A Rock In A Cold Place

Yesterday was my 30th day withBarr Heavy Industries, and consequencially the end of my probationary period. I sent a message to David Barr and within moments he hailed me on a private comm channel. We had a quick meeting. Seems we’re both pleased and I was made a full member of the company. I requested assignment to the Excavation Division and was granted the title of Excavation officer. David also granted me an honorary title as Strategist of Last Resort, due to some unique tactical thinking on my part (Plan B: Kill Everybody).

My first act as a full member was to refer a new applicant to David; Marko is now a probationer with BHI. He’s aspiring to join the Security Team. Some teams are starting forays into wormhole space, so I think he’ll be seeing plenty of action soon. I’ll personally stick to my asteroids.

Hargatay got qualified to run a salvaging destroyer, so he’s taking a break from training and I’m back to work on my refining courses. Davios is only a few days from joining me in a second retriever, which is a good thing becaus Markos is itching to get back on the stick.

Meanwhile, the cash flow is starting to look good with several contracts of ore being closed the other day.  Half of that went towards a cybernetic implant, but we can’t make money without spending money!

I was focusing on getting Abaddor into a Hulk.  In my noobishness once i got into a Retriever my train of thought was “better harvesting requires better ship.”  Reviewing the 39 day training plan to get Astrogeology and Mining Barge to V, I was starting to feel impatient.  Remembering the mention of T2 Modulated Strip Miners in Halada’s mining guide, I decided to see if I qualified.  Lo and behold, I do!  So I went out and bought a pair and some Veldspar crystals and went to work!  Well, definitely quite the improvement, and that’s with T1 crystals!  So, given that there are T2 crystals out there that I cannot use yet, but could soon, I rethought my plan.  Of course, getting qualified for these means working on refining skills, including Refining V, which will open up Refinery Efficiency (I got that skill in a tutorial and have been storing it for seven weeks now!). 

So…these new training goals, which will get me into some T2 crystals in a week, should ramp up the cash flow during that long trek to Hulk pilot.  And the Refinery efficiency, trained to a modest 3, should make it profitable to refine instead of selling ore!

This leads us to the first Sticky Note Of The Week!