Oh good! You went for a totally other kind of game than me :-) Makes things more interesting. NO trading, all combat with a heavy reliance on missions.

The Mamba is a nice ship, a lot more capable fighter than a Buster or a Disco(verer) and that particular one comes with a decent amount of upgrades installed but not maxed so do not forget to upgrade it if you want to keep using it.

For making it on time in missions you need: A (relatively) fast ship with many engine tunings and often you must have a jumpdrive too to make it.

My avatar, when it shows up here some day....., is the picture of O'ren Rock.

Let us keep on playing!

Nice first entry. You've certainly been busy and have advanced a lot :). Make profitsssss and carry on! Gaining reputation requires a bit of patience but can be done mainly in two ways: take missions from Paranid pilots and complete them successfully or attack pirates/Duke's ships in Paranid space. And of course, don't attack any Paranid (including in assassination missions issued by Argon pilots), since that's a very quick way to lose rep with them! That's actually a very good way to get a decent sized starting budget that you can then use on the stock markets. That's where the big bucks are made. I was quite the mercenary myself before becoming a fleet commander.

The Mamba is now fully upgraded. I like it, but one disadvantage of starting with such a capable ship is that I am still flying my starting ship, and I am beginning to think a change might be nice, but I am not even close to affording anything better.

By the way, how did you put together that pilot info picture? I wanted to do the same.

The pilot info was made by combining a couple of screenshots, as was the map, since neither would show everything on one screen.

Yes, I know as much but which program(s) did you use?

Personally I use PhotoFiltre v6.5.3, but any image editing software should do the job.

Day Two

Things got off to a good start when two people hired me to defend the same factory, and as an added bonus I captured another Discoverer in the battle. Over the course of the day I captured another five ships, a Raijin Raider, Elite, Discoverer Hauler, Nova Raider, and Scorpion – a good haul I think.

Mindful of my desire to mend fences with hostile races I agreed to a (rare for me) non-combat mission for a Paranid customer I ran across. This involved picking up Cartography Chips from the neighbouring sector and returning them, with five and a half minutes to do so. Abandoning slow auto-docking in favour of manual docking I made it with seconds to spare, and only minor damage to my ship from a rough landing, achieving my goal of peace with the Paranids in the process. If that was not enough, while I was dashing for the sector gate during the mission I spotted an attractive offer for a second-hand Demeter freighter being sold for just 81,200 Cr, which I jumped on, and after a few repairs sent it to a dock until I could set it up as a trader.

I decide to grab software and equipment upgrades where possible, most notably adding a jumpdrive to my ship, although the docking computer is also much appreciated, and the police licenses quickly pay for themselves (earning me 86,000 Cr so far). With this done I work my way down through Teladi space where I receive an assassination job from a Boron, which puts me square with them, allowing me to continue into Boron territory. There I find (not entirely by chance, I will admit) a Skate Prototype, a similar class of ship to my trusty Mamba. It loses a little speed and hull strength, but boasts better shielding and weapon charging, however it is the addition of a couple of turrets (which can be useful for missile defence) that convinces me to switch over.

With increasing bounties from my assassination work, I decide to invest the money in getting my Demeter trading, so I jump back to where it is docked, and purchase the appropriate software, upgrade the ship, and hunt down compatible shielding and armament before employing a Teladi pilot and setting him loose in Scale Plate Green. Soon my trade rank is increasing through no fault of my own so I assume he is hard at work, and by the end of the day has advanced to rank five.

Jumping back to where I left off, I soon enter Split space, and head towards the Strong Arm corporation's headquarters, with the intention of working for them. They assign me a mix of assassination and defence missions along with an annoying spying job. In between jobs I have been starting to explore the nearby Paranid sectors, but do not get far before the next job comes up. Having completed about half a dozen missions so far I am annoyed to see I am yet to reach rank one, but I will persevere for now. My last assassination was my biggest bounty so far, 1,691,025 Cr to kill Chi t'Ktt, although having to jump two sectors over to find out he was in my original sector was slightly annoying.

Over the course of the day I have advanced from trade rank 0 to 10, and from combat rank 11 to 15. My faction ranks are:
Argon 7
Boron 5
Split 5
Paranid 0
Teladi 6
Goner 3
Terran -1
I have taken on another 23 missions, and completed 20 of them, visited 23 new sectors, destroyed 89 ships, and boosted my bank account from 1 million to 8 million credits.

Hardrada, your reports are excellent, I wish I could write that well.

8 million credits on your second day, from missions alone? That's a figure to be proud of.

As always, it's a pleasure to read your entries and head about your progress. You've even visited the Pirate Duke so early on!

That is mostly from 'very hard' assassination missions, which can easily pay over a million credits. Now that I have a jumpdrive, completing those missions on a tight schedule is much more viable. I expect the trader is contributing too, although I am not sure how to check on his efforts.

I have not visited Duke just yet, but I think I am right next door. Given my hostility to pirates I do not expect to be greeted with open arms, but we will see.

The Pirate Duke has his HQ in Lasting Vengeance and is guarded by several Nemesis squads. I've dropped by once to say hi, but never returned since. Still, I like to harass and prey upon his freighters whenever I run into them.

Later on you might get passenger transport missions worth from 7 to 11 million credits, which are not even that hard to complete if you have the right ship. With missions, it's just a matter of luck and keeping your eyes open.

I was assuming he was in Duke's Citadel, I did visit Lasting Vengeance, I think I popped in, assassinated a guy, saw no reason to hang around and promptly left with laser bolts buzzing past my ears on the way out.

Day Three

This has been a quieter day than the last two, with most of my time being spent doing not particularly exciting chores for the Strong Arms. I am close to getting rank 4 and the ship reward that will come with it, but progress is slower than I had hoped.

With my Demeter pilot reaching a high enough rank to switch him from Sector Trader to Universal Trader I started to think about how I should invest my funds. Although the prospect of a powerful M6 with which to terrorise the neighbourhood was tempting, I decided to get more traders, and after some research concluded the OTAS Mistral was the best ship for the job, and bought all ten in stock at the OTAS shipyard. I then proceeded to search out the shields (40x25MJ) and guns (60xPAC) to equip them; other upgrades such as jump drives, trading software and engine/rudder tuning could be taken care of in their home system, no cargo extensions yet as I was running out of money. While hunting equipment I came across an abandoned Iguana Vanguard personnel transport and claimed it as my own. As I was not engaging in combat, and could use the larger cargo hold I switched to it. Although it was initially slow, after upgrades I was slightly embarrassed to realise it was faster than my fighter, albeit nowhere near as nimble. I proceeded to continue in luxury and style, eventually gathering enough gear for everyone and sending them into the galaxy to earn back my investment.

Expanding my fleet in a more conventional manner (i.e. by capturing enemy ships) has not gone so well today, with only a Fujin Sentinal and Discoverer claimed – eight High Energy Plasma Throwers do not give smaller ships much of a chance to surrender. However, I did manage to grab a second hand Scorpion Raider for about half of its list price, which will be useful if I have any jobs requiring a fast ship before I get my Strong Arms reward ship.

In between my corporate jobs I have been trying to expand my knowledge of the universe, and take some higher paying work in the process, but it seems no sooner have I jumped to where I left off my exploration than they are calling me back for more errands. A couple of supply missile jobs were particularly annoying, with the first one soon abandoned, and fortunately aborted before I could fail. By the time I saw the second one I had realised I should collect the goods before accepting the mission, but even then I had to look all over to get enough, and at one point had to race to a factory before they sold to someone else. I have managed to improve on my best-paid assassination, with 2,046,527 Cr for Ban Sillarn, A.K.A Tammanckussut who should clearly have done a better job of emptying the bank accounts if he wanted to live.

Over the course of the day I have advanced from trade rank 10 to 15, and from combat rank 15 to 16. My faction ranks are:
Argon 7
Boron 4
Split 9
Paranid 4
Teladi 7
Goner 3
Terran -1
Strong Arms 3

I have taken on 15 missions and completed all of them, visited 22 new sectors and destroyed 155 ships, however my bank account is about the same as at the start of the day (8 million credits).