Hi testies,
So I finally put a few hours into 3.7.1 PU. What follows is my usual long post about how things went down.
Started with the armor shopping, got the big backpack, and the flack pistol sidearm (or whatever it's called lol) with a red dot.
Looked at the missions and found 3 deliveries from grimhex that looked easy enough, 2 to some breakers yard and one ti cellin which is close enough to grim, so I took all three.
Landed at grimhex with my stock Aurora MR, went to collect the first box from the vending machine, dropped the package inside the ship, did the same with second, then on my 3rd run inside, it dawned me.
The ship would despawn cos of the time limit!
And sure as hell it did while I was taking the third package from th vending machine. So I spawned it again from the ship console, and there it was, with both my previous packages inside!
All was well, I could do the deliveries still right? (Yeah, right...)
Threw the third box next to the other two and headed for Cellin, and ofc I got intercepted immediately!
I knew it was illegal cargo, so I thought wadda hell, if it's the cops I'll just run for it. Thats just one crim stat that should go away pretty fast, like it did in 3.6, right?
Wrong! Very Wrong!
Ofc it was a cop trying to scan me, so I ran and qt-d the heck outta there.
Arrived at cellin, found the stash place on the map, and spent 5-10 minutes flying there.
Ofc when I landed and got near enough for it to register in the mission system, it bugged out and I had no place to put the package. Spent another good 5-10 minutes throwing off the boxes from the shelves and trying to place mine on them to see if it would work, but ofc it didn't.
So, one orange crime stat gained for nothing so far, great.
I left the box and aimed for the breakers yard next to Lorville.
After a long but uneventful quantum travel, and another 15 minutes of flying to the yard, I landed between an idris and a freelancer. Both looked abandoned. All along the way to the vending machine inside the shack, there were boxes thrown on the ground, like 20 easily. Oh oooh, not a good sign.
Just as I thought, with one of my boxes in hand as I pushed the button on the machine, it noped out.
Went back to the ship, maybe it was the wrong box for the mission I was actively tracking... tried the other box, nope again.
So either the mission were broken from the start, or they broke when my ship despawned. My guess is that the boxes lost their mission tags on spawning again, and were just random boxes, not tied to the mission anymore.
I threw both boxes on top the pile next to the vending machine, clearly others weren't lucky either, and left.
On my way out I checked if I could steal one of the other ships but no prompts came up.
What now?
Well, I could take a look at the ship rentals next door in Lorville, and if there's something I can afford, I can start doing some legal bounty missions...
After a quick jump and descent, hovering over the landing bays, I asked for permission.
Nothing happened so I asked again, but this time I listened to the audio...
Yeah, I didn't get permission cos of my single crime stat for running from the cops! It's been like 1-1.5 hours since I got that, and it didn't go away, I didn't get fined or anything..
So, I was a pirate now!?
Okay, if that's how you gonna play it... I thought as I slammed on the throttle, hit the boosters, and crashed straight into the hammerhead parked at the shops above the hangars!
My thinking was, that last time in 3.6 when I got a crime stat for failing to stop for the 50, I died in accident by crashing into a hangar, and upon respawn my crime stat was gone.
Yeah, bds idea! If you wanna suicide away your crime stat, do it in a legal manner! Crash into the sun, the Test way! Maybe that works!
Because as I respawned at grimhex, I now had a red crime stat, instead of the orange one! I was caught for ramming other ships, or something like that!
So with that, my mind was made up. Time to be the bad guy for once!
My first mission as a pirate, was to kill some guy flying around next to grimhex. I switched to my 300i for this, and went out hunting.
Found him easily enough (finally a bounty mission that worked!!) and after a brief exchange of laser fire, I blew him out of the sky!
Yay, 4000auec as a rewa... what's that now? Crime stat for assaulting an officer? And for murder?
Oh shit.
So I was now at 3 orange crime stats, way to go, noob pirate! I was in comm array range the whole time! Dammit...
Ah well, I'm committed now, so let's do another one. Whoa the next one was giving out like 6500auec or something, and still I only needed to kill one guy, cool! He is around kareah, ok...let's go there then.
So I went, and upon closing with the station and the target marker, it started tk become very clear that the guy was not flying around kareah, he was On Kareah!
And I was dressed in bright yellow light armor, with only a sidearm.
Spotted two player ships while approaching the station, and I had no idea how many baddies were inside. After a quiet landing, gun in hand, I went through the airlock crouching. I coikd now see that the target marker was above me, so I had to find the stairs, and fast before somebody finds me. Crawling along th corridor, on my right I saw a doorway into the main hall.
And through the doorway, a head, a blue-red helmet!
Two fast and precise headshots later, the head slouched to the ground and stayed there.
Damn this is a fine weapon!
Now confident that my weapon was more than capable, it was only my stupidity and the lag gods that could stop me from completing this mission!
I slowly advanced along the corridor towards a corner, behind the corner, there were the stairs leading to my target. No one seemed to be around, as I moved up and closed in on the guy.
After turning another corner, I saw that there was a break in the corridor, and the lights were out. My target was there, in the darkness, just behind the bend. Quickly checked my ammo count, I had 5 points left in the gun. So I went for it!
Popped out from behind the corner, and shot! 2 to the chest, and 1 to the head. He went down like a sack of beans. The deed was done, mission complete, credits received...
I went over to the body to see if I could loot anything, and picked up his rifle, she that's the same behring (I think?) as it usually is with npc-s, it had a full mag of 30 rounds, and I turned around to stroll back to my ship...
And thats when 3 armored figures burst out from behind the corner!
Thankfully as a group, stepping on each other's toes. I emptied the rifle into them, and they fell face first to the ground.
Well, 2 of them did.
The 3rd one, standing mostly behind the others, took aim and started shooting! The rifle was out, so my instincts kicked in, grabbed my sidearm, and emptied the last two shots into his head. (This where 25+ years of playing FPS games pays off, bigtime)
While reloading my gun (I only just realized that I had only those two shots left in it) I looked at my health display. Blooood! Everywhere! And it was mine! I got holes through every single body part apart from my head. Quickly using the med pen, I stopped all the bleeding, and I was feeling better then ever! (And this was the bit where looking up the button for the medpens just before entering the station paid off lol).
After grabbing a fresh unfired rifle from the now dead guards, I sneaked out of the station, and boosted away into the sunset....
And promptly accepted a comm array disabling mission!
But that wast anywhere as near exciting as this one. Went to the pickup location for the cryptokey (hacking pendrive) which I had to hold in my hands or put it down, couldn't stow it. That's kinda silly but oh well... Went to comm array, switched in sneak mode, lowered power until the ship barely moved, and glided mu way to the entry hole, hoping that the gun batteries wouldn't open fire. And they didn't! So I zero-G walked inside, sat there while the hacking ran, pushed the continue button 3-4 times, came out, got in ship, waited 5 minutes as per orders. In the last minute I already chose a getaway location and spooled my quantum drive, in case somebody showed up, but nothing happened. No one came to stop me or reset the array. Mission was done, I was rich (kinda) and happy.
Went back to grimhex and logged out.
Since then, I bought some guns, ammo, and cryptokeys so next time I can try and reset my crime stat.
Tldr.: doing a few criminal missions is fun and all, but the limitations to landing zones and such makes it hard to check out all the cool stuff. Ship rentals, named mission givers, and a bunch more is behind the walls of law and order, so I'm not sure if it's worth it just yet. Also, with a lot of the illegal missions being box runs, there needs to be a way to smuggle effectively sooner then later.
Disclaimer: any and all misspellings and such are due to my autocucumber on my phone, so pls forgive me, I hope it still makes sense.
edit:added screenshot of testiness
. Been letting the space patrol shoot me when I turn to the dark side and its been horrible. They fly around my dead in space ship that I shut all power down on and it takes forever for them to finish the job
Will try the land and greet the guards method next time for sure
