Or space weed.

IF you would already have your own station up and running it could be explained this way (no don't do it), test run of the first production line.

But don't be afraid, I think everyone who played this game did the same as you, including myself. Hello gate disasters, hello auto pilot screw-ups :(

And yes there are some who played it in an iron man sort of style, but it is hard, really hard this way. (not meaning no saving at all, but just using like saving on the stations).
If you get into station building, you will end up with reloading quite often anyway ;)

DAY 6
--------

Too tired to write a proper entry. Will make list instead.

- Bought and fully equipped OTAS Zephyrus and Terran Springblossom. Not allowed to buy PSSC due to low Terran rank, had to settle for EEMPC.

- Went exploring. Found Yaki sectors but ships hostile and stations won't let me dock. But Yaki faction labeled as "Friend" in ship menus and I haven't messed with any settings. Annoyed.

- Left, went back to Kha'ak sector to gather data container.

- Scanned for high-yield asteroids in unknown sector, protected ship that came to build mines there.

- Escorted ship convoy to Argon Sector M148.

- Followed Kha'ak ship to base, blew it up.

- Realized my savings were down to 8 million credits compared to 22 million at the start of the day. Freaked out.

- Took a few asteroid scanning and personnel transport missions.

- Hit 20 million credits again. Explored some more.

- Found and hacked Duke's Haven. Bought System Override Software and Software Signature Scrambler.

- Went to Terran space to build up my rank with them.

- Did a few more personnel transport missions. Almost at 27 million credits. The day is over.

Must rest now.

IIRC this is a setting problem. But don't remember the exact wording. affects traders as well....
Maybe some of the more regular can help out there

It's probably because at the beginning of the game I took some patrol/protect station missions that had me killing Yaki and now my rank with them is low but not yet rock-bottom or I guess the stations would be color-coded red as well.

The funny thing is I will sometimes enter a sector and see in my map a hostile Yaki ship that wants to give me a mission but they get killed off by patrols before I can get close enough.

OK, yep that explains it/ I thought it was without your doing ;)
But hey, if you decide upon hurting those poor Ewoks....ahem....meant Yakis ;)

DAY 7 INTRO
------------------

Phew, it feels like forever since I last wrote in this diary. But here I am, like an idiot with poor self-control, harboring fever dreams of an OTAS Boreas... Even though I just bought a new ship the other day. This career is really bringing out my inner mindless consumer at full force. Fortunately or unfortunately, it's still WAY out of my budget. Anyway, I've grown somewhat bored of peaceful missions, but before I return my focus to glorious carnage I'll look into hiring traders, building cheap factories, that sort of thing. Hopefully it'll result in a stable source of passive income and not get me bankrupt.

Heh. Passive income. Yeah, that's what I thought, too... I hope you've stocked up on TSes! >:D

(I figure you need about three per factory. One for input, one for output, and one to constantly micromanage the input needed by the factories which your input depends on.)

*carefully squints to avoid reading the spoilery bits of your posts* (I'm kinda awed by you already having hit day 7, though!)

I've been buying them up from all those "I want to upgrade" fellows but till now I've avoided most trading missions so they're just sitting around. Good thing I didn't sell them!

DAY 7 PROPER
----------------------

Okay, first the 'research'. I was about to leave Terran space when I remembered that I still hadn't tried flying my Vidar. That wouldn't do of course, so the Springblossom was left in Asteroid Belt and off I went in a grossly slower ship. After hours and hours of visiting shipyards, comparing factory prices, noting any presence of TL ships in the general vicinity and writing down appropriate plots of space... I gave up and picked a random location from the list. An Ore Mine L in Queen's Retribution? Sure. Whatever. I'd only got into this for quick extra credits anyway and it had already taken too much time. Thinking dismissive stuff like that, I jumped to location. Luckily the local shipyard was properly stocked, and I found a TL for hire in the same sector. Though its pilot may have been drunk. Or tripping. "Follow me" I'd tell him and he would rush in the opposite direction or just sit there twiddling the Boron equivalent of thumbs. "Drop my freight here" I'd say, and he would do a gigantic completely unnecessery and exagerated turn and then randomly go to either the far left or far right of where I had indicated on the map. "Not there, here!" I'd repeat and he would randomly dissappear from the sector. Huh. Come to think of it, maybe he was trying to saddle me with extra jump frees.

Anyway, after he'd finally put the factory in its proper place, I went through the property list for my TS ships. None of them had a jumpdrive installed.

Damn.

Fortunately, two of them were five sectors away from Queen's Harbour, where they could get brand new jumpdrives before coming to the mine, so I ordered them to make the trip. Unfortunately, three Xenon Qs with an entourage happened along the way, while I was transfering funds to the Ore Mine.

Double damn.

At this point it was either mindnumbing hours of micromanaging other TSs all the way to either Queen's Harbour or Legend's Home and hoping not to stumble into any surprise ambushes along the way or going back to the shipyard and ponying up for replacement ships. I ponied up.

Two tricked out TSs and a jump to Argon space (for Commodity Logistics Software) later, the Ore Mine had started production. I then noticed that the sector has Crystal Fabs so I also built a Solar Power Plant M and connected it to the Ore Mine with a Complex Construction Kit (I wonder if that will affect things for better or for worse. It will be
interesting to see either way). It was finally time for revenge. I went looking for the Xenon Qs and almost died the moment I went within range of them because, fool that I am, I'd forgotten to transfer the 200 MJ shields from my Springblossom to the Vidar before changing ships. All this time I'd been going around with only 2 25 MJ shields equipped. I'm getting the vague impression that this has also happened before.

Well. -_-

I got away with my life at least. Ship upgrades were all destroyed though so I had to rebuy everything and get proper shields from the Terrans. And repairing the ship by myself instead of paying millions at a shipyard took forever. By the time I was ready and went looking for the Xenon again they were nowhere to be found.

After that I went traveling again, this time focusing on simply taking out any hostile ships that would pop up in my field of view and somehow ended up on Ore Belt. So many asteroids! A bit like Savage Spur but with the Plutarch Mining Corporation instead of pirates. Some random Split wanted to sell me asteroid yield data for 911000 credits. Yeah, right. Dream on buddy! I spent the rest of the day manually scanning the asteroids. Found two with a silicon yield of 64 and one with 50something. Since Plutarch Corp seem to be only mining the ore here I think I'll be making use of that silicon for myself. Tomorrow.

Congratulations on your first complex! I just built my third one (containing 8 stations, and I'm thinking of adding 2 more - will write that up tomorrow, as I just finished day 6).

I've never had problems with supply ships, really. They seem to only need to be in the sector, and can deploy anywhere from there. (You know to position the station with the numpad, right? I didn't, for my first complex, so the connection between the two stations in that is endless...)

I just read up on Commodity Logistics Software. That sure looks tempting at my current position in the game... But no, I'm sticking with my decision to go completely pure. (I have most of my station supply issues tuned pretty well by now, so I know I can do without.)

Also niiiiice on that Ore Belt! Don't think I've come across that sector yet. And that while I've been busily exploring everywhere... Must obviously put more effort into that! :D

You better watch those damn Xenon invasion fleets - Qs become somewhat tolerable later in the game, once you get your own M1s and M2s, but the occasional J can still be a problem. Though there are brave souls that have bested one in certain M7s, I wouldn't even go near a J in anything less than an M2 - oh wait, I did that once in my Pirate Kestrel and almost got blasted out of the sky :).

First time I looked at the screenshot I sort of raised an eyebrow, but then I remembered you're playing TC :). Due to frequent capital ship collisions in that area, it got trimmed down in AP - it still has several asteroids mind you, but it's no longer the mother lode it was in TC.

Queen's Harbour - to me that's rather close to the hind end of the X universe. It's not the only place where you can get jumpdrives, you know.

Anyways, thanks for your last "dictated by duty" journal entry :). Keep the empire building going and I hope we still get to hear on your progress every now and then.

Nice! I would also like to thank you for keeping up on your diary, and posting through day 7. Always a pleasure reading others adventures in the game. If your interested, this guy has some pretty good tutorials, including this one on making complexes with the 3D camera available if you have an advanced satellite in system. Also, if you are also interested, he has some decent tutorials on using the CAG/CLS software for automating ships later in his series.

Congratulations on finishing the first seven days! :-)