Choose My Adventure: I am not good at drug running in Star Citizen

There’s a rather popular quote in military circles that goes “no plan survives contact with the enemy.” This quote springs to my mind as I recount my latest Star Citizen escapade as chosen by you fine folks because my attempt to make money via Jumptown drug running went absolutely haywire. That said, I legitimately ended up having possibly more fun participating in this comedy of errors than I would have if things had gone to plan.

Now when I say “plan,” I absolutely mean plan; my benefactor Ichi had quite literally sent me a tactical breakdown of the mission, replete with information about the location, suggested strategies, and some choices on how to manage the specifics of trading any money we earned. Since I’ve never navigated to Jumptown before, I suggested we do a dry run first to get acclimated to where it is. With that decided, we climbed aboard Ichi’s Freelancer and set a course.

As first attempts go, things went pretty well overall. Ichi talked me through our approach to the area where Jumptown is hiding and seemed pleased with how I was steering his ship. Our arrival to Jumptown was during the moon’s daytime, which makes it visually easier to spot but also means you’re just as easy to be spotted and shot down. However, as we got closer to the assumed location of this little drug lab, we didn’t see any other ships around. Maybe people were occupied with other things?

Not exactly. As we closed in on the general area where the single building of Jumptown is located, two ships appeared on radar: a Hammerhead that appeared to be scanning for Jumptown as well and an F7C Hornet fighter. The moment I locked on to the Hornet and tried to bring it into view, it began to take pretty obvious evasive maneuvers. At this point, we felt it best to attempt to vacate the area and perhaps try again. In doing that, however, I had to bring up my navigation computer to chart a course — an act that effectively means I could no longer fly evasively.

I don’t blame the Hornet pilot for taking the shot. We were flying in a straight line in the Star Citizen version of a minivan. We were pretty much asking to get blown up at that point.

Even though we were blown to smithereens, I felt that the dry run was successful in that it gave me an idea of where to go and what to look for. So with that, Ichi and I decided to hop into a different server and try to make the run for real. This time, I would be piloting the Cutlass fighter as voted on by the readers and he would be flying support. Additionally, we would be joined by some members of his Core Dynamic Systems organization: pilots by the names of MechPilot524, Quigley32, and RockWan.

Once more, our approach to Jumptown was during the moon’s daylight, but since we had the extra support, it didn’t feel like nearly as much of a risk. The trickier bit was flying to Jumptown myself, as I didn’t have anyone riding shotgun with me this time. My approach vector was close but not quite accurate, which wasn’t helped by a weird visual glitch that had identifying white textures slowly sliding their way across the planet’s surface, making navigation challenging.

Still, we managed to find Jumptown anyway, mostly on the strength of the other support pilots. As we all made our way forward, Ichi decided to drop a bit of extra weight on my shoulders. The cargo I was carrying to sell to Jumptown ended up costing him all of his in-game money. It was literally make or break. “Jumptown has been sterilized. Area secure,” read the party chat. Time to land.

The arrival was clear. The landing was clear. The selling of the goods on board was clear. Everything was running smoothly. Then, the console where you’re meant to buy drugs to sell back to GrimHex bugged out, offering Ichi and me no choices whatsoever and no goods to sell. We attempted several times, tried to swap ships, and even tried to wait a bit to see if it would sort itself out. No dice.

At one point when I headed outside to take a look around, I noticed that one of our support pilots was blown out of the sky while another began to give chase. Things were getting hot. After another try at the bugged console, I decided that it was time to cut our collective losses and bail. Ichi agreed and we decided to leg it. Jumptown was now under cover of darkness, so our escape was clean and unnoticed.

I’m pretty sure I ended up making Ichi broke, but we were still enjoying ourselves. Our support pilots seemed to be as well, as they burned by me in their faster fighters and formed up behind my rented Cutlass at one point. I plotted a course for GrimHex and touched down on what I thought was the landing pad, but I ended up balancing the Cutlass on the top of a shipping crate — a cherry on top of the failure sundae that was my first attempt at in-game drug smuggling.

I pretty much ended up precisely where I had started, with only a few hundred uAEC to my name, so I still need to rake in some money. However (at least for this round of CMA anyway), drug running is off the table, which pretty much leaves me with two choices: mission runs or mining. 50/50 choice, I know, but Jumptown is going to go on the back burner for a bit. So, what’s it going to be, gang?

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Next, as always, is the hardware option, and once again the choices come courtesy of my benefactor Ichi as well as my own personal stock. This time, though, I’ll be omitting the selections that barely got any nods from the voting public since they appear to be unpopular options. With that said, feel free to select my wings.

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Once more, polls for this round will close this coming Friday, December 21st, at 1:00 p.m. EST. I’d like to also once more thank everyone for the participation and provide a special thanks to Ichi for his continued rental services and the members of his org in flying support for this adventure. Hope to see you all soon in the ‘verse!

Welcome to Choose My Adventure, the column in which you join Chris each week as he journeys through mystical lands on fantastic adventures – and you get to decide his fate. Which is good because he can often be a pretty indecisive person unless he’s ordering a burger.