Its been a couple of years, so much has happened, I have mostly been sticking to flying around the bubble, collecting bounties, learning to be a soldier and trying to collect the necessary items to upgrade my weapons and suits. Picked up a few bounties along the way until I learned that the best way to gather materials was to raid settlements belonging to anarchy factions, knock out the alarms and authorisation scans then go to town on the population with my plasma shotgun, picked up a lot of bounties, and....well I am not proud, but murdered several innocents as well.

Tonight, whilst raiding a settlement in Hai Si, I shot a guard in the face and got my combat elite, making me triple elite, finally, however, there have also been extra ranking structures for exobiology and soldier, and of course CQC as well. what to do now though, I am thinking of going exploring again, heading to the core and the north west quadrant of the galaxy and do a lot of exobiology to grade as well, and of course, getting some credits. fly safe commanders o7

Today, I landed back at Cleve Hub in Eravate, my home base. my journey back from Explorer's anchorage was uneventful, I went to Saggitaurius A* and travelled downwards about 1000ly then headed east for about 5000ly then started my journey back to the bubble, stats for the trip are as follows: Ammonia world 11 Belt Cluster 2,142 Class I gas giant 334 Class II gas giant 72 Class III gas giant 147 Class IV gas giant 18 Class V gas giant 1 Earth-like world 2 Gas giant with ammonia-based life 34 Gas giant with water-based life 95 High metal content world 1,143 Icy body 3,610 Metal-rich body 85 Rocky body 1,153 Rocky ice world 318 Water giant 9 Water world 80 Most of which were first discoveries, and after refueling of 18 credits - no damage on this trip, which I think is a first for me to not bump into something or overheat on an exploration trip. The trip netted me: 496,482,769 credits which has pushed my credits to over 7 billion. Not bad for a small ginger boy from earth!

What to do next, I have jumped back into my vulture - Foggies hammer and I think I will spend some time bounty hunting, it was a bit odd coming back into the bubble, there were no attempted interdictions on the way back, another first, then I arrived at Erevate and found the system full of fleet carriers, I may pop along to one and have a look at these new fangled things, and maybe, at some point in the future, if theres one heading towards the core, maybe hitch a ride with one so I can carry out my plan to do several circumnavigations of the core stars. Glad to be home and see you out there! o7

Its been a while since my last update, looking back, the last log entry was me trying to faceplant at high speed and being quite successful! Since then I have been working on my combat rating, but, back at the start of March I decided I needed a journey into the black again, my explorer's eye was twitching again, so I jumped into my Asp explorer, the Juno's Paw and headed vaguely towards the galactic core, quite unusually I was not approached or interdicted by any pirates on my way out of the bubble and I was heading towards the western part of the galactic bulge, about 25 days into the trip, I decided to visit the new station constructed near sagitaurius A* - Explores Anchorage, I arrived today 29th April and its an impressive system. I downloaded my exploration data and the stats are below. Ammonia world 7 Belt Cluster 2,288 Class I gas giant 376 Class II gas giant 58 Class III gas giant 144 Class IV gas giant 9 Class V gas giant 1 Earth-like world 6 Gas giant with ammonia-based life 40 Gas giant with water-based life 63 High metal content world 1,206 Icy body 3,590 Metal-rich body 54 Rocky body 1,031 Rocky ice world 223 Water giant 3 Water world 59 This haul gave me 456,056,365 credits of profit after repairs and refuelling at the station, now I need to decide what to do next, I am probably going to go to the supermassive black hole, I have checked my records and the last time I visited back in January 3303 I was also in the same ship I am now so it will be like two old friends meeting up again. I may then head down through the core for a bit then head back towards the bubble, being below the usual straight line route back to the bubble I should be able to get better profits from undiscovered systems, having said that, heading here, I only hit discovered systems in the bubble and 5 jumps from my destination. Hopefully there will be some juicy discoveries on the way back :) o7

So, I was reading issue 25 of Sagittarius Eye during a moment of downtime in my homebase of Cleve hub and read an interview with commanders Primetimecasual and Sanderling about the new sport of speedbowling, where you find a high G planet, do a dive from a high altitude with flight assist off, then, apply the upwards thrusters, these push your speed upwards at a huge rate, the trick is timing the upward thrusters in time to miss the ground and generate the highest speed possible. What a good idea I thought!

So I jumped into my imperial eagle, the waspy, not many lightyears under its wings but a nippy ship, and made the journey to the location mentioned in the interview - Chi Hydrae A 7, 31 jumps, I wasn't sure if the system was inhabited, but hoped so, then I could get the exploration data credits as well. After an uneventual set of jumps I arrived in the Chi Hydrae system and found my target, the planet has a 8.72g gravitational pull. I landed....of sorts....slightly bouncy and sheild sapping but I was down and settled down for the night, today I attempted my first try...... it started ok....and got a maximum speed of 1732 m/s but it sort of went very wrong very quickly!

anyway.......long story short, I got the restart screen over 500ly away from the planet I died on....might head that way again tomorrow to try again and get it right this time!

o7 Commanders!

I started working on my combat rating now I am deadly and after about 50 or so kills I got to 1% deadly, so its going to take around 5000 kills to get to elite, I have read from other commanders that its about that. It is something I will work on as time goes on, as a distraction I thought I would jump into my Asp - Juno's Paw and do a bit of local exploring, I decided to visit all of the INRA sites to listen to the logs recorded there, listening to the logs, I am torn, was the bioweapon they produced really necessary? were we that close to being wiped out to justify attempted genocide? on the other hand, if they had not carried out what they did, I may not be here to question it.

I then visited the various already found generation ships scattered around the bubble, I had previously visited a couple so I got the remaining 13 of those currently known, I am sure there are more out there.

I think next I will visit some of the known abandoned settlements, collecting data from the beacons and materials for engineering, then I plan to go to some of the guardian sites to stock up on guardian materials.

After that, I dunno, maybe a bit more mining, a few missions to increase my ranks with the federation and empire, maybe even pledge myself to a faction for a while in powerplay, its a part of the galaxy I have not previously been involved with so maybe give it a go.

The Galaxy is of course my rather large oyster! o7

Finally hit Deadly yesterday, I have been doing a combination of bounty hunting in Eravate and Apoyota, then I paid a visit to Sol as it was listed as being in Civil War, I was hoping to farm some High Grade materials, but alas, there was not a huge amount of what I needed available. I ran a couple of missions and I have ended up in LHS450 which is currently in War state, I have been jumping into the combat zones between LHS2459 Advanced Corporation and Kruger 60 Free, I have been enjoying the combat and so far, not been completely spanked, though I did end up with 6% hull at one point but managed to get away and repaired. Now its the final combat slog to Elite for my triple Elite status. o7

I have had a spotty couple of weeks where I have not been very active, but I did have another mining session, which was quite frustrating as Void Opals were few and far between, but what I was able to mine, brought me up to 75% tycoon. Then, the weekend I decided to head out again, found another random world with ice rings and a huge void opal hotspot, I sat and plugged away and ended up collecting over 100 tons of void opals, some Grandiderite and some Alexandrite then headed back to Vasilyev Vision as it was again buying for over 1.6 million per ton and the other materials were also selling for good profits as well. the result of this mining trip has now made me Trader Elite, which I am very happy about :) Now there is just my Combat Elite to do, I am currently 70% dangerous, and I don't really want to use the thargoid scout trick to bring my rank up (ok I did use the void opal trick to do it with my trader elite but combat elite dates back to the original days of elite and the one I want to do right).

I am going to load up here at Vasilyev Vision with biowaste, head to Ackerman Market in Eravate, drop that off, load up with produce there, fly to cleve hub and pick up something a bit shootier to go bounty hunting for a while. Fly Safe 07

I have just returned from a spectacularly successful mining trip, I had been focussing on mining in the ice rings around Eravate 10, I had some success and I learnt the skills of all aspects of the mining in relative safety. I used my type 10 defender - the Space Moo but in that location I struggled to fill my hold. I decided to head out to try to find some pristine reserves, I set a random location about 300ly away from Eravate and headed off. after 6 jumps or so I found a system which had been scanned, but not mapped and found a gas giant with pristine ice rings, it has multiple hotspots including several void opal spots so jumped into the biggest one. after 3 days of mining, my 384 tonne hold was 280tonnes of product, about 210 tonnes were void opals! I had a little look and found that Vasilyev Vision in LP 131-66 is buying void opals at 1.6 million credits per ton! I made my way there and the void opals generated 351,000,000 credits! I also had a few low temperature diamonds and they were selling for 749,000 per tonne. This has put me from 92% Entrepreneur to 52% Tycoon, not too far off Trade elite, another mining trip may well put me within sniffing distance of it!

Although Space Moo is set up as a mining ship, I did also plop a few burst lasers and a multi cannon onto it and, so far, she has held her own against several smaller pirate ships in the planetary rings.

I have also now made the money back from my various ship purchases after my last exploration trip, so from now on, the profits are profit profits rather than paying back catching up profits. Fly safe commanders o7

I am currently sat in my vulture - Foggies Hammer, named after my parents cat, a beautiful blue grey cat, completely mad and a psycho killer, felt that would be suitable for a vulture! I decided to use this ship as a way to gather bounties and build up my combat rank. It is a basic build, a couple of lasers, a jump drive, fuelscoop and a load of hull and module reinforcements!

I gathered a few bounties in Eravate then did some research as I want to do various engineering tasks to my fleet. I wanted to pick up some electrochemical arrays, improvised components and polymer capacitors, and my research told me to go to civil war systems and fight in combat zones then collect these resources from the wreckage, and of course getting combat bonds. I have collected a load of electrochemical arrays and several polymer capacitors but so far, not found any improvised components. I am rather enjoying the combat though, getting in behind a python and blasting away, my hardest fights seem to be with other vultures.

I am hoping that I will find other materials soon.

Fly safe o7

I have been back in the bubble for about 5 days now, cashing in those exploration credits took me over 4 billion credits and more than doubled my credit balance, I decided to splash out a bit of cash on some new ships, so I bought my viper mk 3 and engineered it, its fast, but not as fast as I would like so I will need to get some more engineering done on it to bring it up to the potential I am hoping for. I also got a fer de lance, a ship I have wanted for many years, it just reminds me of the automobiles of old that they used to use for driving very quickly over short distances, dragsters I think they were called, huge engines on a sleek frame and bonkers to watch as they would sometimes explode, mine is a fantastic predator red colour. Finally I bought myself a mining/cargo ship, a Type 10, it has 384 tons of cargo space and kitted out with mining equipment, I have spent a few days mining planetary rings in Shinrarta Dezhra, I didn't scan the rings to look for hotspots, but just pootled about prospecting, I did manage to net some void opals and my first ever lot of low temp diamonds as well. I am on my way to making the money back on the ships I bought.

Today I relocated back to Eravate, my home system and transferred my new ships over from Shinrarta Dezhra to where the rest of my ships are stored in Cleve Hub. I jumped into my vulture and decided to go and hang out at the nav point to see if I could collect a few bounties, and gather some materials and data whilst I was there, I bagged a few ships including taking down a type 10 almost solo and a few other large ships as well including a cutter but that one was more a team effort with the security forces. combat was a lot of fun, I had forgotten how much fun it is to hang behind a large ship pounding it from behind with my lasers.... Ah, my ships have arrived, hopefully some of the data and materials I have gathered will enable me to further engineer them. o7 Commanders