Elite Dangerous Session 10 to Session N

Hello again. CMDR Maya Ulniian here. Its been almost a year since I graduated from pilot school and took up a mysterious offer of a sidewinder starship and a career as an independent pilot. I had meant to detail each of my exploits along the way but that has clearly fallen by the wayside.

So, what have I been doing? Well, a lot of the time, I've been living vicariously through watching CMDR Cryptography. He's been working as a pilot for a lot longer and has amassed a significant fortune as well as a large fleet of different ships so has a lot more fun options than I do. This makes the motivation to advance my own position somewhat low, especially as I am also now essentially financially independent. For quite a while now I have been flying an Asp Explorer, configured for general mission running and trade. I still have my Diamondback Scout and Vulture but truth be told I've moved on from combat as the primary money making method.

For a time I was running anti-skimmer missions in a couple of systems. The missions were relatively common for a while and the particular systems I was working from tended to target the same planetary factions so I was able to stack up many missions for which the same targets counted for all different employers. Someone on Galnet pointed out that simple dumbfire missiles made killing skimmers even easier than doing it the "right" way in my SRV, so I blew through quite a lot of missions pretty quickly this way. All the factions that I was working for soon had me at allied status and the payouts were often in the several million per mission.  I did lose a couple of ships due to poor piloting near the ground but that barely made a dent in the progress I was making.  Somewhere along the line, the bases I was attacking hired some muscle and I often had to evade a defending fighting ship. Fighting them close to the ground was generally not wise, but a quick flyby was often enough to get them to follow me away from the base and I then lost them in some nearby canyons. There would then be enough time to come back to the base and nuke any remaining skimmers in relative peace.

Eventually, the economic conditions in the systems changed and skimmer kill missions dried up. I looked for similar opportunities elsewhere for a while but gave up after a few false starts. There are other places offering stacked skimmer destruction missions but I was fairly bored of them by now. By chance, I ended up in the Eleu system, which is the home system of the Social Eleu Progressive Party, a minor faction of pilots who support initiatives for exploration. They took part in the Dangerous Games back when I was a young pilot but unfortunately lost out to EG pilots, who became the 11th major powerplay faction. Perhaps worse, EG pilots were installed in systems very close to Eleu and that caused a certain amount of disruption to SEPP's control of local systems. I started running missions for SEPP and reached out to their public comms channel for guidance on how best to work for their interests in the region - or at least not muck it up! 

I have basically made the Eleu region my home for several months now. I am allied with SEPP and most of the other local factions so mission running in this small bubble of systems is pretty lucrative. Probably two-thirds of my net wealth has now come from running missions in this area.
My money generating capacity now is such that I feel no pressure to really work on it in any concerted fashion. I can get more money in an hour or two than the cost of a ship capable of generating money at a decent rate, so its pretty much self sustaining. This means I have no fear of losing ships and can do fun things like race an Eagle through planetary canyons or inside stations.

As mentioned before, I now spend a lot of my time watching CMDR Cryptography instead. He's got a selection of big ships and swarms of smaller ones. We have both been grinding out Federation rank as part of mission running activities and have only got a couple more ranks to go before being able to get access to the Corvette. The grind is real, and harsh, so this is only happening as a side activity to whatever else we are doing. I still intend to go on a longish exploration voyage, probably to Sag A* via Colonia sometime soonish but that is a time commitment I've not yet been able to do.

Until next time,
CMDR Maya Ulniian, 30th March 3303.

Free to play games..

does F2p games make more money then Payed games what happens with microtransactions is it worth it to pay more money for some skins or payed transfers does having microtransactions start at a young age why is it that the young age is more into microtransactions then saving money and working towards a better life ? when will people just say no to these scams to pump more money out of us free to play games seem to just pump out ex packs and skin to bring people in and it seem to work but when that main amount of people are just the young aged folks it dosent seem to go for the older folks maybe it just me but most of the young people are using their parents credit cards if it fair for the parents to pay for their addiction so when it comes down to it Microtransactions will they stay around to suck more blood out of us or will people catch on and say no more..

yours great fully

Gravediggaz333

When days get slow and get boring....

i have been slowing right down im not sure if the lack of games that are poorly made or the game with huge money that still fall flat but gaming needs to get back into the golden Age when game made you cry where you fell in love with the person or you had a secret romance ( cough Tali from mass effect ) .. are game like these suppose to be ignored can we go back to games that takes 30 hours  but we love them so much we played them for 60 hours when we wanted to finish every little bit what about time  when we dream about games.. not like now were everything is same old same old we as people need to tell the gaming companies that we wish a game had this or that we as gamers need to yell post and talk how a game should be and maybe the love that we have in the games we play maybe the companies to say yes and we have a new Golden Age were we as people matter again.. but the way its going it seems that a good or great game will only come out every year instead of every month...

thanks if you made it this far

your friend

GraveDiggaz333

A day in the life of a gamer..

my gaming life has slowed down i no longer playing wow i dont see my self going back but when crypt and i play No Sky Skies  im going to really enjoy it. its strange when you look at it gaming has really slowed down there one game a month that is really good but all the other games are really bad its like finding a gem in a pile of mud. when you think about it even AAA games are getting bad even with a lots of money ? when a indie game has more fun then AAA games why is that when everything is getting Stranger but im think wow has lost alot of people. Legion will bring back some people but from what i have seen it will bring back a few people but its mostly a reskin of older games i also heard that its has WoD Re skin like the follower system which alot of people never liked.

Well that my life as a gamer

thank you
GraveDiggaz333

A break in the Rhythm

Good intentions were no match for a heavy dose of Real life!  No blogging and very little gaming for several days has derailed my plans for regular updates here.  Even the little Elite Dangerous I managed was almost more of a setback than advancing the cause. One of the real life interruptions came while I was out farming at the High RES again. I went AFK during a relatively quiet time and came back 20 minutes later to the rebuy screen. I’m not sure exactly what happened but I suspect my ship was either shot at by or collided with hostile ships. I had left it stationary well above the asteroid field, “safe” from danger. Clearly that was not the case.  Rebuy cost was just under 1 million and adds a third destroyed ship to my history.

Since Elite Dangerous requires a certain degree of concentration and has no easy pause button, I’ve played more Diablo on my season 6 mage.  I was around level 40 after my last serious gaming session and over the last 5 or so days in short bursts I’ve managed to get to 70 and collect the first 4 parts of the free set. I have no decent legendary items at level 70 yet so am still struggling on Torment 1 or 2 for the most part.

Just last night I managed to get my Eve online characters updated and sorted out my buggy client. My trade character is slowly ramping back up with the buying and selling and my other characters now have more skills in the training queue. My accounts are so old now that I’m struggling to find untrained skills that will ever be useful, or that I can afford. I have level 5 mastery in pretty much all sub-capital ships and am now held back by the expensive skill books remaining. If I actually played the game more I’d be able to afford them!

Hopefully this evening’s game session is somewhere back to normal and I can progress decently in Elite Dangerous.

A close encounter

There is no Elite Dangerous flying to report on tonight. Its after midnight, so I’m technically late posting to the blog which I usually get done by about 10 pm.  Instead, I have a cautionary tale of the modern age – A close encounter with an internet link spiral! These unnatural phenomena warp time and space and can easily suck in the unwary web surfer. They can start from the most innocent place but soon descend into depths unknown from which you may never return!

Tonight’s link spiral actually started in the most beautiful way possible – I was trying to find music on youtube that my preschool aged daughter had performed to at today’s Mothers Day celebration at kindergarten. (Mother’s day here is this coming Sunday, 8th May).  All the kids were dancing to “I’m a Believer”, the version from Shrek. This lead to the original version by The Monkees and the remake by Smash Mouth. Then of course we watched the Shrek in the swamp karaoke, which is a medley of a whole bunch of songs. My kids loved dancing along.
The list is (From Wikipedia) :
"Just the Way You Are" by Billy Joel
"Like a Virgin" by Madonna
"Baby Got Back" by Sir Mix-a-Lot
"Feelings" by Morris Albert
"YMCA" by The Village People
"Do You Really Want to Hurt Me" by Culture Club
"Stayin' Alive" by Bee Gees
"Who Let the Dogs Out?" by Baha Men
"Dance to the Music" by Sly & The Family Stone
"Happy Together" by The Turtles

Then, after the kids went to bed, I got sucked in watching several more
Such as
Culture Club - Karma Chameleon
The Black Eyed Peas - My Humps
MC Hammer - U Can't Touch This

But then some Elite Dangerous parodies appeared:
Here is a Link to CMDR Hugh Mann’s ED playlist.  I particularly liked “Let Me Interdict You” and “Livin La Vida Imperia” as well as “Uptown PvP” but all of them are very good.

... and then I remembered I had a blog to write and some game to play!
Of course I’ve been sidetracked again somewhat while finding all the links for this post. Maybe I haven’t fully reached escape velocity yet.

CMDR Cryptography, lost in 1990's techno videos!

D3 Season 6 and other pursuits

Instead of playing Elite this session, I started up a season 6 character on Diablo III.  I played a bit on season 5 as a witchdoctor so took mage this time around.  Even with my fairly limited play time I’ve zoomed through the levels pretty quickly.  Level 30 in a bit over 3 hours compares pretty favourably to my original characters which are 20+ hours in and only barely in the 30’s. I’ve seen a season 6 preparation guide which says I’m doing it slowly – they are at 70 already in a bit over 3 hours. I’m still having fun my way and am not in any real hurry.

I’ve also played a little bit of Defiance in ½ to 1 hour bursts over the last week or so. Shooters aren’t my usual game but I’ve quite enjoyed this one in the year or so I’ve been dabbling casually. Prior to restarting my blogging I’d spent about 70% of my gaming time in SWTOR where I have multiple max-level alts.  Since I’ve not even started the current expansion story line yet, there’s plenty of content for me there and I expect I’ll pick it back up soon.

World of Warcraft however isn’t of much interest to me now. I’m still subscribed and log in a couple times each month but Legion may well be the end for my time in Azeroth.  My account was opened in the final months of Vanilla and has been subscribed continuously since then.  It was still new and fresh to me throughout the Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King expansions. I initially liked Cataclysm’s storyline and most gameplay changes but I began to find that the dramatic changes to most every zone broke my immersion into the world and it no longer felt like home. The introduction of goblins, worgen and later the pandas further broke my connection to the world. 

Some of the gameplay changes also reduced my connection to my characters, especially the nerfing of talent trees in later expansions. Making levelling content trivially easy hasn’t helped either. Warlords of Draenor was better in that for a while there I actually cared about the story but that soon wore off with all the scripted cut-scenes and confusing massed battles where I had no idea of objectives. Allied npc’s that simply face-roll the content for you doesn’t help much either. If simply spamming your basic attacks on random enemies still wins the event there’s not much incentive to care. Legion had better bring back some of the spark!

Its patch Tuesday for many games as I write this – right in peak evening game time here in east Australia so I’m not sure which I’ll play after posting.  Back to Elite for tomorrow most likely!

-        ~Cryptography

Elite Dangerous Session 9

Hello again. CMDR Maya Ulniian here.  Over the weekend I actually got the time to run quite a few sorties out to the RES. I started with an A rated “golden” Diamondback Scout and finished with an almost completely upgraded Vulture. My current limitations are not really money but the engineering capabilities of Haxel Port in LTT 15574. Some scenes from my recent trips should highlight the changes.

Balance at end of last report, as well as current balance. I’ve almost doubled wealth with only 154 more kills. High end ships make it a lot simpler.

 

A famous victim.  No idea what an imperial Baron was doing in a federal dropship!

A couple of combat shots. When taking out an anaconda you need to be up close!

 

 

The view of a flyby of a pair of moons not far from the ring system. These two moons are very close to each other and I believe landing is possible on both.

 

My new vulture speeds up money gathering significantly. Those large size weapons hit a lot harder than the small and medium on the Viper or Diamondback Scout making short work of any subsystems.  My original goal was to get 12 to 18 million to spend on an exploration ship but I’m considering pushing for a much better ship around the 50 million mark.  Grinding at the RES is probably the fastest way at least for the short term.

Back to the grind for now!

CMDR Maya Ulniian, 2^nd May 3302

Elite Dangerous Session 8

Hello again. CMDR Maya Ulniian here.  Silent running in a ship that uses lasers extensively is not terribly effective. I had the opportunity to test it out for a short time in my latest visit to the RES. My shields had been wiped out in a combat against a python when a Federal Drop Ship dropped in. Ducking and weaving seemed to avoid most damage long enough for me to finish off the python but once I turned on the FDS my ship was unfortunately directly in the line of fire.  With shields gone anyway there was little lost in activating silent running mode.  I am not sure if it helped to avoid incoming fire initially, since we were basically head on to each other but I feel it broke his tracking once I got around to his flanks. As soon as I opened fire myself however I rapidly overheated. An all multicannon loadout would probably have fewer issues.

Somewhere along the line I managed to pick up a wanted flag so I eventually had to run when a couple of police ships joined in. The FDS was almost dead before I made the jump.  That was basically the end for this session as I docked up, repaired and waited out the bounty timer before returning to LTT 15574 and Haxel Port ready for next time.

I have sold off the Viper and re-invested the surplus back into the DBS. I now have a “golden” A-rated ship  that flies pretty nicely! With the weekend ahead of me I can look forward to finishing off with this ship and probably switching to a Vulture. 

A quick look at my statistics says I’ve amassed 284 confirmed kills at an average of a bit over 28,600 credits per bounty. Smaller ships are just a lot easier to kill!

Until next time,

CMDR Maya Ulniian, 29/30th April 3302