When I woke up in my ship… yes, my ship, I grabbed another meal bar and some water. A quick check showed me that I had my Well Rested buff back and I felt like I was ready to get stuff done. I was finally out of the contract and ready to get going on my own.

And to figure out which way I wanted to go, I needed information. That’s what it boiled down to. Actually that’s what it always boiled down to. You see, I am someone who believes in choice. I don’t ever want to call it free will because I believe that this is an abstract concept and nobody has the ability to actually put it in use. However, I believe in choice. That meant that I believe people try to make the best possible decision at the time. And I think all people do. But to make an educated decision, well, people needed education.

And for me right now that education would come in the form of information and knowledge. Because that was the only way I could see myself deciding my next steps. So the first thing was to get an idea where I stood. With that thought I pulled up my character stats.

Name

Malcolm Solo

Callsign

n/a

Faction Allegiance

Free Worlds Alliance

Current Scenarios

Quirt Starting Scenario

Current Wealth

3694 ICU

Personal Statistics

Strength

3

Raw physical strength

Constitution

3

Endurance, Resistance to damage

Intelligence

5

Complex problem solving skill, Logic, Comprehension

Charisma

5

Attractiveness to others

Perception

5

Awareness through senses

Willpower

4

Ability to make decisions and override impulses

Memory

5

Ability to recall information and experiences

Implants and Enhancements

Neural Link

Gen 7

Allows direct neural interaction and learning

Skills

Small Arms

4 / 100

Piloting

2 / 100

Coordination

3 / 100

Team work

4 / 100

Basic Space Mining

12 / 100

Survey

4 / 100

Abilities

Standings

Nothing new there other than the updated money amount. I frowned but then I noticed the last two lines on the character sheet. Yeah, okay. As they say: Sometimes no answer is an answer. I hadn’t really paid attention to these last 2 parts because there was no information. But in my current mindset I considered the information that these two lines gave me.

First, there were apparently abilities I could learn in this game. From my gaming experience I knew that these abilities could either be active, meaning that you would activate the skill to affect the world around you. In previous games these were things like magic spells, powerful weapon techniques or something like this. What I would get here, I had no clue. The other option would be passive abilities like having an increased damage under certain circumstances or with certain weapons or something like that. Passive meaning they were always active in the background and when the circumstances were right, they went into effect.

In the past it depended a little on the game which was more important and worthwhile but in general I leaned towards passive abilities. Don’t get me wrong, I would make sure that I had a good selection of active ones as well, just in case I could not control the circumstances I was in but at the same time, passive ones were often disregarded as they were perceptively weak but in the end, they often enough made the difference.

The second line was also interesting. Standings usually meant how major factions reacted to you. So I needed to get an idea who and what I could gather standings with and how to go about it. And what effect that would have on my career. At the moment there was no information. Which I took to mean that I hadn’t come across one of the factions that I could have any standing with.

Next I switched the tab over to my ship.

Ship

Civilian Miner Type Digger

Name

n/a

Identification Tag

3VW217AU4FM011666

Active Components

2 / 2

Civilian Mining Laser

Civilian Mining Laser

Static Components

1 / 1

Asteroid Survey Module

Internal Components

0 / 1

Shield

175 / 175

4.2 sec / HP recharge

Armor

138 / 150

Structure

150 / 150

Ship Status - 95%

Life Support

94%

Active Systems

93%

Static Components

90%

Internal Components

n/a

Communications

100%

Shield Generator

100%

Armor

92%

Supplies - 92%

Water

90%

Food

94%

Cargo - n/a

Okay, now there was really nothing to see here. Well, give me a second. Okay, ship status seemed to decline due to use. I was sure that harder use or any kind of fighting situations would drop this much faster. At least if the ship sustained damage.

Food and water were limited resources and I needed to restock at some point because I was really not looking forward to being stranded somewhere in space and dying of hunger or thirst. Yeah, didn’t seem fun, especially considering that I had no idea how death worked yet or how crappy I felt when the debuffs hit me.

Shield, Armor and Structure also seemed pretty self explanatory although I wasn’t exactly sure what the difference between armor and structure was. Man, I could kill for a wiki. But then again maybe I could be the one that builds one after the game goes live and people come looking for information. This alone could be a major source of income.

Since my shield had recharge information while my armor and structure did not, I guessed that meant while my shield would replenish over time, my armor and structure needed to be fixed by manual input. That theory also seemed to be confirmed by the fact that my armor was damaged while my shield was all perfect. Yeah, reminders of my first attempts at manual flying…

The one thing I could change right now in my ship’s overview sheet was the name and on a whim I went ahead and renamed the thing to Rustbucket 01. Not that I ever planned to have a fleet of these things and I surely hoped that my next ship would not be a lot less rusty but then again you never knew.

The other thing I could change were the components. I am sure there would be better mining lasers out there. Something that would have a better yield or something. Also I had an internal slot available. Not sure what I could get my hands on to put in there but it was an upgrade option. Which in itself made me happy.

Finally I pulled up my log where I had made notes over the last few days.

Get an idea what an ICU is worth in terms of living and gaming expenses. Get an idea how much new equipment and possibly a new ship costs. Decide how much ore I want to exchange for credits. Keep raising my skill level in case it proves to be a worthwhile money making scheme. Mine my ass off to get out of here. Figure out how the death and respawn system works in this game.

I updated the list and scratched points 3 and 5. I had made the decision on number 3 a while ago and it was an uneducated decision. To be honest, in retrospect I think it was a bad one considering the information I had gotten from Len-Dren. Instead of a value of 1.5 units of ore to one ICU, I would now have to trade in 2.5 units to get one ICU. However, I was also sure that I would have gone mental if I would have had to sit in this belt for much longer. Since I was still sane the decision didn’t seem so bad after all.

Next I added some items to the list that had popped into my head as I was reviewing my own and my ship’s stats. In the end the rewritten and re-ordered list looked like this.

Figure out how the death and respawn system works in this game. Get a repair quote and if affordable fix Rustbucket. Get an idea what an ICU is worth in terms of living and gaming expenses. Get an idea how much new equipment and possibly a new ship costs. Figure out what to do to make money. Have a chat with Ralgau and get his ideas on freelancing and what to pay attention to. Find out what else there is to do but sit here.

Well, the first one was clear. This had to be my highest priority. I had no clue and to be honest this was one of the most integral parts of the MMORPG genre. Basically you died, you came back. That one was easy. But then every game had different levels of severity with which it punished the player who died. So I needed to get an idea how this worked here and if there was something I could do to avoid overly harsh punishment.

Next thing was that I needed to make sure that Rustbucket stayed in one piece. After hearing Ralgau’s story it seemed important to make sure that I do not end up in some backwater space station serving shitty drinks. And since this shitty little ship was all I had to my name, I better made sure it was in good shape.

Then I finally needed to check what my money was actually worth in this universe. Which went along with number 4 as my expenses would most likely be on ship stuff and equipment, which meant these prices would be my gauge. So I needed to get an idea of ship and equipment prices. My current account balance of 3397 ICU didn’t seem like much if I considered my experience in other space games. Usually the good ships were priced in the multiple million ranges and even half decent ship’s equipment would cost 200 - 500k.

Then I needed to figure out a way to make money as a freelancer. Usually there were several options and I expected them here too.

Mining, which I was already familiar with and had some skill in. On the plus side, mining seemed pretty easy but for low level minerals the payoff was usually pretty low. To make mining a worthwhile thing one needed to heavily invest in specialized equipment which usually corralled one down a path that it was hard to come back from.

Trading, which meant getting a ship with a decent cargo hold and then travel between planets and stations delivering the goods needed for a profit. Plus side: Decent money with a decent ship and I would get to see more of the universe. Downside: Since freighters were usually poorly equipped it left one open to be pirated. There were ways to minimize that risk but they would cost serious money again.

Piracy, which meant stealing from the rich and giving to the poor. The poor being me in this scenario. High risk, high reward. The problem was that one usually ended up with a bounty on one’s head and it was really hard to come back from that. Pus standing with all kinds of factions was easily ruined on that route.

Then there were always some crossover and more exotic occupations. Mercenary or Privateer which was basically a legitimized pirate working for some organization or interest group, Blockade Runner which was a mix of trader and fighter, Smuggler, a mix of pirate and trader, etc. I did not think I was ready for any of these things in the near future.

Which brought me finally to what was often the bread and butter in space games: Mission Running. There were always someone that needed someone to get something done. I doubted that I could do much in my Rustbucket but you never know. After some contemplation I decided that I might as well pick this as my most possible option to make some scratch.

Let’s stick with these things for now. Since Ralgau had treated me decently before I decided to make the Rambler my first stop. There I could check the bulletins and see what’s what. And I could also pick his brain regarding some of my other questions and get his take on the whole freelancing business.

With that thought, I set the destination in my hud, grabbed my jacked, secured the ship and headed out.