he visited it a few times in his past explorations, and confirmed that yes indeed the girls there are fond of /wealthy/ male company with a wink.

For Jaque it seems, a map showing the way to trillions of credits of exploitable resources will put him in a good mood every time. Gratitude here pays well it seems, he pays me 90 million credits for the data, and pays for the meal. As he sends the credits to me he swears me to silence about my "Solomon System" at FLYIEDGIAE TZ-Z B32-6. He has a lot of very wealthy friends and business.. aquaintences who would like to explore the place without.. complications. This guy would give Delaine a run for his money. More like organised crime than business. Considering Tritium has only been found in a few dozen systems at this point - Jaque likely got very rich from that data.

I bet I see a fleet carrier there before the month is done.
What to do next? Lindsay is annoying me about the whole Delaine mission, so I give him a 6 million credit cut out of Jaques payment. That will only shut him up for a while tho. I need him out of my face....

(Author note: The events of this leg of the trip span a period of several months a while back. Fleet carriers were only just out, back when tritium was hard to find - and none of the stations I landed at had power contacts in Colonia yet, so my "payment" email was a cruel mockery of the money I couldn't claim. This all appears to have changed a few updates later. Or i just had bad luck.)

(#meanwhileincolonia Part 2)

(ye I still have a cough. Not streaming again, making a habit of it now..)

.. The story in deep space so far, in the course of going deeper and deeper into deep space in the search for a virgin undiscovered system, I find 7 escape pods in the middle of nowhere which did not help my hunt for FSD injection materials - the extra weight has reduced my jump range.

I had moved to the second barren planet in this system. The first landing site there was a bust, not a single thing showed up on the SRV scanner (odd..), so I pitched camp for the night.. and ended my first log here.

Back to our story - After some much needed rest, I took off again and moved to the next crater over, now this was a much more productive site. Ended up totally filling my supplies of some more common materials like Iron etc, still have 45 Vanadium from the first planet, and now I have 16 Polonium. Sorted for escaping this orphan system cluster at HD 110346 - but this crater also contains two downed intelligence (ha!) drones.. owned by opposing factions.

Probably been here for a century so not sure how useful it is, but I grabbed a copy of its data anyway.

Perhaps a clue why they are here, I find a destroyed SRV surrounded by obscenely valuable ore canisters, (not entirely sure how this many canisters fit an SRV, maybe its some limited edition military or early retro model or something) and some mining equipment between the two drone sites. . Ended up tossing the mining equipment because.. of course nearby there is another 4 life pods and it was either leave one here or dump the machinery.. sigh the miners over at my home system Arverda would sell their left testicle for this equipment, but I cant leave them out here. At this point my jump range would be further if i got out and pushed.

For a remote system nobody could even be bothered surveying the planets on, it seems awfully crowded out here.

Anyway, now that I can injection jump up to 60+ LY these orphan systems and cul-de-sacs are less an issue, but the navigation system still refuses to plot jumps based on injection, and will barely plot jumps more than 78LY on connected systems. What is up with that?

So I jump deeper into the void, with one brown pants moment near a wierd red giant star where i come out of jump too close and immediately take 12% hull damage and drop out of Super Luminal (That's a fancy way of saying Low wake Frame Shift). I find some systems with a few planets people missed.. plus a few interesting hotspots on some rings which I tag to return to later with a mining ship. With people being this sloppy, chances are good I should find an entire system someone missed..

..But disaster strikes - while attempting to land and investigate some wierd geological features, (the hell is a compressed water lava vent?) something goes horribly wrong and the ship crashes into the ground. Must be the extra weight of all those pods and ore canisters. Hull is down to 45%.. lucky I opted to keep even a smaller shield for this mission, Or there would be 12 escape pods here!

At this point I decide to try to make a run back to the nearest station for repairs.. following the systems as I find them, I end up roughly 1300 LY above the bubble on the Galactic south west end.. and find a bunch more system density - now I am finding orphan system chains 20-30 LY apart of 8 or more, seperated by 50 or or 60LY voids, and I start finding more and more systems where the discovery scanner reports more hits than the system map shows - so a detailed scan finds quite a few undiscovered planetoids and the occaisional gas giant someone missed. I might come out a head in credits on this after all.

In the middle of one of these system chains, I find it. A totally Virgin system of about 40ish points of interest that nobody has visited before. Ironic I found my mission objective on the return trip. Well that pays for the entire trip.

I scan the system in detail and begin surveying each planet - I find some more interesting geological sites, and attempt to land, in my "excitement" my night vison goes out.. (dang it!) and I missjudge the ground, (why is the geological site marker 80 metres underground... on the dark side of the planet) and end up bouncing off the very features I planned to investigate, taking my hull down to 2%! argh! (and not the fun sort of pirate argh either!)

Having nearly left my mark in the form of 12 escape pods here too.. one with a nasty brown stain in it.. I climb for the sky and boost like crazy to get clear. I check my modules, but thanks to the module hardening upgrade I left installed, they are all in the high 90%'s condition wise. I tag the system with a bookmark and write the name down on a note, and start plotting manual jumps down towards what I hope is the nearest station. Jacking up my shield system power a little out of paranoia.. since thats pretty all I have between me, space, and that 2% hull.

I also note the 3 or so orphan systems I had to jump between to get my isolated chain of systems where my virgin system is so I can get back again.

I half heartedly honk the systems as I go past, and find maybe 1 or 2 planets someone missed which i quickly scan and move on. I get stuck at one point and jettison one of the less valuable ore canisters just to squeeze in a fraction more FSD range which gets me within 600 light years of the most remote station I can find nearby on the galcon. The milestone commemorated by a random space pirate trying to interdict me. Hell no.. power to engines and escape and an injection jump to lose the guy.

Systems density here is crazy and all of a sudden my navicon can plot jumps up to 700 LY's chains again. Thank feck for that. I lock onto Arverda and start doing fast jumps. About 3/4 of the way there, I get the hostile power warning light come up, and poke about the system map, and find some obscure remote mining outpost in a system with literally 1 planet 430,000 light seconds in. It is also the power that owned one of those downed probes to boot. I thank whatever wealthy idiot thought that was a good idea, although since when does the power bubble go this far up? Who cares, I put all power to engines and jam my way over there and land.

I immediately repair my hull, and dump the probe data. Checking the market I also offload a couple of the ore canisters, saving the other 2 for a nearby system where its worth 2000 more (which pays for the hull repair) apparently this outposts faction like me now.. pfft. Was hundred year old probe data that important?

While I think of it I release all my system data taking claim to the system I found, and the few dozen other things I found.. ok thats like 50 million credits worth, I just doubled my money.

This stations faction REALLY likes me now.

I tag the station (its the closest to my shiny new system) and jump a few more over to sell the last 2 cannisters.

I finish my trip to Arverda, and convert my Diamondback explorer back to a combat ship, then swap out with my ASP explorer mining ship. With all the mining fittings its jump range is junk but I am curious what I will find in those ring hotspots.

I slowly make my way back to my system, stopping at a few rings which are meant to contain low temperature diamonds. All i find is some crappy water and oxygen crystals with my abrasion blaster. I did get some wierd crystal with the mining laser, but not enough to sell. Also apparently the salesman saw me coming when I installed the mining bomber, none of the bombs explode when I shoot them into the hot asteroids - or even seem capable of exploding. Well my dreams of void opals and diamonds are dashed then. I throw all the junk ore out an airlock, and good riddance.

I return to plotting course to my cherry system. Man the fuel scooper on this ASP is over powered, I should downgrade something and put in more cargo.

Oddly my nav computer manages to plot me to within 300LY of my system.. wonder why the Diamondback struggled so much. Things get complicated however, all my marker systems are 60 to 100 LY away from this direction. The ASP maxes at about 50LY on lvl 3 if I dump all my cargo. Using injection, getting me at best 35LY on lvl 2 - I manage eventually to reach some of the approach systems I used before, but that puts me 138 light years in the wrong direction, so I have to burn some of my precious level 3 injections to make 3 hops over.

Finally I arrive at my system. I do a quick surface survey and land near my first geological POI.. silica lava vents, Pretty, but apparently I already discovered one like this, so my bonus is only a few thousand. I hit some mats Vanadium. Nice. So I settle back into my ASP as the sun sets, leaving me a view of lava vents like the camp fires of an army laying siege to a castle in the night, and bed down for the night. It has been a long day.

What will the future bring I wonder. At the very least hunting for more polonium, or I might be stuck here forever. Not that it would be a bad thing. Us spacers always say.. we want to die in space one day.. just not on impact, and preferaably of old age..

Meanwhile in deep space.... ( #meanwhileincolonia Part 1)

(So for once I didn't stream, got a cold, nobody wants to hear me coughing in their ear, so I am writing of my adventures now.)

I set a goal, keep flying into deep space until i find myself a shiny undiscovered system to call my own. So I poked about my dust covered hanger to see what has the most range, and I break my diamondback explorer out of the mothballs, my old low level bounty/boom ship, and strip that girl down until she has a jump range in the 30's. Not engineered so about as good as I can get a stocker without losing all the modern amenities.

Off I fly.. after one false start after a misshap with a neutron star.. i go roughly Galactic south west, and up in a spiral path, figuring non cardinal directions are more likely to fluke a new system, unfortunately, it appears everything in that direction leads to rather annoying cul-de-sac systems where the next system is 50 or more away, anyway, after numerous dead ends, I scroll out the map and manually tag a remote system as a vague goal to get near.

I find a few systems where surface scans have not happened.. seems promising, looks like I am in pre-DSS era systems. I am roughly 900 - 1300ly outside the remotest bubble systems, and I stop at an asteroid area. Much to my surprise, there is a (NPC) ship there mining. At least he moved like a miner, but wasn't actually shooting any mining beams. Weird. He is flagged as dodgy, but has no bounties and we scan each other, then promptly ignore one another. Tho I do a quick scan of the galaxy map for the hip faction he proudly transmits the name of, and discover this bad boy is 1200ly from home.. someone took a wrong turn.

After getting increasingly frustrated by the galcons inability to chart a course.. anywhere anymore - and discovering using the option to chart based on using additives doesnt work out here either, I start manually locking systems, injecting and overclock jumping across a few 38 to 40 light year voids from the dead ends. After ending up in an annoying orphans system cluster of 4 systems, in the middle of nowhere 50 LY from anywhere else and running low on additives to jump any deeper, i scan all systems and surfaces in detail, plently of rare additives in these systems, also someone else was here before me and honked it seems 🙁 but only about 5 of them have atmospheres light enough (or non existant enough) I can actually land on and explore with the SRV.

So an hour into jamming around in my SRV in a particularly promising crater and getting loads of jump additivies, I pick up a perculiar railroad shaped contact on the spectrograph, thinking I might have found something rare I head over that way. What do I find? 1500 lightyears in the middle of nowhere, in an isolated desolate planetoid in a remote cut off system, that has barely even been honked and never explored in detail, I find 7 life pods.

How the hell did they get here? Sighing as i realise these things are going to hurt my jump range, I call up my ship and load them on. Who knows how long these people have been on ice. Well they can stay on ice a bit longer, I am a long way from home too.

It is probably a random find, tho what are the odds anyone would land on that planet, in that crater, and drive to that exact spot to find them. I should buy a lotto ticket. 7 seems an odd number, and their transponder beeping loudly and showing on my spectrograph is all the more strange since I cannot lock on find or even scan it.

Having stowed them away, I fly to the next rock and land, the scans say I should find materials for a lvl 3 injection.. but 40 minutes later not even one rock shows on the scanners. This is going to be a long trip I think, as I drop the ship into low power mode and settle in for a sleep..

So at great cost I might add, I have sat and passed my pilots federation License.

It was not easy. Compared to the Flight systems of my KeenSWH Pirate Corsair, Built by Space Engineers it was a nightmare of undocumented buttons and switches.

But if I ever wanted to leave my home system, it had to be done. There is an entire universe out there to explore. Far larger than rock hopping asteroids.

It took time to reconcile the controls I was fluent with on my rock hopper to the frankly absurd complexity of controls in a small frame shift capable ship.. but I get there eventually.

About the only advantage is being considered "harmless" after about 2500 undocumented hours of pirating in my corsair rock hopper in the non-aligned asteroids of Ramblers Frontier out From Jupiter... "encounters" will never know what hit them... "harmless" heh heh heh (muahahhaha)

Downside of course is with my Pilots Federation Registration comes a debt of many thousands for my first frame shift capable ship. This is no dinky little Rock Hopper out in the belt - this thing is fast and long range. I have to keep on the right side of the law until it is paid off.

The station where they delivered my sidewinder was of course a rotating station. This "rental" had a defective flight stick which failed the initial pre-flight check.. and it didn't improve from there.

Alone with my "new" (reconditioned?) ship, dumped in a system in the ass end of nowhere - it is still no walk in the park. My flight training and certification was at a remote Outpost past the Oort cloud, only covering basic flight and combat. Nobody explained these rotating stations, or taking off from them!

Hundreds of buttons on the control panel.. yet you to use the hat controls on the flight stick to queue up navigation and coms? What fool thought that was a good idea? Millions of commanders out there using the same controls? Lunacy!

I select coms and request permission to take off. Released from the landing pad I raise the landing gear and pull up navigation, picking a location at random - I locks it in but it causes the guns to suddenly deploy.. why? I've not even left the station and I have a 100 credit fine now? I attempt to stow the guns and a fault in the system panel miss fires my after burner. I watch in horror as I scrape the side of my ship along the inside of the station... bleurgh! Now someone is yelling at me on coms about the speed limit.

Things get worse.. I kick the reluctant system panel several times to get it to stow the guns - live firing a freakin missile in the process before it finally responds. With only half the flight controls responding... I somehow manage to avoid fire from the local system Authorities who are now shooting at me.. where was that afterburner again... some luck - they activate! Quickly I turn on the one axis that actually still works and perform a 3 point turn then boost again to escape the station and hostile gunfire. Well the ship isn't useless in a straight line at least, I outrun the the authority ships and keep running until the radar is clear. Well I don't care for all the red flashing lights and alarms.. I think I took damage.

After more troubles with the navigation systems, where exactly is super cruise.. its a sub menu off navigation? Errr.. how do I stop it again.. there is no visual queue.. why is my throttle disabled? Only the throttle overrides on the console work in super cruise? Eh? I eventually manage to target the system I actually wanted to travel to - somehow activate the jump - arrive and nearly crash into the star. Each jump drops you on a collision course with a star... what the actual F...

Now my frame shift controls are bugging out, how the hell do I drop to normal space now? frantic random pressing of keys I manage eventually to drop out near a station. I manage to request docking without deploying the guns this time.. and head for the slot.

Oh right the station is spinning. I am expected to manually match rotation..? lucky that axis actually works on this factory second of a ship.. those thousands of hours in a rock hopper dodging spinning rocks and wreckage finally pay off. They have the audacity to give me a mortgage to pay off this ship? I've salvaged better wrecks in the belt than this junk heap. The ship in front of me is rapidly approaching.. I go to hit the match speed control... and then discover there isn't one.. in all the hundreds of controls.. nobody thought to add that one? Sigh. Emergency reverse thrust.. phew close. I make out some freaked out passenger peering at me through a porthole in the ship in front. I just shrug at them. They frown and shake a fist at me.

This cut price ship is also too old to have a docking autopilot. Apparently all the newer models have one now. Lucky me.. I get a bona fide vintage collectors edition without one. Well I managed to get in the slot.. but where is my assigned landing pad.. er.. uuhm? Oh there it is - only had to spend 2 minutes blundering around like a drunken sailor in the dark to spot that faint blue smudge in a remote corner of the station. What do you mean 100 credit fine for loitering.. oh for the love of.. they didn't think indicating your assigned landing pad on the radar was a good idea? Ugh...

Right - to land I need to coast in, lower landing gear, cancel out my forward momentum and... oh crap I hit flight control/assistance instead of zero my thrust.. why are both buttons next to each other.. and unlabeled? What a stupid design.! ....aaaaaand now my throttle has been disabled and jammed at 30..

I curse as my ship randomly drifts into the nearest space station wall.. again. So much for my paint job.

Ok flight controls are online again... there is my pad but speed wont go below 1? Is it stuck? I line up the horizon.. slowly approaching my pad. Er.. how do I descend.. Franticly I page through a stained and faded sidewinder flight manual I find under the seat. aha... the key marked F (f? huh?) Oh crap another button next to flight control assist.. I curse as I hit the wrong key again... overshoot the pad to crash into a wall for a third time. I slam the throttle into full reverse... until I line up with the pad finally. Landing gear down, descent thrust... Oh damnit now I am taxing instead of hovering.. I abort and retry.. my coms panel starts scrolling like a stockmarket readout as one after the other I get another series of fines... another loitering fine, 100 credit blocking fine, 600 credit trespass fine, someone is yelling at me on the radio for entering the station without landing approval.. ARGHHJHHHH!!! for the love of...

much cursing and thumping flight controls with a spanner later

Ok I am back at my assigned pad. According to this flight manual I need to use the mini squiggly ship icon on the radar to align to land.. that wasn't covered in orientation videos either. Achh.. it doesn't tell me which way the pad wants me facing. much frantic reading of manuals and watching of videos later ugh the videos only cover combat? Ok.. right only one direction works.. Nearly out of time I finally line up correctly and hit the tarmac. With a thump and grinding of docking clamps I have landed. Somehow I have managed to pay off my fines without incurring a violent brutal flaming death. This time at least.

Right I need to trade or something to make money.. er.. ok nothing covers the trade process.. I cant even SEE a market anywhere on this station? sigh

many many hours of adventures and swearing at the ship later

Right so I've done some bounty hunting, data deliveries, system defense and a bit of trading. I can't even remember what system I started in at this point. Lets try some passenger tourist missions they sound relaxing... who doesn't enjoy a vacation?

WHATS THIS.. ILLEGAL PASSENGER! This was supposed to be your honeymoon? What the hell did you have in your luggage? Get the hell off my ship.. What! I cant eject these passengers..? Darnit.. now I am wanted? I will never pay off the damn ship at this rate....

Wait.. what.. I need to pay extra for the ability to land on a planet now... some module called "horizons" and a landing suite? Oh for the love of.... sound of static