Time vs Money

Another potential gain is to sell the equipment quickly. If you can make 500cr profit in 5days rather than in 10 days it would be better because you could then have the potential to make more in the remaining 5 days. Eventually all trades come down to a rate of increase of your credits. The faster the better.

As it happens, Venus is passing very close to Earth in its orbit as well as Oldy, the Ranger Station. Dropping off the goods there would mean a sale in 2 days or 4 days respectively compared to an 8 day trek across the solar system to Dream. Earth being the closest is an obvious choice as long as it has around the same prices.

Turns out it's got better prices! 95cr per equipment means that I'll rake in an extra 700cr over what I was expecting. Quick! Turn around and sell some more while the prices are running hot!

Full Hull vs High Returns

The hull conundrum bred some interesting choices. Do I leave minerals in my hull due to the current poor price, or do I clear them out for more manufactured equipment that is offered at an unbelievable rate? Time for some math:

1) 38 tonnes @ 6cr now would give 228cr to bring my total to 2665. That would allow buying 42 tonnes of equipment @ 63cr each. Selling all 42 for potentially 77cr would eventually net 3234cr. Add the 19cr we'd have left after buying the equipment would mean we should have 3253cr.

2) Leave the rocks for now and get 11cr when I get back to Dream. 38 tonnes would give 418cr. The hull can only take another 29 tonne, so 29 equipment @ 63 would cost 1827 (which we have) and net 2233cr if selling at 77cr each in Dream. That would mean we should have 2437 - 1827 + 2233 + 418 = 3261cr

So it's (marginally) better to leave the rocks in the hull. The first solution suffers from having a partly empty hull. All our money has been invested in high return equipment, but the free areas of the hull could have been used to make additional profit off the rocks we sold at a lower price.

The opposite is true for solution 2; We have 610cr left over after filling our hull with equipment, but equipment would make more money (63->77=14cr) per unit of space than carrying the rocks (6->11=5cr). We'd be better off filling our hold with as much equipment that we could buy

So solution 3, try to maximize both hull space and money:
3) If we sell 10 units of rocks @ 6cr we bolster our initial money from 2437 to 2497, which will allow us to buy 39 units of equipment, the exact amount of space we have left. So we'd leave Venus with 0 tonnes of space and 40cr to our name. We'd then sell off the remaining 28 tonnes of rock @ 11cr for 308cr and sell off the 39 units of equipment for potentially 77cr to make 3003cr. That should leave us with 40 + 308 + 3003 = 3351cr! Almost 100cr better off by just leveraging the capacity of both hull and money.

Venus arrival

Lasers definitely work on Asteroids. Managed to blast 2 rocks down into smaller chunks for pickup, but one still hit me !!?! Space is a dangerous place.

One of the pieces scanned up at 68 tonnes! That sucker would have filled the hull, but my gripper couldn't drag anything larger than 40. Maybe I can nudge it down to Venus? Nup.

The Venus landing pad was full of traders with the same idea; drop off medicines while the price is sky high. It didn't matter much though, the meds went for double the price I bought them for. Nice little tidy profit. They weren't so keen on the rocks though as the disease had halted production of equipment and ore was everywhere.

The government's placed an export incentive on the remaining manufactured equipment to keep the economy moving during the crisis. Basically means they're cheap. Cheap enough to buy and make another trip to the medical centre for another double-up in money. I still have rocks clogging up my hull though. Do I sell them here for a crappy 6cr a pop or hold on to them for 11cr at Dream? Choices, choices...

Rocks for Medicine

On my way to Medical Centre Dream, an asteroid ploughed into my ship! Shook me up a little and bent the mining laser a little. Hmm, mining laser. Maybe I'm supposed to shoot the rocks? The explosion left a couple of lesser rocks that the ship's scanner picked up as valuable, so I let the gripper do its thing and dragged them aboard.

Turns out the scanner was right. Traders were happy to part with more meds when shown the rocks I'd collected. Might be a worthwhile venture; I give you rocks, you give me money. Win / Win.

Medicine to Venus

It's amazing how much a little ranger badge changes people's attitude toward you. I was able to head straight in to the chancellor's office to receive a mission rather than being a guard's punching bag.

Sounds like there's an outbreak on Venus again; Infoclemidia. I'm tasked to take them a hull full of stims from the medical base to 'ease the pressure'. Might turn a tidy profit too!

Raw Recruit

Today's the big day: 1st of January, 3300. Turn of the century and the biggest party this side of Rigel. Not for me though, I'll be making my own fireworks in the Old Ranger training centre.

Space flight is different than what I imagined. They steer like the aeroflots at home when in the atmosphere, but once you get out the controls tighten up and your bearings get screwed. Dad's advice was to travel fast and watch your back. Well, I got the first part down pat and it's AWESOME!

Ranger Station "Old" is a hive of activity. Here's a pic of my training instructor along with my omni-watch overlay to translate what he's saying:



Apparently the stories Dad used to tell me about the Dominators are real, and as a Ranger they are our primary task. We're free to tackle them any way we see fit though, so trading, mercenary work, or even piracy could be tolerated if it means getting closer to information about the dominators. They are still a little cagey about the details until I've completed the training, but I'm in no rush to meet them.

We've also stumbled across a couple of extra bonuses Dad had preinstalled, a Rethone cannon and an advanced engine. I guess he was serious about the speed:



Oh hey, that was me in the corner!

Speaking of Dad I found him in the list of Rangers too. They have somewhat of a leaderboard to promote competition amongst the pilots. I'm at the bottom with Orollin above me with a couple of missions already completed and some Dominator action. Nothing like my Dad though; 39 dominators killed to be 14th on the list!




We're also taken through a briefing on map reading. Our solar system is simply know as the "Sun" inside the "Qaragon" sector (what happened to the 'u'?). Phaavy and Khisha sectors have systems within one jump, although I'm told we'll be getting to that later ..



First mission is to fly back to Earth. If it weren't for the bio exam I could have saved myself the trip!