After clearing some enemy ships, i've gone on the hunt for Wake exception data and Tellurium to upgrade to an experimental frame shift drive. I've cleaned out my supply of low grade materials and data and scrapped enough components together.. time to see if I can install the thing..

I've also scraped together enough parts to acquire some sort of rapid fire cannon, that damage wise sits somewhere between a rail gun, plasma gun and a multicannon. The current tests of the technology are not particularly impressive, the fire rate has some potential, but the damage figures seem misleading. The DPS does not match the raw damage, and in testing this seems to be confirmed. I may be able to apply an experimental alteration, but I suspect none are available.

Also it appears I can get a slight experimental upgrade on my experimental frame shift drive, which may improve jump range slightly further but nothing else.

So I upgraded my ship to an Odyssey class.. but something went wrong... I am stumbling about like a drunkard like i've forgotten how to control myself.. the problem is soon resolved.. I just needed to set "custom" in my system profiles, and turn down the visual feed quality.. having regained the ability to even move again I take my first steps outside my ship - I feel somewhat cheated.. we were promised cities.. but they wont let us outside of the landing bay and shopping district on most stations. Even on a planet you need to drive out in an srv or land outside the colony to get out and walk around outside.

I went into a pioneer outfitting shop the other day... the shelves were all stacked with sweet gear.. but when I asked to buy any the shop keeper insisted he had nothing to sell...? What an odd fellow. Perhaps they only sell gear to the locals? I noticed a local peering with interest at the equipment on one of the shelves. He seemed to have no difficulty using the shop.

The administrators of these cities and colonies seem to lack much creativity too.. most shopping districts look more or less the same. On top of that now it is very difficult to buy clothes.. previously you could simply dock on any station, wander over to the local holo me and buy whatever you pleased. Now you need to wander about and request load out permission from a local information kiosk to do the same? How utterly frustrating.

I took a job to collect some sundry Item for a gentleman who had forgotten to grab an item from his locker that morning on the way to work.. when I went to open his locker his flatmate started attacking me.. and when I defended myself a literal endless army descended on the settlement and started shooting at me.. why?

Even more bizarrely these soldiers have personal shields more powerful than an engineered anaconda shield.. and carry a limitless supply of explosives and munitions - and if you manage to kill any of them.. somehow all their weapons, gear and amour simply vanish and you cannot help yourself to any of it.. not even ammunition - as a pirate i find this rather frustrating? What is a pirate to do? Even stranger is it seems some residents of these outposts.. disturbingly enough don't need to breath.. what are they automatons? If you try the nefarious underhanded tactic of turning off all the air to get rid of them, they happily keep wandering about with no air or space suit. It is rather unnerving!

Even more perplexing still is since upgrading to Odyssey class.. I feel as if I am losing my mind.. it is like entire mountain ranges and canyons are simply gone.. and the ability for my ship to detect surface features of interest simply vanishes!

Pretty unproductive day. Doing some ship transfers and experimenting with load outs. Got my travel shuttle shot out of the sky right as I landed at Farseer in Deciat.. well that is a new way to land i suppose.. at least i landed AT that station even if it cost me a rebuy.

Concluded my business and legged it for the sky unmolested, whomever it was seemed distracted by another ship.

Well conclude is too strong a word.. i need more Selenium to do any of the remaining modifications I require.

Found a world, forgot the surface scanner.. of course all the local supply is out of stock, more time wasted..

Somehow I've lost 4 hours doing all this too. ugh.

So. after delivering, murdering and stealing my way across the bubble for the Federals.. i've finally got to rear Admiral.. which means I should be able to buy a Federal Corvette now....

Be afraid, be very afraid.

So I am doing some federal errands, scanning and delivering stuff, killing stuff that sort of thing. Found a really nice canyon on Nambikuara11C to fly through when glide ended prematurely.

Got one of those tip offs, high value data at hip 12248 5a lat 5.63 lon 150.62 not sure I want to follow it up, last one was a military fortress.. (it was)

So I got a little help, and have managed to hunt them all down except 4. I've also assassinated several of their leaders.. and are on the lookout for two more high priority targets.. still even after all this, the rogue faction has barely lost any power at all... hmm

I managed to catch the last 4, still little impact to the politics of the region however. Something decidedly odd about the government in this area. But I got paid, not my problem anymore.

Thanks to Commander Zeke Drezel for help chasing down those last few bad guys.

So the last 78 enemies have proven elusive.. I've managed to hunt down 21 of the first group of 48.. oddly one of them appears to have led me to a hidden supply cache on one of the planets. Found some gold platinum, consumer tech and a black box..

The black box contained an assassination mission for some religious person called Taylor Cholo in Gilya? shrug who am I to argue. A bounty is a bounty.

I've cleared the first few rogues, a group of 15, 20, 30 and 40 so that's 105 less undesirables in the clients region.

I still have a group of 30, and 48 respectively to clear out.

Lindsay surprisingly has improved his flying considerably, having gained a number of pilot federation combat ranks during the course of our first enemy encounters.

Maybe I'll let him keep flying the fighter a bit longer..

So Archon Delaine had me flying my ass off this week fending off ferals from some of our assets. Had to completely rework the Argyre II into an experimental Frankenstein death dealing nightmare. My multi role ship is now useless for anything except killing things... quickly.

I've taken a commission outside of Kumo, apparently some crappy faction tricked the federation into ceding a system over to some fraudsters. Now the region is crawling with non-aligned rogues with no loyalty to the Archon, and who as a consequence of stealing the system cut off the supply to pretty much the entire universe of custom weaponry.

My job consists of killing off several hundred of them. With one ship. I don't anticipate any particular challenge, so I've given in to Lindsay nagging me to let him fly the fighter for a while.. I probably don't need the fighter for this; but something to distract the target might speed things up.. and if nothing else Lindsay is good at being distracting.. maybe the stupid accountant will actually improve his skills too.

So I just ran about 150 million in cargo for Archon Delaine..

Yawn how boring. Hopefully it will pay itself back in missions once I return to my home sectors.

Look like I need to find some materials too, this old explorer is overdue for some upgrades.