The escort is prepping as I speak. About 33 minutes to go ’till the escort happens as I type this. And to calm my fear, they sent me a thing to show just how professional they are. But due to the confidentiality of this mission, I cannot share said thing with you guys.
What I can say, is I have full confidence in them to get me to Farseer alive. They know what they’re doing, and I trust them. They’re going to protect me as if I was the President of the US. It feels so awesome! 😀
.
.
.
Ok, so.. I haven’t reached Farseer’s place -yet-. I’m currently at the ‘Bernard’s Star’ system which is in the bubble, safely docked at ‘LEVI-STRAUSS INSTALLATION’.
We are to meet up again at 1900 UTC (3pm EDT). The reason is it was late for them and they needed to go to bed. But that wasn’t the only reason. There was two more.
————————————————————————
The first one is I was carrying illegit cargo (hence why the pirates wanted me dead). It was the 5 canisters of Narcotics, and two canisters of Personal Weapons. The odd thing is, when I picked them up during my solo expedition, they said they were “LEGAL CARGO”.
It seemed like every occupied system banned these. Surprised I never got scanned by an authority vessel when in these systems. Was scanned once, and it said I was clean (but this was outside of these systems).
Due to this (and how the IW couldn’t help me during NPC interdictions because of the second thing that is listed below), I had to do an emergency jump out of there (to save my ass). Which is how I wound up in Bernard’s Star, and was suggested I dump my illegit cargo and sell what I got at the nearest port, which I did.
I’ve also managed to sell my SRV scan data that was for the Federation (as this system is controlled by them).
And finally the second thing…
ED’s servers were really being annoying, mainly due to instancing in a system. In order for the IW to escort me safely to my destination, we must all see eachother at all times. And the servers made this really hard, frequently having them (or myself) having to log out completely and back in and rejoining the Wing with them.
Sometimes, the plan works perfectly – with the lead pilot calling out a system, jumping, making sure it’s safe, then set my course and go follow him (with the other IW pilot behind me).
Other times after jumping in, we can only see our Wing beacons and not the actual ship and told “explorer, please move away from the star and drop out to normal space” in order for them to see me. And most of the time after I do, I have to log out and back in (due to the servers being a prick).
It’s quite annoying, but I’ll do whatever it takes to ensure a safe arrival.
There was also this issue (happened twice to him) of one of the IW pilots not able to hear me or the other IW pilot. This lead to large delays of attempting to acknowledge requests between me and him (like being told to go into supercruise, yet not able to tell me that I’m the one that needs to).
But now that I’m at this station, I managed to repair my hull (and as said, sold my cargo).
Calculated how much of a difference it was before (including hull repair costs) and after the cargo price (and selling my SRV scan data to the Federation), and it totals around 294,566 Credits. Almost 300,000 CR. Not bad. I wasn’t expecting much from the cargo anyway. The real payout will be from the system/planet scanning.
But that’s about it. Despite the delays, I really enjoyed the professional protection of the Iridium Wing. If only if it was possible to hire NPC escorts, and have them attack pirates (while I watched from a safe distance). But I imagine I would need something like an Anaconda (or any other large-sized ship).
There’s still that highly-wanted feature coming in either 2.2 or 2.3, to give us AI fighters (not to mention multicrew — aka having real players in your ship).
And if you were to ask me if the IW is worth hiring? Definitely. They know what they’re doing! Again, really love the professionalism. Just wish I could had gotten back to Farseer.
Well, hopefully it’ll be easier on Friday at 3pm EDT. Closer to Farseer then I was before. And with no cargo, pirates -should- leave me alone.
.
.
.
Also, I hear your complaints of “where are the game reviews”. ED has taken my interest tenfold right now (if you couldn’t tell). But between when I get to Farseer and the GNE’s launch date (which I’m pretty hyped about as the trailer was shown during GamesCom 2016), I’ll be showing off other games (including PS+’s games for this month that I have yet to play).
So don’t worry, readers. You’ll get what you ask for, quite soon. 🙂