Let there be Light

Beta 1.1 - city lights now on the dark side of planets. 

Too much ED?

You know you've played too much @EliteDangerous when you watch Interstellar and think "Aren't Saturn's rings small".

Shiny Ship

After making 6 million to boost my bank balance selling Performance Enhancers "Viagra" to Seeking Luxuries Type 9 Lakons at Beta Sculptoris yesterday; I finally stopped procrastinating bought my Clipper.

The Clipper is probably the best looking ship in the game so far.  Its not really designed for fighting but it is a really good transport ship.  If you have to haul cargo - why not do it in style?  

I stripped my ASP of its A5 drive and the expensive Advanced Discovery and Detailed Surface scanners and installed them in the clipper to save me some cash.  Even with the A5 drive it will still only jump 19 ly which is such a shame as the clear cockpit window makes it the ideal exploration vessel.  

  

It feels quite zippy for such a large ship.  The graphic signature on the large pad almost filled it instead of the fly-sized signature of the Type 7 that I was flying earlier but the Clipper feels like a smaller ship to maneuver.  Or maybe its just that the Type 7 handles like an ugly bus!!

Now the hard grind to kit it out.   I'm not really happy about trading in the size 6 shield generator yet - as doing so will allow me to add another 64 cargo slots - in favour of a less powerful class 4 or even 3 shield.  I think I'll do a few runs at a lower profit margin until I'm happy I've mastered the feel of flying it and that I won't go crunch in it whilst docking.  But even without the class 6 slot I am still sporting a pretty respectable 176 tonnes.  To run without the shield generator - eek - gives it 240.

Definitely needs a larger power plant as the FSD raises 40 heat points when it charges - not good when I was interdicted scooping on my first jump out out Beta-1 Tucanae by an Eagle. Must admit I did panic a bit when I started cooking myself to give me 6% hull loss. Lol - £42k repair bill for that when I docked.

I created a new HUD layout.  The standard orange HUD and the blue lights of the Clipper's cockpit simply do not go!

My HUD.

My ASP is so big

My ASP is so big it casts a shadow...

Bo'Groll - he was clean too :-)

On the First Day of Christmas

On the twelfth day of Christmas my true love gave to me:-

• 15 Diso Ma Corn (230,685 cr profit)
• 9 Leestian Evil Juice (138,744 cr profit)
• 7 Azure Milk (115,345 cr profit)
• 7 Lavian Brandy (114,548 cr profit)
• 1 Leathery Eggs (13,633 cr profit)

Happy Christmas to the people of Lange Vision in Mara, and 612,955 credit profit for me :-)

The Naming of Names

Back in the Kickstarter I reserved the CMDR name "Mara Jade" for £15.

Mara Jade was a character in the Star Wars Extended Universe novels.  She started off being an Imperial Assassin for the Emperor, but on his death at the hands of the Skywalkers she found herself out of a job and took employment working for the Smuggler Talon Karrde.  Mara Jade soon rose through the ranks of Karrde's organisation and ended up as his second in command.  She was given her own Ship "Jade's Fire".  Then over the course of the next decade went on many adventures and missions with the Star Wars Characters, at one time even being seen on the arm of Lando Calrissian before finally marrying Luke Skywalker.

Mara has been my avatar in Runescape for 7 years so it only seemed fair to continue the tradition in Elite.  I was strapped for cash at the time of the Kickstarter or I wish I had pledged more to get the higher levels of rewards.  So I didn't have enough spare cash to name a planet, a star or an NPC.

So I was simply stoked in Gamma to find that Mara had her own system anyway.  Its down in Empire space about 50 light years from Achenar.  It's my adopted home in the game, and it would be such a shame not to live there and store all my ships there, wouldn't it?

Not to be forgotten, her last name Jade (also the name of my cat), got a look in too, and he has his own planet in the Cemeiss system.