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)

Tuesday 24 February 2015

This clearly went wrong

Naddodur Terminal, Yembo. I was still in the same game session from my last blog entry. Very tired after this long way back, tired from analysing the data, from typing my story in this blog. What I should have done, is log out and get some sleep already. What I did is to hang on and dawdle in the internet and in the game without sense. So the following story happened.

From this thread in the ED forum, I gathered that there must be quite many earthlike worlds, which I just did not find yet. One system in particlar, Myriesly RZ-DE D13-2140, even seems to have five of them! I have to admit that reports like this relativise my pride in my little successful venture from the last two sessions. Then again, this guy had started his expedition on 18 January, so he was out there about a month (and playing each evening as he wrote). His income was an astounding 43 million Credits. Even if I scaled up my 700k Credits gained from two game sessions out there up to, say, 22 days, I would only  have earned only about 7.7 million Credits. All those seeming more frequent earthlike planets, which eluded me so far, must be worth quite a bit, then!

The Galnet news read that the Sirius Corporation offers sizeable monetary rewards for explorer who bring data to them at Nourse Orbital, Lambda Andromeda. If I just had seen these news earlier! However, according to this thread in the ED forum, the goal is already almost through. The forum thread tells also that the News on the ship-building seem to be another red herring or bug.

I was not sure what to do next, maybe some trading again so that I can re-afford a well equipped Asp? The 5% bonus from the community event saves me 300k Credits on buying the Asp here. This is what I promptly did, after all, my blunder with the reputation gain at this station for just one faction instead of the whole Federation, was because I wanted to profit from this discount.

After the sale, this left me with about 9 million Credits to outfit it. Then I had to realize that the shop here only offers a class 5C frameshift drive. Then I also realized that I already missed the sleek red design of my Cobra. And on top, I realized I did not really feel like trading.

So I re-sold the Asp and bought back a Cobra. Re-fitting everything with class A components failed regarding the trusters and a fuel scoop. So I tiredly went on a shopping tour again, through some systems. After a visit to two different systems I found what I wanted. It was just weird that my cash seemed to be less than it was before I followed my mislead whim and bought the Asp. Fact was, I just had 4.1 million Credits left, and with my Cobra from before, I had had 6.4 million Credits. I dearly hoped that I did not just throw my cash away with this little confused buy-and-sell deeds? Maybe I had bought some more exensive components? No idea, I though my old Cobra had been also all-class-A-equipped...

Then I caught a posting in the ED forum which talks about a 10% loss when selling a ship. Let´s see, the value of my Asp was about 15 million, and my Cobra was about 9 million. This would mean 2.4 million loss. Roughly this amount indeed did correspond to the difference in my cash level. So it was kind of official for me that I just had thrown 2.4 million Credits out of the window.

You know what is annoying me? Obscure information! Buying and selling ships and equipment was reimbursed 1:1 all the time through the beta and gamma game, maybe even at launch, and at some point, Frontier apparently snuck in that 10%-loss "feature"!


All in all, with the destruction on my first expedition and this shopping session gone horribly wrong, I now had incurred losses on two sessions, which will have to be re-earned, by trading best profit routes roughly two sessions, more sessions if I follow other activities instead. It also means that I have to look on overall four sessions without any economic gain. I am so glad this is just a game and not real-life! I guess if I was a self-made entrepreneur, I would probably quickly land on the streets...

For my gameplay, this revelation also means I am now practically stuck with my Cobra, because there is no way I can switch ships to an 128 ton long range Asp freighter anymore without incurring a financial loss of about 1 million Credits. Sigh.

So, this is why I hereby swear to in future leave a game session when it´s done and don´t hang on when I should have known better. Some things just don´t go well, especially when you undertake them when already too tired.

2 comments:

  1. Falken. Before selling a ship, sell all your added parts for 100% refund. Only lose 10% on the basic hull. You lose less that way.

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  2. Thanks, good to know! However, Frontier really should work on the game´s inner consistency...

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