I thought I would try out my unfocussed jump drive as I have read that the sectors it leads to can contain engine tunings and on rare occasions the legendary Aran. I loaded my Hyperion with eight of my best marines and set off into the deep black with no idea of what lay ahead.

Upon arriving I immediately detected nearby Xenon fighters and switched to my Enhanced Chimera to engage. As I dodged and blasted my way through the Xenons I spotted something else nearby - or perhaps just huge. Ordering the Hyperion to follow I set off to investigate. A derelict ship of a type I had never seen before gradually grew before my eyes, but with a Xenon Q following my Hyperion in I had to put my investigation on hold. The Q is a formidable warship but the superior speed and agility of the Hyperion kept me (mostly) out of harm's way while I pounded it into scrap. With that taken care of I turned back to the derelict, and sent in the marines. After persuading all of them to land at the same time they had little trouble seizing control of the ship and turned over control of the Aran to me. With a fresh wave of Xenons bearing down on us I wasted no time docking my ships and transferring over a jumpdrive and energy cells and jumped back to the known universe as the first shots started to land.

When I found my prize had a top speed of 4m/s I had to scout out shipyards for proximity to gates and settled on Kingdom's End as the best choice, and have sent it in for repairs and upgrades.

Given I had read that sectors had perhaps a one in fifty chance of containing an Aran I was not expecting much, but there it was - first sector, and not hard to spot at all. I am not sure if I just got lucky, or if it is an Albion Prelude thing, but either way I am happy.

Great luck you have :-)

Success in the Hub Plot!!!

At long last the Xenon Hub is fully operational again. While most of the the supply missions could be completed in about a day in game, the largest microchip complex I could afford to make only produces 1000/hour, and that cost me over 720,000,000 Credits. With 75,000 microchips needed for the plot I resorted to leaving the game running in the background for a few days to hurry things along, and eventually I came home to find the last shipment required had been delivered and all that remained was to ferry Mahi Ma back to Boron space. I have since redeployed a heap of freighters to more profitable work selling off my substantial ore, silicon, crystal, and microchip production - not that I need money any more, last time I looked I had over 1.5 billion credits in the bank.

Nice layout! It's a shame that the game usually ruins the look a bit with all the connecting conduits after installing the construction kits. When your done with your hub plot, can I have some of your crystals at bargain prices for mine? ;)

Congrats!

Congratulations indeed! I think not many have completed that Hub without resorting to any modding, like one mod I spotted that allowed you to cut away large percentages of the materials required, or cheating other than letting the game run by itself.

Here, an achievemnt badge for you: *A * A * A*

To some extent it is annoying that working for money is now essentially pointless, and that in order to complete the hub plot you have to build up the infrastructure that will earn you that money. I am currently focussing on acquiring all the non-purchasable ships I can, and am just about done with those belonging to friendly races, but it looks like I could be spending some time in Yaki and Xenon territory. Also, it is probably about time I started the main plot.