Running an Imperial Eagle. Really nice to get in a cozy fast ship. Obviously a better ship than the stock Eagle but I don't think I will be doing all the usual variants of the model. I love the wing tip pylons though. The are awesome when you look behind to the sides. Shame You can't quite see the spoiler. I bet that looks pretty cool from the cockpit. The best bit - the view. The observation you get from the canopy is freakin awesome. No having to guess where stuff is and combat is a dream. Though to be honest, I'm gonna need a bigger ship because you really do have to pick your targets and assistance is always welcome. Nice to have a fast ship to escape if you have bitten off a touch to much and the nasty bad guy wants you for a snack.

Been out of the seat for a while. I had a major system overhaul to carry out. Had to put the ol' Adder (Annunaki IV) in to space dock while I had infrastructure specialists (me) do a complete rework of all systems. That didn't take too long but you know how it is with resetting everything back to just how you like it. I think Astra had a bit of a sulk on for a bit. She just wouldn't listen to me when we first came out of dock for a shake down. She's feeling better now I've given her the reins a bit. She does like to boss the ships systems about. Haven't brought any of the other crew on board yet. Just so she feels comfortable with the ship before having a crew to see to - and a parrot.

Been away for a bit, mainly due to career choices invoking a separation of pilot and machine. Also felt I had to wait until the upgrade to Chapter 4 was completed so as I wouldn't have to mess around too much with VoiceAttack. I reckon it was a reasonable option but still ended up with a bit of a configuration foul up. You know the usual wiped keybinds - even though I renamed it. Got a working config at the moment but there are a lot of unconfigured keybinds. Also having issues with what fires what in the Fire Groups but I'll get a handle on that in due course. Suffice it to say I am a VERY RUSTY pilot right now. Onwards and upwards.

Yeah, so much for having a crewmate. Found out they won't sit in the crew seat while they aren't out flying and have no influence on turreted weapons. The crew seat is only good for avatars. I fly solo so no point in that then. As far as NPC crew goes then I'll wait until I get a fighter bay.

Hauler Fleet complete. Now onto the Adders. Looking forward to working with a crew member. Should be interesting to find out how they can help or if indeed hinder. First impressions: strange being on right hand side of cockpit but I will adapt. View seems a little better than the Hauler but still can't really look up which can be frustrating given the advantage of VR in combat and when rotating around to docking bays.

I kinda have the idea that when my ship gets ripped apart by an NPC many levels above me then the game is telling me that I really shouldn't have tried that mission or don't do USS's with any cargo in the hold. Is it subtly saying - "Don't you think you're biting off more than you can chew, you Novice in a Hauler!"?

I have just counted the number of dots in the stored ships area under the main ship diagram. There were 35 (I'm pretty sure, didn't want to recount) which implies that it is a cap of 35 ships stored at each station. Therefore, although not theoretically limitless, I can have 35 ships at every starbase in the Galaxy, That's one hell of a fleet bud. I'm going for the record. I wonder if there is a badge for that? Before you say it I'm not going to put default load out Sidewinders all over the place. In keeping with game ethics (mine anyway) I shall be creating ships with a purpose only.

The triggers that notify boundary levels for materials in EDDI don't appear to be working. Might investigate a bit deeper sometime but not now.

Completed as much of the trigger levels as I could. Decided to go with the bin capacity for the maximum, however this may change to be slightly lower so that the trigger becomes a warning that the maximum bin capacity is about to be reached. The Minimum & Desired levels I have set to arbitrary thirds (very ish) to give some indication of progress. A slight modification to this is to set the minimum to 1 for those commodities I do not have yet (or may have had but now don't have) so that I know to modify the trigger thresholds for newly discovered stuff. I know ED flashes this up but I may miss it.

Just about happy with the Hauler phase but realised I need to have an SRV variant for each type. Therefore I have travelled back to Eravate to my Sidewinder base to start building and evaluating each SRV variant.

Side note - I am aware that there is a cap of about 35 ships that can be stored. The main point of the fleet building exercise is to evaluate each type and role to eventually have and 'Elite Fleet' as it were. When I hit the cap (should it still exist - read Frontier nerf/modification) I will decommission the ships most poorly suited to the task. It may be hard to avoid sentimentality of course.