A trade route along 343 lightseconds

Serebrov Station, Yakabugai. I thought about a plan for today, but i fear that the trade route will drop low after some time and I better work it while it is still profitable. How right I am. My profit for superconductors is down to 82.300 CR, from ~120k CR. Zut alors. Oh well, tantalum is still in high supply/demand, so I guess it is worth trading a little bit more, even if profits have lessened by ~40k CR.

I guess there are some little green men which scan player behaviour and just throttle a trade route down over night once a player worked on it. Joke aside, I know it is supposed to be a "living" economy, however, the game mechanic effect is, that you have to better play one horridly long game session in order to really (ab)use a trading route which you spent already time on finding. Short sessions will be wasted by looking for trade routes, and once you come back next session, that work was almost in vain. I would therefore prefer either a less fast decline in supply/demand, or better even, a faster way to find a trade route. Slopey´s best price calculator with its automatic load of commodity data helped me a lot in beta1 to cut down chores by providing relief me from taking handwritten notes so that I could focus on zipping around. I still do not get over the fact that Frontier blocked that tool.

My piloting is sloppy today; I did not sleep well and am unconcentrated. I fear grinding more of this route will make me fall asleep. I would be happy for some team work, even if rudimentary. Consequently, a little show off when approaching Serebrov Station goes wrong. I approach on a vertical vector with boost, then go into FAoff, then change vector towards the docking entracne, switch FAon, boost. The vertical drift is too strong, which makes my ship go off-target by about 15 degrees, vertical thrust correction is too weak at this speed, and my ship crashes right into the station wall. CMDR Middlehoff Mcnulty in his hauler, who I wanted to race to the docking entrance, must have a good laugh by now. Only 12 % hull left. Repair cost: 45.351 CR. Gulp. There goes almost half of my profit. Still, I guess I am very luckyto not having lost everything.

Since I am not content with neither the lowered profit nor the boring flight times (since that incident with the Clipper, I evade now interdictions in my Type 6), it is time to look what has changed with prices in Montalcini-City. For starters, a low demand of superconductors. Not good. But tantalum from Aristotle would sell at high demand for 950 CR per unit here, too. I bring gold to Aristotle Gateway, just to not have an empty cargo hold and check for things I could bring back. Gallium is a good tip, but also weird. There is no supply or demand listed in Aristotle, but apparently, you can sell it there anyways, and the profit span, bringing it in from Montalcini, is 939 CR per unit. Ok, do not look a gift horse into the mouth, this route is better now and my flight time is cut in half, with only 343 ls distance. A round trip takes about 10 minutes, and less interdictions because of shorter travel time.

There is a CMDR Deviant Imp in a Sidewinder zooming about in supercruise, and he pops a question to me, how I got to the Type 6. I have to tell him, take notes of high supply/demand and trade away. But basically I should have told him to do some bounty hunting first, I think this gives a slightly faster kickstart. At least, it is some more action than this, and you are going to be better prepared for those pesky interdictions.

In the ED forum, a guy showed off his wealth: 71 million Credits. If you assume you can do 6 routes per hour with ~200k CR profit, equals ~1,2 million per hour, this is still an awful lot of grind of 60 hours doing that route. Maybe he did an exploit, who knows. Well, profit will double after buying and outfitting an Asp, after about 10 hours. Then assuming 220 tons load, would be still 25 hours to go. Not sure if an upgrade to a Dropship will give cargo space for more profit, again, though. If I now just knew whether there would be a wipe or not!

If I was playing the X-series, I would now set the Type 6 on autopilot, buy one or two Eagles as escort and let it grind away while I moved on. Wrong game. Which makes me think whether the idea of persistent commodity amounts for all players does have drawbacks. Otherwise, Frontier could just limit commodities to fewer numbers so that a long grind on one single route would not happen at all.

Some routes later, there is another Type 6 with CMDR Locutos arriving first at Aristotle Gateway and I consequently get the docking permission denied; there is only one medium landing pad on outposts. So I have to stand the line and watch him doing his landing maneuver, unload/load, and start again. It is interesting to finally see a Type 6 in action from outside. He also encounters the same bug as me, when an NPC ship has occupied the landing platform before you; the first cleared docking does not work as the landing pad does not react to your presence, when you then cancel and re-request, the required landing direction is then always inversed.

At some point, I look into the outfitting offers of Montalcini-City, and to my surprise, I find almost all class A outfits for the Type 6, except for the frameshift drive. And, yes, I do have the cash to fit everything, including two railguns! Wow! Now I want an opponent for testing! An unidentified signal fits nicely. An Eagle has wanted status. Deploy railguns, fire! Instead of dissolving the Eagle into a blue energy cloud, my guns just hum and do nothing except for sucking my weapon capacitor (3 pips!) dry. Damn. Some testing, but nothing I do makes them fire. I should probably log a ticket. I have had this bug in beta1, but the reason at that time, a double setting of mouse2, is not the reason now. I make away before the "wanted" Eagle scans and attacks me

At the next occasion I switch out the rail guns for gimballed beam lasers. Then I do another test with a Sidewinder, which foolishly interdicts me. But those beams behave more like strawberry goo. I was much more accurate and faster and did more damage with my loaned pulse lasers! The Sidewinder escapes with 28% hull, while I was firing almost exclusively close range and with 3 pips in weapon energy (and a class A power coupling!). I want my loaned pulse lasers back!

Well, the evening has passed and it does not make much sense to start a new project tonight. I should plan a bit where I want to be until release. Now after two nights of trading, one night of tedious taking notes, I crave again for some more action - despite some exciting close encounters during my last trading session.