Flieger, grüß' mir die Sonne, grüß' mir die Sterne und grüß' mir den Mond. Dein Leben, das ist ein Schweben, durch die Ferne, die keiner bewohnt! - Hans Albers, F.P.1 antwortet nicht (Adaptation in the 80s: Extrabreit)

Sunday 28 September 2014

Some quick combat blogging

I am playing more than I can write. Time contraints. Here a quicklog, drawn up from rather incomplete and hastily scribbled notes.

First game session found me doing PvE/PvP exclusively, with my Cobra (2xC2 gimballed pulse lasers, 2xC4 cannons). I chose the Eranin high conflict distress signal. I chose Eranin side to start with, because just attacking everybody would be probably  too much to handle alone. I logged several engagements with CMDRs.

- CMDR ? (Viper) flees after me 75% and him 64% hull without shields.
- CMDR Gesar destroys me by collision; no way to know if I got him, too.
- 2 CMDR vanish before I can get close
- 4 CMDRs, obviously Fed side, I am dead before I have scanned even one. Killscreen says "CMDR Dagobah"
- No CMDRs on my radar, but I am dead within fractions of seconds while I engaged a Fed Anaconda. Killscreen does not give any name ("your ship has been destroyed").
- Encounter CMDR Dagobah again, after a short wrestle I am destroyed by something but killscreen does not show any name again.
- Killed again in fractions of second, radar showed no CMDR ship, killscreen says "killed by CMDR Dagobah".

As I approach the distress signal once again, I get contacted by said CMDR Dagobah, wants me to join Fed side. Sure, why not, my mission is to interdict all sides concerned, after all.

- Join side with CMDR Dagobah, but he has to jump due to NPC fire; I destroy the rest but he does not return.
- CMDR Dagobah with 3 other CMDRs, but I get engaged and destroyed by several NPC Eranin Sidewinders. Embarrasing.

After this inderlude, I seem to have lost my new short ally. I realise that when destroyed you always start at the last station you docked, not the station of the system you go killed in. So I dock now in Azeban, because until now I always started from Asellus Prime. A new Cobra costs me 9.000 Credits, so it is really no problem to get killed at this point in the game. Joining Eranin side again.

- CMDR Kydechner in an Anaconda. I engage, but even though I thought I had avoided his frontguns, he manages to destroy me; not sure though because the killscreen does not show his name. Must be gimbals? Indication of being hit is very scarce, sometimes ships rubberband away from each other, so it is almost impossible to stick close to a ship.

- Killed by NPC again, by ramming this time. Embarrasing.
- CMDR Michael Searle disengages before meaningful combat can start.

From here on, I read in the ED forum that new conflict zones have appeared close to I Bootis´ station Chango Dock. Those are much closer to the station, so time to get there again is at least halved. From now on I join Fed side.

- Killed by NPC. Rrragh. Did I loose skill or what? If three Sidewinders have pinned you down it is very difficult to get the turn around; you have to realize a situation like this very quickly in order to still be able to boost to safety.
- CMDR Fromtonrange. Quite a chap. There are four CMRD and even before I have chosen side, he attacks and destroys me within two or three seconds.
- Some NPC only encounters.
- CMDR Fromtonrange again. I marked him as kill-on-sight and shoot him without having chosen sides yet. He boost out of range and jumps, though. Strange, even I chose Fed side after that, they remain yellow, but Eranin becomes red.
- Killed by NPC again.

With this I quit my Friday night session. Saturday night is as follows.

I am a bit tired from battle. I notice that when I try to engage CMDR Higgs Bosson and he escapes. Next engagement is NPC only and then I quit combat. I am tired and yearn for something more calm and relyable. After some pondering I decide to buy again a Lakon9. I did not fly this thing since I received my EDtracker for true "head turning" in the cockpit, and it should be gorgeous in combination with the Lakon9´s full round view cockpit.

Checking ranges via the "mission bulletin board" method (they show the range of your ship):
- empty gives 18,something ly
- 4 C2 missiles still give 18,something ly
- Full cargo of 440 drops it to 13,12 ly

I fly a mission with computer components to Draconis h, fully excpecting that I would also make a good price for the rest of my cargo hold with computer components. Unfortunately, this is not the case, I would have to sell them with a loss there. So I fly back to Aulin.

Slopey´s trading tool has been taken offline due to an interdiction of Frontier. They say it makes the game buggy. Fortunately, Slopey tells me in the forum, I can still use the current accumulated data, it will just not update. This is enough for me; I just need a rough idea which system has a good demand or supply of certain goods. It works fine for the last of the session.

- 435 units computer components from I Bootis sell in Aulin for a profit of 125 k Cr.
- Terrain enrichments cost 3900 Cr in Aulin and sell in Eranin for 5500 Cr, for a total profit of 706 k Cr.
- I repeat that single-run, going back empty because Eranin is so totally sold out on everything. The profit is still worth it.

- After five repetitions, I notice a profit-drop of 50 k Cr. The terrain enrichments are still in high supply for almost unchanged price in Aulin, but demand in Eranin is now medium. I use this occasion to find a similar high demand, and guess from Slopey´s old data that Opala might be it.
- Bingo, Opala buys for a profit of 700 k Cr again. Better yet, I can bring Fish (440 Cr.) back to Aulin (895 Cr.) and make an extra 175k Cr.

Unfortunately, after another run, Opala´s demand of terrain enrichment systems has already dropped to medium, and my profit dropped accordingly to 575 k Cr. With this, I decide to call it a night. I probably should have waited until the next session in order to sell my stuff, but this could also backfire and I am content with the profit from this game session. My cash accounts now for 14 million Credits, plus I own a 3 m Cr. worth of a Lakon9 (accounted from resale of the Cobra).

As a summary, combat zones are now cranked up with other CMDR´s presence, however, the PvP suffers still from glitches like rubberbanding, invisibility, instantkills without visualisation of being hit firstplace. It still is fun, but I can imagine a lot of frustration if this is not fixed in the new beta client which arrives on Tuesday.
Trading was as fun as it used to be, a bit more guesswork because of Slopey´s tool not being able to update with ingame data anymore. Without any Slopey, having to log every commodity manually would become too tedious for me. I really hope the trade-route ingame tool will be fully functional from Tuesday onward!

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