I also need to look up my blog notes so far to get back to what I was at. Which, of course, gives me only a faint idea of what to do next. My best course of action would be now to either get down with trading, in order to brush the rust of my pilot skills with some station starts and landings, or right in the middle of it, grab my Eagle, which is stored in Yakabugai, and do some bounty hunting. I now remember my reluctance to enter combat: My reputation with the Federation had received some severe downgrading, and, checking, yes, they see me still as unfriendly. No idea how reputation logging has changed since then.
The galaxy map´s trade route finder seems to be still a mess. Superconductors are at high demand here, yet no trade route is shown. Might be because there is none, but I find this hardly believable. Could be something to try out, though. Or, check back whether my old, in-system trade routes in Yagabugai still work?
My ship has a range of 15.07 ly when fully laden, 22.11 (22.67? a bit unclear in the outfitting screen) when empty. Yakabugai is 15.71 ly away, dang! Maybe I should remove mass( e.g. the guns) to increase range? But only when I have found a worthwhile trade route!
- where to go, where to go... lots of musing and planning required
I am also updating Slopeys Best Price Calculator and start it. First thing I do is delete all data; I want to use it only as my notepad for commodity data. Then I start typing in commodity data on those who can have the highest possible profit span, so mainly the medium to high priced items. I quickly realize that this is a chore when having to tab back and forth between programmes. I need a second monitor or at least run the game in windowed mode.
Hmmm... second monitor, I happen to have one, but a proper cable is missing, as it is still VGA without any DVI connector. I probably should order one? Somme rummaging through old cartons from my last four computers and a game session later, I have found a VGA-DVI adapter and am proud owner of a dual monitor setup. Jay, first time, and contrary to my experience from setting up computers so far, it works immediately! Well, I had to figure out that there are two different types of DVI connectors, one which brings also along the analog VGA signal (DVI-I) and one which does not (DVI-D), had to realize that my VGA-DVI adapter was of the DVI-I type and did not plug into the free DVI-D port on my graphic card, then had to luckily find out that my graphic card has one of each type of DVI connector and I had used the DVI-I for my primary monitor, which only needs a DVI-D connection, and all of this wasn´t immediately obvious to me, until on a hunch I unplugged my primary monitor to actually look it up...
Anyways. Here I am. Elite runs now in the graphic setting "borderless" and while in the station menu I can go with my mouse seemlessly from one monitor to the other (in space it still requires alt-tab), where my blog notes and Slopey´s BPC are opened. The latter auto-updates itself on launch and I again am saddled with a full database. Delete! And then I call up the commodity market and analyse trade data, and get up and go with some routine trade runs.
Wow. I feel very unsecure, a hint how a total newb might feel when he enters the game first time. The sound effect of supercruise has changed a little bit, it has a more agressive engine sound now when accellerating. And I am sure the graphics have gotten a little update, too. I can see... a kind of nebula behind Serebrov Station in Yakabugai which I do not remember. But I could be wrong, my memory of such details is fuzzy.
Levi Montalcini City. "Docking request denied" still makes me shudder from those old beta times, but here, it is only caused by a CMDR taking of from the only one medium sized landing pad of this outpost and I can quickly land, too. The "inverse landing pad" bug has been resolved, too; I realize this when I inconsciously approach the pad inverse as if the bug was still present and I actually have to turn 180 degrees to the normal landing direction. Good news. BTW, lots of CMDR ships zipping about, more than I remember. So the networking code has again improved, I guess.
- one thing never changes; waiting queues
Artistotle Gateway. Again a queue for landing, two CMDRs before me. This systems seems to be rather busy! CMDR Leuchov who got to land before me disappears into the station, however, this does not enable me to use the landing pad. He then comes back up, but does not launch. While I am waiting, there appear two more commanders, and the first one who launched before, CMDR Quirlond, still sticks around for some time; I wonder why. The waiting is long. Six CMDRs hang around at times. Weird, there are also a lot of Sidewinders; they should be able to use one of the small landing pads, no? Well, once I land I fear I will for sure block the medium landing pad for some time, until I have typed in all commodity data! But for now, I am sure we have a bug here. There is no discernible reason why I should not be able to land. I try a relog, in order to get into a different instance on the servers. Bingo. Should have done this earlier!
Typing in complete commodity data is a chore. I have now three complete sets and can test whether my old trade routes from last year still exist.
No. Aristotle (Tantalum) - Levi-Montalcini (Gallium) for roughly 980 CR profit per unit was my last best-profit route on 8 December 2014. It seems that prices have been turned around a lot since then, because now, Gallium would only sell at a loss in this system and Tantalum is not available at all anymore. The best profit route seems to now require a trip to another system, LTT 7548 being the only one I have data from, which suggests: Yakabugai, Levi-Montalcini (Gold, 96k CR) LTT 7548, Boltzman Gateway (Auto-Fabricators, 100k CR). This is roughly 200k CR per round trip, roughly 1000 CR profit per unit loaded, which is already good to go. Now, if my ship could one-jump that distance, it would be even better! Even after selling all weaponry and upgrading to a C3 shield generator with less mass, I am still some 0.5 ly short of the required jump distance.
Sigh. There must be some better opportunities, though, probably up to 150k CR per run. Maybe I should aquire i.e. type in more data before I commit? This manual data mining has cost a lot of time and my time this night is almost up. To do at least something tonight, I fly Beryllium from Aristotle to Serebrov. Should be 83k CR profit, and it does after a short 1000 ls trip over there. I manage to do a fast approach in supercruise and let my ship then decelerate rapidly by passing by close to the planet; this seems to allow for a faster travel than to just do a standard deceleration by keeping my supercruise speed in the "blue range" on the speed indicator.
As a last thing tonight, I check the bulletin board in Serebrov Station. And I am surprised with some new mission structure. Apparently, the game now takes into account your standing. The only mission I see is a fetch mission in order to improve my standing with the Federation. Abysmal payout, of course. But at least some chance to redeem my unfriendly standing. I do not accept it, because I do not know where to source non-lethal weapons yet, and when the board refreshes, even that measly mission is gone for good.
- uhm, not very many missions for unfriendlies, it seems
Re-reading the news, I can see a lot of crazily high bounties, as high as 19 million Credits for a CMDR Derath, followed by CMDR Redan at almost 6 million Credits.Wow. I wish for a lucky encounter in my Eagle and a lucky shot!
Checking the galaxy map one last time, I can see some bigger systems on the other side of LTT 7548. This was probably the reason why I ventured in that direction before my great pause. I should check for BD-11 4932, an industrial/extraction economy which could complement nicely to the high tech/refinery economy of LTT 7548; both systems have millions of population and thus a chance of good supply/demand markets, too.
Bottomline for this session: If you want to make good money, the game needs a lot of planning and thinking about what to do. Piloting also requires more skill and attention than I remember. It is probably just a bit of a missing routine, but I can see again the learning curve for a new player. Which is not a bad thing; games should be a bit challenging, shouldn´t they!?!
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