I still have a good store of manufactured materials, but used a lot in engineering my new Colonia fleet ... so to replenish. Taken out the Cobra with a combat load-out and collection limpets to a compromised beacon at Tenjin. Found some wanted small ships to collect bounties and materials from, and also sat watching bigger ships (FDL' Kraits Dropships) in combat and got a few shots in on the looser when they were really on their last legs ... this is hyena or wild dog tactics ... but hey. it works for me. Realise how vulnerable a Cobra is to a blast from any decent mid-size ship, became wreckage instead of collecting it on a couple of occasions! I'm going back to the safer collection method, use the cargo space in my Conda to run missions with rewards of G5 focus crystals, etc. I also want to "fully" engineer the Vulture at Etienne Door (the creepy one!) ... but then probably time to head out into the black once more.

I'm sure I can give up buying ships at any time ... but I bought an Adder and built it for Engineering collection - surface prospecting and USS debris ... a small cargo hold for limpets and a few things salvaged, an SRV hanger and limpet controller. I armed it and protected it ... pirates in remote places? And it's great ... as hoped. The very small hull can relatively easily find places to land - trying to land the Asp Explorer near some geysers can be very hard, and landing the 'Conda close to a settlement even harder. This could be the right tool for such jobs. Scavenged a lot of surface miles, gathered a lot of materials, and also located 25 occupied escape pods ... more than 25 in fact, but Etienne Door doesn't accept "Stolen" goods. With him unlocked, I can fully-engineer (to Colonia standards) all of my new Colonia fleet ... any improvement in the Vultures power plant will be very welcome! So ... a brief stop in Colonia was planned to ditch unwanted fuel tanks and get a repair limpet controller ... it's turned into an entertaining episode of purchasing, outfitting and engineering three useful ships to store out here ... a combat Vulture, a surface prospector Adder, and a mining/trading Cobra MkIII. I am going to head off to SagA* and some nebulae soon ... but not quite yet ...

Back in the Conda to add to my materials store, and look for occupied escape pods. Found three, but only had two loaded aboard ship when scooting along on a low-grav rock filling up with sulphur, carbon, phosphorous, germainium ... there was a big flash and I'm back in the ship and missing an SRV. Not sure what happened ... I had about 48% hull, so I don't think a big ding would have totalled that. Wasn't aware of any nearby skimmers, defence turrets or whatever ... could I have been shot from overhead? Clean record ... Anyhow ... it happened ... lost an SRV and an escape pod. Could have been much worse! Restocking at Damask Rose megaship in Centralis, was offered millions of credits to ship cargoes of about 100 palladium. Three or four 23LY trips back and forth, and have paid for the Cobra and the Vulture thrice over ... nice little earner, might be worth another session at some point ... made a change from SRV driving ... Will be back on the ground somewhere tomorrow ... a metallic world in a well-populated system I think ...

I am keeping the Cobra, but it ought to earn its keep. Used it to do a whole lot of missions to stations too small for the Conda - which also paid for a refit with more cargo space, pulse lasers and multi-cannons. Too late I realises the use of Blueprints ... I had G5 Rapid-fire pulse lasers, so that's what I've got! Everything else ... well, make use of the new local engineers. The mining loadout got me access to Marsha hicks, and the Condas hold made short work of access to Petra Olmanova (not that worthwhile, but ...), which led to Mel Brandon. I took the Cobra to explore it's combat potential ... and got expensively trashed when set upon by two pirates, one Conda and the other a Python! No chance! So ... back to the shipyards and outfitters ... found a Vulture and set it up as a full combat ship ... well, practicalities for this neck of the woods means a small additional fuel tank or a scoop ... I'm going to try both. But ... with two G5 rapid-fire pulse lasers, it turns out to be a lethal machine! At the Nav Beacon in Cordosa I earned bounty's of over 600,000 Cr in a couple of hours, without any damage to my ship ... and importantly around half of those were for the Nameless faction that I needed ... Mel Brandon allowed for G1 upgrades to core things like dirty-drive thrusters, long-range FSD and enhanced shields. These two ships promise potential for a lot of new missions ... and flying smaller ships is an exciting change to the large ships I have been using back in the Bubble. I want to do more prospecting for materials to maximise my Jumponium and the like for synthesis out in the deep - nebulae and Sag A perhaps are the plan ... but this is a fun change from exploration, and prospecting for materials also means discovering man-made things ... I have found crashed ships, cargo stashes, etc, and mostly ignored them ... but hunting for escape capsules to take to Etienne Dorn would make it a full house on the Engineers front. Not sure where gameplay is going ... I have G3 access to three of them now ... but they are only currently capable of G1 modifications. Hmmm ... maybe all will have changed on my way back?

Update 3.2 installed apparently without problems. I get caught out by the new delivery missions mechanic - accepted a contract and jumped over to deliver ... only to find I'd not loaded the cargo! And I was just looking for a bit of variety, after trading materials I'd collected to build up my Jumponium resources. I completed a few missions just to get a feel for it - and I like being able to stack missions and complete them in a fashion that is more constructive than the old accept the mission and immediately your hold is filled with haulage. It wasn't trailed, but a good improvement to the game on first impressions. While jumping around Colonia systems, I get invited to all four of the new engineers out here. Not that interested, and I'm not equipped or that thrilled by the idea of collecting a lot of combat bonds or escape capsules ... but mine 10U of osmium ... why not? Another spur-of-the-moment trip to a shipyard for a Cobra MkIII with mining lasers, a refinery and limpets. Not used to having to hunt for components, having always had Shinrarta Dhezra as a home base where everything is there for the asking. But ... suitably equipped (miners aren't exactly high performance) I dived into a pristine belt in Colonia and 4 asteroids (and a a lot of prospector limpets) in half an hour filled my hold and I was off to The Watchtower in Tir to unlock Marsha Hicks ... I might as well try to get lightweight limpet controllers for my ExploRataConda. I could sell the Cobra, but since there are so many mining missions out here, I'll keep it for the foreseeable ... it seems like a good tool for that job.

I have driven a lot of k's in my SRV. needing regular fuel and repairs. Always the basic options ... why waste more valuable mat's on the upgrades when I always have iron and nickel to spare (typically replaced within 5 minutes) and sulphur and phosphorous are pretty plentiful? Maybe if I was going to take on a hostile situation, a raid on a base perhaps, then a better hull and ammunition load-out might make sense ... but no plans to do that out here. Surprised that on rather dull metallic worlds a long way (100 LY from Colonia or any populated system) I still occasionally find dumps of cargo canisters with sentry skimmers? Why would this make any sense to smugglers (I assume)? Thank goodness for Materials Traders ... I have been planning to be extensively loaded with Jumponium but some components are hard to find. Rare Polonium and Yttrium are there, and gathering and trading for steadily. But Arsenic, a supposedly Common material just isn't ... EDDB struggles to find 3%, I have a hold full of Antimony but arsenic rarely spawns. Maybe it'd be easier to mine for it ... but my T9 rock lugger is back in the Bubble ... and generally I found mining for materials to be a pretty weak collecting system. I expect to revisit mining when the proposed Beyond 4 mechanics come out ... but for now, it's surface prospecting that's achievable. Boron, Lead and Rhenium don't seem to be of any value to me. So, gathering lots of stuff, and trading it around. and logging some SRV k's ... wondering about a circumnavigation, just for the stupidity of it! Servers down for Beyond 3 ... nothing much in it for me as far as I can tell ...

Hmmm - planning a trip "out there". On an impulse (blame ObsidianAnt!) I stopped earning doing missions from home, bought and engineered an ExploraConda, and headed out to Colonia via the Neutron Star cluster. Surprised at how good the Conda is ... getting over 60LY jump and scanning systems well enough to earn 45M from the trip. I always thought the Conda would be a lump compared to my Asp ... but it's not really, and carries a brilliant fuel scoop, SRV's, AMU's, etc. I made the mistake of fitting an extra tank, thinking it might keep me out of trouble ... not realising that (unlike cargo), it cuts my planned jump range whether empty or full. Stored that in Jacques station! Totally unnecessary - not sure if I'll rethink if travelling at the rim, or trying to cross an abyss ... but not a problem in the centre of things ... Before I head out, planning to do two things in preparation, now I've got my exploration head back. Make use of the Materials Trader at TolGarf's Junkyard to fill up completely with Jumponium components and anything else that might be needed ... SRV refuels and repairs easy, but hunting arsenic, polonium, etc is more laborious. I'll trade the easy stuff for type-5's while I can. Second thing ... since I have the capacity ... I have equipped my ship with Repair and Fuel limpet controllers ... I can try to be an ExploRataConda if the Fuel Rats will have me? Read their excellent web pages and watched IRC comm's rescues ... I will see if I can do a drill before I head for the wild places? Prospecting call's ...