I haven’t been posting a ton because there’s not really a lot of news to be had. Two things remain in-progress:

  • Acquisition of Prismatic Shielding
  • Columbia mining operations

The shields just take time. I’ve been working to get my ranking where it needs to be with Aisling Duval and now it’s just a matter of maintaining that rank and waiting out the clock. 2 weeks to go.

It’s proving to be pretty expensive but mostly because I’m impatient. I want to get the ranking done in one session as opposed to waiting for the material buy clock to tick over so I’m paying extra to stock more propaganda to deliver at once.

That’s why I brought Yukon Cornelius down here. I originally arrived in Javelin but she wasn’t built for what is essentially cargo missions. I was running around Empire space in an Orca that I bought just because I didn’t feel like flying back and getting a bigger ship but, now that my Anaconda is down here to do the heavy lifting, I’m getting rid of it. It’s an okay ship… but I just have better ones for the work.

And speaking of expediting costs, I’ve been lucky to have been able to replenish a lot of expenditures recently because of Columbia’s mining operation. Twice now I’ve jumped her out to a selling location to offload the Painite other commanders have sold her. Unfortunately, that may be coming to a close soon.

Painite is becoming a little more volatile. You can still make a profit on it but it’s getting to be more work than it’s worth. This last offload took a couple of hours to do because the demand was so low and this week seems to be worse. Coupled with the fact that I can’t get a spot in the mining system to save my life, I might have to do my own mining runs here in a month or so. Columbia’s budget is in good order with a weekly upkeep of around 12 million against a 6.3 billion economy. Granted, 1.2 billion of that is reserved for Painite purchases at 700k a ton. I’m fine on credits. More than fine. but I’d like to have my personal finances at around 5 billion and 10 billion in Columbia’s economy by the time Odyssey comes out.

At some point I need to start shooting shit to finish out my combat rank. Maybe I need to set a goal of Triple Elite by the end of the year… hmmm.