One thing you need to know about me and my blogging habits is that I tend to shoot from the hip. I get an idea in my head, write a post, barely edit or revise, and kick it out the door like the in-laws after dessert on Thanksgiving. While that means you get a 100% mostly unfiltered view inside my head re: specific subjects, it also means that I occasionally have to write posts like this wherein I walk back some rather bold assertions.

I jumped into the game this morning and ran into a wealth of issues, specifically that none of the screens or terminals were loading. That meant I couldn’t summon a ship from the ASOP terminals and get out of Lorville. A quick server-hop solved this, and then I was off to the races…almost literally as I spent some time in a Pisces just flying around and through Lorville.

I verified that some areas of the city threaten to impound my ship when I dipped below 1400m, but the zone around Teesa Spaceport seemed to allow low flight, like in this “trench run” screenshot above.

Of course, slamming into supports in the city hurts just as much as it should, which is something I learned when I slammed into some supports in the city and got sent to the rehab center.

Because I could, I armed myself with a tractor beam, unlocked the Pisces, and stripped the weapons from the front. I had no reason to; I just wanted to see how it worked. Problem is, I couldn’t see how to get weapons from the local inventory available to me so I could snap them to a ship.

Finally, I left Lorville for Everus Harbor, as one does, and when I looked back I was pleasently surprised to see the fidelity of the clouds had greatly improved.

In 3.18 my clouds looked grainy and pixelated, but these look phenomenal.

I also received word from the org’s head of mining operations that his previous assessment — which drove most of my bitching about the neutering of the Prospector — might have been off. He is going to spend some time in the game later to try a few things, and when I get mor of a chance I’ll go out and try it myself (I need to review the mining changes in full). I might just end up screwing around in 3.19, going back to the bunker missions (AI has supposedly been improved as well) or just seeing what events I can join.

Let this be a lesson kids: give your thoughts time to relax before you spend the better part of your day banging out a long post with screenshots that you might regret.