My solo adventures in an Aurora, 3.6.1 (story time)

[Lorddarthvik]

Welcome to my logbook/diary/whinig thread. Here I'll describe how my play sessions end up.
While I know that many of you couldnt care less about how the aurora performs as you already have way more expensive ships, I think it's a good indicator of how the game will play to a huge percentage of backers, and thus it should be prioritized over "endgame" level content like multicrew capital ships.

Anyways, the premise is as follows:
The ship: Base Aurora MR
Starting funds: 26k auec
The goal: get enough aUEC to purchase an Avenger through solo mission running, before the next reset, by playing at least an hour a day, using only the aurora whenever possible

Day 0. Prep day
Got out of bed on Port O, and went Armor shopping. It's important to be prepared for those bunker cleaning missions. Full set of medium armor fits into the budget nicely.
Hopped over to the nearest rest stop ( in my Aurora ofc) to pick up a Gallant rifle, as I found it to be the best all-rounder a few patches ago, I doubt that changed much. Added a new 3x sight as well for the zoom and accuracy.
Ended the session by flying outside of the armistice zone, came to a full stop and went to bed (inside the ship).

Day 1.
Was hoping to wake up inside my ship, and it did work!
Checked the mission board, and it was almost empty! The new location based system is kinda annoying sometimes. So I had to qt back to Crusader, and check again. Found the bounty assessment mission, which sent me to Grim HEX just like it did in 3.6.0.
Shortly after arriving at Yela, the bounty was withdrawn. That's 20minutes down the drain... I landed at Grim HEX.
Found the Personal delivery mission to take human burgers or whatever to a junkyard next to Lorville. I guessed it was illegal, but who cares, it payes well (7000+auec). Picked up the package, put in front of the bed inside the ship, and hit qt!
About 20 seconds into the flight I got dropped out of qt! Oh oh, here comes the 5oh... but they didn't. There was no one around. So I went on my merry way, and 10+ minutes later I landed at the junkyard. Walked in with package in hand, while another player ran past me to his Avenger. He didn't try to shoot me so I was in a good mood. Moments later the package was delivered and I accepted another delivery of alien dildos from that location back to Grim HEX.
Started up the ship
Shields, check
Engines, check
Weapons, check
Fuel,... oh crap
I was almost out of QT fuel. So I headed for the nearest RnR station. The trip was uneventful, and short. Made the landing, pulled up the mobiglas to refuel.. And everything was showing red, unavailable.
No way to refuel, what now?
In theory, I could have taken out the package, claimed the ship, waited 5mins, and been on my way. Simple. Instead I opted for the faster option of switching over to my 300i, with package in hand.
From here, the story is not so relevant cos I had to use another ship. If I didn't have one I would've had to claim the aurora instead. Anyways, the session was broken.
On my way to Grim HEX I got pulled over by da police, they did their scan, and let me go! I had a box of illegal cargo, brightly lit and visible through the moonroof of the 300i, yet they didn't notice! Amatures...
Landed at HEX, fed the package to the machine and logged out.
All in all, not a bad session! Made 15k auec in roughly 1.5-2 hours. Could be much better, but still, not bad for a first day of work.

I'll keep posting, every couple of days. Feel free to add your stories of Starter ship shenanigans!

Tldr.:
- Aurora is a fine ship for box deliveries
- long range qt jumps deplete the qt fuel really fast
- refueling/repair interface is broken
- bounty missions are still broken
- game is very stable

 

[Montoya]

Aurora is still the best ship!

 

[Printimus]

I do love me some Aurora

 

[Radegast74]

FYI, for refueling, it seems you have to be *in the exact* center for it to work (same with repairing, etc.).

Use "Autoland" at the stations when you want to refuel or repair (you know, hold "N").

 

[Mastersan]

Aurora is the best ship indeed. Why diverting from the Aurora line-up? Just upgrade to the next size-up Aurora, - a Constellation

 

[NaffNaffBobFace]

This story makes me want to get my LX out of buyback. Dat leather seat tho!

 

[CosmicTrader]

CCU that MR to an Aurora LN........ It is a much better ship. (only $10 USD)
Twice the Armour, better Shields and lots more/better Weapons.
I love the LN.....One of the best ships in SC.

 

[Lorddarthvik]

Thanks for all the tips!
I tried the autoland thing to refuel, it worked, but not always. Either the autoland or the refueling, stuff is still bugged.
I will not upgrade my MR, not even to an LN, I like it as it is. For now.

So, some more progress, or a lack there of.

Day 2.

Spawned on Grim HEX, took a delivery mission to Lorville from Daymar, just to move around a bit.
Arrived at Lorville, as soon as I stepped out my ship, I just died. No apparent reason, just dead. The cargo was in my hands but ofc it disappeared the moment it hit the floor, so that was 30 minutes well spent...
After spawning, I accepted a bunker clearing mission right next to Lorville!
A short trip later, my screen was shaken by the concentrated fire from the AA guns dotted around the bunker. After pointing the nose of my mighty aurora at the ground, and a short prayer to the shields to hold, I sprayed one of the guns with hot laser fire... and nothing happened. So I turned the shop around and went in for another dive!
And again, nothing happened, although by this time my front shield was far gone.
So after some flying around repeated attempts at doing some sorta damage to the AA guns, I gave up, and ran for the hills.
Or the be more precise, the nearest outcropping of rocks, that would cover my crash landing.
With gallant in hand, and screen shaking violently, I started my sprint towards the base, curious to see if the guns would aim at me instead of my ship landed behind the rocks. But nope, they kept hammering the landscape.
Went in, found the lift, went down, shot the baddies, of whom some were spawned inside each other so a short burst to one had netted 2-3 kills, and came back out after the mission was marked complete. All the while my screen was shaking crazy from there AA guns still firing. It was very annoying. Walked back to ship, and carefully took off the ground just a little bit, so the rocks still covered me mostly while I flew out of range of the guns.
Btw, while at the bunker, I threw a grenade at one of the guns, and emptied 3 magazines from the gallant into it, to absolutely zero effect. Guess I'll bring a rail gun next time!
After a this ground based action, I decided it was about time to try some bounty hunting in space again.
Well, it started out about the same as last time. I was given a location near one of the moon's orbital markers, next to a debris field. After hitting the marker for the bounty location, nothing seemed to happen, it was broken again. But I thought maybe I wasnt thinking enough! The mission states that I have to "find" the target!
So I started pinging the heck out of the debris field in the hopes it would show up! But ofc, it wasn't the bounty that showed up, but another player! In an Aurora LN, with a red triangle around it on my HUD! He was doing the same as I, pinging the debris field, so I didn't pay much attention to him, but then the police showed up, chasing after him through the the fields.
Now I was quiet a good distance away, like 6k, so I just sat back and watched as the player dodged the fire from the police ships, flew in circles around them, started closing the distance with my ship... wait what??! And that was when the first volley from his 4 guns hit me! Oh crap. But it's just another Aurora, right?
To battle!!!
We danced around for longer then it took me to write this post on my phone, but in the end, results were achieved! To put it bluntly, he wasn't bad, he just wasn't any good either. It must have been sync/lag issues, cos I was hitting him all the time, while he was kinda always shooting just a little bit behind me.
I had to pound him for literally 10+ minutes at least, until finally he blew to glorious little pieces of shrapnel, gore, and space dust.
Yay, my first ever proper victory against another player!
Luckily the police just effed off after he was gone, they didn't take offense at me offing a criminal. At least something worked lol
So, filled with the joy of a successful hunt, I went back to Lorville, and touched down in the hangar.
Then the ship shook itself, sank into the floor, flipped upside down, and stopped, with half it's nose stuck in the pavement.
Ingot out my seat, went to the door, clicked exit, and as I climbed through the floor, I got teleported next to my ship.
And promptly died.
End of day 2.
+5000 auec, 2+ hours spent. Not. A good day.

Day 3.

Again on Lorville, accepted a bounty mission, went to location, it was a no show. Then I tried to do a pickup box from crashed ship mission, but when I got out of my ship, I just died instantly. Twice. Tried to do a short ranged delivery fromsoftware moon to the other, but the box fell through my ship and ended up in the middle of the moon, which I only realized after flying around the moon for 10minutes hoping that it just came out the other side. Tried another type of bounty mission, where it gave me a timer to rendezvous! Ofc, as I was on Lorville, by the time I got in the air, the 7minutes were up.4 hours spent, zero results! Total disappointment.
Ended the session with alt-f4. This was a rare day when I could play during rh day, and late at night, so I came back for the second round, determined to make some auec.
I decided to just cut my losses and do the no-effort grind. Flew back to Crusader, filled up at Port O, accepted 4! deliveries from Daymar? to an ArcCorp moon.
Pick up was at 2 locations on Daymar, so I spent roughly 20-30mins doing that, then flew to whichever moon of ArcCorp.
On the moon I had 3 delivery locations, that took another 20-minjtes to fly around I think. With the trip time of something like 10+ minutes, it was a little over an hour to get this done, and it netted me 28k+ auec! Best day so far in terms of profits!
And I had plenty of time to practice my new hobby of lock picking irl while traveling to ArcCorp! Lol


Offtopic a bit, but today Boredgamer put up a video about starter ships, where the first thing he says is to ignore the delivery missions and do the buggy bounty missions instead cos you can't to boxes in an aurora! I dunno about you, but to me it seems like the best way to make money in a starter aurora is to just stack deliveries and grind em, instead of spending days looking for a server where the bounty mission works, and then spending half an hour trying to whittle down the shields on a buccaneer or whatever the first bounty throws at you.

 

[NaffNaffBobFace]

Thanks for sharing day 2 and 3 :)

"fromsoftware" Aha, your Autocucumber gives you away - are you an Armored Core or Dark Souls fan? ;)

 

[Michael]

Aurora is the best ship indeed. Why diverting from the Aurora line-up? Just upgrade to the next size-up Aurora, - a Constellation

The better is clearly the Freelancer MAX

 

[Lorddarthvik]

Thanks for sharing day 2 and 3 :)

"fromsoftware" Aha, your Autocucumber gives you away - are you an Armored Core or Dark Souls fan? ;)

Dammit, betrayed by the cucumber again!
I'm a big fan of Dark Souls although I never finished 1 or 2, and there's still all of the DLC for 3 that I haven't even touched.
Armored Core sounds familiar, was there a made for Kinect version of that? Cos if yes, then I played the demo. At least I tried playing the demo but it was God awful lol

 

[NaffNaffBobFace]

Dammit, betrayed by the cucumber again!
I'm a big fan of Dark Souls although I never finished 1 or 2, and there's still all of the DLC for 3 that I haven't even touched.
Armored Core sounds familiar, was there a made for Kinect version of that? Cos if yes, then I played the demo. At least I tried playing the demo but it was God awful lol

Armoured Core was fast paced Mech-Warrior Giant Battling Robot action but with way more customization and speed, you could change almost all the components, legs, arms, torso, head, weapons. Really, really good. Playstation exclusive though from what I know.

The Xbox game you may have played could have been Steel Betalion, the first game had a HUGE specialist controller, the third in this series was using the Kennect but it failed on it's ass because the Kinekt controlds were crap, apparently.

 

[Lorddarthvik]

Armoured Core was fast paced Mech-Warrior Giant Battling Robot action but with way more customization and speed, you could change almost all the components, legs, arms, torso, head, weapons. Really, really good. Playstation exclusive though from what I know.

The Xbox game you may have played could have been Steel Betalion, the first game had a HUGE specialist controller, the third in this series was using the Kennect but it failed on it's ass because the Kinekt controlds were crap, apparently.

Ah yes, that's was it! The controls were junk, I kept ejecting instead of starting the engine or firing the gun or something, as the movement was basically the same. And it didn't register at al like 80% of the time.
To be honest, I love mech stuff, but only very specific stuff, and that's mostly in Mechwarrior. Boxy chicken mechs. I don't care much for human shaped (like most Japanese) mechs. Also never owned a PS, so I missed out on armored Core.

Anyways, onwards to glory!
Day 4.
Didn't have much time, so I picked simple, legal, delivery quest.
On my way to the pickup location, I got interdicted by the police. No big deal, my Aurora was empty, I had no stars.. I mean criminal rating. Well, I didn't until now that is. I got scanned, and immediately shot at for no apparent reason, and gained a rating. Fuck.
I didn't wanted to deal with it with my limited playtime, so I just let them kill me.
Respawnd with no crim rating, got my Aurora after a minute, hopped in and went to pick up the box.
All went smoothly. Landed at Lorville, got out with box on hand, all was well. Went to the metro station, and realized I had to drop off the package at one of the outer gates! Time to check which one it is, so I pulled up my mobiglas to check.
Aaaand that was the mistake. After quitting the mobiglas, I started moving and saw my hands swing into view...
The box was gone.
35-40 minutes all in all, zero results.


Now, something I keep forgetting to check is my network connection I use. My pc is on wifi (reasons, don't ask) about 3 meters from the wifi router, with clear line of sight. The pc has a usb3 extension plugged into the mobo, and that is placed at about 1.8m height, well above the desk. I'm using a zyxel whatever 1200ac dingle with foldout antenna. It can do 5ghz ac and older, meaning it does 2.4N just fine. The router is an Asus 56 ac something something. Very nice design, but no visible antennas.
I've noticed that with some games, like WoW, the 2.4 ghz n works really well, but the 5ghz ac desyncs after a few minutes! It's odd really, but others have reported this as well and Blizz said "just use 2.4ghz", basically equivalent to " we don't give a f".
Other games work perfectly fine on 5ghz, like WoT, BF1, TESO...
Star Citizen seems to be a mixed bag. It looks like it's working fine on 5ghz, but I feel.like there are more lag spikes, and more sync issues. On 2.4 n things feel smoother, and then not, as I get more disconnects and sometimes heavier stuttering in more populated areas, so it'sone the bandwidth is not enough.
Windows 10s handling of this setup is atrocious, particularly the 5ghz bit. I have to keep reinstalling the manufacturers driver, cos win10 just replaces it with its own junk driver that keeps dropping the connection every 2 minutes.
Another annoying thing, It keeps randomly switching back to 2.4ghz, or if I manually set it to that, it reconnects to 5ghz after a restart. So I usually don't know which connection I'm using, and this might be the cause of better / worse days regarding sync issues like my ships falling through floors, boxes falling out the world and such.

In short, I guess I don't have a solution or tip for what is the better way in case you are on wifi and have the same issues as I do, apart from getting a wired connection ofc.

 

[NaffNaffBobFace]

Ah yes, that's was it! The controls were junk, I kept ejecting instead of starting the engine or firing the gun or something, as the movement was basically the same. And it didn't register at al like 80% of the time.
To be honest, I love mech stuff, but only very specific stuff, and that's mostly in Mechwarrior. Boxy chicken mechs. I don't care much for human shaped (like most Japanese) mechs. Also never owned a PS, so I missed out on armored Core.

Anyways, onwards to glory!
Day 4.
Didn't have much time, so I picked simple, legal, delivery quest.
On my way to the pickup location, I got interdicted by the police. No big deal, my Aurora was empty, I had no stars.. I mean criminal rating. Well, I didn't until now that is. I got scanned, and immediately shot at for no apparent reason, and gained a rating. Fuck.
I didn't wanted to deal with it with my limited playtime, so I just let them kill me.
Respawnd with no crim rating, got my Aurora after a minute, hopped in and went to pick up the box.
All went smoothly. Landed at Lorville, got out with box on hand, all was well. Went to the metro station, and realized I had to drop off the package at one of the outer gates! Time to check which one it is, so I pulled up my mobiglas to check.
Aaaand that was the mistake. After quitting the mobiglas, I started moving and saw my hands swing into view...
The box was gone.
35-40 minutes all in all, zero results.


Now, something I keep forgetting to check is my network connection I use. My pc is on wifi (reasons, don't ask) about 3 meters from the wifi router, with clear line of sight. The pc has a usb3 extension plugged into the mobo, and that is placed at about 1.8m height, well above the desk. I'm using a zyxel whatever 1200ac dingle with foldout antenna. It can do 5ghz ac and older, meaning it does 2.4N just fine. The router is an Asus 56 ac something something. Very nice design, but no visible antennas.
I've noticed that with some games, like WoW, the 2.4 ghz n works really well, but the 5ghz ac desyncs after a few minutes! It's odd really, but others have reported this as well and Blizz said "just use 2.4ghz", basically equivalent to " we don't give a f".
Other games work perfectly fine on 5ghz, like WoT, BF1, TESO...
Star Citizen seems to be a mixed bag. It looks like it's working fine on 5ghz, but I feel.like there are more lag spikes, and more sync issues. On 2.4 n things feel smoother, and then not, as I get more disconnects and sometimes heavier stuttering in more populated areas, so it'sone the bandwidth is not enough.
Windows 10s handling of this setup is atrocious, particularly the 5ghz bit. I have to keep reinstalling the manufacturers driver, cos win10 just replaces it with its own junk driver that keeps dropping the connection every 2 minutes.
Another annoying thing, It keeps randomly switching back to 2.4ghz, or if I manually set it to that, it reconnects to 5ghz after a restart. So I usually don't know which connection I'm using, and this might be the cause of better / worse days regarding sync issues like my ships falling through floors, boxes falling out the world and such.

In short, I guess I don't have a solution or tip for what is the better way in case you are on wifi and have the same issues as I do, apart from getting a wired connection ofc.

Thanks for the tip about carrying things and checking the Mobiglas. Think I might be avoiding missions for the moment.

I'm on Wifi too as my machine is the other side of the room to the router, and a 20m long cable would probably fail to hit even Wifi speeds. Also, the stock router my ISP sent is only 2.4 so I don't have the headache of trying to work out how to get the best out of it. When crap is your only option, use the crap.

 

[JonSpencer]

Aurora is still the best ship!

...and it always will be!

 

[Lorddarthvik]

Day 5.

Let's try to do a bounty mission, again....
Went to the marked location near one of Lorvilles moon's. Arrived at the spot, radar was empty... and then not! Finally! It worked!
The bounty showed up in a buccaneer. Spent like 5 minutes whittling down its shields and finally causing enough damage to send it into a spin!
It was traveling in a straight line, but spinning like a top, and every time a tried placing the crosshair on it, the ESP kicked in and moved it off, cos of the spin! It was impossible to hit it! So I matched speed about 200m behind it, went into the control options, bound a key to esp toggle, and once I turned off the damned thing I could hit it!
It took like 30seconds of constant fire, every single piece was blown off of it and hit me in the process, but finally it blew upI
Results!
Got my 5k for the bounty, and a new Assessment mission, which I promptly accepted. It was next to delamar / levski in the asteroid belt, so I headed there. Stopped on the way for fuel at an RnR and to see if I could add some upgrades. Refueling didn't work, even though I auto-landed in the middle of the pad. The ui was blue but said "not available" on all. So I just grabbed a regulus power plant, cos I hoped it would supply enough power for some extra guns, and went on to Levski.
Arrived next to the planet, then spent a good 5 minutes circling it to the spot where the bounty was.
And ofc it wasn't there. Thwarted again by the bugs...
Oh well, shit happens.
Landed, fueling was now marked red. Went to the shops, bought two size1 neutron guns l, attached em to the wings, claimed the ship just to get it refueled, and accepted a "clean out the area" mission.
This is one of those times missions where you have to first get to a rendezvous point on time. With the qt points around delamar not working, and the points totally removed from the asteroid field, I had to fly there as fast as the little thing would go, not hitting the asteroids. Barely made it in the 7 minutes given, and I was pointed at a patrol zone 550km away, with 5 minutes time limit.
Yep, that is an impossible task. The MR can go at 1212 m/s top speed, and that is 550.000m to do in less then 300 seconds. You can math it all you want, thats not gonna happen. I tried my best by qt jumping back from the asteroid field to near the planet, but that left me with 350km to go with less than 4 minutes left.
I was way out when the timer ticked to zero, failing the mission.
So, what to do now... well, there was a Beacon calling for assist only 200k away, let's check it out!
Arrived on the spot to find an aurora LN hanging in space, doing nothing. It was marked friendly. So I stepped out of my ship, and EVAd up close, to see if I could get in or something. It was an AI ship ofc, no reactions, no prompts to open the door.
It was time to try and glitch my gun through the window and try to shoot the guy in the seat!
Sadly, that didn't work and after half a mag he flew off and started shooting in my general direction!
This was the moment I remembered to check if I was in comm range lol Thankfully I wasn't, so I decided it was as good an opportunity as any to test out my new neutron guns! Hovered back to my ship, got in, and started blasting his ass with the shiny blue rays of death!
Gotta say, it's a pretty damn sweet gun. It took a couple of shots, but it was waaaay faster to blow him up then it was with only the stock gattling guns!
Ofc this kill didn't do anything, no rewards or loot to find, but it was fun at least.
That's all I had time for, so I just quit.
The good thing is that the aurora feels like a viable ship for bounty missions now, the bad thing is that I'm down to 3000 auec after the purchases.
I almost forgot. Did I mention that I bought a cyclone? The one with the gun on top, it was like 27k auec. Yes, I know it defeats the purpose of the overall mission to get enough money for a new ship, but it was cheap! And it looks great! Although the wheels don't turn and the suspension is locked in place for some reason, it driver fine though...
Anyways, what to do next time? With 3.6.2 on the horizon, I'm pretty sure it's impossible to get the amount of money before that patch hits, with ship rentals, so I'm open to whatever. I've done some bunkers, done some bounties, done all sorts of deliveries, tried the spy sat shooting with my 300i... what else is there worth of a look?
Are the named-npc mission chains worthy of my time? And more importantly, does my progress in the chain persist between sessions?

 

[Carlos Spicyweiner]

Alien dildos are illegal cargo?! Crap! Gotta rethink my entire corporate strategy now. The damn Banu Merchantman is pretty useless now!