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)

Thursday 16 October 2014

Short profit runs

This thread is very interesting; 38% of Elite-fans are 30-39 years old, 37% are 40 - 49. So, these are "my kind of people", roughly overall 2600 similar-aged other nerds, world wide, who play Elite: Dangerous and participate in the forum. I cannot help but feel nerdier than before. At least concerning World of Warcraft, I could hide behind 13 million likeminded people playing it...

In the ED forum, Frontier announced a new patch 2.06 yesterday evening, which I missed while wandering The Secret World. Well, it was more a séjour in the character creator than anything else. However, there still is feedback which indicates that it did not solve issues for some players. I guess it would have been a mircale if that patch would have solved all crash and connection problems for all players. But maybe, this time, I am one of the lucky ones who got their issues solved? Let´s see!

Firing up the game. Wow. Really fast loading now, well under 10 seconds. My Lakon Type 6 is floating in space, close to Fisher Platform in LHS64. I have 545k Credits cash. And a lot of stolen goods in my 100 tonne cargo hold. This is from the expired transport missions from last time. So I jettison my illegal cargo. The 21 Betrantide amongst all the cheap rabble could be worth something but dont want to distract myself right now by looking for a black market. Jettisoning was not a good idea, as I discover. Apparently, the space outpost is still too close range, so the authority fines me for throwing garbage on the traffic lanes. Makes me 6000 Credits poorer. Oh my. The little perfectionist inside me flinches, of course.

While I check for the amount of fine in the right menu, I already approach the station and activate my docking request macro. Too much at once. The docking macro only works when starting out of every menu, so naturally, it screws up now and I have to request docking manually. After that, my ship seems to be disabled. I cannot steer or accelerate anymore. A relog does not help. A restart client does not help. Another bug? No, a brain fart. My docking request macro was activated while I was in he rightmenu, so it had caused a very particular click in the modules section, namely "thrusters offline". It took me about 15 minutes to figure this out. Nothing beats being constantly reminded of your own foolishness.

Having finally docked at the outpost, I take a fetch mission for 12 mineral extractors, betrantite, coltan. The latter I only took because, once more, I confuse metals with minerals and thought that this outpost seels coltan. But no, they sell "cobalt". Looks like this will be a long evening full of stupid mistakes!

And indeed, next thing is to ty to sell exploration data at universal cartographics. This was bugged, but fortunately, patch 2.06 has it sorted out and it works. I only receive about 2000 Credits, for data about five or six systems. And I accidentally buy a lot of data, because the "sell all data" button still does not work and after each sale of a single system data, the menu starts on the top again, where the buy data options are.

Meanwhile, on the bulletin board, a hauling mission for 58k Credits popped up, to Locke´s Claim, in the very same system. Some more small hauling tasks added, and I am on my way. Supercruise is laggy, but it works and I drop safely out of it. I do not wish for more, glad I am finally back in the game! At Fisher Platform, I am extremely lucky. Three cargo missions for >50k Cr, back to Fisher Platform, are overall available. Only 12 minutes time to resolve them, though, and this conflicts my current fetch mission´s timers. But this is so totally worth ditching my current fetch missions. After the run back to Locke´s Claim, I have 767k Credits.

Time to try out if hyperspace finally works again, plotting a course to NLTT49528. I take a packet of small hauling missions, about 23 if I counted correctly and launch. Engage! Hyperspace is laggy, also heartstoppingly blurry for a moment, then endless. Aww. After 2 minutes, the client spits me out to a black screen. The mouse pointer works, but no menu appears. I kill process via the task manager. Relog, enter "open play" yields me a "Could not connect to server" message. But the second time works, as it did the last times. And it works fast! I repeat the attempt two times, but experience the same pattern again.

Trying to hyperjump to a different system, Wolf1080, results in an even more blurry hyperspace (no cloud background), and then the same pattern again. As a next try, I relog into solo. Still the first "could not connect to server", then I am in within two seconds. Hyperjump works here. At least something. Although it somehow feels weirdly wrong for me to play solo. By the time I finally arrive at Fuller Station in NLTT49528, some missions already have exired. I remember to jettison the goods while in supercruise so that I won´t be fined again when too close to the station.

Roughly two hours later, I have about 1,5 million Credits, just by farming the hauling missions in-system of LHS64, and some few hops to the neighbouring NLTT49528. It was a bit grindy and of course became boring in the end, but for this session, I am just content to be back in the game.

What annoyes me is that I still am not able to get a handle on those "fetch stolen goods" missions. There was one instant when one of them requested 12 coltan, and I just had accepted a 50k-Credit mission to transport 23 coltan. I could have abandoned this one in order to finally have matching stolen goods in my hold. Alas, this idea came to me two seconds after I had pressed the launch button, and the occasion was gone. The completionist within me feels immensively provoked by obscure or infeasable missions.

Repeating such a session as this one would probably be a bit too boring, e.g. until I am at 6 million Credits, in order to afford an Asp. With probably already enough cash, it would also be attractive for me to switch over again to a well fitted combat ship, the Viper or the Eagle. But this is for next session to decide; where the cosmic winds will blow me, I guess.

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