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 22 February 2015

Destruction

Almach, also known as constellation of Andromeda. From the wikipedia entry on Gamma Andromedae B:
"It was later discovered that γ2 Andromedae is itself a triple star system. What appears as a single star to the naked eye is thus a quadruple star system, approximately 350 light-years from the Earth." 
Tired as I was at the end of my last extended session, this system still deserves a little bit of sight seeing; did Frontier accomodate a that accurate representation? Not exactly, it seems. Here in the game, Almach is a orange-ish giant star and Gamma Andromedae B is a class B blue-white star, not a triple star system itself. A gas giant about 22,000 ls out complements the system here. The scales are impressive; once I am those 22,000 ls out, the blue-white "huge" star, which impressed me so much at the end of my last session, is but a tiny speck, while Almach itself still is of considerable size.



- relativity sometimes needs you to take a step back out

Onwards, towards the Pleiades. It is also annoying that everytime I target an astronomical object in the system, my plotted course resets itself and I have to go back into the galaxy map and re-plot it.

The next system, Synuefai XG-W C28-12 [must be a typo, cannot find it anymore!] has a T-Tauri type star, very young. And indeed, I cannot scoop any fuel from it. There are six huge planets here which have to be gas giants. They are unexplored, so I give in again to my completionist side. Which, after all, yields a very nice surprise; the second gas giant accomodaes a water based life form of carbon based algae. I wonder how much a discovery like this is going to be worth.

Then the catastrophe happens. Interdiction, I am sloppy again typing my blog, and it is NOT the small EAGLE I had seen on my radar before I had alt-tabbed into my blog notes, but a FREAKING BIG Imperial Clipper! Routine kicks in which thankfully makes me not waste precious seconds. I realize that it rated "harmless", so I go for it. Bad decision? I don´t know, it should have been doable.



 - Imperial Clipper - the bane of my existence










It goes well for some rounds, the Clipper is down to 70% hull and I still have my shield. But an Imperial Clipper has a terrible fast turning rate, as well as a very good speed and acceleration, and I frequently get into its firing arc. The Asp is clearly an inferior ship in comparision. But the pilot is crappy "harmless", so I should habe been able to emerge victorious. Then the Clipper does the dreaded "full reverse" maneuver, I hit boost to get again quickly close and below of its guns. The STUPID Clipper again accelerates bowward and holds firing position towards me. So, what does happen when to ships accelerate towards each other and both want to keep the other in their firing arc? Right. They collide. And because that freaking stupid Clipper even managed to tear my shields down in the last moment, and my ship was already battered from the last encounter (only 44% hull left), it happens as it must.



Dumbfounded I stare at the screen. My ship got destroyed. By an NPC ship. Sigh. I feel so humiliated. There goes the life of an intrepid explorer. There goes the ore which I had so painfully extracted and scooped in during my travels. I wonder, is my exploration data, accumulated over two long game sessions, now lost forever, too? This would be hard to swallow.

But first, my resurrected persona has to deal with a case of almost bankruptcy. I can only rebuy my ship by taking a huge loan of 160,455 CR. I guess I am lucky that the allowed maximum still is 200,000 CR. But this will be a huge hypothek on my earnings for a while.

I "awake" back in "Under Construction", New Yembo. And indeed. Visiting Universal Cartographic in the station menu, all exploration data is gone. I don´t believe it. About eight hours of travelling, exploring and surface scanning, valuable high metal content planets, a water world, a gas giant with water based life forms, all are gone, wiped out.

And I also realize that my full surface scan of New Yembo has dramaticall dropped in value. Was it at 135k CR two sessions before, it is now only worth 2,825 CR. I should have guessed that the naming contest would entice a lot of CMDRs to fly this way.

Well, I guess I am lucky that I am not back to the starter ship, a crappy little Sidewinder.

I need a drink.

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