Jump Town in a 315: a short story!

Was collecting drugs at Jump Town under tense conditions :grimacing:, but went well for an hour, maybe more.

Oh, wait, you don’t know about Jump Town? Lemme explain …

It’s an event in SC whereby there is a small, unassuming moon base in which there are several rooms.

One of the rooms is special. It contains a drugs making machine that packages up and dispenses one package of drugs every 30 seconds or so.

Usually, when the event is active (there’s a published schedule!), you can find a mission available in the “Priority” section of your mobiGlass mission browser. Accepting this mission will give you the current coordinates of Jump Town. It moves every few weeks.

Collecting these drugs packages and taking them to a drop off location (also marked) will earn you credits, quite a lot of credits, and the more packages you move, the more you make.

Now, head down there, land, enter the moonbase, find the right room, walk up to the machine, collect the next package and place it in your ship. Rinse & repeat, until the hold is full!

Now, the problem is that accepting the mission does not remove it for other players as an option, and there’s competition for these packages. But just as Game Theory sometimes instructs us, it can make sense to collude.

Now one option, especially for an org, is to take a lot of muscle down there, lots of badass ships bristling with weapons, maybe one or two AA vehicles to deter and shoot other players out of the sky, divide up responsibilities and hold the place down. Assign three guys to do the loading into a big ship. The rest on security. Take every package. Divide up the profits. There’s probably over 4 million credits to be made in a session, at least, so there’s plenty to go around. If the org has been together for a while and trusts each other, this should work fine. Plus the more there are of you, the more you eat up the server capacity of 50 players and you lower the threat of significant groups of rivals.

But I’m alone, solo, I’m not in an org.

Luckily there’s no org there today, phew!

It was very quiet, considering. It’s the weekend and the servers should be full of players.

If there is only 3 or 4 of you there at one time, then you can quite easily each take turns to pick up a package, take it to your ship and load it. By the time you return to the room, it’s your turn again.

No problem if there’s a small queue, so long as everyone is playing fair and the same ballgame.

The parked ships were unthreatening … just one or two small Titans and a medium fighter, big deal.

It only takes one person to break the peace though…

I think there were four of us, rarely a queue. Two working together, one of which was a female so hopefully less ruled by testosterone and going for the smarter, peaceful approach? One guy with a weapon out (not a good idea imho, you’ll make other people nervous and potentially invite confrontation, but he was obviously not taking chances), but no-one else, to begin with.

It’s the ship you least expect

You see the advantage of the 315p is that it has a (relatively for a small ship) capacious hold that crucially opens up on the outside of the craft. There’s no ramp to leave open and allow others to step inside. As ever, only the pilot can open it.

So, slowly but surely, after many trips, the hold filled up. You’d never know what was in there just looking at the ship. People are too busy usually to watch you open the hold.

It’s not a military ship and whilst it has a flashy paint job, it would not be perceived as a threat and as a small ship doesn’t really attract attention.

Then this new guy turned up, acting odd. He was using a tractor beam to move packages. That’s an ok strategy, but there was something shifty about him, I couldn’t quite place what though …

Still, carried on for another 20 mins, everyone behaving ok

Now, I’m close to filling the hold of my small ship. I know I should really wrap up at this point, head off and materialise the profit. But I so want to fill the hold! I’m going to carry on, despite the risks.

Karma has a way of playing out. I was being too greedy.

One final time I enter the room, the dodgy guy is there, messing with his tractor beam. I wait til he moves one package from the machine.

Just as I collect the next one (fair, it’s my turn) with my back turned to him, he must’ve changed weapon, a couple of shots rang out. I’m the intended target and he shoots me in the back!

I bleed, incapacitated and things go dark…

Medical gown time, ugh!

I’m revived at the local planet hospital. I’m furious! But what to do?: my ship still sat there, almost full of drugs, and amongst thieves!

If I rage quit now, I’ll never get back into this server and my ship will despawn, I’ll lose everything.

On the bright side, the shifty players down there are probably too busy to notice it, but I can’t be sure. The guy who shot me probably didn’t know which ship was mine, but again, can’t be certain. Maybe he’s busy griefing other players and will forget me soon, but can’t be sure.

So, desperate to get back there and simply pick up my small ship, not seek revenge (I knew the risks and the drugs are worth more than my pride!), I headed back in an Arrow, to see if I could just quickly land and retrieve ship, that’s all I needed to do!

I had got dressed in different armour so I would not be recognised as the same guy who the hoodlum shot.

What if the place is devastated by an A2 bomb before I get there? One or two of those bombs from a Starlifter can take out everything … I’ve got to get back and I’ve got to get back there NOW! There is no time to waste.

It’s just not the same place anymore.

After a reasonably short flight (luckily the event is near my home planet), I got there, but things had changed for the worst :frowning: :

Massive amounts of new ships, mostly military!

As soon as I tried to land, my small insect like ship was shot at, I exploded, I die
… again!

Medical gown version 2.0

Undeterred, I’m revived again at the local planet

This time I committed to change up my strategy!

I spawned my bigger ship, a Freelancer Max, the idea being I could take my moon buggy, land a little further out, drive the buggy to my little drugs ship, get out, jump in and take off before anyone could do anything.

I wouldn’t have to worry about the Max, or the buggy as can reclaim them on insurance later.

I got into my ship (the Max) at the spaceport hangar, only to find the rover had despawned from cargo bay

“Damn!”, can’t be bothered to go respawn one and load it at some landing station, that’s just a time delay and any moment my ship might be destroyed and the drugs may spew out over the snow and be picked up by some undesirable who will surely profit handsomely from his or her misdemeanours.

So went in this ship anyway, it would still have better shields for landing under fire and it would take a bit of grief before exploding, by which time I planned to have feet on the ground and clear of the explosion, so I went ahead.

As I flew, an announcement came over comms that the event had ended, the machine will have stopped dispensing drugs - would people leave whilst leaving my small ship alone?! I could hardly bare the pressure!

I aimed to land further out, behind a mountain.

As I approached the final 4km, missile lock warning … eeek

Landed quickly and with more missile warnings jumped out and ran for the hills

Turned the corner, and ran towards Jump Town.

My ship was still there!

Most people had left!

No-one had thought to touch it, or so I thought.

There was now only one ship left, a Cutlass Black.

It had same livery as the uniform of the guy who shot me.

As I approached, it took off. Hooray, I thought, off with you!

But my joy was short lived.

It headed towards my ship as if to shoot it

I ran as fast as I could. Could he see me? It was dark by now and I’m really small in comparison to other objects, but I’m bound to be caught in the glare of all the lights near the ship.

It pointed its nose at my small craft.

I was literally yards from my ship now!

Undetered (what did I have to lose?!) I jumped in.

Struggling to enter pilot seat (Damn the SC interface when you are in a panic!!) I hit the engines and …

Took off!

Headed for the sky as fast as I could, didn’t look back!

He’s not following me?!

Reached Quantum Jump

Got to the drugs drop off location, a space station, landed, jumped out, entered and stored the craft.

Ran to the Galleria and found the Admin office.

Sold the drugs at a console.

600k up - extremely good for a solo effort!

Exhausted, stressed, but what an amazing experience!!!

Star Citizen, yet again, proving how awesome it can be!

If you enjoyed this and/or have a comment, please Like it and/or reply below! Sign in via Discord or just by using your email address. Thanks for reading this far!

If you’ve yet to join Star Citizen, please consider supporting this site by using our referal code STAR-QSK9-YWYF

1 Like